Jeryl propped himself up on one elbow and grinned. “I never got my turn,” he said, grinning.
Delinda was confused. “Your turn?” she asked.
“You were supposed to wash my back. I guess you got distracted.”
Delinda laughed aloud. The moment could have been—should have been—awkward, but Jeryl had made it all right. “Well, I suppose I could still do it, if you would like to get back into the bath and turn around.”
“Perhaps next time,” he said, pulling up into a sitting position and taking her hand to help her do the same.
Next time, thought Delinda, and felt the flame in her belly flicker again. Ridiculous, she thought, I have not even recovered from the first time.
They tidied the bathhouse, and Delinda was grateful for the simple task and the return to normalcy. Should I say something? What does one do after…?
Even in her own thoughts, Delinda realized she had no word for what had just happened. Coupling sounded so pragmatic. She had coupled in the breeding houses. That which had just passed with Jeryl bore little resemblance to the act.
Jeryl surreptitiously watched Delinda as she refolded towels and gathered items from the floor. She used deft, efficient movements, as she seemed to with everything. She was strong and yet utterly feminine, and the shape of her body reflected this strength and grace as completely as did her actions. Other than her face, which would be thought beautiful anywhere, she was the virtual opposite of what he had been raised to consider desirable and womanly, and yet she was more female than anyone he had ever known. He wondered what his granna would think of her, and this caused him to grin.
“What makes you smile?”
“I was just thinking how different you are from other women I have ever been with,” he said absently, still envisioning how confused his granna would be by a woman like Delinda.
“And just how many women have you been with?” asked Delinda.
Jeryl was surprised to hear a slight edge to her voice. Could it be jealousy? “Oh, not that many,” he said. “I think I told you before that where I come from, it is not all that easy to get respectable women out of their clothes. Add to that the fact that I spend a great part of my life on a ship, surrounded by men and far from the comforts of shore, and my opportunities are greatly diminished.” He gave her his best rogue’s smile. “So you see, my dear, you have nothing to be worried about.”
Delinda’s expression changed. “Respectable?”
Perhaps not the best choice of words, Jeryl realized too late.
Before he could continue, she replied, “Oh, I’m not worried. I am sure I have been with at least as many other men as you have women.” She tossed her wet curls, sending a shower of droplets into Jeryl’s astonished face.
“Other men?” he repeated. He could have kicked himself. She had told him herself women went to brothels here—she had called them breeding houses—to get themselves with child or just for pleasure. Why had he assumed she was only talking about other women? For all he knew, she frequented these places several times a week. She was certainly no virgin. An even more startling thought struck him. “Have you had children?” he asked.
“No. I am not able to get pregnant,” she said, her voice brittle and her face coloring. “I tried for a number of years, but the doctor said it was no use.”
Jeryl tried to understand what he had just learned. Tried for a number of years. How often and with how many men had she tried? Moments ago, she had showed a passion that made him think she was starved for his touch and he would have sworn she was surprised by some of what he had done to her, as if she had never experienced it before. Was it all an act? She managed to look regal and haughty, standing there naked without even trying to cover herself with a towel. Even now, his manhood stirred. He shook his head and said aloud, “No, not again. Not until I figure this out.” He picked up his clothes, turned his back and walked out of the bathhouse, leaving Delinda seething.
* * * * *
Delinda stood before her mirror and examined her face for outward signs of the turmoil that still churned in her mind. Were her cheeks a little pinker than usual? Perhaps, but there was nothing she could do about that. She could, however, avoid the vertical line bisecting her brow. Her lips, too, showed a telltale thinness.
She had told Jeryl she had been with many men. This was not really true—her trips to the breeding house had been infrequent and had ended years ago—but she did not like him implying she might worry he would compare her to other women.
Her fury boiled up again. How could he make her feel like…like that one minute and then run away as if she had suddenly broken out in a contagious mass of boils the next? Was this how men treated women they had bred with in his land? It was a small wonder that the so-called “respectable” women wanted no part of it.
She willed the muscles in her face to relax. She had spent the last half hour trying to figure out how to avoid being alone with Jeryl for the rest of the day, but could not think of anything that would not be so contrived as to be completely transparent. And she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how upset she was about his apparent indifference to what had transpired in the bathhouse this morning.
A ripple of heat spread down her stomach and between her legs, where a recent examination had revealed the swollen, rosy evidence of the delicious invasion. Instantly, the vertical line and thin lips reappeared. She would not melt like a weak-minded girl every time she remembered what it had felt like. She turned and almost tripped over a boot that had toppled over from where she had carelessly leaned it against the edge of a cupboard. She kicked it viciously, sending it under the bed.
* * * * *
When Jeryl arrived in his room after practically running up the stairs, he realized he was furious—absolutely furious—with Delinda. It felt good, and he was not exactly sure why that was so. A quiet, nagging voice told him he was being ridiculous, but he ignored it. Instead, he mentally enumerated all the excellent reasons he had for being angry.
She should have told me about having been with all those other men, he told himself, bringing on a satisfying swell of righteous indignation. The quiet voice, however, had not yet been silenced. She as much as told you, it said, when she explained about the breeding houses. Jeryl was still formulating a rebuttal to this thought when the voice—surely not his conscience!—persisted. And in any case, you have been to brothels yourself, and for far less noble reasons.
It was not the same thing at all! Once a man was married, an argument could be made that such adventures should be left behind, but there was no shame for an unmarried man who had the means to pay for his pleasures. The same behavior from an unmarried woman was unthinkable.
But there is no marriage here, the voice said reasonably. You cannot use the unmarried state as a basis for an argument when there is nothing against which to compare it.
Jeryl cursed the professors of the courses in philosophy he had been forced to sit through as a young man. He had momentarily forgotten he had quite enjoyed the study of logic, ethics and moral thought and had received excellent marks on the few assignments he had actually completed. This gave him an idea.
She pretended I was the first man who had pleasured her in that manner. This was, he thought, a better argument. Deception was considered wrong in all schools of philosophical thought. Again, however, the voice of reason contradicted him.
She did no such thing. You drew the inference on your own.
“Oh, damnation!” said Jeryl aloud. Why could he not just be angry with her and be done with it? Unfortunately, the niggling voice knew the answer to this as well.
You feel guilty because you are not sure she would have come to you willingly if she knew you are planning to leave.
“Damnation,” he said again, more quietly this time. He knew this was true. Whatever her experience with men, he had been the one who had deceived her. He was not going to be here long, and even though he could not betray the confidence of his men and t
ell her of his plans, it did not mean it was right to carry on an intimate relationship with her under false pretenses.
He sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. If only it hadn’t felt so…right. He realized he could still smell the scent of the perfumed soap on his fingers, and jerked his hands away from his face. He must not think about what had happened today, because it should not—could not—happen again.
He stood and dressed. It would be difficult to avoid her for the entire day, especially with Ostyn away. There was nothing he could do in the fields until the wagon returned with supplies, and Delinda would probably want to help him if he started working on that damned pile of laundry.
Of course, there is no reason to avoid her, he thought ruefully. By the look on her face when he left the bathhouse, she was angry enough with him to ensure there would be no repetition of this morning’s events, even if he had not already decided thus. And there was the issue of meals—she would probably expect they would eat together as usual. He sighed, realizing it was not to be avoided.
* * * * *
Breathing deeply, Delinda forced herself to walk down the stairs at a normal pace and forced her face to smooth into serene contours. When she came around the corner into the kitchen, she found Jeryl standing with his back to her, reaching up to remove a container of salt from a high shelf. The movement caused the loose trousers to mold themselves to the contours of the backs of his legs and the strong muscles at the top of them—muscles which she had recently come to learn were housed under surprisingly smooth skin. She shuddered and turned her attention to the table, where a simple meal comprised of the leavings of last night’s dinner had already been laid out.
“I thought that even cold, Letta’s food would be better than anything you or I tried to prepare,” said Jeryl. Delinda did not look at him, but wondered whether his voice held any particular emotion. It did not.
“No doubt you were right,” she said, matching his tone. He sat, placing the salt on the table and the two of them ate in silence. Even Letta’s excellent food was difficult to swallow, but Delinda was determined to eat every bite and appear to enjoy it.
She could sense him watching her carefully. Is he angry with me? If so, it is certainly not hurting his appetite, she thought with annoyance. Not that she actually wanted him to be angry, but it galled her to think he could remain unaffected while she was so uncomfortable. She ate automatically, barely tasting the meal.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” said Jeryl, breaking a long silence. She looked at him inquisitively and he continued. “If all men are slaves here, what happens when a woman has a male child?”
“She trades him.”
“What do you mean, ‘trades him’? For another baby?”
“For any other slave still too young to work,” she said. “The idea is to prevent her from beginning to think of him in an improper way.”
Jeryl seemed to think about this for a while. “Have any women ever tried to resist this?”
Delinda put down her fork and stared at her food. “Yes,” she said. “They have. That is what happened to my mother.”
“Your mother?” said Jeryl, surprised. “What happened?”
“It was something she did not like to talk about, and I was very young when it happened.” She cast her mind about for a place to begin. “When I was about four years old, my mother became pregnant by a man who had been at the estate for most of his life. I do not know his name, and in any case he had to be sold before we left here.” Delinda picked up her cup and drank some water.
“When she had the baby she was disappointed it was not a daughter, but knew she could not keep him. The very day the baby was born, a winter storm arrived. Everything was coated with ice and it was much colder than even the oldest of the villagers could remember. The roads were all frozen mud, slippery and sharp at the same time. No horse could travel on them, and it was too cold to go anywhere on foot for fear of freezing to death.”
Jeryl nodded and she continued. “Here at the estate we were better off than many, with plenty of food and firewood. I vaguely remember looking out the window and thinking it was beautiful, although it was too cold to play outside for more than a few minutes. I thought it was a great adventure, though, sliding on the slick stones by the kitchen door.” She smiled at the memory, but only briefly.
“For my mother, however, the storm was ill-timed. We did not have another woman who could take over the feeding of the baby, and he became sick when the slaves tried to give him milk from the goats and sheep. So my mother had no choice but to nurse him until the roads were clear and she could take him to the woman with whom she had already negotiated a trade.” She looked at Jeryl and explained, “It is customary to prepare in advance, just in case the child is not a girl. He nodded and she continued. “My mother said when a woman nurses her child, the connection they shared when that baby was in the womb becomes much, much stronger. She came to love the child just as she would have had he been female.”
Delinda was lost in the tale now, no longer seeing Jeryl, only the young woman her mother had been—the woman she could not really remember but could envision as clearly as the room she was in. “So she came up with a plan. She would put about the story the baby had been stillborn, and she would give him to the slave who had sired him to raise. She would keep him out of sight when outsiders visited the estate and eventually everyone would assume he was a child acquired in a trade. The slaves were loyal and the rest of the household could be counted on to go along with the story, even if they did not approve.”
Delinda fell silent, and Jeryl had to prompt her to continue. “I guess it did not work,” he said softly.
“It did for a while,” she said. “But then my mother started working with a young woman from the village who had some ideas about how to improve life for all the people of the sector. Mother did not share the secret with her but somehow the woman learned it anyway. It was never certain how she found out, but Mother said her breasts often leaked and it was weeks after she could use the stillborn child as an excuse for that. The woman may have become suspicious and done some investigating on her own. I will probably never know.” She sighed.
“Who was this other woman?” asked Jeryl.
Delinda lifted her chin and a fire showed in her eyes. “Bloduewedd,” she said. “My mother had trusted her, and not thought to watch her or question her in any way. Not up until then, anyway.”
“And Bloduewedd used the knowledge to,” Jeryl searched for a word, “to depose your mother?”
“Eventually,” said Delinda, “although there was much more to it than that. At the time she convinced my mother to give up the baby, saying it was the right thing to do and promising to keep the whole thing a secret. She said she was arranging everything for Mother’s own good,” she said bitterly. “And Mother would come to agree in the end.”
“But she did not keep it a secret.” said Jeryl—a statement rather than a question.
“No. Not when it suited her aims, though she did keep it a secret for many months. Mother still trusted her, you see, though perhaps not as much as before.” Delinda’s face was fierce. “That trust ended up costing my mother nearly everything.”
There was obviously more to the story but Jeryl did not wish to push. When he saw that she had finished for the time being, he stood and stretched. “I had better get a start on that laundry,” he said, wondering what his men would think if they knew he had volunteered for the task. Never mind his men, his granna would faint dead away. The thought made him grin, and Delinda raised an eyebrow but did not comment. She made no move to join him and was still sitting at the table when he left, staring into her empty cup.
* * * * *
Later that evening, after Letta and Ostyn had returned with a wagon laden with everything on Letta’s lists, along with many more things she had thought of at the last moment, the four residents of the estate were seated in the main hall. The room was enormous, but Ostyn and Jeryl ha
d dragged some of the ponderous furniture into a rough circle close enough to feel the warmth of the fire, and this made a cozy enough setting for quiet talk. Letta had managed to produce a fine meal despite the late hour and weariness from a long day. Once they were all settled, she spoke to the group.
“I did not want to say anything until after dinner, but one thing happened today I thought you should know about.” Everyone looked curiously at her, including Ostyn, who had not yet heard the tale. “After I was done packing and had left to help Ostyn at the feed store, Korin says Grenda came into the shop and was asking questions.”
“What kind of questions?” asked Jeryl sharply.
“About me and where I was going,” replied Letta.
“Did Korin tell her?” asked Delinda.
“She had to,” said Letta. “Everyone will know about it within the week anyway, and it would not do to lie to Grenda. Korin just thought it odd, because Grenda and her women never come into the shop, and so asking about me was obviously the only reason she was there. I just thought you should know.”
“I wonder what it means?” mused Delinda, and the others all wondered as well.
Chapter Ten
“I cannot believe I’ve been here four days,” said Letta, “and it’s already market day. It seems like I just arrived—there is so much to do and I’ve hardly started.”
Delinda, Jeryl and Ostyn exchanged amused glances. Letta had already completed more work than most women could accomplish in a month, it seemed to them. She was up in the morning before the rooster’s crow—several roosters had been delivered the day after Letta came back from town, along with a sizeable flock of hens—and worked until long after everyone else had collapsed on the comfortable seats near the fire and wondered how they would make it up the stairs. Delinda may have owned the estate and been nominally in charge, but it was Letta that drove them all relentlessly toward her goal of seeing the estate as Korin had described it.
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