Winter's Heat

by Denise Domning

  Startled, Rowena stepped back, then watched in angry dismay as her husband set his cup on a table and offered Maeve his hands. With neither a word nor a glance to her, he stepped away. From over his shoulder Lady Maeve shot her a brief and triumphant glance.

  Jealousy and pain exploded within her. Oh, she was beautiful to him, the way a copse was beautiful to a woodcutter. She was only good enough to share his bed and breed him sons.

  "My lady?" Lord John offered her his hands. "Would you dance with me?"

  "I would be honored," she replied with a smile she did not feel. Putting her small hand into his callused palm, she struggled to present the best face she could to her husband's castellan. To her surprise, she enjoyed herself. The man's size belied his agility, for he was a competent dancer, spry and light on his feet. And only when they were well into their third tune did he mention his daughter.

  "So, it went well?"

  "Aye, at least I believe so. Your daughter has some strange notions, but I think she is better reconciled to your marriage now. Do not expect her to attend your bedding, though."

  There was a sudden light in the man's brown eyes. "Excuse me, there is something I forgot to say to my lord."

  He released her and left, mid-step, to stride across the room to Rannulf. She backed out of the way as the dancers broke apart around her then wove back into two lines, one all male, the other female.

  "My lady," said a servant who appeared at her right. "Your lord says to tell you that the bride must be made ready. Also, you must be quick about preparing her. He does not think he will able to restrain the groom for longer than a quarter hour."

  Rowena glanced around the room until she saw her husband. He was refilling his cup from the ewer at the far table. Why send a servant to tell her, why not tell her himself? Because she was not worthy of his notice. With a sour taste in her mouth, she announced to the room it was time for the bedding.

  The bride bid a fond farewell to her husband and happily climbed the stairs. When she was led through the solar to the master's chamber, she cried, "Why, sister, you have given me your own room. I am honored."

  While the priest blessed the bed, five of Graistan's most stout-hearted maids encircled the bride to remove her finery. "How kind your lord has been to do all this for me," she called from over their shoulders. "Surely, I can find some way to repay him for the care and effort he has made on my behalf this day."

  Her voice seemed light and happy. "To think that if you had not banished me from Graistan, none of this would have happened." She continued speaking around the maids as she donned a sheer, silken robe to cover her nakedness. "John is such a simple man, I am sure I shall have no marital discord. We shall have a cozy, little hall with but two villages to provide for us. No doubt we will have many long, bucolic years between us."

  Rowena frowned slightly in disbelief. These were all the things that should have enraged Maeve. Yet, she seemed completely content. "He was my lord husband's choice for you," she said tentatively.

  "Oh, do not be so shy of accepting my compliments," the bride responded with a little laugh. "It may have been Rannulf's idea, but no doubt you rejoiced at the man, sister."

  Just then, there was a knock at the door and the bridegroom called for the right to enter. The maids moved behind Lady Maeve while Rowena came to stand at her side. Instantly, the bride leaned toward her lady to harshly whisper, "My spies tell me how dearly you have already paid for crossing me. Your husband despises you and in his hate he has finally turned to me for comfort." There was triumph in her quiet voice.

  "You lie," she shot back.

  "Do I or has he only deluded you so well you cannot see the truth? Think on it. Ashby is so close, and John is such a fool. Nay, your husband is mine, my fine lady, and it is you who has driven him into my arms. He intends to be my lover and make a mockery of your marriage. It will humble you far better than any of the plots I had devised over these past months. Your downfall will be sweet, indeed."

  "You lie," she retorted, this time with less surety as the door flew open and the bridegroom and Rannulf entered.

  "You will see," Maeve hissed, then stepped forward, her sheer bedrobe falling open as she did so. "Come, husband," she fairly simpered, her expression without a hint of her previous emotion, "Come to our bed this night."

  Rowena put an end to the ceremony as quickly as she could without insulting John, then returned to the hall. The servants were still dancing. She looked for her husband, but he had disappeared. Where? To make arrangements for a tryst?

  She stood stock-still amid the noise and confusion, torn asunder. Was it true? Lord John's name had come so quickly to her husband's lips. Lady Maeve believed it; this is why she had so happily agreed to wed. When a servant offered her a cup of wine, she took it and drank deeply to steady her nerves.

  Her husband startled her when he spoke from behind her. "Did I not tell you she would do as I said?" His tone was patronizing, and he was obviously pleased with himself. Pleased because his arrangements had worked out so nicely?

  Her insides turned to ice. "Oh, she has done it. At first I could not understand why she was so cheerful over it all, but now I know for she has told me why. You and she are to be lovers."

  He stared down at her, his features freezing into a dark and dangerous expression. "What did she ever do to you that you should hate her so? You will hold that vicious tongue of yours, or I will publicly name you liar."

  "Do not rush to spew denials, dear husband," Rowena's voice was even, but inwardly she reeled. "How foolish of me to expect it. You call me a liar, yet I have never lied to you. When she steals from you, you find her a husband and gift her with a substantial dowry." She continued with a calmness that belied the roiling hurt within her. "You were so determined to bring her back here, even when we'd told you what she'd done. It was only Gilliam's threat to leave that caused you to relent. And, I in my selfish desire to be rid of her, I did not think to question your swift turnabout."

  "You dishonor me with your presence," he said, his words low and cold. "Leave me."

  "Do I? That sounds strange coming from you. As for leaving, I have not finished with you yet." There was a desperate edge to her voice, and she fought to suppress it. It would not do for him to see how much his betrayal hurt her. "The least you could have done was to keep it private, but every soul, including poor John, saw the greeting that you gave her."

  "No further, madam." His face was a bitter mask, his eyes as sharp and hard as the steel of his sword. "You'll not treat me so. Behave yourself or I will confine you with your women."

  Rowena snarled quietly in barely controlled rage. "I am treating you only as well as you treat me," she hissed, "and if you do not like it, choke on it. But, I won't stand idly by while the two of you humiliate me before my servants. You had better reconsider, or you'll learn quickly enough where the power lies at Graistan. So it's common now to manage one's hall, is it? Well, if you like her moldly bread so well, I'll see to it that that is what you eat."

  "Hold your tongue, woman," he said, his voice growing steadily in volume. "Quit your lunatic ravings and be gone with you." His final words were a thunderous roar that rang out over the hall. Everyone came to a sudden halt, the music dying away into a shrill shriek.

  "Gladly," she hissed, unwilling to let the servants hear what transpired between them. "But it is I who am done with you. You want my inheritance, well go fetch it from my sister. As for locking me away, I will not give you the opportunity. From now on I will make my bed with my women, and you can find your pleasure with any whore you choose, except her."

  She whirled and ran, not caring what direction she went, only wanting to be away from him. As she reached the screens that guarded the outer door, his cup crashed to the floor at her heels. "Go, then," he thundered. "I have had enough of you to last me a lifetime."

  She ran outside and down the stairs. It was by instinct alone she found her way to her garden's gate. Here, she leaned against that doo
r, her breath coming in huge, tearless sobs. "God forgive me," she cried out to herself, "but I hate him."

  "God forgives you your lie and so do I."

  Chapter 14

  "Temric!" she cried out, leaping away from him in fright.

  "My pardon, I did not mean to startle you." He opened the gate. "Why not come sit for a moment and settle your senses. You seem overwrought," he added dryly.

  Rowena laughed, but the sound was nearer a sob. She hurried within her garden's shielding walls to walk agitatedly up and down the sole path. Her brother by marriage leaned casually against a tree trunk. It was only the enclosing privacy of darkness that finally loosened her tongue. She let fly the harangue she'd so long suppressed.

  "I have kept his home, seen to his table, denied him nothing, and what does he do? Not only does he treat me as if I were the least of his servants whose only value to him is in my inheritance, he plans to betray me with Maeve. What have I done that he should so deeply hate me? Why must it be with her?" Her voice broke in a breathless cry and she stopped, her hand pressed to her lips to still her pain.

  "Betray you with Lady Maeve?" Temric's surprise filled the air around them. "What do you mean?"

  She whirled, her heels scratching deep marks in the gravel path. "Maeve told me that my husband has arranged her marriage to Sir John so the two of them could be lovers."

  "And you believed her?" he retorted. "After all she's done, you believed her? Surely, when you told this to Rannulf, he set you straight."

  "Nay," she cried out in wild hurt, "he protected her. He threatened to name me a liar when I repeated what she'd said."

  "Listen now and make no mistake on what you hear. Rannulf could no more do what you accuse than he could fly. Whether or not he will stray from his marriage vows, I cannot say, but my brother would die before he dishonored his man by laying with that man's wife." His voice was as deep and soft as the night around them. The very tone of it made his words unassailable truth.

  "Am I to believe you when he, himself, would not deny it?" Yet, she held her breath waiting for his answer.

  "What you believe is up to you. I can tell you what I know and let you make what use of it you will. I know Rannulf better than any man alive and I tell you now, he is not capable of what you accuse."

  She paused as the rightness of what he said filled her. It was only then that she realized the enormity of what she'd done. Like the angel with the fiery sword who'd banished Adam and Eve from Paradise, her burning words had irrevocably driven her husband away from her. She sat on the bench as rage and hurt were replaced with despair. "How could I have been so blind to her trap? Sweet Mary. I have destroyed my marriage over her, just as she desired."

  "Well, I do not doubt you shocked him with your accusations, but it does him no harm to find you can be driven to a jealous rage over him." He stated it so matter-of-factly, as if it were nothing at all.

  "Not jealousy," she sighed, "but fear of humiliation drove me to accuse him. Oh, Temric, tell me something, anything, that can be done to ease this accursed match of ours. I cannot spend my life surrounded by so much hate. What is it about me? I need only speak two words to send him raging in anger. Whatever you suggest, I swear I will do it, although now I fear it may be too late."

  "Accursed." He managed to make that single word ring with ironic amusement. "Now, there's an accurate description for this trap into which we shoved you. Your union will continue to be troubled until Rannulf can see himself free of his past. That I cannot change. But why did you cease to try?"

  "Cease to try?" she cried out. "What is there left to do that I have not already done, all of it wrong. I have even accused him of adultery."

  "That may be the only thing you've done right so far. Now, tell me what you have done save let him belittle you and treat you as if you did not exist? Three nights ago he spoke to you with unforgivable rudeness, and you let him do so unchallenged. I took you to be a different woman. Was I wrong?"

  Rowena gave a harried sigh and hugged herself. "If I cannot have the man, I will not lose the hall," she breathed.

  "Here's a particularly odd turn of logic. Do you think you secure yourself here by allowing him to treat you without the respect due to your position?"

  She shook her head in frustration. "You are right, I do know better. But, Temric, his anger comes exploding out at me from deep inside him. Dear God, I could not live with the shame if he were to beat me before my own servants." Her last words were almost a sob.

  "Nay, this is again something you need never fear from Rannulf."

  "You might be right if it were anyone other than I at whom his anger is directed. When I should remain calm to soothe him, he says the one thing that drives away all my common sense and control. I find myself goading him, although I cannot explain why I do it. I thought if I were silent, he would come to care for me—so, I gritted my teeth and humbled myself—aye"—the word sprang from her in enraged anguish—"I have borne it all while it ate my stomach through to my spine. I do not know who I hate worse for it, him or myself."

  "It has not been all silence." His calm, certain tone told her he knew they shared their bed as man and wife.

  "Ilsa talks too much," she said darkly.

  "I do not need old women to tell me what I can see in my brother's eyes."

  "If that is what I must do to keep my home," her voice died away into the night.

  "Now you are truly lying."

  "Let me," she snapped back. "It does not hurt as much if I say it so."

  There was a long, quiet moment broken only by the echo of music from the hall and the rustle of wild creatures moving within the garden. In that time, the moon lifted above the wall. Its pure light made silvery trace work from branch and bough.

  Temric sighed, and she studied him. His harshness was gone or at least hidden for the soft illumination revealed only sadness. "I would have warned you, but I was loath to interfere in my brother's life. There'll be no peace for you here, at least not of the kind you knew at your convent. How you must regret what you have lost."

  She hesitated to answer, for what she could not have from the church she'd found here. "Nay, I have no regrets." Then, suddenly, she straightened. "Do you say that my lord intends to send me back? Then you may tell him that I will fight him with every ounce of my strength. If I must stay locked in with my women for the remainder of my life, I'll not leave Graistan."

  Temric's chuckle rumbled deep within his chest. "To the best of my knowledge, he has no such intentions. My brother needs your pride and your arrogance, not the quiet nothing you have shown him. If you had been a biddable child, he'd not have married you."

  "You are wrong," she returned with firm certainty. "My father forced him to fulfill their contract. He accepted me only to avoid losing my inheritance."

  "And I tell you, my brother went to Benfield that day to say he would not complete the deed despite the richness of your holdings. Do not forget that I was there as well and saw what you saw, but also what you did not see. Your father could never have forced Rannulf if my brother hadn't found something about you he could not refuse."

  Rowena stared at him, as if she could pick the truth out from the white and black relief of his face. "Even if that is as you say," she replied quietly, "I fear your words have come too late to be of any help to me. I have held my anger too long and vented it too soon. I did not only accuse him of intending betrayal. I have also told him I want no more to do with him and have sworn to confine myself to the women's quarters."

  To her utter astonishment, he laughed aloud. "Good work, my lady. First you show him your jealousy, then you remove yourself from his reach.

  That'll tweak him right merrily. It looks as though you needed no help from me after all."

  "How can you laugh," she said, a little irritated by his amusement. "You come to see why I stop trying, then laugh when I say I have not only quit fighting, but have also left the battlefield. You laugh when I have now lost all rights to the tit
le 'Lady Graistan?"

  He only smiled. "You have lost nothing. Of your rights to this keep, you took those in one masterful stroke on your first night here and will hold them as your own until you choose to release them. You know that. It is my brother you want. Do not shake your head at me, for only a blind man could not see it. If you had no place for him in your heart, Maeve's words would not have given you a moment's pause."

  Stung into silence by his statement, she watched him straighten as if to signal the end of their unexpected conversation. "There has been an ocean of heartbreak here that has trapped us all in its chains until we believed we'd never again be free. Yet in you come and sweep most of it clean, as if it was no more to do than lift a spilled cup and wipe away the slop. You have opened the door for him, now Rannaulf must free himself."

  "What happened here? What plays between Rannulf and Gilliam, and how is it Maeve has such a hold over them?" she asked softly, but his upraised hand forestalled any further question.

  "Ask your husband. If you are the woman I think you are, he will tell you."

  "It is too late," she whispered to herself.

  "Not yet," he answered easily.

  "So you say," Rowena sighed. Despite his words, she found no reason to hope. "But, I thank you for your friendship. Oftimes, I feel so alone. Until I came to Graistan my solitariness never pained me. Here, where there are so many who love me and I should feel accepted, the hole in my heart seems greater than ever."

  "You, lonely? I am surprised," he said, sounding genuinely so. "You know who you are."

  "Know who I am? What do you mean?"

  "I mean that you are noble by class."

  "What was peerage to do with loneliness or identity?" she returned in quiet confusion. "A title did not spare me from being an unwanted daughter, rejected by my mother simply because I was my father's spawn and only desired by my father as a weapon to use against her. Who am I now but the Lady Graistan, except that Lord Graistan will not acknowledge that that is who I am." She plucked a pink and held the bloom to her nose. Its warm, rich scent eased the throbbing in her head. "Identity has nothing to do with being common or noble nor should you judge it so."