Aldfrith tensed, realization dawning. “You sent word to him about Lady Osana?”
Wilfrid nodded, not remotely cowed by the king’s glare. “She is a corrupting influence, milord. You should send her away.”
“Lady Osana is a good woman,” Aldfrith replied. “I see no corruption in her. She only wishes to be useful, to find her place in the world.”
Bishop Wilfrid favored him with a pained look. “Has she cast the wool over your eyes so easily, sire? The woman watches you; she meets your eye too boldly. She is a temptress who covets a place at your side. She wishes to become your consort and control you with lust and wiles. Cast her out of Bebbanburg, and find yourself a gentle virgin to wed.”
“Enough,” Aldfrith snapped, his patience finally giving out. “You forget your place. The widow Osana has done nothing to merit such accusations. Do not speak to me of this again.”
With that, Aldfrith strode forward, leaving the bishop behind. Fury boiled up within him; he clenched his fists at his sides. Wilfrid’s words were outrageous, ridiculous. And yet they also bothered him.
Temptress. Consort. Lust and wiles.
I shouldn’t have offered to teach her to read … what was I thinking?
The wistfulness on her face the night before, the light in her eyes as she had pored over the page of that book, had made him speak without thinking. It was something he was getting into the habit of doing when it came to Osana. He gazed into her eyes and lost his wits. The loss of control concerned him; it reminded him of a past he had spent many years trying to forget.
Wilfrid was wrong, Osana was not the problem. He was. He could not spend time alone with her, could not risk opening his heart to her.
I shall have to cancel that lesson.
Chapter Seventeen
Learning Letters
OSANA GRIPPED THE quill tightly and moved it across the sheet of vellum:
O S A N A
Leaning back, she surveyed her work, her gaze roaming over the spidery script.
“Is that really my name?”
“Aye.”
She glanced up, her attention shifting to where Aldfrith sat beside her at the table. He had remained silent while she laboriously copied the letters he had written out for her. His expression was solemn; in fact, he had been in an odd, distracted mood since she had arrived at his annex for her lesson.
He had not smiled once and avoided her gaze.
“But they’re just marks on vellum. Do they really have meaning?”
The corner of his mouth twitched then, the beginning of a smile. “Each letter has a sound. Look at the word you’ve just written … let’s sound out each letter.” He reached out, the sleeve of his tunic brushing her hand as he did so, his finger resting under the first letter of her name. “Repeat after me.”
Osana did as bid, sounding out each letter. When she had done so a handful of times, Aldfrith sat back, nodding in satisfaction. “Now run each of those letters together … what do you get?”
Osana frowned, looking back at the sheet of vellum. “Ooosaanaa.”
His mouth quirked once more. “Well done. Once you learn the sound of each letter of the alphabet, and what they sound like when grouped together in words, you can read anything.”
Osana traced her name with a fingertip, pride thrumming through her. “It’s like magic,” she murmured.
“No, it’s much easier to understand than that. One day many folk will be able to read and write.” Aldfrith gestured to his two precious leather-bound volumes on the shelf above them. “And there will be many books filled with histories.”
Osana’s gaze traveled from the shelf down to the desk once more, her gaze alighting upon a messily stacked pile of vellum full of Aldfrith’s slanted writing. She then glanced back at him. “Are you writing a book?”
He actually did smile then, the expression illuminating his face. “Those are just scribbles … ideas … thoughts. I don’t think anyone besides me would be interested in them.”
Osana huffed. “I would … can you read something to me?”
