“You’ll be wanting to go to chapel, but Father Wessen is away at the village, seeing to Grania.”
“She’s ill again?” Gwyn asked distractedly.
“Aye. So, he said to tell you there won’t be mass this morning—”
“Where is he?”
“Father Wessen?” She gave a confused look. “Forgive, my lady, but as I was saying—”
“Lord Griffyn.”
“Oh.” The young maid smiled as she reached to add another stick to the flames.
“Well?” Gwyn asked again, eyeing the maidservant dismally. Perhaps she had been a bit lax in her administration.
“He’s about. He’s been everywhere, my lady. The men are in the fields, and up on the walls.”
“On the walls?”
“Aye. Repairs, my lady. They’re fixing up the walls a’ready. They say a mason’s coming, if ye can believe it.”
Gwyn lay back in the bed and hugged the furs to her chest. Mary looked over with a smile.
“And it’s raining.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then Gwyn flew out of the bed, furs around her shoulders. “Raining?”
Mary’s head bobbed. “Raining, a lovely sort of mist that’ll soak deep into the ground, it will.”
“Rain,” Gwyn breathed, dragging the pelts behind as she went to the window. Indeed, rain. A solid sheet of light mist covered the world in a pearly shroud. Rain. The drought was over.
She dressed in under two minutes and ran down to the hall. Each step on the winding staircase was more excited than the last, although she didn’t have to admit the reason until she reached the hall and Griffyn was not there.
He’d be outside. In the rain.
She took off so quickly an approaching servant blinked in surprise, then headed back to the kitchens with the tray of bread and ale.
She climbed to the battlements and found Griffyn ten minutes later, talking with Alex along one of the loneliest stretches of the endless curtain wall. He had a shoulder propped against one of the towering stone merlons, arms crossed over his chest, smiling. A flood of affection crowded into her heart.
He caught sight of her over Alex’s shoulder. He continued talking, but now his eyes were on her. When she reached them, he stepped back a bit to allow her in.
“My lady.”
“My lord,” she murmured, then turned to respond to Alex’s polite greeting.
“’Tis raining,” she said softly and, if truth be told, a trifle stupidly. For her first words since their…last night, they were not terribly absorbing things.
Griffyn did not seem to mind. A corner of his mouth crooked up lazily and her world slipped into slow motion. She felt a blush begin in her cheeks.
The soft rain barely made a sound. Pungent scents were carried low on its back: wetness and worms and woodsmoke, and lon
g, elusive trails of the sea. She leaned her face up and let the mist fall on it for a moment, then straightened, suddenly self-conscious. They were watching her.
“It smells good,” she explained. The men sniffed obligingly.
“It smells different from Normandy,” Alex allowed slowly.
Griffyn was still watching her. “Come,” he said in a low-pitched voice that sent ripples of completely unnecessary desire pulsing through her blood. “Look at the walls.”