The Murderer's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

and kissed it lingeringly. Edeyn looked around at him again, her smile deepening with pleasure, her face lightly coloring with embarrassment. Giles enjoyed that in her—her stupid modesty that made her shy of showing what she was, her wantonness when he could have her alone in bed for long enough to rouse her.
    There was wantonness in every woman. Some needed longer to have it dragged out of them than others did but it was there. Because with Edeyn there had been time, he had made a long and pleasurable process, after his lusting for her had been slaked, of first finding hers and then waking her fully to it. Now occasionally for extra pleasure, he let Lionel see it, too. There was a certain look that Lionel had—a way his gaze slid away when Giles handled Edeyn in front of him—that made the moment, the possession, more pleasurable by far. Lionel might plague him with these fools just now, but he could plague Lionel any time he chose, simply by reminding him whose Edeyn was and what Giles could do with her whenever he wanted to.
    It did not change the fact that Giles had to listen to this drivel now but it evened out the suffering a little.
    And wonder of wonders, the fat franklin was coming out with another riddle so old it was wrinkled.
    “I think it was my aunt told it to me when I was a lad. I’ve always favored it. She was as clever a woman as I’ve ever known. It goes this way. A house full, a hole full, but no one can gather a bowl full. Eh?”
    Lionel and Martyn held back admirably. It was the cross-eyed yeoman father who exclaimed, after a moment’s hard remembering because even he had heard that one before, “Smoke!” At Lionel’s praise—Lionel would praise a cloud for raining, he was that soft—the oaf grinned but then realized, appalled, that it was now his turn to find a riddle, and one he remembered the answer to, too, which would make it doubly hard, Giles supposed. The dolt was hesitating mightily before his son leaned over and whispered something to him, making him brighten. “Aye. There’s one,” he said with relief. “How can an apple be without any core?”
    Oh, God! Giles dropped his head back down on the cushion under it and said toward the sky with undisguised disgust, “When it’s a blossom, damn it. That one’s older than the smoke one. Even Edeyn knows it.”
    “Giles!” Lionel snapped. “You have a way…” He cut himself off from whatever angry thing he had been about to say.
    Good old Lionel. Not even allowing himself some temper. Why didn’t he do everyone a favor and die since he wanted so much to be a saint?
    With an unwarranted enthusiasm that showed he was glad of the diversion, the franklin exclaimed, “Well, and what’s this coming then?”
    Willing to be diverted by almost anything, Giles rolled his head sideways and saw that the lot of them were looking away along the road and Lionel was rising to his feet. Good. Maybe whatever it was would set them all on their way again. Giles sat up.
    He nearly lay down again. There had been no other travelers today and what was it now but a pair of nuns. There was a lack of excitement for you.
    Still, they were on foot. There was a priest and a servant riding attendance behind them, so they were not out wayward and wandering, but the reasons two nuns would be traveling afoot were few, and penance came to mind immediately. If that was it, they must have made serious offense to have been sent out like this.
    Or one of them had offended and the other was sent along to keep her company, no nun allowed to go alone outside her cloister.
    Giles’ speculation veered toward the lewd. This could be interesting after all. But a clearer look killed his hopes. In those obscuring habits, with wimples tight around their faces, a nun’s age could be hard to judge, but he could tell enough here to guess that whatever these two had done, it had not been out of youthful folly. The smaller of the two might have been gamesome when she was