by Karen Ranney
“She is here?”
“Yes, my lord.”
What kind of woman would agree to the bargain he was about to make? A question to which he’d found no answer. For months, he’d wanted to avoid this moment. Had delayed it until it would have been dangerous to continue to do so.
He’d seen her only once, on the occasion of their wedding. As her father had sat at the desk signing the documents that would pass her and her dower lands into the keeping of the earls of Langlinais, she’d peeked from behind her mother’s skirts, her green eyes as bright as a new leaf. She’d had her fist in her mouth. Her mother had slapped her hand away, but it had only crept back a moment later. He’d winked at her, and like a wise little owl, she’d stared back, her eyes widening at such irreverence. Finally, she’d stuck her tongue out at him, and he’d laughed, charmed.
Their marriage had been a union of their fathers. Hers had been a vassal of his, and proud to align his family, by way of his daughter, with the Langlinais earls. Before her father left on crusade, he’d wanted her future assured, so the five-year-old bride had been roused from her nap to wed him. Sebastian would have done anything for his father, including marrying a child he wouldn’t see again until she matured. The bargain had been made and the Langlinais coffers increased by her dower lands in Merton. He found it ironic that he’d had to sacrifice those same lands to the Templars in order to pay a portion of his ransom.
He’d not been so prepossessing back then, only a twelve-year-old boy. Years had added muscle to his arms and legs, and height to his frame. Would she see him as different?
He almost laughed then. Of course she would see him as changed. He would be fortunate, indeed, if she didn’t run screaming from the castle.
Another knock. His summons then to the moment of truth. He opened the door only a few inches.
“Bring her upstairs.” Now he would speak the words that would put into motion this great and glorious farce. What would she say? Would she be a danger or a blessing? He would know in a few moments.
Chapter 2
“My lady?” A soft voice at her side. Juliana turned and a man smiled down at her. “I am Jerard, my lady, your husband’s steward. I have been sent to fetch you.”
The speaker was very tall and thin, dressed in burgundy tunic and hose. One hand rested on the hilt of a short sword buckled to his waist with a leather belt. His blond hair was cropped short, framing a face that was angular and tanned, set now into stern lines. It was a face that gave her, strangely, the impression of humor. As if the serious expression he wore at this moment was forced upon him and was not his natural countenance.
Her stomach clenched, but Juliana stood, followed him through the great hall. There were people there, the sound of talking, a laugh, but other than that, she did not notice. Her attention was on her composure and the fact that her knees felt as if they wobbled when she walked.
The steward led her to the far end of the hall, where a steep flight of stairs led to a covered interior corridor.
A small oil lamp illuminated a painting of a glade, heavily forested and deeply green. In the middle of the mural, a pool shone with such glistening brilliance that she touched the wall to test whether her fingers would come away wet.
Jerard threw open the second of three doors. She reluctantly left the mural and stood on the threshold as he turned, walked to the opposite door, and rapped his fist sharply against the iron-banded wood.
“She is here, my lord,” he said to the closed door.
Not your bride, not Juliana, not lady. Only she. Simply she. It relegated her to her exact position in life. The female to his male. She was only a vessel to her husband, whose contempt for her must be fierce indeed that he had not even greeted her himself, but had sent his steward to fetch her.
She turned, squared her shoulders, and entered the room. An oil lamp, its flickering flame casting shadows over the walls, illuminated the room, revealed her chests neatly arranged at the end of the bed.
The chamber was as beautifully decorated as the great hall, made bright by the white wainscoting with red roses painted above it. Juliana sat down on the bed, sinking into the thick feather mattress with surprise. Her fingers rubbed over the snowy white sheets, expecting them to be rough to the touch. Instead, they were soft, as if they had been laundered often. She stood and opened the tall chest placed against the wall. It was empty, and smelled of new wood. A bench and two chairs made up the remainder of the furniture.
It was the window, however, that captured her attention. It was not merely a narrow slit, but wide and nearly her height, topped by an arch whose stones were decoratively carved. But it was not its size that amazed her. The window was glazed with glass not the usual greenish white tint but as clear as water. When she looked down she could see an inner courtyard, its outlines blurred by darkness. During the daylight hours the sun must flood into the room. She brushed her fingers against the surface of the glass, discovered that it was still warm to the touch.
She turned and stifled a sound of fright.
A specter stood there watching her. A shadow limned in light. No, only a man garbed in monk’s habit. But he seemed so tall, so broad of chest, that he filled the doorway. Indeed, he looked to be more than a mortal man.
“Are you Death?” she asked in a tremulous whisper.
“Come to judge you in your final hour?” His voice was low, a rumble of sound. Had he spoken, or had she just imagined the words? “What would you confess if I were? Or does your silence indicate a pure soul?”
Not Death then. Death did not speak in a voice that hinted at irony. She felt absurdly weak, as if her knees wished to give out beneath her.
“Are you a zealot, then?” she asked, hearing the tremble in her voice and wishing she was capable of hiding it.
“No.”
His cowl shadowed his face so well that she could see no hint of his features. She clenched her hands together at her waist, forced herself to take a deep breath, ask yet another question.
“A monk?”
The words came softly, seemed tinted with kindness. “I am your husband, my lady wife.”
Her hand reached out and rested at her throat as if to keep her heart from leaping there.
She was a stranger to him, yet there was a resemblance to the child he’d seen once before. The shape of her lips, the symmetry of her face, the color of her eyes, her hair. But whereas the child had viewed him without fear, it was all too evident that this woman was afraid. Her eyes had not veered from him, as if hoping to pin him in place and halt his advancement.
Enchantment. He should not feel it. Or a host of other emotions, all out of place for this moment: bemusement leavened with a slice of curiosity and the oddest amusement. The hand that carefully bracketed her neck, thumb and fingers splayed, was blotched with ink.
As he watched, her skin seemed to grow whiter, so fragile a hue it was as if snow had been given life. Such paleness set into relief the plump pinkness of her lips, the startling brilliance of eyes the shade of spring grass, her hair the color of a Saracen night. She blinked a few times, rapidly, her mouth fell open, her hand still touching her throat as if to measure the beats of a struggling heart.
He almost reached out with his hand, his fingers braced to feel her skin before he remembered.
He had no doubt of how he appeared to her. A frightening vision of a cloaked and garbed monk. A cleric in appearance but not in soul. His cowl had been slipped forward a few inches in front of his face, a shadow was all that anyone could see of him. The rest was covered adequately by the black wool and gauntlets crafted of leather. Hardly a sight to reassure her, Sebastian.
But somehow, he must. She must agree, else his future, and that of Langlinais, was in jeopardy.
No fire burned in the fireplace, but she wished, improvidently, that there was one. She might have turned and extended her hands toward the warmth of the blaze. Allowed some time to elapse during which she might be able to think, do something other than
stare at the black-robed figure of her husband.
“Will you not sit?” he asked, and she sat heavily on the bench.
Of all the thoughts she’d had of her marriage, of all the fears and trepidation, she had never imagined herself confronted by such a vision. A man, cowled and wrapped in black, draped in the color of night with a voice that sounded like muted thunder.
Her heart beat so hard her chest trembled with it.
He sat in the corner on a chair constructed with an X for a base. His monk’s habit pulled back from his arms, exposing gloved hands. He linked his hands together and folded them beneath the cloth. A gesture done so quickly it seemed second nature to him.
“I submit to you an agreement, my lady wife, about which you must decide before I leave this room.”
She spread her hands at her waist, wished she could rid herself of their dampness. “We have already forged one bond, my lord, that of marriage. What other understanding would you wish?”
Silence, while he seemed to weigh her words. Was he surprised by them? She had shocked herself by voicing her thoughts. She did not often do so. It was easier to remain silent. That way, she could only be ridiculed for being timid, not for the thoughts of her mind.
Sebastian studied her. “If you will agree to pose as my wife, you will have Langlinais as a reward.”
Juliana stared at him in shock and confusion. “I am not posing, my lord. I am your wife.”
“Without consummation,” he explained softly. “Or hope of it.”
The Church endorsed two ways of marriage, the first that of declaring “words of the future” uttered by young children. Such a marriage was valid only as long as it was later consummated. Vows considered “words of the present” could be exchanged when the bridegroom was at least fourteen, the bride twelve.
They had been put through a marriage ceremony when they were children, in order to effect a peaceful transfer of her dower lands in Merton. But by his words he was saying that their wedding would never be considered legal and binding.
“You wish me to pretend that I’m no longer a maiden.” The bluntness of her speech surprised her again. She was not given to such candor. Perhaps the reason for it was simply that this meeting was too abrupt, the questioning too odd, the bargain he offered strange and disconcerting.
“Yes,” he said. Simply that. No more explanation than that. Just yes.
“And if I do not agree?”
“Then you will be returned to the convent tomorrow.”
He was garbed in shadows, but she had the impression that he studied her closely. “Why should I agree to such a thing, my lord?”
“Why should you not? I offer you the freedom of Langlinais to do with as you will.”
She looked down at her hands. Freedom? To a villein it meant the ability to own his life. What did such a thing mean for her? No marriage bed, evidently. But what else comprised this spurious freedom he offered?
“Have you a man of letters living here? And a library, perhaps?” Her question popped free before she could think it through.
“Would you like a tour of Langlinais before you decide?” There was humor there, if only a small bit of it, a dry husk of amusement.
She stared in front of her, wishing that she was not offered a view of herself in the night-darkened window. Her toque shone whitely, her skin as pale as her headdress. She looked away. She should think on this bargain he wished between them rather than noting her appearance.
“You would have me lie about our marriage.”
His shadowed face turned in her direction again. “Who would dare ask such a question of you? Who would want to know if you lay with your husband? No one at Langlinais.”
“May I have some time in which to decide, my lord?”
“No.”
There was no hesitation in his voice, as if this plan had been long considered and he was impatient with her participation in it.
“You wish me to choose this moment?”
“Yes.”
“To be a wife without knowledge of her husband?” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap.
“Yes.”
“Or return to the convent?”
“Yes.”
Would he say nothing more? Give her some reason? Or was she simply to be content with his assent? Yes and yes and yes.
“Why will there be no true marriage between us, my lord?”
Her hands twisted together, a habit she thought she’d outgrown when she was a little child. She’d been cured of it by having her hands tied behind her back. She no longer twirled her hair around her finger either, another habit she’d been weaned of when one of the nuns had simply cut her hair to within an inch of her scalp. She had cried for a week, but she’d never adopted the habit again, not even when her hair had finally grown back to its former length.
“I regret that I cannot answer your question,” he said.
There, a few more words from him, but not an answer.
She looked down at her hands. If she returned to the Sisters of Charity, she would forever be a wife without a husband. She knew neither of them could have their marriage annulled. To do so it would have to be proven that they were related closer than the fourth degree or that each had submitted to the marriage against his consent. They had both been children, eager to please their parents. Nor was there any relation between them. Only one of service; her father had been a loyal vassal to his. Yet, surely her marriage would be set aside if he did not wish to bed her? The laws governing such things were not known to her, but she doubted that her life would be made better by the simple dissolution of this marriage. She would simply be wed again, her dower lands taken back and given to another man. The fact that she had been wed to her father’s liege lord meant that the king would have to adjudicate such a thing. Timid Juliana, petitioning the king. Where would she find the courage?
At the convent she would be able to do her work again, but only within the confines of gray walls, subject to a regimented schedule. At Langlinais there would not be the tolling of a bell. She would not have to wake before dawn and retire at dusk. She would not ever have to weed a garden again.
She studied him in the silence. “Who would ask?” he had said. Indeed, he may be correct. She might never be forced to seek the king’s counsel or to lie. In fact, a life here might well be a blessing.
“Whatever decision you make now, my lady wife, cannot be repealed.” It seemed an ominous warning.
“Are you certain you are not an ascetic?” she asked softly.
For a long moment he didn’t answer.
“An ascetic?” Was he discomfited by her question? “You believe me to be a penitent, then?” His voice oddly toned for a man. Too deep and yet soft. As if he’d not used it often enough and was just now becoming accustomed to it.
“It is the only thing I can imagine, my lord.”
He looked away, the deep cowl pointed in the direction of the window. “I wear no hair shirt, and my attire is for one purpose only, but not that of self-abasement. If anything, circumstance has done that to me.” He jerked, as if startled by his own words.
“Were you wounded in the Holy Land, my lord?”
“You must not do this, you know,” he said, his low voice sounding almost kind. “You are trying to find explanations where there can be none.”
“But I do not understand.”
“I know that.” His words were soft, almost sorrowful. “And I cannot make it more clear, Juliana.”
She looked at him, startled. It was the first time he’d said her name. It had never seemed so lovely before, a word comprised of rolling syllables. It flowed from his mouth like a brook might tumble over round and polished stones. She flushed and looked away, surveying the chamber so obviously meant to be hers. But not shared. Alone. No man’s hands would touch her. For that alone she should not fear him, and yet, he was perhaps the most fearsome man of any she’d met.
He offered her freedom. But it was too much a gift, one dappled i
n sunlight and extended on a plate of gold. Why did he do it? Was he incapable of siring a child? She felt her cheeks warm. Too many questions, after all, and he sat waiting for the answer to the most important one of all.
Would she pretend the union? A strange request from a bridegroom she did not know, a husband wed for so many years but seen only once.
He stood and moved to the other side of the window, on the same side of the room as the bench upon which she sat. They were close enough to touch.
A sweet smell seemed to emanate from his clothing, a hint of cinnamon. She wondered if he carried the costly spice in the little silver ball at the end of his corded belt. He was not the man she’d fashioned him to be. She knew him less now than when she’d entered the great hall.
Word had spread of his exploits, the number of tournaments he’d won, his father’s death, his own departure for the Holy Land. Even the convent had not been exempt from tales of Sebastian of Langlinais.
Before today she’d imagined his appearance, had taken the knowledge of his exploits and paired it with what she knew of the world, rendering him almost solid in her mind. He would be strong. Knights must be, in order to carry a lance and armor and sword. He would be tall. The boy she’d seen but once had seemed to tower over her. He would be handsome. Again, that young man who’d grinned at her had been graced with a flashing smile and a comely face.
She had created a rich and detailed picture of her husband. Except that he had rendered all of her thoughts oddly black, muddied them with the reality of his presence. The man who stood beside her hinted at mystery and secrets she might not wish revealed. There was something about him that cautioned her not to explore further, something buried in his softly voiced words. She knew, without testing the point, that he would not answer any more of her questions.
It would be safer to return to the convent, to live among the nuns and do her work. It would be wiser to heed these currents she felt in the air, the hint of danger and the lure of a voice that made her tremble.