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He jumped and glanced at her sideways while animosity swept her. “At one of the tournaments he frequented, no doubt, while he left me at home to raise money for his battles and raise his sons for the future.”
He took the bowl from her and blotted the last of the broth out of it with the remaining bread. He handed her the bowl.
She clutched it tightly and urged herself to stand, to put distance between them, to ignore him as the shallow pig deserved to be ignored. Instead she remained as she was and said, “You give me advice on how to raise my sons, but how much do you care for their fate? They are my boys, kept by me and nurtured by me. To you they are only a whim to interest you as you lie there, and you are subject to whims which are nothing more than itches. You scratch them, you’re done, you forget. But if I allowed you to, you would twist my whole world around for those itches, and when you had scratched and forgotten, my world would still be askew.”
“I am not so capricious!”
“All men are capricious. They have the power, why shouldn’t they be?”
He took a breath and when he spoke, he used the voice of reason. “It is not capriciousness which makes me realize that any sons of the earl of Jagger will be fighters. I knew Robin, Lady Edlyn, in the prime of his life, and I felt the power of his blade. I saw how his men worshiped him and how the ladies…well.” He cleared his throat. “You say his sons want to be monks. Perhaps, but perhaps if shown a different path, they would find themselves more fitted to knighthood.”
“Robin died in the prime of his life.” Her heart almost stopped its beating as she remembered the lively, handsome, heroic man and realized he would never again walk this earth. “I want more than that for my sons.”
“But what do they want for themselves?”
“They are eight years old. They don’t know what they want.” She stood and placed the bowl in the bucket with her other dirty dishes. “Other parents set their children’s feet on the path which they must follow all their lives. Why do you think I’m less capable?”
“Perhaps your father could give you advice.”
He hadn’t answered the question, she noticed. “My father doesn’t even know where we are.”
“Why not?”
She opened the bag she had taken with her into the woods that morning and shook the plants and roots out on the table. “I haven’t sent him word—nor has he sent to ask. When I married the first time, I was one of five girls. My mother gave birth to two more after that, all to be married or placed in a nunnery, all to be given some kind of dowry. I helped purchase husbands for three of my sisters, as I was expected to do.” She sniffed the mandrake root, then continued calmly, “Nevertheless, I hazard my father would not welcome me back into his home, disgraced as I am.”
“A sad state of affairs,” Hugh rumbled.
“Not at all,” Edlyn answered. “You were born to a family as poor as mine. Would your parents welcome you home again?”
“Nay, but I’m a man grown!”
“Too true.” Had he detected her sarcasm? She doubted it. He was too much of a man to ever conceive a woman’s thoughts. She was a woman grown and as accomplished as he in her endeavors. But they were not a man’s endeavors and therefore worth little.
It irked her, the way men plunged through life, assuming their way was the right way, secure in the world they had created especially to serve their own needs and wants. Women had to try to fit into that world, to understand their men’s thoughts and desires. If a woman failed, she was punished by her man. If a man failed, a woman was punished with her man.
“Perhaps Sir David would consent to give his opinion,” Hugh said.
He sounded more hesitant now. Maybe he was reading her after all. She could imagine the frown that puckered his forehead, the way the light hazel of his eyes deepened to green, the serious turn of his mouth.
She could imagine all that, and she cursed herself for that imagination. Why did she know him well enough to forecast his reactions? Oh, aye, she had spent hours as a girl studying him—his firm lips, wide with the promise of sensuality, the way his blond hair swept back from his face, how his eyebrows habitually lowered as he faced the challenges before him.
But she’d forgotten all that! It had been years ago. She did not, damn it, did not carry his image like an icon in her mind.
Which led her to another less than palatable thought. If she wasn’t remembering him, then she’d been observing him here in the dispensary. Observing him not as a patient, but as a man worthy of attention. She didn’t believe she’d been doing that. Yet here she was, prognosticating how he would act and react.
She hated this about herself. It was like thinking she had been cured of an infection only to find it lingered still in her veins.
“I hope you’re mumbling that I have a good idea.” Hugh didn’t sound as if he believed that.
Separating the trefoil, she stacked it into a pile and began plucking the crimson blossoms. “When I lived with Lady Alisoun, she and Sir David treated me with the greatest kindness. I have nothing but respect for their opinions, but I fear I am unable to apply to them for anything. It would not be acceptable to me.”
“Your pride is not seemly in a woman.”
Her hands clenched into fists, and the scent of spring clover assailed her. Opening her hands, she wiped the smears of red from her palms. In a low tone, she said, “My pride is all I have, and it has sustained me for a very long time now.”
“You’re too independent.”
“Whose fault is that?” Her movements jerky, she stretched a thin cloth over the table and dumped the blossoms onto it.
