“Of course I didn’t say any such thing.”
“It was something like that, if I recall aright. Nay, you’re right, Graelam. You told me that a man’s rod was a measure of a warrior and that, therefore, you were as great as Charlemagne himself.”
Graelam threw a carafe of water at Roland, then fell back against the pillows at the pain it brought him. He cursed fluently and with all the frustration in his soul.
He felt his wife’s soft hands on his chest, lightly stroking him, and the pain, incredibly, eased. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “You think you are well in control, don’t you?”
She leaned down and kissed him. “Aye.”
“He does better, Kassia?”
She gave her husband a long look, then raised her head. “He mends, Roland. I cannot, however, continue losing at draughts with him. He isn’t altogether witless and must soon guess that I am allowing him to win.”
Graelam smiled at that. “I improve, Roland. It’s just that I am so damnably bored. It’s been two days now.”
“Lady Katherine tells me that you should be well enough to be out of your bed on the morrow.”
“And Daria? When will she be up and about again?”
Roland shrugged, and bent to retrieve the wooden carafe from the floor.
“It’s because of me that she lost the babe. I am sorry for it, Roland.”
“Lady Katherine said it was God’s will that you be saved. If that is the truth of it, then so be it. There is no blame here, Graelam. Rest now, and obey your wife. Daria does well enough. Kassia, when you wish to be relieved of this giant’s company, you will send me word. Now, Rolfe awaits outside to see you, Graelam. Some matter of little importance, I imagine, but he doesn’t wish you to feel impotent.”
Roland left Graelam’s chamber, his destination the stables. He wanted to clear his mind, to leave all the pain and hurt behind him for just a few hours.
Not that Daria had said anything to him.
She’s said nothing. She’d slept throughout that day, awakening in the early evening to drink some beef broth prepared especially for her by Alice. Roland wanted to see her, hold her, perhaps, assure himself that she was all right, but when he had entered the room, it was as if she wasn’t there. A pale copy of her lay in the bed, but Daria, his Daria, was gone. As was the babe. She’d looked at him, then turned away. He’d slept that night in the great hall, wrapped in a blanket, one of the castle dogs at his feet.
It was nearly dark in the bedchamber, yet she made no move to light a candle. The air was cooling finally after the intense heat of the day, and Daria pulled a light blanket over her. It brought her no pain to do so. She felt no pain at all, just a soreness and the damnable weakness.
Her mother came into the room quietly, her stride light and graceful even though she carried a tray doubtless filled with an assortment of incredible foods from Alice. Daria closed her eyes, but it was too late.
“Nay, love, don’t pretend with me. You must eat.”
Daria felt the soft sting of candlelight against her eyelids. She didn’t want to be awake, she didn’t want to be here. She said aloud, her voice still raw and hoarse, “I wish I had died, Mother. It would have solved every problem.”
“It would have solved your problem and only yours. You wouldn’t be feeling a thing. But everyone else’s?” At least she’d spoken, at last, Katherine thought, even though what she said sent pain in her mother’s heart. She continued, speaking her mind. “You will bear your pain just as everyone around you bears his own. But that isn’t the point, is it, Daria?”
“The point is that I have no more excuse to remain here, in his castle, eating his food, sleeping in his bed.”
“It isn’t a matter of excuses.”
Roland’s voice came from the doorway. Katherine whirled about, wondering how much he’d heard. As for Daria, she turned her face away, closing her eyes. Katherine watched him as he strode into the room. He looked tired, she thought. He said to her even as he looked only at his wife, “I will see that she eats, Katherine. Sir Thomas grows restive in your absence. I would appreciate your being our hostess until Daria is well again.”
Katherine looked down at her daughter, then back at her son-in-law. She wanted to beg him to go gently, but his face was now closed, his eyes cold, as if he guessed she would press him again. She said nothing. Roland waited until the door closed after her; then he moved to stand beside the bed.
“You will eat your dinner.”
Daria said nothing, nor did she move.
“You’re not dead, Daria, so there are still problems abounding, and you must help to solve them, and that means that you must get out of that bed. I can’t regain your strength for you. You must do it for yourself. Now, eat, or I will force the food down your throat. I won’t tell you again.”
When she didn’t respond to him, he leaned down and clasped her under her arms and pulled her up. He smoothed the pillows behind her and straightened the covers. “Have I dislodged the cloths?”
“No.”
“Do you have any pain?”
“No.”
“Good. I will place the tray here and you will eat. I won’t leave you alone until you have done so.”
She turned to face him. For the past two days he’d kept his distance from her. Now it seemed that he was changing his tactics. His voice was cold, his face set. His dark eyes, so beautiful and deep, regarded her with no emotion at all. He looked tired, and she wondered what he’d done during the day.
She said aloud now, “Why are you doing this? What do you want? I will give you an annulment, though I doubt anything I would say would have any bearing on it.”
A black eyebrow shot up. “Eat some of these stewed carrots and beans.”
Daria ate several bites of the stewed vegetables. They were delicious and she realized she was starving. Her mouth began to water. She took a bite of mutton, marinated in some sort of incredible dill sauce, and roasted until the meat was falling from the bone. She nearly moaned aloud at the wondrous taste of it.
She continued to eat. Roland merely watched her, saying nothing. He was so relieved, he could think of nothing to say in any case. She was still so very pale that it scared the devil out of him. He’d allowed her two days; nothing had changed. She’d fallen even more deeply into depression. She was retreating even further from him. He would allow her no more time, in the hopes she would regain her spirit. He would take over now.
“I would say that eating Alice’s cooking is preferable to dying,” he said at last as she chewed on a hunk of soft white bread.
She continued to chew, looking straight ahead.
He wouldn’t continue to let her ignore him. “Dying is the coward’s way as well. It wouldn’t solve any problems at all. You would just be buried with some of them, yet the feel of them would still exist and eat at others who still lived.”
She looked at him then, her expression as closed as his own. “I care not about your problems, Roland. They are yours and thus you are responsible for them. I would that you leave me alone. I would that you would seek an annulment.”
“It appears obvious to me that you will gain neither of your wishes. Don’t tell me you wish to contemplate visiting a convent again?”
Daria closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the pillows. She wanted to shudder at the thought of a convent. Her belly was full, but she felt so tired, weary to the depths of her, and now he was baiting her.
“Please go.”
“No. I’ve left you alone for two days. No longer. Now I will carry you to Graelam’s bedchamber. He wishes to see you. His guilt is palpable and you must assuage it.”
“His guilt. That is utterly absurd. It was my decision to try to save him, not his. If there is guilt to bear, it is mine and no one else’s.”
“That’s what I told him, but he refuses to accept my word. Do you need to relieve yourself?”
She shook her head at that.
“Good. Let me take the tray, then.�
�� He paused, looking down at her. Katherine had braided her hair, but it was lank and lifeless. There were purple smudges under her eyes, but it was her eyes themselves that frightened him. They looked vague and lost. He shook himself. It made no sense. She would come around. He would make her come around. At least there was some color in her face now from the meal she’d eaten.
“I don’t wish to see him.”
“I don’t care what you wish,” he said. She didn’t fight him, merely held herself stiffly until she didn’t have any more strength, then laid her head on his shoulder as he carried her to Graelam’s bedchamber.
Roland kicked the door open with his foot and called out, “I have brought you a treat, Graelam. What say you, Kassia? Shall I place my wife in bed with your husband? Perhaps we could begin a row of invalids. I could go fetch others. What do you think?”
“I think the two of them is plenty, Roland,” Kassia said, and smoothed a place beside Graelam. “Place her here if you wish it.” But Roland shook his head, saying, “Nay, I believe I shall continue to hold her. She’s warm and soft. Bring that chair closer, Kassia.”
Roland settled into the chair, his wife held close against his chest.
“Now, Graelam, as you see, my wife is mending. Unlike you, she is pliable and docile. I told her to eat, and she ate. She lies gentle and uncomplaining in my arms.”
“Whilst you, husband,” Kassia continued, sitting beside her husband, “complain until I want to throw that chair at your head.”
Graelam stared at the pale-faced girl held in her husband’s lap. With Kassia and Roland here, he would never come to know what was in her mind. Soon, he thought. On the morrow he would visit her. He said now, his voice gentle, “I’m glad you ate your dinner.”
Daria nodded. She felt Roland’s arms around her, holding her as if he cared about her. She felt his warmth, the hardness of his man’s body, and wanted to weep. She felt pain so harsh it filled her and broke her completely, and she turned her face inward against his throat.
Roland felt her tears, felt the tremors go through her, yet she made no sound, just that awful racking of her body. He looked at Graelam and Kassia, their expressions appalled and concerned. “I will see you again,” he said to Graelam, and carried his wife back to their bedchamber. He didn’t release her, merely eased down on the bed, still holding her closely against him. “Are you cold?”
She didn’t reply, just continued to cry without making a sound. It tore at him, this silent pain of hers. He spoke to her then, quietly, his voice pitched soft and deep. “If I could change what happened, I would, Daria. Doubt it not. I do not rejoice that you lost the babe, for I could have lost you as well. I want you to mend, to smile again, to come back to me. Please, don’t weep.”
“When you last took me, you felt the babe and hated me and you hated him.”
Her voice was a whisper, and wet with hurt. He closed his eyes, remembering clearly that morning, remembering clearly how he’d felt when he’d touched the slight mound in her belly. He’d left her without a word. How had she felt?
“It isn’t true that you don’t rejoice.”
“Daria, listen to me. I’m your husband. I have told you before and I will tell you again. I would protect you now with my life. Then I would have protected you with my life. It seems that ever since that first time I saw you, I was ready to protect you. I don’t know why you won’t name the father. Perhaps it is because you fear I would be killed by him, for I know you care for me. But it’s no longer important. You are important, you and I and our life together.”
She stopped crying then. These tears were for the child, his child, and for her, and for the emptiness in her heart. Slowly, for she was so very weak, she lifted herself to look at him. “I will say this just once more, Roland, then never again. The babe I carried was yours, conceived that night in Wrexham. If you cannot bring yourself to believe in me, to believe that I would never lie to you, ever, then I wish you to seek an annulment. I don’t wish to remain here.”
“Daria—”
“No. I had prayed the babe would come in its time and it would look like its father—like you, Roland—that it would be a son and he would be dark like you, his eyes so black they looked like a moonless night, that when he smiled, it would be your smile you would see smiling back at you. It was a hope that I held deep within me, praying that it would be so, praying that then you would realize that I hadn’t lied to you. But God decided otherwise. Now there is nothing for you save my word to you.” She broke off on a gasp.
“What’s wrong?”
“The bleeding—oh, God.”
Roland quickly eased her onto her back. He jerked open her bedrobe and saw that the cloths had become dislodged and there was blood on her thighs. “Hold still,” he said.
After he’d bathed her and replaced the cloths, he straightened over her. “Are you warm enough?”
She nodded, turning her face again from him.
“Salin told me today that he’d heard of a band of about ten men a day or so away from here, camping in the open. They weren’t recognized.”
She remained silent, locked away from him.
“From the description he got from a tinker, though, it sounds like your esteemed uncle. A tall blond-haired man with pale flesh and a destrier more powerful than any he’d seen before. I wonder if your uncle would be stupid enough to try to enter the keep and kill me. He’s a fool if he believes he can accomplish it.”
“My uncle would never attack you in the open. He is treacherous and will surprise you. He will seek to take something precious from you, and then he will use it as leverage against you. Perhaps jewels, perhaps coin.”
“You are all that is precious to me and I vow he’ll never come near you again.”
He heard her draw in her breath.
He smiled down at her. “Would you like to play draughts with me now? Like Kassia, I could cheat so that you would win.”
21
Graelam de Moreton waited patiently until Lady Katherine disappeared down the stairs, then walked down the narrow corridor, carefully and as slowly as an old man, his ribs pulling and aching. He slipped into the bedchamber, quietly closing the door after him.
Daria was lying on her back, her eyes closed, a thin cover drawn to her chest. He walked to the bed and stared down at her. Her dark hair was loose on the pillow. Beautiful hair, he thought, darker than Kassia’s, yet mixed with the same vivid autumn colors. She was still too pale, her bones too prominent. As if sensing him, her eyes opened and her breath choked in her throat before she recognized him in the dim light.
“Lord Graelam. You startled me.” She struggled up to her elbows. “Should you be out of your bed, my lord? Shall I call Kassia for you? Your ribs, surely they aren’t healed sufficiently as yet. Shall—”
He smiled at her and gently pressed her back down. Her bones felt so very fragile under his hands. He sat beside her and lifted her hand, holding it between his two large ones. “I would speak to you,” he said.
He saw her withdraw from him in that instant, her expression now carefully blank, her eyes wary, an invisible wall now firmly set between them.
“Nay, don’t retreat, it’s a coward’s way and I know you aren’t a coward, Daria. A coward wouldn’t have thrown aside my men to get to me and heaved at those damned rocks until she was numb with the pain of it.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing left.”
He snorted at that and said something so lurid she blinked, staring at him. He grinned at her and nodded. “Aye, my men told me what you did. Indeed they seem to talk of little else save your bravery. They were amazed, and yea, somewhat frightened, for you seemed possessed to them. Yet you saved me, and for that I think they will forgive you almost anything.” He grinned. “My men are loyal.”
“As is your wife.”
“Very true. She would try to slit an enemy’s throat were I threatened. She hasn’t the physical strength, but her spirit is boundless.”
Daria sa
id nothing more, and Graelam looked away from her, toward the window slit. “I know the truth.”
“Nay.”
“There is humiliation in that one small word, Daria,” he said, looking back at her. “No, your husband didn’t confide in me, though I wish he had. Actually, I listened to your mother speaking to Roland. They didn’t know I was there. She was upset and was pressing him, but he withdrew from her just as you have from me. This is a puzzle, this strange tale of yours, but not unsolvable. I’m surprised you would give up. I’m disappointed in you. It isn’t the act of the woman who saved my wretched life.”
“He won’t believe me. Should I continue to protest my innocence until he retreats completely from me?”
“So, it’s a matter of him not remembering that night. I wonder how to stimulate his memory.”
“Nay, it’s a matter of him refusing to believe me. I’m his wife and I love him, I always have, ever since the moment I first saw him disguised as a priest when he came to Tyberton to rescue me.”
Graelam laughed, much to Daria’s surprise. “Nay, don’t look at me like I’m a monster. It’s just that early in my marriage to Kassia, there was strife between us. I didn’t believe her innocence in a certain matter. And then, finally, it simply was no longer important, for I had come to love her. The truth came out later, but it didn’t matter by then.”
“There is a difference here. Roland doesn’t love me and I doubt he ever will. The king forced him to wed me. Nay, more’s the truth, his own honor forced him, for he did care about me; he felt sorry for me. He also wanted my dowry. And now there is no way I can prove the truth of my claim. You see, I swore to myself that Roland would never know. I didn’t want him to feel guilty that he’d taken my virginity. I didn’t want him to feel responsible for me, for all of it had been my idea. Then I was with child and everything changed. I was sorry for it, but there was naught I could do. And now there is no reason for him to trust me, to believe anything I say. There is no reason for him to ever care for me again.”
“Why do you harp on that? Are you a shrew? Are you a nag? Do you gainsay him in front of his men? You haven’t an answer, I see. Let me ask you this, Daria. Who does Roland believe to be the man who raped you?”
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