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“Then you will go with Dame Agnes. She will show you Eloise’s chamber. It is small, but no matter, so is Eloise. As for you, Beale, you will sleep with the other female servants.” She nodded and turned back to the child. “Come, Eloise, let us look at MacDear’s almond buns.”
She heard the woman Beale suck in her breath. She waited, but the woman held her tongue.
Severin came into the great hall some minutes later to see Hastings seated at a trestle table, the girl child seated beside her, staring at an untouched bun. Her fingers seemed to crawl toward the tray then stop and back up. The child was pale and skinny. Severin frowned. She was a child, she should be stuffing those buns into her mouth.
He’d left Sir Alan, his own man, and a good dozen of Trent’s men-at-arms at Sedgewick Castle. No. He had to remind himself that they were his men now, every last one of them. They’d all sworn fealty to him the day he’d wedded Hastings. Three days ago.
He’d had his men bring the child and her nurse back here to Oxborough.
“Let her eat, Hastings,” he said, striding up. The little girl’s fingers fell away and she seemed to shrink in on herself. Very slowly, as if hoping Severin wouldn’t notice her, she slid off the bench and crawled under the trestle table.
“Eloise, what are you doing?”
There was no sound from Eloise.
Hastings frowned at Severin. “How very odd. At first she was frightened of me but at least she didn’t crawl under the table. Did you perhaps yell and rant when you were at Sedgewick?”
“Of course not. There was no need. Everyone was glad to see me after they realized I wasn’t going to butcher all of them. Besides, I don’t frighten women and children.”
“Ha. Nay, don’t yell at me, you’ll just scare her more.” Hastings got off the bench and went down on her hands and knees. The child had wrapped herself in a tight ball, pressed against the far leg of the table.
“It’s all right, Eloise. Come, Severin is very big but he is also very nice. He won’t hurt you.”
The child seemed to tuck herself into an even smaller ball.
Hastings looked up over her shoulder to see Severin, standing there, looking baffled and impatient. Then Trist slithered out of his tunic and jumped onto the table. He smelled the buns, then backed away.
“He doesn’t like sweet buns like that,” Severin said.
“Eloise, would you like to meet Trist? He isn’t a man, he’s a marten.”
The child lifted her head. “What is a marten?”
“He is an animal, long and furry and very soft. He likes to eat eggs that are boiled just enough so that the insides are clingy.”
Slowly, the child inched out from under the trestle table. Severin had sat himself down so as not to frighten her. He was eating an almond bun. Trist was sprawled out next to his hand, his head on his front paws.
“That is Trist. He belongs to Severin. Isn’t he beautiful?”
The child stared at the marten. As if he knew he was being watched, Trist cocked an eye open and looked at the child.
“Does he eat almond buns?”
“Nay, he does not,” Severin said, as he reached for another one. “But he would like to see you eat one. He just said that you didn’t eat your breakfast.”
The little girl blinked and took a step back, bumping into Hastings’s knees. Hastings lightly laid her hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “Eloise, this is Lord Severin. He is my husband and the master of Oxborough. He will protect you. You are not to be afraid of him.”
“My father hit me.”
“Severin isn’t your father. He will see that no one will ever hit you again, I swear it to you. Severin will swear it as well as soon as he has swallowed the last of his bun.”
“I swear it, Eloise. You will remain here at Oxborough until King Edward decides where you will live. My lady will look after you.”
“She is very young,” Eloise said, staring hard at Trist. “Beale said she was too young to know anything at all about children.” Trist stretched out his full length, which was nearly a foot and a half. Then he stretched out his paws. He looked at the little girl. She said in a whisper, “Beale won’t like it. She won’t like any of it.”
“Beale has no say in it,” Hastings said. “I was a little girl like you not at all long ago. I’ll wager that Beale can’t even remember when she was a little girl.”
“Is she that sour-faced old woman dressed in black with the black hair on her lip?” Severin
