The Reluctant Berserker by Alex Beecroft Page B

layers of cloaks and tunics between them, to get cold fingers on undefended flesh.
    Sadly, the moment it had become just another fight, the joy of it had gone out of Wulfstan. He grabbed his friend by the arms and used all his greater strength to push him away. The skin on the inside of his lip had broken, and his mouth tasted of blood, coppery and sickening. Cenred’s disappointment made him want to apologise, to explain—and that was too frightening a thing to contemplate. He couldn’t tell anyone what he really wanted, could he?
    Oh, if he could only trust Cenred completely, with his whole heart. He wanted to, badly wanted to, the memory of desire like a fever in his blood, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He was ashamed to find that he too didn’t trust the coward’s son, though the man was his best friend.
    Accepting, finally, that no more kisses would be forthcoming today, Cenred sat back on his heels and looked at Wulfstan sideways out of slitted eyes. “Why not? Since I’ve known you, you’ve bedded no women. Why not with a man?”
    “It is a sin.”
    “So is anger, yet you give in to that one often enough.”
    “I have a besetting sin,” Wulfstan agreed, “so it’s best I do not add to them, don’t you think?”
    “You want to.” Cenred leaned forward again and watched the changes in Wulfstan’s face as though he were tracking a rare and shy wild animal. What he saw there must have pleased him, because his disgruntled expression slid into a smile. “Ha! I thought you did. Think on the offer awhile. It will only be the sweeter for a little self-denial first.”

Chapter Four
    This thought stayed with Wulfstan as the weather’s grip eased on the land. It made him keep away from Cenred, so that those who watched muttered that there had been an estrangement. He heard them worrying about who would calm and restrain him now when the wolfish mood came over him. No one else stepped in to be his friend, though no one dared be his enemy either, offering shallow smiles and words carefully measured neither to insult nor to encourage.
    By St. Carantoc’s day, Wulfstan was lonely enough to disregard the strong hints he had been given about being unwelcome, and turn to his other estranged friend, Ecgfreda, for company. Though he still didn’t know what he had done to insult her, he went fully prepared to apologise for anything, if only they could talk again.
    Ecgfreda was in the brew house, amongst her women, and the place was too forbiddingly feminine for him to dare to enter. But she came to the door when he asked, and bidding her younger sister and her closest maid to accompany her, she allowed him to walk her back to the bower house and stand just inside the door.
    It was warmer here than in the main hall, the building smaller but with a fire just as large and all the walls curtained with second-best tapestries. At one end of the fire, seeing more with their fingers than their eyes, a dozen women worked at their looms. At the other, a round, well-fed lady crouched over a small brazier, stirring something pink with a small ivory spoon. The scent of frankincense was in the air, sweetening the already sweet smoke of the applewood on the hearth. A score of faces lifted, marking them come in, and politely lowered again, leaving them in what semblance of solitude it was possible to have when blamelessly visible under the gaze of witnesses.
    Wulfstan rolled his shoulders—he always felt their gazes like a bridle. A harness to keep the dog from becoming a wolf. Sighing, he began, “I have been combing my thoughts finely, to find what I could have said to you that lost me your friendship. I can only discover that you turned your face against me when I asked you to be my wife. Still, I cannot see how what was meant as praise should have been taken as insult.”
    He must have hit on the problem, though, for her polite smile had frozen in place, and there was something about her eyes that reminded him