He ground his fist into his palm. Of all the women in the world, why did Mina have to be the one to show him how brutish he could be?
Here in the cold darkness, he knew that he wanted Mina more than he had ever wanted a woman. Even watching her performing the simple, intimate act of combing her fiery hair, the brush caressing her, moving in long slow strokes down her back, had excited him beyond his expectations. He almost wished she had never turned to see him watching her.
But she had, and when he had gone to her and touched her shoulders, making her face him, he had thought he glimpsed a charming vulnerability there, all the more thrilling because of her usual self-assured confidence. It had delighted him to think that he affected her in any way.
And then he had said he wanted her to obey. It was the truth, but he had not meant it the way she had taken it. He had meant that he wanted her to do as he asked, yes, but freely. He didn’t expect her to obey unthinkingly, like a dog. God’s wounds, she had not given him one moment to explain, but had lashed out immediately. Then she had offered herself to him defiantly, not with passion or even liking. She had thrown herself upon that bed with undisguised loathing, as if he were an ogre from a minstrel’s tale and she the sacrificial maiden.
Well, he was no ogre, although he doubted he could convince her otherwise. Perhaps he had made some mistakes—but she was no saint in women’s clothing, either.
Roger pushed himself away from the wall, his mouth set in a hard, grim line. He didn’t need her, or her approval. He was Sir Roger de Montmorency, and she was nothing but his wife.
Chapter Nine
Nearly a fortnight later, after mass and breaking the fast, Mina decided to walk to the orchard, which was outside the castle and across the moat. She could easily be seen through the trees by guards on the battlements, so it was a safe place for a solitary ramble on a cloudy summer’s morning.
Roger still had not returned. He had left at first light after their disastrous confrontation, and taken Albert with him. She had made no comment to anyone on his departure, and if any of those in the castle thought Sir Roger’s behavior odd, they wisely kept their opinions from his wife.
As for Mina, she was pleased that he was gone. It meant she had considerably less to worry about, and if she did think of him often, it was only to count her blessings at his absence. Or so she tried to convince herself.
Mina looked up at the fruit and vaguely noticed that it seemed to be growing well. A few bees, more alert in the coolness of the early hours, buzzed past her as if on important business.
She felt more like a bee overstuffed with nectar during the hottest part of the warmest day of the season, she thought as she strolled slowly through the grass cropped short by the sheep allowed to graze there. During Roger’s absence, she had discovered that she had almost nothing to do. To be sure, she had taken over the business of running the household, but with the wedding guests gone, there were only the day-to-day tasks to oversee.
The hall servants had clearly been well trained, so they needed little immediate supervision. Dudley saw to every aspect of the management of the estate, and she had no need to interfere except to make sure she knew what was happening every day. Several times the steward had sought her opinion regarding a household matter, and she had given it. If she suspected he was saving the important decisions for Roger’s return, she also knew there was little she could do to change that.
She helped with the meals, although she sensed that Thorbert didn’t fully appreciate any assistance. Indeed, he was such a fine cook, she had no cause to interfere except to escape boredom.
She had tried to assist Father Damien and his almoner, a man nearly as ancient as the priest and all too similar in comprehension, as they distributed the alms to the poorer members of the village. She had been forced to give up when the two men consistently ignored her. It wasn’t a purposeful neglect; they simply seemed to forget that she was with them.
She had gone riding with Reginald a few times; however, the pace he preferred was so leisurely, she rapidly grew impatient. Her mare was too old for long gallops, too, and she soon felt that it would be less frustrating to remain inside the castle walls.
To think, during the long years that had seemed almost like captivity, she had harbored such wonderful plans for when she married! She had lain awake at nights imagining how she would command her vast household, gather important people about her, lead the society of the land, be respected. Be listened to. Be important.
Instead, she was finding that while she had everyone’s respect except her husband’s, and was listened to by everybody, save the elderly priest and his almoner, she was not really very important. She suspected that the estate would continue to function with only a slight interruption if she disappeared in a cloud of smoke like a necromancer. To be sure, there would be some talk, which she could easily envision: “I knew she was strange all the time.” “Aye, so did I.” “Well, let’s get back to work before Sir Roger sees us talking’.” “Aye.” And that would be it.
Mina was allowing herself a few more moments to wallow in self-pity when she noticed a couple at the far end of the orchard. She thought it was Hilda and a man. If the maidservant was dallying with a lover when she should have been attending to her duties...!
Mina strode toward them. As she drew closer, she noticed a young child toddling near the couple. The little boy had been hidden by the trunk of a tree before. “Hilda?” she called out, puzzled by these unknown visitors.
Startled, Hilda turned to her and the servant’s gaze quickly darted between the child and the man beside her, a big, stolid fellow with a shock of thick black hair above equally thick black brows. “My lady!” she cried, hurrying to take the child’s hand.
The boy buried his face in Hilda’s skirts, then peered shyly at Mina. He was an adorable child, in the bloom of health, with plump rosy cheeks and serious big blue eyes. A thumb progressed pensively to his cherry bow mouth. Mina smiled warmly at him as she knelt in front of them. “Now, who have we here? Is he come to be a page for my lord?”
Hilda flushed and one hand went around the boy protectively. “This is my son, Hollis. Bow to my lady, Hollis,” she said softly.
The little boy bobbed his head, his thumb still in his mouth. Mina rose and looked at the man beside Hilda, wondering if this was the child’s father and if so, why he hadn’t married her.
“This is Lud, my brother, the reeve,” Hilda said, answering the unspoken question. “He brings Hollis to see me when he has business at the castle.” The last was said with some defiance, but there was fear in the serving woman’s eyes.
“Where does Hollis live?” Mina inquired, her gaze searching the child’s face. She stopped when she realized she was trying to detect some semblance of Roger.
“With Lud and his family. Dudley doesn’t mind him visiting me here, my lady. Truly.”
“And the boy’s father?”
“Dead, my lady. Drowned in the river when I was with child. Afterward, Dudley was kind enough to offer me a place at the castle. I...I didn’t want to burden anybody with Hollis, and Lud and Mary offered to take him for me, and they let me see him as often as I can.”
“This must not continue,” Mina said firmly, and Hilda blanched. “You must bring Hollis to stay with you at the castle.” She crouched down again and looked at the boy. “If that is what he would like. Would you, Hollis?”
Hollis solemnly nodded his head.
“Oh, my lady, I thank you with all my heart, but my duties—”
“There are enough women in the castle to help you look after him, I think.”
Hilda grinned and looked at her brother. “Mary won’t mind, I’m sure, with the new baby on the way. You’ve both been so kind to look after him, but I’ve missed him so much!”
“You will come to play with me sometimes, won’t you, Hollis?” Mina said, addressing the child who she now knew was not her husband’s offspring.
“Yeth,” he lisped, taking his th
umb from his mouth for the brief time needed to respond, and then he smiled at her.
Mina longed to scoop the little fellow up into her arms and press his soft, satin cheek to hers. The yearning was so powerful, so overwhelming and shocking in its strength that she straightened abruptly. “Perhaps one day, Sir Roger will make you his page. And then a squire, and then a knight, eh?”
The boy nodded, Hilda beamed and Lud, who had not said a word or even registered much change of expression, nodded as slowly and solemnly as Hollis. “We’ll miss him,” Lud said, his voice deep and slow, but not without true compassion. “He’s a good boy, my lady.”
“I can see that,” she said. “Hilda, you may go with Lud and collect your son’s things. Take as long as you like. Hollis might need some time to get used to his new home, too. I excuse you from your duties for the rest of the week.”
“Oh, my lady, thank you!” Hilda cried. “I can’t thank you enough!” She gathered her child into her arms, tears of happiness in her eyes, and hurried off, with Lud trailing behind like a big dog.
Mina sighed as she watched them leave.
“What was that all about?” Reginald called out from behind her. “Wasn’t that Hilda?”
Mina glanced over her shoulder to see Reginald tiptoeing through the damp grass as if it were a freshly manured field. He wore an intricately embroidered red tunic with slashed sleeves over a purple shirt. She noted with hidden amusement that somebody had managed to get his painted boots clean. Perhaps that was why he was walking with such care. “Yes. And her son. And her brother.”
“I say, really? She has a child?”
“Yes. The father is dead. I’ve told her to bring the boy to live at the castle.”
“That’s generous of you, Mina.”
Mina shrugged in response.
“She’s a pretty wench, isn’t she? And very kind,” Reginald said. “I don’t know how I would have recovered without her.”
Mina thought time would have been sufficient, but she didn’t say so.
“You know, I’ve often envied the peasants,” he remarked philosophically. “Their lives and obligations are so simple, so uncomplicated.”
Mina forced herself to keep a straight face. “Their clothes are so plain, so rough.”
“You’re making fun of me,” he complained, aggrieved.
“I’m trying to imagine you in a simple homespun tunic with a hoe over your shoulder. It isn’t easy.”
“Very well, I confess I wouldn’t want to wear a peasant’s filthy, flea-infested garments—but there is a simplicity to their lives that I do sincerely envy.”
Mina heard the earnestness in his voice, and decided not to tease him anymore. “What are you doing here, Reginald? I thought you’d be playing another game of dice or hounds and hare.”
“Dudley couldn’t spare the time and there wasn’t anybody else, so I decided to come along and see what you were up to,” he said, turning back toward the castle. Mina fell into step beside him. She had to slow her usual pace to match his. “I must say I didn’t expect to see you strolling through the orchard.”
“I came to see about the fruit.”
“Hmm. Not a lot to do around here, eh?”
“Enough,” she lied.
“Any word when Roger wiU be back?”
“No.”
Reginald paused and gave her a look that was surprisingly studious. “I say, Mina, is everything all right?”
“Of course it is.”
“I was just wondering, that’s all. I mean, your new husband suddenly decided to go to his other estate after only one day of married life. People are talking.”
“What are they saying?”
“That you had an argument or something. That he looked angry. I don’t put much stock in that, I must say. Roger always looks angry to me. Always has. If somebody were to ask me, who’s the surliest fellow you know? Well, the answer would be Sir Roger de Montmorency.” He gave Mina a sidelong glance. “But even so, he’s not like Father.”
“How do you know? You were in France.”
“I remember the days before I left with some clarity, Mina. He was never a kind man, but he was already becoming a bitter one, thinking he’d made a mistake marrying your mother. Yes, a bitter, mean-spirited fellow already given to drink. I say it even if he was my father. I’ll also say that Roger de Montmorency isn’t mean spirited, for all his surliness. Look how he let his sister marry who she wanted, despite his respect for the baron’s wishes.”
“Yet you fear him.”
“Fear and admire. He scares me because he seems to be so much that I am not.”
Mina regarded Reginald thoughtfully, and with some pity as well as understanding. Roger de Montmorency was like all the power of Norman France combined in one person. So was the baron, in a way, but there was one very important difference. The baron had a hardened quality that Roger had yet to acquire. She hoped he never did.
“Does it surprise you to hear me speak this way?” Reginald asked, breaking the silence. “I know what I am, Mina. I could never be like Sir Roger, nor am I quite sure I would want to be. Such responsibility! Such fortitude! He never lets his guard down, not for a single moment.”
Mina thought of the first kiss they had shared, and of the look she’d seen again in his eyes when he had turned her toward him in the bedchamber. Unless she was very wrong, his guard had been down on both occasions, if only for a fleeting moment.
“Mina?”
“Yes ?”
“Are you sorry for the marriage? Do you wish I had stood up to the baron and refused?”
“No,” she answered truthfully, looking at her half brother steadily and giving voice to her feelings in a way that she was not used to. “I wanted to be married.”
“I’m relieved to hear it, I must say. Still, he’s not an easy man to know.”
“No.” Mina gave him another sidelong glance. “I don’t suppose I’m an easy woman to get to know, either.”
“That’s right!” he exclaimed. Reginald’s expression of surprise and enlightenment was almost comical to behold. “You know, you’re a lot like him, sometimes. Proud, sure of yourself—”
“I would stop before you flatter me too much, Reginald.”
“You deserve the compliments! I should think you two would get along very well, now that I think about it. Why did he leave?”
“Because we’re both proud and altogether too sure of ourselves. Besides, the rumors are true. We had an argument.”
Mina tried to walk ahead, but Reginald’s hand shot out and clutched her arm. “My God! You didn’t! Whatever did you say to him?”
Reginald’s hand held her firmly in place. Aware of the sentries on the battlements above, she didn’t want to struggle, so she didn’t move. “Let me go, Reginald.”
“I can’t believe you would do such a foolish thing! To argue with him! What would be worth that risk?”
She smiled wanly. Reginald could never understand her, or why it was so important for her to stand up to Roger or anyone else, so she said, “Perhaps it was only a lovers’ spat, Reginald.”
That startled him, too, but at least he let go. “A lovers’ spat?”
“Yes, and I am not going to go into the details,” she said, striding forward. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see how many eggs were gathered today.”
“Certainly. Go ahead. I don’t expect you to tell me anything,” Reginald spluttered, watching her go and reflecting that of all the people he could least imagine having a lovers’ spat, it was Mina and Sir Roger. A lovers’ shouting match, perhaps, but not a simple spat. Still, if that was what Mina said it was, there was cause to hope, and definitely no cause to go sticking his nose into their business.
Much better to mind his own, especially when the lovely, well-endowed, kindhearted Hilda was not so far away.
Albert stamped his foot on the stone floor of the small manor house, setting the chess pieces rattling on the makeshift board.
St
artled , Roger glared at his friend in the dim light provided by a single rush torch. “What the devil was that for?” he snarled.
“You’ve been staring at that queen for so long, I thought you were dead,” Albert answered, a hint of impatience in his voice as he looked at Roger. “Are you going to move it or not?”
“Since you are so upset, I will,” Roger replied, his musing interrupted. He kept his voice calm, but he was also surprised by his own lack of attention to the game. He really had to stop thinking about Mina and their last quarrel. It hadn’t been his fault. It was hers, and if she didn’t understand that—
“Move that godforsaken piece!” Albert growled again.
Roger shoved the playing piece over the board, his movement casting a large shadow over the walls of the two-roomed building.
“The poaching problem has been addressed, your steward given his orders for the harvest, the repairs to the outbuildings underway—why are we staying here?”
“Since when are you so anxious to get home?” he demanded, determined to keep his mind on the game.
“Since we have had nothing to do here for the past three days,” Albert replied, his tone returning to its customary calm.
“I like it here.”
“You’ve never liked it here before,” Albert charged as he moved his bishop. “And that was before you had a wife waiting for your return.”
Roger didn’t say anything. Instead, he kept his gaze on the board as if fascinated by Albert’s conventional move.
“What’s really going on?” Albert asked. “Did you quarrel with her?”
“What makes you ask that?”
Albert leaned back in his chair and contemplated his friend. “I’ve known you a long time, Roger. When you act in such a manner, you’ve usually had an argument with someone. And you’ve usually lost.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What mysterious ‘manner’ are you alluding to?”
“You are as cantankerous as a wounded boar gone off to lick his wounds in peace, and you know it. Did you quarrel?”
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