Dominic’s eyes narrowed into splinters of clear ice.
“In any case,” he said smoothly, “I find myself saddled with an infertile wife.”
“Not so!”
There was no doubt in the old woman’s voice.
“Then why is Meg so certain I will die without sons?” Dominic demanded.
Gwyn’s eyes widened, then narrowed in consideration of the tall warrior who stood before her. For the first time she realized just how deep a rage he was concealing.
“Is that what she said to you?” Gwyn asked carefully.
“Aye.”
“Precisely? Word by word, lord. I must be certain.”
At first Dominic thought he would refuse. Yet there was something in the old woman’s eyes that couldn’t be denied.
“She said, ‘For a Glendruid son, love is required. There is no love in you, Dominic le Sabre.’”
The sound that came from Gwyn could have been a sigh or a whispering sound of pain that was absorbed by the slight noises of the hearth fire. She rubbed her eyes as though inexpressibly weary. Then she looked at the man who wanted only one thing in life.
“It’s not that Meg is infertile, Lord Dominic. It’s that no Glendruid son will be conceived if there isn’t love between the parents.”
“How can that be, old woman?”
“I do not know,” she said simply. “I know only that it has been thus since the loss of the Glendruid Wolf.”
“And how long is that?”
“Long, long ago, lord. So long only God remembers and He has told no one.”
“Come now, madam,” Dominic said in a voice rich with sarcasm. “Are you asking me to believe that in such a great span of time, not one man has deceived a Glendruid lass into thinking he loved her?”
Gwyn shrugged. “It wouldn’t matter what lies he told her to bed her. Ultimately the curse rests on the woman’s love, not the man’s. Many Glendruid women have wanted sons to bring peace to their world. Not one has managed the kind of love a son requires.”
Dominic narrowed his eyes. Nothing of what Gwyn was saying pleased him. But then, he was never pleased to discover the traps and fortifications of a city he must take.
“’Tis true, then, what Lord John said,” Dominic murmured. “The witches are as cold as a mountain grave. They feel no passion.”
Gwyn smiled oddly. “Do you believe John or do you believe the untouched Glendruid flesh that came to your call as a falcon to its master?”
Dominic’s whole body tightened at the reminder of the desire he had indeed aroused in Meg, only to have her angrily withdraw at the thought of giving him heirs.
“Then why haven’t the witches loved? Are they incapable of it?” he demanded tightly.
“Some, yes. The ability to love is rare in any clan or kin. But not in Meg. There is great love within her. Ask any of the people of the keep.”
“What of the witches who could love?” Dominic persisted. “Did they marry brutes unworthy of them?”
“Brutes? Nay. They simply married men, lord. Just men.”
“You speak in circles,” he said impatiently.
“No. You simply choose not to understand. Could you give your soul in love to a woman if you were absolutely certain she wanted nothing but to use you in order to gain lands, wealth, and sons?”
“God’s teeth, what foolishness is—”
“Could you,” the old woman continued relentlessly, “allow yourself to love any woman? Could you share your tightly guarded soul with her?”
Dominic gave her a look of disbelief “Do I appear a fool, madam? I cede that kind of control over my destiny to no one, man or woman!”
Tears magnified the old woman’s eyes, but they did not fall. She had had too many years on earth to believe that tears changed anything.
“Then you will have no sons and I will be doomed to watch yet another generation pray for release from the curse.”
“I don’t believe you,” he snarled.
“Then believe this: Glendruid women see beneath the sensual lure of broad shoulders and handsome faces. They see a man’s soul. Seeing that deeply makes love surpassingly difficult, for Glendruid women are also human.
“Understanding someone, and loving him despite that understanding, is a trait more often found in angels than in mankind. Meg is a woman, not an angel.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed into splinters of ice, a reflection of the cold condensing in his gut as the old woman’s certainty and grief rolled over him like a dark wave. Without warning, his fist slammed onto the table’s surface. Bells leaped and jangled. After that brief, unmusical cry, silence came.
No one disturbed it.
Simon looked from the old woman to his brother. Dominic’s eyes were narrowed. He had the air of a man thinking very rapidly.
Slowly the tension eased out of Simon. Once his brother concentrated on an objective, there had never been a keep, a city, or a wench that Dominic couldn’t take by force or stealth.
Or treachery, if it came to that.
After long minutes of silence, Dominic focused once more on the old Glendruid woman. His eyes were like ice, hard and very cold. His voice was the same.
“Thank you, madam. You have clarified the problem of heirs for me.”
It was a dismissal, and Gwyn knew it. She nodded slightly and withdrew as quietly as smoke.
Dominic turned to his brother and asked bluntly, “Do you believe the old witch?”
“I sense she believes her words are the truth.”
“Aye,” Dominic said bitterly. “I saw enough in the Holy War to know that kind of faith can pass miracles.”
“Or call down curses?”
Dominic’s fist hit the table once more, making bells cry in protest for the man who would allow no protest of his own to escape his rigid control.
“What will you do?” Simon said after a time. “Have the marriage annulled because she is infertile?”
“Nay,” Dominic vowed. “Never.”
The force of his instant reply surprised both men.
“We could hold the keep even if the thanes and vassals rebelled,” Simon pointed out. “If the people refuse to work the land for you, our father has more peasants than his estates in Normandy need. The serfs would be glad to come here where each would get a garden of his own, and a pig.”
“Aye.”
Dominic said no more. The solution Simon offered was workable, but Dominic refused it out of hand. He couldn’t precisely say why. He knew only that his instincts clamored against a solution that didn’t involve the Glendruid witch who was his wife.
Frowning, Dominic looked at the delicate golden bells that shivered so musically with the least touch.
If flowers could sing…
If Glendruid witches could love…
“Aye!” Dominic said fiercely. “That is it!”
“What?”
“The solution, my brother, is simple. I must teach the witch to love me.”
14
DOMINIC AND SIMON CROSSED through the great hall on the way to one of the corner stairways that wound up the inside of three of the keep’s four towers. The soft music of the golden jewelry overflowing from Dominic’s left hand was lost in the noise of servants raking and scraping the wooden floor of the hall.
As soon as the planks were bared, more servants with buckets of water, lye soap, and coarse brushes went to work. Heaps of soiled rushes were piled up along one wall, waiting to be burned. The fire in the huge hearth leaped high as it devoured all that it was fed.
The steward hurried from group to group of servants, urging that they work harder and faster in order to please Blackthorne Keep’s new lord.
“At least the steward knows who his new master is,” Dominic muttered.
“They all know who their new master is. Some of them just find it harder to swallow than others.”
“They had best not take too long in the chewing,” Dominic retorted as he began climbing stairs with long stri
des. “I have little patience for some things. Sloth is foremost among them.”
Simon’s laughter echoed in the twisting stone passageway.
“Your knights well know it, Dominic. I doubt that your wife will be long in learning.”
“There will be no need of teaching in Lady Margaret’s case. Her breath and body are as sweet as spring itself. The cleanliness of her rooms tells me that it was John, rather than she, who was at fault for the state of the rest of the keep.”
Leather boots slapped rhythmically against stone as the brothers climbed the right-hand turning staircase. If they had been trying to take the keep by storm, they would have been hampered by the fact that all knights were trained to use their right hands in sword fighting. As a result, it was far easier to defend the stairs than it was to take them, for in fighting up the steps, the stone wall forever thwarted the thrust of the attackers’ swords. The defenders, retreating up the stairs, were under no such handicap. They could cut and slash with a will, and their blades would find only the enemy rather than the stone walls of the tower itself.
Dominic took the final three stairs in a single leap and strode down the passageway that led to his wife’s rooms. He ignored the two small rooms that opened along the way. Those were the quarters of the lady’s maids. As only one was being used by Eadith, he had given the other to Marie.
The thought of seeing either woman didn’t appeal to Dominic at the moment. He had decided Eadith was a greedy flirt with little to recommend her but her clean hands. Nor was Marie good company. She was sulky that no more gifts of gold and gems and been forthcoming from him since Jerusalem.
Rather wryly, Dominic realized that part of Meg’s appeal for him was that she wasn’t tripping over her own feet with eagerness to discover the contents of the small chests he had brought into the keep when he arrived. In fact, it seemed she wasn’t eager for anything at all from him.
Except her cursed plants.
She had snatched them back from him with great speed. He still found it difficult to believe that she had gone on foot over fen and moor—and risked her husband’s certain displeasure—simply to collect a few odd bits of greenery. But there appeared to be no other explanation for what had happened.
Dominic found himself curious to discover if a few hours of silence had made Meg more willing to talk to him. He also wondered if the golden jewelry in his hands would make her eyes light with welcome for him, despite her anger that he wasn’t falling under her spell as all the other people of Blackthorne Keep manifestly had.
The door to Meg’s room was closed. Dominic rapped on it impatiently.
“Open, madam,” he said. “It is your husband.”
No answer came.
Dominic knocked less gently. “Lady Margaret. Open the door.”
No one spoke from within.
The force of Dominic’s fist made the door shudder. “Open the cursed door or I’ll have it off its hinges!”
The door swung open.
“Wife, you and I will reach an agreement on the basic courtesies I expect from…”
Dominic’s voice died as he realized that the door had been opened by the force of his fist rather than by his wife’s softer hands. He strode into the room.
It was empty.
“God’s teeth,” he snarled, throwing the jewelry onto his wife’s bed. “The witch isn’t here!”
Dominic strode through the room into what had once been the nursery. From the look of it, Meg spent time sitting there by the window, embroidering and listening to the sounds of servants in the bailey below.
“Empty,” Dominic said before Simon could ask.
The two men quickly checked the ladies’ quarters of the keep, the bath, and the latrine. All were empty.
As one, the brothers rushed back down the stairs to the forebuilding. The man on duty looked as bored as he undoubtedly was.
“Did Lady Margaret leave?” Dominic asked.
“Nay,” the knight said, surprised. “You told me she wasn’t to pass from the keep unless she was with you.”
Dominic grunted.
“What of the lady’s handmaiden?” Simon asked. “Has she gone from the keep?”
“No. Only serving wenches, and I looked at each of them quite carefully.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Dominic said.
Both of them knew the knights were still smarting from the rough edge of Dominic’s tongue for not having realized that the “serving wench” they had let out earlier that morning had been, in fact, Lady Margaret.
“What now?” Simon asked. “Shall we find Eadith?”
Dominic grimaced. As much as he disliked the wench with the covetous eyes, Eadith was more likely to know where Meg was than anyone else in the keep.
“Where to first?” Dominic asked unhappily. “The battlements or the garrison?”
“It’s storming.”
“The garrison, then,” Dominic said. “Eadith has a taste for dalliance, but not in a cold rain.”
“What wench does?” Simon retorted.
Dominic grunted.
In a silence that seethed with Dominic’s frustration, the two men headed for the knights’ quarters. Since Duncan and the Reevers had departed, Eadith had spent much time checking the battlements—and flirting with the knights on sentry duty.
If the weather was too blustery to enjoy being out in the open, she spent time around the wellhead, supposedly checking that the servants were careful in the water they drew. Actually, she was simply hanging about the garrison, which was located on the same level as the well.
The second floor was alive with the sounds of knights and squires from the garrison area, and servants chanting rhythmically as they hauled up water for the keep’s use in a large wooden bucket. Among the masculine sounds, it was easy to pick out the teasing feminine laughter.
When Dominic and Simon emerged from the tower staircase into the garrison, the first thing they saw was Eadith standing close to Thomas the Strong. Just behind him was Marie. Both women appeared to be interested in capturing the knight’s roving eyes—and hands.
“Perhaps you should have saved Marie’s cost, and that of her like,” Simon said.
Dominic said only, “Marie will be earning her keep as a seamstress, beginning this moment.”
“And Eadith?”
“Some women are born to be whores.”
Thomas heard the sound of Dominic’s approach before either woman did. He turned, saw his lord’s face, and knew he was in trouble.
“Sir Thomas,” Dominic said without preamble, “the armory is a heap of rust. When you aren’t drilling the men on leaping into the saddle and using the broadsword one-handed, you will oversee the armory’s thorough cleaning.”
“Aye, lord,” Thomas said, reluctantly removing a ham-sized hand from Eadith’s hip. “When shall I begin?”
“Now. Draw up a list of what you will need and present it to me tomorrow morning.”
“Aye, lord.”
Thomas fastened his mantle, which had come undone beneath Marie’s clever fingers, winked at both women, and withdrew.
“Marie,” Dominic said.
The dark-haired woman watched him with eyes as black as Simon’s. She couldn’t conceal her hope from Dominic as she walked gracefully to him.
“Aye, lord? Do you finally wish something from your faithful Marie?”
“You are quite skillful with clothing. You will attend to the lacks in my lady’s wardrobe. You may draw freely upon the silks I brought from Jerusalem. There is the cloth from Normandy and London as well. If you lack for anything, see me immediately.”
Marie’s full mouth thinned, but all she said was, “Yes, lord.”
“You will have little work,” Eadith said to Marie as the Norman woman turned to leave. “Lady Margaret cares for nothing but her gardens and herbal.”
“Marie,” Dominic said.
He hadn’t raised his voice, but Marie froze in the act of turning away from him.
“Use your clever little hands for sewing, and I will reward you with silk of your own,” Dominic said.
Marie smiled with delight and said, “There is no silk finer than my lord’s mouth upon my body.”
He laughed. “Be gone, wench.”
The look Marie gave Dominic was full of memories. She leaned close to him and spoke softly, but not so softly that the others couldn’t hear.
“When you tire of your gardener-bride, come to me. My body will smell of passion rather than dirt. And if you like not my scent, you can bathe me in yours.”
“Go,” Dominic said, but his voice wasn’t harsh.
Smiling slightly, he watched Marie walk from the garrison. The fine wool of her tunic was closely drawn about her body, revealing the ripe feminine shape beneath. With each step her hips swung in a silent, unmistakable invitation.
“As for you,” Dominic said, turning to Eadith. “Where is your lady?”
“I don’t know, lord,” Eadith said carelessly. “Have you lost her again so quickly?”
Simon winced at the girl’s foolishness. Just because Dominic was willing to treat his people well didn’t mean that he could be taken lightly.
“Do you have any kin?” Dominic asked, his tone polite.
“At Blackthorne Keep?”
“Yes.”
Eadith shook her head.
“Do you feel a calling to the Church?” he asked.
“Nay,” she said, surprised.
“Then I suppose I must continue to pay for your keep as an act of Christian charity. Henceforth, wench, you will oversee the scullery and the kitchen.”
Shock showed on Eadith’s face. “Is that what Meg said I should do?”
“How would I know?” Dominic asked silkily. “I keep losing her, as you so kindly pointed out. But then, it doesn’t matter what my wife said or didn’t say. When it comes to the keep, I am absolute ruler.”
Eadith’s cheeks became as white as salt. Tears appeared in her eyes.
“I overstepped, m’lord. Forgive me. The past few days have been upsetting,” she said in a rush, “what with Lord John’s death and the wedding and Sir Duncan being banished and seeing Normans walk unhindered where…”
Eadith’s voice died as she heard what she was saying.
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