"Welcome Home, Darling."

Lord Remus Archer-Varana leaned back against the stone stable wall, attempting to catch his breath and lifting one hand to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead. A particularly tall, pale man, with a cropped close blond beard and sprightly blue eyes. He looked down, watching Arthur’s clumsy hands redo the laces of his trousers with uncharacteristic gentility. He grinned at the kneeling man, and attempted to regain some composure.

Arthur grinned right back. Eventually, he rose, and dusted off his knees. “Will that be all, my Lord?” he enquired.

“Yes, Arthur,” the nobleman answered. “Your servitude is appreciated, as always.” He pushed off from the wall, stepping over the straw littering the floor of the courtyard. “I should really inform her that I’m home.”

And that, he did. Drawing in the shoulders of the wolf fur and red velvet cloak that had become such a symbol of Varana kinship, he headed across the courtyard with a broad smile on his face. Certainly not a bad welcome home, and if he knew his wife as well as he thought he did, there’d no doubt be another ‘welcome’ awaiting him shortly.

He popped his head into the various rooms on the lower floor of the Manor Varana, and on being unsuccessful in the hunt for the woman, began ascending the stairs, leather armour-mimicry creaking and clinking all the way. Perhaps she’d gone down for a nap, or had taken ill. Either way, if she was in bed, it cut half of the chase out of the entire business of greeting her properly.

He glanced down to readjust one leather glove, checked his reflection in the mirror outside the marital bedroom, and then a quick look to ensure that those trouser lacings had indeed been done up properly. There might be all sorts of horrid if she found out he’d been greeting Arthur before her.

Once all was in order, he reached for the door handle, and stepped into the room with his most winsome smile and triumphant status prepared.

He, however, was not prepared. Not for what he encountered, at any rate.
Her hands were his first port of call. The manicure he’d paid for presently found itself divided. One gripped the edge of the mattress next to one porcelain hip, and the other was entangled in dark locks that obscured his rightful husbandry from view. His wife’s hips, and he knew they were hers by those ubiquitous flat moles that appeared every now and again over otherwise white skin, gyrated against the head presently so absorbed in the crux of her thighs. And above the movement of flesh over hipbones, her spine bent her bodice outwards, ribcage quivering with frequent, carnal moans and her sternum rising and falling in sharp, impassioned breaths. A hand on said bodice caused his eyes to widen – as if the dark curls invading her loins wasn’t enough, that damned servant girl had her mouth very firmly glued to his wife’s lips, and seemed to be swallowing those moans with nothing short of voracious devouring. And to make matters worse, her fingertips were very clearly as eager as her mouth!

Two women. Of all things he thought his generally proper wife capable of, one between her thighs and one on her lips wasn’t one of them. Not so fervently! Not so obliviously that she didn’t notice him stood there, and if she did she sure as sin wasn’t breaking that kiss for him, or stopping her southern grind onto the tanned presence on her knees in front of her.

He cleared his throat.

There were no flinches. No squeals. No scurrying to cover themselves with bedclothes. In fact, very little changed. All he garnered from his entangled wife was a brief, interruption smattered greeting – against her handmaiden’s lips!

“Welcome home,” she murmured huskily, eyes refusing to open and her lips rejoining with Amiel’s with a low, enthused utterance. “Darling.”