none of the other
local landowners would do. Her best friend was even a commoner, the daughter of
a bloody Innkeeper.
Chapter Four
Alexandra, daughter of the innkeeper, was bored.
The Inn was deserted apart from a small sad group sitting in the corner, the
four men blinded at Othem Moat. She felt so sorry for them, Kit had told her
that their commander had found them drunk on watch, and that their eyes had
been put out in front of the rest of the troops as warning. Alexandra
shuddered, she couldn’t imagine the things some of these men had been through
since she last saw them. The blinded soldiers could not work the fields like
the other men and women of the village, they could not hold a scythe and work
the line, so they spent their days sitting in the Bull Tavern, reminiscing
about the days when they could see, and occasionally calling out for more ale
from their attentive serving girl. Just as Alexandra was certain she was about
to fall asleep from tedium Harper burst through the door carrying a large
sailor’s trunk.
“Here I am! Your protective and ever attentive
guardian angel!” He shouted to Alexandra.
The blinded men jumped and then brightened at the
sound of the new voice.
“Harper, that you I can hear?” Called one “You
come to look after our Alexandra have you?” the blind man let at a theatrical
whistle “Don’t blame you, I might not be able to see now, but I can still
picture her from a decade ago, kept me happy on many lonely nights of marching
that image did.” He smacked his lips. “Just my kind of girl, bit of meat on
her”
“Oh quiet down you dirty old bugger, I was fifteen.”
Chuckled Alexandra. The blind man reached out to aim a slap at where he thought
Alexandra’s rump should be, but she had already skipped out of reach.
“Oh I wouldn’t get too excited Stephens, she can’t
have aged well at all, looks a little scrawny to me.” Said Harper, throwing
Alexandra an exaggerated wink before letting his eyes drift over her curvy
body. Alexandra placed her hands on her wide hips and shook her head.
“Don’t you start,” She said with a smile. “You can
put your trunk upstairs, there’s an empty room, second door on the left, and
there’s water in the back yard if you need to wash, its cold but its clean.”
Harper left to unpack his trunk and Alexandra
carried on the slow wasting of her afternoon, tending to the blinded men who
were now slumped in almost complete silence. After twenty minutes she realised
she needed to bring in more cider, so wandered out of the back door towards the
storage shed. As stepped out of the bar she froze in the doorway, her eyes
fixed on Harper who was washing himself by the basin. He had his broad
triangular back to her and was lathering his front, raising each thick muscular
arm in turn to scrub underneath, she could see that he was big across the chest
and stomach, but he was not fat, or if he was it was a taught, drum-like
fatness that suited the proportions of his wide shoulders and broad head. After
he had finished soaping his armpits he moved his hand down to his crotch and
started working in the suds. Alexandra knew that she shouldn’t be watching, but
she couldn’t tear her eyes away. She noticed that he was taking a lot longer
rubbing himself down-there than was strictly necessary.
“Ahem!” She coughed, putting on an expression of
mock consternation.
Harper spun around, he looked momentarily embarrassed
to have been caught pleasuring himself in the back garden just thirty minutes
after moving in, but he recovered quickly when he saw Alexandra struggling to
hold in her laughter. “I just thought I’d better take care of myself out here,”
he said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t know how to control myself when I got back
inside.” He laid it out it as if it were the most logical argument in the
world.
Alexandra said nothing, she was desperately trying
to avoid looking at his manhood. It was the most beautiful she’d ever seen,