Chapter 22: More Girl Talk
The hearth in Nan’s cottage sighed, a soft collapse of embers behind the iron grate. The room held the day’s warmth close, a cozy pocket against the castle’s autumnal chill. Landra sat in Nan’s own cushioned chair, a place of honor, cradling a clay cup of warmed mead. The sweet, herbal steam rose between them.
After the revelations in the Great Hall, words seemed to have loosened in Landra, a dam gently cracking. The formal mask was gone, left on the bench with the breakfast crumbs. Here, in this intimate clutter of dried flowers and well-mended wool, she felt like just a woman.
“You spoke of him as a boy,” Landra said, her voice quiet. “Nervous. Needing comfort. When he came to my husband’s estate to squire… he was different. Already tall. Not yet filled out. All potential.” She took a sip, the mead painting a warm trail down her throat. “He was a sweet boy. An attentive one. Much more so than my own children, if I’m being brutally honest.”
Nan, mending a sock by the lamplight, nodded without looking up. Her needle flashed. “They often are, when they’re not yours. No history of resentment.”
“He helped without being asked. Carried water for the kitchen maids. Polished tack long after the stable master had retired. Performed brilliantly in his training, of course. My husband’s master-at-arms wrote to Bryce weekly with praises.” Landra’s gaze drifted to the low flames. “My own son, Kevan… he was a good lad. But petty. Kerr’s ease with a sword, his natural grace in the yard… it rankled. Kevan grew sullen. My lord husband saw only the ledger books and the hunting reports. Attention was a currency in that house, and I was bankrupt.”
She fell silent for a moment, the memory a tangible weight.
“Kerr,” she continued, “would find me. In the solar, in the garden. He’d ask about my day. He’d notice if I’d switched to a new embroidery thread. He saw the book on my table and asked what I was reading, and he’d actually listen to the answer. It wasn’t flattery. It was… curiosity. A genuine want to know. For a woman surrounded by people who looked through her, it was like water in a desert.”
Nan set her mending aside. She pulled her stool closer, the legs scraping softly on the stone floor. She said nothing. Just waited.
“One night,” Landra said, the words coming easier now, pushed out by the need to finally speak them aloud. “I couldn’t sleep. The arguments had been particularly biting that day. Kevan’s spite, my husband’s cold disregard. I was in my sitting room, just… crying. Not a proud sob. A quiet, hopeless leaking of tears. The door was ajar.”
She swallowed, her fingers tightening around the cup.
“He was on night patrol. Heard it. He pushed the door open, just enough to see. He didn’t speak. Just came in, closed the door, and knelt before my chair. He looked at my face, saw the misery there, and… he kissed me. Not like a boy. Not like a squire to his lord’s lady. It was firm. Certain. A decision made.”
The cottage air seemed to thicken, charged with the ghost of that moment.
“Then he… he just proceeded. As if it were the most logical thing in the world. He pushed my dressing robe open. Put his mouth on me. I was so stunned, I couldn’t even breathe. I just… gripped the arms of the chair. My mind shattered into a thousand pieces. All the propriety, the titles, the years of neglect… they just vaporized. There was only that astonishing, relentless attention. He was never rough. He was… thorough. Like he was studying a new form of combat, and his only goal was my complete surrender.”
Nan’s hand found hers, a brief, grounding press.
“When he entered me,” Landra whispered, the memory so visceral her body hummed with it. “I came apart. I didn’t know a body could feel that. I made sounds I didn’t recognize. It was like he’d found a fracture in my very foundation and pressed against it until the whole structure of me, the proud Lady Landra, simply… crumbled into bliss. I was stunned. For days. I functioned, I performed my duties, but inside I was reverberating. I couldn’t shake how good I’d felt. How seen. How used, in the most glorious way possible.
How used, in the most glorious way possible.
“And after that,” Landra said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush, “it became a pattern. A secret rhythm to my life there. Whenever they were out of earshot—after drills, before supper, in the dead hour between midnight and dawn—he would find me. And I would let him take me, let him make me feel good. And god, did it feel good.” She shook her head, a faint, disbelieving smile on her lips. “I never spoke of it. To anyone. I thought the feeling had passed when he left, when he returned to Highever. I buried it under a mountain of duty and decorum. I convinced myself it was a madness of a lonely season.”
She took a slow breath, the mead forgotten in her hand.
“But then, when I was here last autumn, delivering my husband’s missives to Bryce… he came to me again. My first night in the guest wing. He didn’t knock. He just entered the room, and then he entered me. He undid me all over again, like it was his duty. A maintenance of some pact we’d made years prior.” Her fingers traced the rim of the clay cup. “I remember clinging to him naked, all those years ago in my sitting room, just licking the sweat from his throat after he’d finished. I was an animal. He had turned me into an absolute whore. His whore. And I loved it. I loved the filth of it, the sheer disrespect for every title I held.”
Nan watched her, the lamplight softening the lines of her face.
“And here I was,” Landra continued, her gaze fixed on the dying embers, “years later, in a borrowed bed in his father’s castle, milking him of his cum all over again. Taking his cum under my belly and bathing in it internally. Letting him pump me so full I could feel the heat of him for hours after. It wasn’t comfort this time. It was confirmation. The need was still there, in both of us, perfectly preserved.”
“Like a fine vintage,” Nan murmured, her tone devoid of judgment.
“A poisonous one,” Landra corrected, but she smiled. “One I’d drink until my heart gave out. He ruins me, Nan. Every single time. He ruins the idea of any other touch. He makes my marriage feel like a business contract scribbled on dusty parchment. My husband… he occupies a space. Kerr?” She laughed, a short, sharp exhale. “He occupies me.”