On his way back below stairs, a frightened looking servant approached him. “My lord, a visitor awaits you below.”
“I’m not seeing anyone,” Guy answered, practically grinding his teeth. No doubt it was some prying neighbor who had attended the feast and wanted more salacious details about the state of his marriage!
The servant turned pale. “It’s, er, well, it’s, er…“
“What?” Guy barked. “Oh, never mind, I’ll tell them myself!”
He didn’t care if it was the Earl of Strethneal, he’d send him away with a flea in his ear! However, on reaching the hallway, he found it was altogether a different class of guest.
“Mistress Helga,” he blurted, seeing her upright figure stood just inside the doorway. “I did not realize it was you.”
He glanced about wondering where the servants were cowering. Staying out of his way no doubt. He came across them in small huddles, whispering to each other and glancing at him askance. No wonder that fool had not wished to turn her away. Didn’t have the guts to.
“Come through,” he invited in a weary voice. “I’m sure we can find you some refreshment.”
The large black raven on her shoulder croaked. “Be quiet you,” Helga muttered, sounding annoyed. “Who asked your opinion?”
Guy shot her a startled glance.
“Tancred and I are not on friendly terms this morn,” she said by way of explanation, following Guy down the corridor. “He says I do not deserve to break my fast.” She sighed. “It’s a hard life when one’s actions are judged so harshly, is that not so?”
The topic of conversation struck a chord of fellow feeling, and Guy found himself concurring. He felt very ill-judged at present. Even Temur’s wife Lettys, his previous ally, had looked at him beadily when he had told her she was now to wait on his marchioness. He was quite sure half of his staff thought him an unprincipled lecher who had used his wife very ill.
“Tancred does not appreciate my methods. But I always tell him, the end justified the means, do you not agree, my lord?”
They had reached the Great Hall now, and Guy led her to a wooden bench and gestured for her to be seated.
“Quite,” he murmured distractedly. He caught sight of a shadow lurking beyond the door at the far end of the room. “Hie! You there, fetch us ale and oat cakes,” he ordered briskly. Hasty footfalls told him his orders had been received. “How can I help you this morning,” he asked politely, as he considered his next move in the campaign to break down his wife’s defenses.
Suddenly, it occurred to him that Mathilde had a fondness for the old witch. Maybe he could recruit her to his service? After all, the old crone must know he was quite innocent of any wrongdoing, other than his failure to trust his own wife. When he turned his head to give the old woman a considering look, he was startled to find himself being eyed in the same appraising nature.
“Maybe ’tis I’m here to help you?” she suggested slowly. “Ever considered that?”
“I was just entertaining the notion,” he admitted grudgingly. “I find myself in need of an advocate at present. How do you fancy the job?”
Footsteps approaching forestalled the old woman’s immediate response. A tray was born in with the ale and oatcakes he had demanded. Drinks were poured and a platter set down between them. Helga helped herself to an oatcake as Guy took a swig of ale.
“Let me guess,” she said, tapping her chin. “Your task for me is to try and weasel your way back into your wife’s good graces?” she suggested.
A dull flush rose in Guy’s cheeks. “Am I so easy to read?” he asked, glancing away.
“All too easy,” she scoffed, offering the cake to her bird. Tancred resolutely turned away from her peace offering and she sighed. “Besides,” she added loudly. “How can I plead your cause, when it was I who denounced you for a traitor in the first place?”
Guy wheeled around. “What? What do you mean?”
“It was I,” explained Helga impassively, “who told your wife you entertained another in her place. In short, that you betrayed her.” At his incredulous stare, she nodded her head gently. “Yes, I confess it freely.”
“Why?” he thundered. “Why would you do such a thing?”
She drew herself up. “It was necessary,” she said in her portentous voice. “I am not one to shirk my duty.” Tancred gave a loud croak.
“You try my patience, old woman. A vastly pretty husband you’ve made me out to be!”
Helga looked at him thoughtfully. “Think!” she said sternly, “of the results of my ploy. Your people pity the wronged wife who walked into your fine banqueting hall and found you carousing with another woman sat at your table, dressed in splendor and jewels.”
Guy gripped his cup. “I was not carousing!”
“No one,” Helga interrupted him loudly, “even mentions that the wife was an outsider, a hated southerner in the retelling.” She paused letting this significant fact sink in. “They whisper of her peasant garb, her bare feet, her sweet little pregnant belly…”
“She wasn’t barefoot!” snapped Guy. Then his head whipped up. “Pregnant?” he echoed. “Nay…”
“They recognize the old story,” the woman carried on, ignoring his words and nodding her head. “The Wicked Lord and the Other Woman. Their sympathies lie firmly with the abandoned wife, humiliated and scorned…”
“I didn’t abandon her!”
“You denied her her rightful place,” she said firmly.
“Because I didn’t realize—” Guy scraped his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I can’t forget the look on her face,” he said, passing a shaking hand across his face.
Helga leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder. “Take heart.” Guy mopped his brow. “This way is far better,” Helga persisted. “So, your tenants will eye you askance for a few months. They’ll whisper you’re no better than you should be. What would you rather? Mathilde endure twenty years of being shunned as the enemy of your people. Would you prefer your tenants threw dirt and stones at her when she was unaccompanied? Called her ‘the southern bitch’ behind your back? Rued the day you were forced to wed her? For them to tell each other the Kerslake girl was your true love?”
“No!” Guy burst forth. He looked appalled. “Is that—?” he hesitated. “Is that what would have happened?” He felt sick.
Old Helga’s blue eyes turned dreamy. “It’s what I foresaw lay ahead for you, if I did not act.”
Guy broke out in a cold sweat. “Then you were right to do what you did,” he said hoarsely.
She nodded gently. “Well, I thought so,” she murmured. “I know the little one, she suffered, but it was a fleeting pain, not to be sustained. You’ll find she is surprisingly resilient. The important thing is that a true understanding of heart and mind is established between the two of you.”
“How am I supposed to achieve that?” demanded Guy bleakly. “Any understanding between us has been shattered. She trusted me, and I—” his voice lowered. “I broke that trust.”
Helga nodded her head sagely. “Now you have smashed the rotten foundations, you can start to rebuild.”
“Rotten?”
At his angry tone, her eyebrows rose. “Do you deny this match was entered into in the wrong spirit?”
“There was nothing rotten about our beginnings, nothing at all!”
“Your hand was forced,” Helga reminded him. “You did not want her.”
“I don’t care! She was meant to be mine,” vowed Guy vehemently. “It was fate. If it hadn’t been this way, it would have been another.”
Helga looked pleasantly surprised by his words. “Well, well,” she murmured. “Almost, you impress me.” He scowled at her. “Think of it this way. Your foundations were mostly sound, but one tower was built on a cliff edge that would erode in time. Seeing this, you dismantled this tower and rebuilt it on firmer ground.” Guy considered this a moment. “Does that sound any more palatable?”
He gave a short nod
and cleared his throat. “Aye. I’ll consider it that way.”
“Excellent.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “Shall I tell you the fate I told your father would befall you?”
He was startled, but did not hesitate. “Tell me.”
“That you would fall deeply in love with your own wife, a southerner. And that if you managed to earn her love in return, all would be well at Acton March.”
Guy flushed. “That was it?”
“It was.”
Tancred gave another croak. Helga gave a wintry smile. “Oh, you will, will you?” With a deft movement of her hand she tossed an oatcake up into air. It was caught in a large black beak and consumed with ruthless efficiency. “I accept your apology,” Helga added coolly.
Guy wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or the bird.
XXX
“Come in,” Mathilde called out listlessly, in answer to the light tap on the door. She already knew it wasn’t Guy from the lightness of the rap.
She was sat bundled up on the window seat, a woolen mantle over her shift, and her hair in a messy mop of curls. She had washed, but hadn’t bothered to so much as drag a comb through her hair. She would have to use his if she did, she thought, looking around the large bedroom in a desultory fashion. And she didn’t want to touch anything of Guy’s. It was curious to think she would have been so happy to have been set up in his rooms only three days ago. A blonde head peered around the door. This must be Temur’s wife, she surmised. She was young and fair and carrying a bundle of clothes in her arms.
“Good morning, my lady,” Lettys said, gazing about her in open curiosity. She shut the door behind her. “I have some of your clothes here brought over from the lodge.”
Mathilde eyed the scarlet dress on the top of the pile with disfavor. Prudie must have repaired it. She certainly wasn’t wearing that! Seducing Guy was the last thing she wanted to do.
“My green wool gown will do very well,” she answered with obvious disinterest.
“Begging your pardon, my lady, but his lordship has had that given away.”
“Given away?” Mathilde was momentarily startled out of her apathy. It was the only warm dress she possessed. Certainly, the only one that covered her charms adequately.
“A woolen dress is not fit for a marchioness,” Lettys informed her firmly.
“Well, he seemed to think it appropriate, when he gave it to me,” Mathilde answered tartly, before she could stop herself. Lettys’s eyes widened.
“It little matters,” she continued quickly. “As I have no inclination to venture below stairs.”
She turned her face away from Lettys’ curious gaze. The young woman shrugged and placed the pile of clothes down at the foot of the bed, opening and closing drawers, tidying her things away. Mathilde fought down a wave of annoyance at the way her own wishes were being so ignored.
“Where is Prudence?” she asked pointedly.
“She’s returned to the lodge,” Lettys informed her cheerfully.
Mathilde sat up in her seat. “Returned to the lodge? Without me?”
“Which one does your ladyship wish to wear today?” asked Lettys brightly. She held up the scarlet or her sapphire gown.
“When did she return?” Mathilde persisted. “I did not give her leave to return.”
Lettys nibbled her bottom lip ruminatively. “If I tell you, will you oblige me by picking a gown?” she cajoled, before adding hurriedly, “Your Ladyship.”
“It little signifies,” Mathilde sighed. “And please stop calling me my lady, I am not accustomed to such considerations. Call me Mathilde.”
Lettys looked gratified. “I’m by way of a cousin of yours through marriage,” she said eagerly. “I’m called Lettys. I believe you know my man, Temur? Temur is a second cousin of His Lordship’s. On his mother’s side.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Lettys,” Mathilde found herself murmuring, unable to ignore societal politeness. After all, it was not this young woman’s fault that Acton March was the last place on earth that she wanted to be right now, and its master the very last person she wanted to see. Seeing Lettys take up the scarlet dress in the face of her silence on the matter, Mathilde was forced to speak up. “Not that one,” she said apologetically. “It has … associations. I’ll wear the sapphire blue.”
Lettys very likely thought her a contrary and difficult woman, Mathilde thought forlornly as she laid out scarlet stockings for her and yellow garters.
“I believe there is a pale cream under-dress,” she forced herself to say. Perhaps if she wore that under the low cut gown, it would it would give her some modesty. “It is of samite. If you could find it for me, I would be most grateful.”
“I think I remember seeing that,” Lettys said obligingly and went back to one of the drawers. “Ah, yes here it is. What lovely fabric.”
Together they managed to get Mathilde dressed and looking halfway decent, but when it came to her hair, Lettys looked less confident. Lettys’s own hair was worn in a braided coronet wound about her head.
“What do you normally do with it?” she asked, sounding perplexed. “It’s far too short to braid.”
Mathilde glanced over at the looking glass, and found her hair stood up almost on end like a dandelion clock after Lettys’s brisk brushing of it. “Um…” She reached up and tried to smooth it down. “I may need to apply a little water,” she said distractedly. “It’s most strange, when it’s long it has a wave, but not curls like this.”
“Were you ill?” asked Lettys sympathetically. “My sister had scarlet fever and they had to cut all her hair off. It took an age to grow back.”
“I’m afraid it’s rather complicated,” answered Mathilde, not wanting to go into the whole story.
Lettys nodded. “She had complications too,” she said breezily. “But it grew back in the end.”
“I’m so glad,” murmured Mathilde, slipping on the garters over her stockings.
“So was Gladys. When Erik saw the state of her, he vowed he wouldn’t marry her for a herd of heifers. Not when she looked like a plucked hen.”
Mathilde paused. “And did she? Marry him I mean?” she asked in spite of herself.
“Oh yes. And they’d not been married a twelvemonth, when Erik’s own hair started to recede. You may be sure she flings it in his face, when it suits her. My old plucked cock she calls him. ‘Never mind your field of heifers,’ she says. ‘What about my fine prize bull?’ Lettys laughed heartily, and picked up the comb again gamely. “Let’s see what we can do.”
It was somehow impossible to stay disinterested and apathetic in the face of Lettys’s lively conversation. Still, Mathilde felt an emotional wobble when Lettys pronounced her ready to precede her downstairs.
“I want only a quiet sitting room, where I won’t be disturbed,” she reiterated nervously. She was not up to any confrontations with her husband again so soon. Not now she knew what lay behind that handsome face — betrayal.
“Aye, my lady,” Lettys assured her. “All is in place.”
“Mathilde.”
“Mathilde,” Lettys corrected herself, shutting the door behind them. “His lordship specified you were to have the best blue sitting room at your disposal.”
Mathilde pulled a face. It was a little late she thought, hardening her heart against him, for him to be rolling out a warm welcome for her in his home.
“We won’t find his other guests there?” she ventured sharply, as they descended the staircase. Again, her thoughts strayed to that woman, with her golden gown and jewels, and her cultured voice and felt a tremor of anger reverberate through her.
“The Lady Julia has been locked in her bedroom in hysterics this last two days now,” Lettys told her, clearly seeing through her query. Mathilde bit her lip determined not to betray herself further.
“His lordship relieved me of my duties, chaperoning her about,” sniffed Lettys. “And a good thing too, for she was a haughty, disagreeable madam at best and resented me some
thing fierce.”
“Resented you?” echoed Mathilde, forgetting her resolve to maintain a stony silence on this subject. “Why?”
“On account of she wanted a free reign to do as she pleased, but Lord Martindale didn’t want her racketing about the place, lording it over everyone.”
Mathilde digested this a moment before concluding regretfully that she couldn’t take much comfort from this. After all, he hadn’t wanted Mathilde to have a free reign over his home either. She remembered her previous visit and the poky little bedroom she had been locked in.
“For all the fine folk about these parts think so much of her,” Lettys continued, lowering her voice. “The servants can’t stand her. Demanding and spoiled, that’s what they all think.” Lettys nodded her head. “Her brother directed a bowl of cold water be thrown over her yestere’en, when she wouldn’t be quieted. Flew into a passion she did, and went at him like a regular she-devil! Caught her by the wrists he did, by all accounts. ‘That’s enough my girl,’ says he. ‘You’ll not be sharpening your claws on my face!’”
Mathilde’s mouth fell open. “Her brother is here too?” She hoped she managed to mask her astonishment. Was it usual for a man to house his mistress’s brother also?
“Oh yes, for they come every year to visit the neighborhood of their birth.”
Mathilde lapsed into silence. She didn’t want to hear about it after all, she told herself. Still, at low moments, she couldn’t help herself from thinking of that ruby set in a swan brooch the other woman had worn. Mathilde may have only been wed by proxy, but she knew very well the crest of the Martindales; the gorged swan with wings outstretched. In four years she had received no token from her husband, but perhaps after all, that wasn’t so surprising if he had given them all away to his various mistresses over the years. In spite of her resolve, she smarted at that thought and had to hold her head higher to hide the fact.
Her every feeling was raw and bleeding. How right Old Helga had been to identify her true enemy as Lord Martindale and not the carter. The carter could never have inflicted this amount of pain on her, for all he had trampled and kicked her. Guy had dealt her a far more grievous blow, even though, she remembered dimly, she had been the one to strike him. In front of an audience too.
Wed By Proxy (Brides of Karadok Book 1) Page 26