Chapter 21: Girl Talk
The Great Hall felt cavernous after breakfast, a vast expanse of scattered crumbs and abandoned silver. Sunlight streamed through the high windows, cutting through the lingering haze of woodsmoke and ale. Landra watched the servants begin their silent, efficient clearing, her own fingers tracing the grain of the oak table. She’d asked Nan to stay behind, a casual request wrapped in formality.
Nan stood patiently, her hands folded at her waist, a picture of respectful attention. “You wished to speak, my lady?”
Landra took a slow breath. “I find myself… unsettled, Nan. And I value your discretion, as I value your knowledge of this house and its people.”
“Of course.” Nan’s expression was kindly, unreadable.
“It concerns a matter of… companionship.” Landra chose each word as if placing stones on a treacherous path. “The loneliness of these halls, with our men away. It can lead to… uncharacteristic choices.”
Nan nodded slowly, her warm eyes full of benign understanding. “Aye, it can. The nights are long. The mind wanders. The body… follows.”
“Precisely.” Landra felt a flush creep up her neck. “There is a certain… individual. Here in the castle. Whose company I have… sought. For comfort.”
“I see.” Nan tilted her head. “One of the guards, perhaps? A handsome, broad-shouldered lad from the lower town?”
Landra almost smiled. The old woman was playing the fool beautifully. “Not a guard. Closer to home.”
“A steward? A visiting knight?”
“Closer still.” Landra held her gaze, the truth hovering between them. “It is Kerr, Nan.”
There was no gasp, no shocked silence. Nan’s face simply softened, the lines around her eyes deepening not with surprise, but with a profound, weary amusement. A low, rich chuckle bubbled up from her chest. It was a sound of pure, unfiltered recognition.
“Oh, my dear girl,” Nan sighed, shaking her head. She pulled out the bench beside Landra and sat, the formality dissolving like mist. “You poor, fortunate thing. You’ve gone and let young master Kerr into your bed.”
“You’re not… shocked?”
“Shocked?” Nan laughed again, a genuine, lighthearted sound that echoed softly in the empty hall. “Landra, that boy has been filling my cunt for many a year now. Since the day he was but a teen, all knees and elbows and a look in his eye like a lost pup who’d just found a warm hearth. He has not slowed down since day one. If anything, he’s only… matured. Like a fine, devastating brandy.”
Landra stared, her carefully constructed confession suddenly feeling quaint. A strange relief flooded her, warm and dizzying. “You? But… how?”
“He was fifteen,” Nan said, her gaze drifting to the sunlight on the flagstones. “Tall already, but all nervous energy. His brother had just left for the Free Marches. His father was buried in ledgers. The boy was drowning in this big, empty castle. He came to my rooms one night, not to my bed, just to sit. Talked for an hour about nothing. The next night, he came again. Then he just… put his head in my lap and cried. Sobbed like his heart was breaking. I held him. Stroked his hair.” She smiled at the memory. “The third night, he kissed me. It was clumsy. Sweet. And when he touched me… Maker. The size of him. Even then. I thought it couldn’t be real.”
“It’s real,” Landra breathed, a shared truth now.
“Oh, I know it’s real.” Nan’s eyes twinkled. “He was terrified he’d hurt me. Moved like I was made of glass. I had to show him, guide him. Tell him it was alright. That I could take it. That I wanted it.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “The first time he finished inside me, I saw stars. Literally, little pinpricks of light at the edges of my vision. He panicked, thought he’d killed me. I just laughed and pulled him back down. It was the only peace that boy had known in weeks.”
Landra found herself laughing too, a release of tension. “The peace. Yes. That’s it exactly. It’s… overwhelming. It feels like being consumed. But afterward, there’s this… silence. This perfect, heavy stillness.”
“You surrender to it,” Nan said simply. “That’s the secret. You stop fighting the current and let it carry you under. There’s a profound peace in that surrender. He gives you no choice, really. Your body just… opens. And accepts.”
“I fainted,” Landra admitted, the confession feeling glorious now. “Last night. Just for a moment. The feeling of him… finishing. It was too much. My mind just… switched off.”
Nan clapped her hands together gently. “There it is! I’ve lost count of the times I’ve woken up with him still atop me, or tucked beside me, having spilled myself into oblivion. It’s a compliment, in his way. He empties you of every thought, every worry. Leaves you hollowed out and peaceful.”
Their shared laughter was easy, intimate. It was then they heard the faint, sharp intake of breath.
Iona stood frozen by the service door, a tray of forgotten tankards in her hands. Her face was pale, then instantly flushed a deep, mortified crimson. She looked like a startled deer caught in a hunter’s torchlight.
“Iona!” Landra said, her tone instinctively shifting to noble concern.
The girl’s eyes darted between the two women, well-loved and confiding, and the reality of what she’d overheard crashed over her. The tray clattered to the flagstones, the sound explosively loud in the quiet hall. Instead of fleeing, her shoulders slumped. A single tear traced a path through the dust on her cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” Iona whispered, her voice trembling. “I didn’t mean to… I was coming back for the tray and I… I heard.” She swallowed hard, looking at the floor. “I know it’s not my place. I’m no lady. But… it’s him. For me, too. It’s Kerr.”
The silence that followed was different. Not shocked, but expansive. Welcoming.
Nan rose and walked over. She didn’t scold. She bent, not to pick up the tankards, but to place a gentle hand under Iona’s chin, lifting it. “How long, sweetheart?”
“A few months,” Iona choked out, shame and relief warring in her expression. “After the harvest festival. He was kind to me. Spoke to me like I was a person. Not just a servant. And then one night in the stables… he just… looked at me. And I knew. I just knew.”
Landra gestured to the bench. “Sit, Iona. Please.”
Tentatively, the maid sat, perching on the very edge as if ready to bolt. Nan resumed her seat, creating a small, closed circle of three.
“He finds us all, in our different loneliness,” Nan mused softly. “Doesn’t he?”
“He makes you feel… seen,” Iona said, gaining a sliver of courage. “And then he makes you feel… everything else. All at once. It’s terrifying. And wonderful.”
“Describe it,” Landra urged, not as a mistress, but as a fellow traveler. “What is it like for you?”
Iona’s eyes went distant, a private smile touching her lips. “It’s like… being remade. He’s so big. Everywhere. At first, it hurts in a bright, shocking way, and you think you’ll break. But you don’t. You stretch. You… accommodate. And then the pain melts and it becomes this… this full feeling. Like you’re finally complete. When he moves, it’s not just inside, it’s everywhere. You feel him in your throat, in your fingertips.” She blinked, seeming surprised at her own eloquence. “And when he finishes… it’s so hot. It feels like he’s claiming the very core of you. Marking you as his. I… I like it. I crave it.”
Nan reached over and patted Iona’s hand. “That’s it, dear. That’s the truth of it. We’re all bound to that magnificent cock of his. Not by duty, or command. By the sheer, ridiculous wonder of it. By the peace it leaves in its wake.”
Landra nodded, a sense of strange, powerful camaraderie settling over them. “We should pity the woman who gets only his name and his title,” she said, a wry edge to her voice. “She’ll get the political alliance. She’ll get the heir. But she’ll never know this. She’ll never know him. Not like we do.”
“We know the beast,” Nan said fondly. “And the boy inside it. The one who needs the quiet we give him.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, three women connected by a secret that thrummed through the castle’s very stones. The sunlight had climbed higher, warming the spot where they sat.
“He’s due back from the northern ridge by sundown,” Nan said finally, standing and brushing her skirts smooth. A practical note returned to her voice. “I’d best see about airing his rooms. And ensuring there’s a hearty supper. He’ll be hungry.”
Iona stood too, hastily gathering the fallen tankards. “I’ll see to the linens, ma’am. The… the heavier quilts.”
Landra remained seated, watching them go, a new understanding weaving itself into the fabric of her world. The castle no longer felt like a collection of isolated rooms, but a single organism, breathing in unison, waiting for the return of its restless, unifying heart.
The castle no longer felt like a collection of isolated rooms, but a single organism, breathing in unison, waiting for the return of its restless, unifying heart.
Landra watched Iona hurry off, the girl’s steps lighter than they’d been in weeks. She turned back to Nan, a new curiosity cutting through her residual awe. The morning sun was warm on the back of her neck. “A question, before you go,” Landra began, her voice dropping low. “Did you ever… pursue him? Initiate the act, I mean. Or was it always him coming to you?”
Nan paused, her hand resting on the back of the heavy bench. A slow, wide smile spread across her face, full of memory. “Pursue? Oh, no. I never had to. The need just… hung on him. In the set of his shoulders. A tension in the air around him.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “Sure, I’d surprise him sometimes. Find him brooding in the armory or staring at a map. I’d kneel, take him into my mouth, and swallow every drop. He’d given me so many blinding peaks, I thought it was the only right thing to do. A bit of peace for his peace.”
“A bit of peace for his peace.”
Nan’s smile turned wistful, then genuinely amused. She settled back onto the bench, the morning light catching the silver in her hair. “You asked before if I was shocked. No. But I was stunned. By the sheer… volume of it.” She let out a soft breath, almost a laugh. “That first year, after he found his courage? It was a flood. The boy was a damned geyser. I’d reckon he spent inside me no less than six times a day. Easy. Some days, when the skies were grey or a rider came without word from his brother, it could be ten. Twelve.”
Landra’s teacup halted halfway to her lips. Iona’s hands, busy stacking tankards, stilled completely.
“Fifteen,” Nan said, the number hanging plainly in the sunlit air. “I counted once. Just to see. It was the day they announced the betrothal plans for his brother to that Orlesian girl. He was quiet at supper. He came to my room after and he just… worked. For hours. It wasn’t angry. It was mechanical. Like a man digging a trench to divert a river.” She looked at her own hands, calloused and capable. “I passed out sometime after the tenth, I think. Woke up with dawn at the window and him still going, sweat shining on his back, silent as a glacier. He finished, finally, and collapsed. Slept for fourteen hours straight. I could barely walk to the privy.”
“Maker’s mercy,” Iona whispered, her voice full of awe.
“It’s not mercy,” Nan corrected gently. “It’s biology. A cruel, magnificent joke. That body, that drive, born into a lord who has to bow and negotiate and weigh grain reports.” She shook her head. “He should have been a brigand. A mercenary captain. Something where he could just use it, wear himself out on battlefields and in taverns. Instead, he’s here. Caged by stone and duty. So the energy has to go somewhere.” She leaned forward, her tone becoming conspiratorial. “Wouldn’t surprise me at all if there’s some other grateful woman in a remote tower or a warm kitchen corner getting thoroughly raked over the coals right this very minute. While we sit here talking about him. That’s the rhythm of this place. It beats to his pulse.”
Landra set her cup down carefully. The porcelain clicked on the oak. “It’s unsustainable.”
“It’s been sustained for years,” Nan countered, not unkindly. “His body makes the demand. Ours meet it. It’s a simple, silent economy. A secret tax we’re all happy to pay.” She stood again, her joints giving a faint pop. “A cruel thing, him being born a lord. All that potent, beautiful fury, wrapped up in velvet and diplomacy.” She winked, the warmth returning to her eyes. “But lucky for us. We get the truth of him. The raw material.”
Iona finally moved, hefting the tray. Her expression had shifted from shame to a kind of giddy pride. “He’s… he’s coming back today.”
“He is,” Nan said, smoothing her apron. “And he’ll be hungry in every way a man can be hungry. The ridge ride is cold. It’ll put a tension in him.”
She gave them both a final, knowing nod and walked toward the kitchen passages, her steps firm and familiar on the stones. Landra watched her go, the older woman’s words layering onto her own memories—the overwhelming scale of it, the staggering frequency. It reframed her own single, fainting encounter into a mere footnote in a vast, ongoing text.
Iona hovered, shifting her weight. “My lady… do you think she’s right? That he’s with someone else? Now?”
Landra listened. The castle groaned around them, the old stones settling. Somewhere, a door closed softly. A distant, muffled laugh echoed from a corridor far away, impossible to source. The air itself seemed charged, waiting.
“I think,” Landra said, rising from the bench, “it is a very large castle. And he has many hours before sundown.”
A strange, quiet understanding passed between the noblewoman and the maid. It wasn’t jealousy. It was complicity. They were both keepers of the same visceral, exhausting secret. The hall felt different now—not empty, but pregnant with unspoken activity.
“I should see to the linens,” Iona repeated, but her eyes were bright.
“Yes,” Landra agreed. She touched the girl’s arm briefly, a gesture that would have been unthinkable an hour before. “Use the lavender water. He likes the scent.”
Iona’s smile was quick and bright before she disappeared into the shadows of the service hall. Landra remained, alone in the vast, sunlit quiet. She could almost feel it, a low hum in the castle’s foundation—the relentless, quiet engine of him, moving through the dark passages of his home, seeking and spending, a perpetual, draining storm. She picked up her cup and finished the cold tea. It tasted of herbs and revelation. Outside, a cloud passed over the sun, momentarily dimming the great hall, and she felt a deep, unsettling thrill that had nothing to do with nobility and everything to do with the sheer, terrible luck of being a woman within these walls.