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snap to the side. She grabbed her skinny neck between her hands. “Listen to me, Beale. You are the wicked one here. You will never speak to Eloise again. Go now to your chamber and ready your clothes. You will leave early on the morrow.”
“Your lord will not allow this,” Beale said, Hastings’s handprint stark on her cheek. She was panting, not from the blow, Hastings was certain, but from rage. “You will pay dearly for this, lady. All men are the same. When he hears ill of you, he will believe it, and he will strike you down. I could see it in his face. Even though he is young, he is debauched and hard. He will grow harder and more brutal as he gains years. You will learn that you have no power. You will learn that you cannot treat me as you have. You are young and foolish. You will die young and foolish.”
“I suppose you will see that I die?”
“God gives us tools to help ourselves. I will see that you pay.”
Hastings wanted to strike her again but she didn’t. Beale was the first person she’d ever hit in her life. No, she remembered poking Tim the blacksmith’s son in the arm when she’d been all of ten years old and grown so quickly. He’d called her a maypole.
“Get away from me, Beale, before I vomit. Stay out of my sight until you leave in the morning. Aye, I will watch you leave to make certain it is done.”
After Beale had finally left the bedchamber, her venom still hanging in the still air, Hastings replaced the bramble blossoms in their marked drawer. She ground hyssop and savory. She worked slowly, careful not to spill any of the precious herbs. She began humming. Time seemed to slow and the very air around her seemed to become softer and warmer. She calmed.
She worked until the door opened and Severin looked in. He looked healthy, strong, his face and arms darkened by the bright sun. He was dressed all in gray, as was his habit. For the first time she saw him as a man, a young man in his prime, his body as solid as the keep walls. He was not at all displeasing to look at. She remembered that first time she saw him, the utter fear she’d felt when he’d stood in that bright shaft of light, large and mysterious, hidden, really, perhaps not really a man, but the Devil’s messenger.
She smiled at him.
He stopped short, staring at her as if she were a stranger. He looked down at her neat piles of ground herbs and frowned.
Her smile fell away. No, he wasn’t like Graelam and she wasn’t a bit like his Kassia. She was herself and it was obvious she didn’t please her husband. “How is your shoulder?”
As he walked toward her she noticed a tear in the sleeve of his gray tunic. He merely shrugged, saying, “It is sore but healing well. You saw it yourself this morning. What is happening, Hastings? That sour woman Beale with her black mustache accosted me and accused you of interfering in the child’s religious lessons. She said she was the only one to take care of Eloise, that Eloise’s mother had placed the child in her hands.”
“I wish you could have seen the child’s knees, Severin. They were raw from all the hours she’d been forced to kneel on the stone floor to pray. You’re right. I interfered. I gave Eloise over to Dame Agnes, who will begin to teach her about how to run a household. She will also teach her to play, perhaps even to smile eventually. I told Beale that she was leaving on the morrow.”
“She said you struck her.”
“Aye, I did. I slapped her as hard as I could and I did take her scrawny neck between my hands. I wanted to strangle her and I wanted to hit her again, I really did, but I managed to gain control. She is a frightening woman, Severin. I cannot trust her around Eloise.”
To her immense relief, Severin nodded. “I have two men going to Sedgewick on the morrow. They will escort her back.”
“Thank you.”
He paused a moment, looking down at the row of wooden drawers. “I remember my mother picked daisies at the full moon, crushed them, mixed them in some kind of oil, and laid them on her face. I remember that my father just laughed and told her that her freckles wouldn’t fade. But you know, I remember that they did.”
“Were the daisies white?”
“I do not remember the color. How much longer do you bleed, Hastings?”
How quickly she had become used to his frank speech. “Four more days.” A day longer than she’d known him. A day longer than she’d been wedded to him.
“My shoulder is nearly healed now. I do not like waiting. It isn’t wise.”
“Richard de Luci is dead. Who else is there to fear? I am your wife and no one can possibly know that you aren’t with me ten times a day.”
He laughed at that. “Your ignorance is piteous. You claim to be a healer, yet you know nothing about men. A man can’t take a woman that many times in a single day. Four times, perhaps five, if the woman is sufficiently skilled and enthusiastic. Beauty helps as well to stir a man’s passions.”
She was shaking her head. “Nay,” she said. “Nay, it would be too great a punishment. Five times?” She actually shuddered. “Even you would not force me that many times.” She saw him over her, felt him shoving into her, felt the grinding pain. No, it wasn’t possible.
“If five times is too many in your ignorant mind, then why were you braying about ten times?”
Her hands fluttered and fell to her sides. It was difficult to face him. “I don’t know. It was just a number I lifted from the air. I meant nothing by it, not really. I just said it. Besides, even five times would not be possible for you.”
“Now you insult my manhood.” He took a step toward her.
She said quickly, taking a step back, “Nay, I mean no insult to you. The insult is to myself. I have no skill, no enthusiasm, and I am not beautiful. You said that I was very ordinary.”
He did not like this quickness in her. This logic. He said with natural perversity, “I will teach you to be skilled. You are not ordinary. I said that simply because I did not want you to believe that since you are an heiress what beauty you possess places you above me.”
