Page 7 of An Inconvenient Vow

“That is exactly what I mean!” He swung about to look at the court officials. “Am I not justified?”

The questor cleared his throat. “Madam, by your own admission you have lain with this man and afforded him the rights and privileges which should belong only to your husband. Why should you cavil now, when you are offered the role of wife, in place of wanton? It is more than the likes of you deserve!”

Sabina’s mouth opened and closed, as well it might, Jeffree thought contemptuously. She could make no answer to that, not after her previous bald-faced lie. “It is madness!” she cried, looking about wildly. “I won’t do it! You cannot make me!”

“Stubborn, willful woman!” the magistrate exploded. “I can scarcely believe mine ears! This man, whose virtue you stole by way of your wicked wiles, is willing to give you the protection of his name, and you turn your nose up at the opportunity!”

“I barely know him!”

“You know him in ways, madam, that would make a decent woman burn with shame!”

“Young woman,” the summoner put forth. “If you are so foolish as to reject this proposal then I feel it is only fair to warn you that you face public punishment of the most stringent kind. By method of a skimmington ride, culminating in the ducking stool.”

Sabina Hendry’s breath came very fast. “You would do that to me? The daughter of a Burrell of Tipton Hall? I am no village lass!”

“You have shown yourself no better than the lowest village lass, who resides in the gutter,” the summoner responded with venom.

Sabina flinched as the words sank into her flesh like barbs. “I cannot marry this man,” she said in a low trembling voice. “It is not reasonable to ask it of me!”

“Sabina,” her father said hoarsely. She turned to him at once. “Child, you speak of being a Burrell of Tipton Hall, and yet, if you do not take this step, if you do not accept this man’s offer then…” His words trailed off before he could bring himself to utter his dire warning, and he turned his face, now wet with tears, away from her. “Do not ask your mother and me to live through the shame of seeing you publicly lambasted for a harlot.”

Well, thought Jeffree, the implication was clear enough. She would be cast out from the ancestral home and the bosom of her family. Her father’s words seemed to have made more of an impression on her than his own, he noticed sourly.

Ceasing her protestations, Sabina cast a deeply despairing look in his direction. “However repulsive we both find the notion?” she asked brokenly.

Jeffree snorted. Gods above, but she was an ungrateful bitch! He could not remember disliking a person more in his life. He was coldly furious as he gave his short nod of agreement, his mouth tight with anger and his eyes hard and glittering. He felt as though he could strangle her.

“Very well then,” she said hollowly, with the expression of one greeting the pronouncement of the hangman. “I suppose I have little choice in the matter and will have to marry you.”

4

Afterward, Sabina remembered the events of the next quarter of an hour as a miserable blur. After being hustled into an antechamber, they got through the formalities with scant ceremony. For all his insistence it must go ahead, her new groom seemed to have as much trouble as her in forcing the vows through his tight lips. Sabina found it best not to look him full in the face, but rather to focus on a spot just to the left of him.

The three officials stood as witnesses, along with her shamefaced father. The priest engaged for the duke’s nuptials had instead to turn his offices to theirs. Despite the Great Hall being full of his relatives, Sabina noticed that Sir Jeffree had not asked a single one of them to stand beside him now and see him joined in matrimony.

She wondered suddenly how many of those disapproving nobles even knew what was happening in this small chamber, mere yards away from where they stood gossiping over the morning’s events? Well, the duke had certainly thrown a banquet to remember, she thought bitterly. Would the priest now go next door and join Isemay with Bethencourt?

Would she have to re-enter the Great Hall at Sir Jeffree’s side? Sabina was distinctly uneasy at the prospect. She only had so much bluster and she had used up today’s allowance to the full. Seizing the bull by the horns, she turned to her new husband. “What now?” she asked forthrightly and saw him give a violent start. Of course, he would think a wife should only speak when spoken to!

He opened his mouth and then shut it again, as though drawing a sad blank. She realized Jeffree de Crecy had no more notion of how they should continue than she had!

“I am not staying in this house,” she started pugnaciously.

That roused him alright. “You will stay wherever I see fit, madam!” he retorted, blue eyes blazing.

Jarringly, Sabina realized that now they were indeed man and wife, this was no more than the truth. She bit the side of her mouth as her father regarded them with unease.

“I shall have to go in search of your sister and mother,” Wilfred Burrell muttered, looking harried. “The gods only know what has become of them and how they are coping!”

“Yes,” Sabina agreed dismally. Mother always did tend to think herself the most affected by any given situation. She sent another glance Sir Jeffree’s way and saw the magistrates were now taking their leave of him. He looked rigid with affront as they issued whatever final words they saw fit on such an occasion. Likely an entreaty to sin no more. Giving them a stiff nod, Sir Jeffree watched them leave the chamber, his large body radiating hostility from every pore of his being.

Then his gaze flickered to meet Sabina’s and her breath caught to see them flare with such loathing. What had she done, she wondered with a spurt of alarm, linking her lot in life to this man? Fighting down the rising panic, she turned back to her father. “Go, then.” She forced a smile to her lips. “You had better see they have come to no ill.”

Her father cast a quick look at Sir Jeffree, blanched, and beat a hasty retreat, leaving them alone together. An uneasy silence ruled for all of one minute. Then he spoke. “We had better go out there and face them,” he said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Significantly, he left the together unvoiced and Sabina considered this a moment.

“You are probably right,” she conceded. “However, I should tell you now, Sir Jeffree, that I will not be paraded and humiliated to appease your friends and relations.”

“What?” he barked. By this point, Sabina was starting to think his handsome face wore a permanent expression of outrage. It must be exhausting, she thought, always being so offended.