Wanton

By Constance Kent

The year is 1228. King John is dead and an uneasy peace has settled over England. Callie of Wideopens is the beautiful 18-year-old ward of Jane and Ethan. Jane is dying and her lonely husband is tormented by impure thoughts about the girl. The crone who supplies Jane's herbs has a vision of a terrible act and in a misguided attempt to alter the fate of her husband, Jane makes a desperate request of Callie. In doing so, she unwittingly sets in motion the crone’s prophecy. On the run from the law, Callie learns to fight like a man and outwit her captors, but in all her adventures, she can’t escape the love she has for Ethan.

A sinfully erotic adventure set in the High Middle Ages. Packed with action, swords, horses, skullduggery and romance, Wanton contains racy, intimate love scenes not for the faint of heart. Sensitive readers are strongly cautioned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writewood Creations Publishing
• Release date: Apr 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9780993770487

Book preview

WANTON

A Dark Redeemer Medieval Romance

CONSTANCE KENT

Copyright 2011 Constance Kent

Writewood Creations Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-0-9937704-8-7

All rights reserved.

This publication remains the copyrighted property

of the author and may not be redistributed for commercial

or non-commercial purposes.

Cover image by izusek

Cover design by Writewood Creations/Canva

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

From the Publisher

WANTON

About the Author

From the Publisher

Wildly wicked. Sensual and steamy. Medieval lovers in a dangerous time. Dark Redeemer Medieval Romance is a series of sinfully erotic adventure tales set in the High Middle Ages. Packed with action, swords, horses, skullduggery and romance, Wanton contains racy, intimate love scenes not for the faint of heart. Sensitive readers are strongly cautioned.

Titles in this Series

Wastrel

Traitor

Soldier

Christmas Rose

WANTON

Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks.

I am the drudge and toil for your delight,

But you shall bear the burden soon at night

.

— William Shakespeare

Chapter I

THERE WAS a beginning to my story, long ago. A time before this when I wandered the fields and meadows in the cold spring light or ran along the cliff path in the heat of summer to reach the rocky beach below. There was a time before I became the girl I am now. But that girl will not enter into this confession. It is who I have become that interests them.

The day is waning. The hangman and the priest will arrive on the morrow, one seeking absolution and the other to offer it. I was spared these hours to make my peace and beg forgiveness of their god. I have not the faith they believe me to have, but penning this confession is a small penance to pay for twelve additional hours of life.

Only twelve ... I must do my best not drop off to sleep.

The stone walls of my cell are crisp with cold. My fingers are frozen. It is hard to hold the quill. I cannot form my letters as well as the old woman in the forest taught me to do but the message is readable. The cruck I once shared with Jane and her husband, Ethan, had walls of mud and thatch but it was warmer than Bamburgh Castle for all its stone and massive hearths.

In the months since my arrest, I have thought long on the sickness that possessed my body and controlled my mind. The night Jane died was not the beginning of it. I will not flinch from the truth now when I am at the end of life. It was born in me long before.

It would have been better for both of us if he had just done as he wanted to then. Perhaps I am the monster they have said I am. If so, I have nothing to fear. The scaffold will be my reward.

The road to my perdition began with a simple, terrible request.

CALLIE, come to me.

My guardian, Jane, who had been as an aunt to me was very ill. I turned from the hearth where I had been stirring our pottage. She lay on the straw mattress, gesturing to me. I hurriedly set the ladle down and came to her side. Her face was contorted with terrible pain. I could not bear the thought of losing her, and yet there were days this winter past when I wished for death to come and put an end to her suffering.

You are not eighteen, Callie.

Aye, this month, Jane. You gave me the comb, remember?

Aye, aye. She nodded, her eyes slewing over the room. You ought to have been married long before this. Long before.

You have been ill. I could not be spared.

It is taking me longer to die than I thought, girl. You are of age, you are well of age. Ethan was sixteen summers when he married me against the wishes of his father. Did you know? I was not a maid as you are but a widow already from the wars. Ethan was a knight’s squire, only a boy of fifteen, but he had fought alongside my husband in battle. He returned a man, bearing news of my husband’s death. We fell in love though I was eight years his senior.

Aye, you have enchanted me with this tale many times. Ethan loves you still. You are the happiest of women to have such a husband and he the happiest of men to have such a wife.

He is good, she said, the breath failing in her body. He is so very good. He has paid the price for his love and loyalty to me. There were no children. The promise of his youth—a knighthood—has been swallowed in marriage to a barren, sick woman.

Do not speak thus. It is wrong to speak of your marriage in this manner.

I speak as I must so that you will not judge him harshly. The crone who supplies my herbs was here and gone this morn. It is my fault it has come to this. Though I am ashamed to confess it, I could not prevent it. It is the way of men. The crone warned me of the danger two years ago but I did not listen. You have no husband ... you have no husband ... the fault is not yours girl. The fault lies with me.

She was babbling, wandering in her mind, half-mad with pain.

There is no danger, I soothed. Why do you listen to the crone? There will be a husband for me in good time. There is no shame in staying with a beloved aunt when she needs me.

I am dying! Jane said with sudden force and strength. I have been ill for far too many months, too ill to be a wife to Ethan. Do you not understand? He takes his rest on the mat beside the hearth—you must realize—there are measures that must be taken—

My eyes travelled to the loft where I slept, above Jane and her husband. I will sleep on the hearth. Ethan can take my bed. I am ashamed I did not think of his comfort before this.

It is not your bed my husband wants. Jane winced and her voice strained. It is the girl in the bed.

I froze at her side, holding her cold hand. What she had said could not be true. She was so very ill and in so much pain that her mind was failing.

You have grown up beautiful, Callie. He is not strong enough to resist.

I dropped her hand. No.

Please. I am weak and cannot argue. Please hear me, child. I do not mean to harm you or Ethan. The opposite ... the opposite ... please.

I stared at her unable to tear my eyes away from her pleading face.

Her words came in short gasps. Ethan is a young man, not so very much older than you. Only ten summers separate you in age. He has paid the price for his love and devotion to me. I cannot bear that he will pay a price far dearer. The crone has had a vision of Ethan’s destruction and yours—a tower wall and a dark, foaming sea—death and madness will come to you both. My husband’s needs have been denied for so long. The crone has warned me. He will not be able to stop himself. He will—he is close to doing so even now while I yet live. My time is slow in coming—too slow and I will not condemn the two people I love best if I can prevent it.

Ethan is unchanged with me. He is as he has always been—impatient and distant. You are ill. The pain makes you imagine danger where there is none. Please put this out of your mind. There is nothing to fear.

You are talking like a child, Jane said peevishly. I will soon be in a deep sleep and you will be alone with him. If you refuse him, Ethan cannot bear it any longer—he will do the unthinkable and he will never forgive himself. The guilt will destroy him almost as certainly as he will destroy you.

My beloved Jane, who had been both aunt and guardian to me for eleven years, gazed at me, her eyes filling with tears. She twisted the bedclothes. Her once-beautiful hair was thin and hung in dry brown wisps to her shoulders. Her eyes were still bright and even in madness they were the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen.

Because she must be mad to be speaking thus. The pain of the illness was at fault and the vicious imagination of the crone. There was no reason for this fear. As ill as Jane had been for two years, not once had her husband given her cause to believe what the crone had insinuated.

I will not be responsible for your distress. I will leave, aunt. I will go this night.

No! Her hand flew out to grasp mine. Would you have my husband nurse me alone while I suffer and die in his arms? Would you be so cruel? He is a good man. He is trying to be good for both of us. It is only his nature—the nature of all men—that tortures him. I cannot explain. Only promise me that you will not leave us here alone while I die!

Aye, aye, calm yourself, I shall stay, I swear it, Jane. But do not speak of condemning your husband to sin when your time comes! He will not do what you fear. He would not. I know this. You must trust me.

And you must trust me, Callie. We have not had guardianship of you for lo these three years. The time is long past when you were a child in our care. The change is in my husband’s eyes. I see it when he believes me to be sleeping. He watches you not as a man looks at his ward, but as a man desiring. The crone has confirmed all. Jane flinched, in the grip of a spasm. Callie, you must listen to me. When you are alone with him, he will restrain himself no longer. In the time that is left to me, I release Ethan from his vows to me as husband. Therefore there will be no shame in it. But you must consent, Callie, or it will destroy you both.

I turned my gaze to the window, to the blue cloudless sky beyond. Birdsong filled the silence. We had weather that was fine for threshing but Ethan, our protector and our provider was away at the manor sharing in the boon work required of the men. I had chores of my own awaiting me out-of-doors. What is it you are asking of me, Jane? You must speak plainly so there can be no mistake.

My aunt cleared her throat.

This is my request, Callie. Will you give yourself to my husband?

IT IS the Year of Our Lord, 1228. My name is Callie of Wideopens. I am named for the beachhead where I was found orphaned. It was believed by the gentler folk of Bamburgh that my parents perished when their ship wrecked against the lethal rocks of Farne Isle. I was the sole survivor, miraculously washing ashore. Another story, this one told by the superstitious, is that I am the bastard child of a human woman and a daemon man who was banished by St. Cuthbert to Farne Isle hundreds of years ago.

I prefer this story. In my imagination, my mother was the beautiful daughter of a distant lord. She had fallen in love with an immortal devil on the blackened isle one moonless night. The only way to reach Farne without being seen is to cross the flats when the tide is low. I spent many girlhood hours on the cliff gazing out to sea, imagining my mother pushing against the weight of her muddied gown across those tidal flats, breathless, to reach the jagged rock island. And then, just as the cloud clears the moon, my father would emerge from a cleft in the hill, riding his black stallion. Towering over her, he would reach down and lift her to him in one movement. Then they would ride away, disappearing into the mists of Farne Isle.

It is at this point in the story that my imagination would fail me. An innocent child, I could not dream of what my parents would do together hidden in the clefts of that black rock. Now, as the shadows lengthened across the fields and Ethan’s return drew nearer, I sensed the base nature of the love my mother shared with my daemon father. My skin plucked and pulled taut under my shift. I was a product of carnal love. Was I also to be its medium?

I was seven years of age when the villagers found me sitting on the rocky beach at Wideopens. It was determined then that I was not to be christened. The Interdict of Pope Innocent III had been lifted allowing christenings to once again take place, but my mysterious appearance and uncertain parentage had damned me. The good people of Bamburgh would not allow me to die on the rocks of Wideopens, but they stopped short of granting me eternal salvation. I was a silent, watchful child, marked as unusual. As well, my odd resistance to illness did not work in my favour and finding a home for me soon became a difficulty. The issue was resolved when Jane had been delivered of another stillborn babe. A kindly midwife handed me over as a consolation and I was placed under the protection of Ethan of Bamburgh. Jane was never to conceive again and this was given as another proof of my unnatural power. My adopted aunt, for her part, was delighted to have a child in the house and delighted in her little girl. Ethan, less so, (a boy child would have been his preference) but I was never made to feel unwelcome. He adored Jane and would have suffered many indignities for her sake.

I was eighteen and the only home I had ever known was the small farm hold clinging to the border of the village Bamburgh in Northumberland, Kingdom of England. Bamburgh Castle appeared to be carved out of the surrounding stone, lunging free of our difficult coast, poised against the sea, ready to defend.

In 1210, the year of my birth, Alexander of Scotland had pledged his allegiance to King John of England bringing peace to the warring land. The peace was timely. The men of the village were busy with the construction of St. Aidan, and did not have time for battles. The cathedral was almost complete and its inhabitants would come to dominate our village with as great a power as those in the castle. Bamburgh was a powerful land—the Seat of Kings—but that meant little to its peasantry. Our position on this earth was fixed by the power of our lord to whom we swore fealty, in exchange for a parcel of land that belonged to no man but to Nature herself. The Old Ways were still with me but I was forbidden to speak of them. They built their church over our ancient worshipping site. I can say no more.

After leaving my aunt, I wandered to the cliffs and climbed down to a sea-weathered slab of rock and lay down to face the mighty North Sea. There was much to think about. Jane had much more to say until she wore herself out with her urging and then fell into a fitful sleep.

I opened my braid and removed my tunic. I longed for the courage to remove my linen smock as well; it clung to my skin, damp from the day’s sweat. Instead, I stretched out on the full length of the rock, presenting my body to the healing warmth of the sun. The rhythm of the sea pounded against the beach below, soothing my spirit.

The memory of Jane’s terrible request and my duty to her, returned. I was without knowledge in this arena. Girls of my age were already married women with babies at their breasts. But no man had claimed me. Jane said this was to be expected given my certain damnation in the afterlife and my supernatural beginning in this one. No man would risk the bad luck to his crops that marriage to me would surely bring. I believe she was secretly pleased when it became clear I would not be wed. I fancied that I must be plain and this was the true cause. I had no glass to prove me otherwise.

My mind turned to Ethan. I could not stop it. He was tall with shoulders wide enough to take the plough when the ox was away to the neighboring farm. His eyes shot blue fire when I had displeased him and his mouth ... ah ... I could not think of his mouth for the shame my body gave me. He was dark in hair and colouring; a black Celt landed amongst the

Reviews for Wanton

[ROSVI C. GAETOS · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This author is so versatile…this story is intense and dark, but love conquers all finally