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“You think I cannot do precisely as I wish? You believe I am somehow bound to you and only you? That is lunacy. If you do not become properly submissive, then after you bear me my son and heir, I will have you confined as a madwoman should be.” He released her and pushed her back. He streaked his large hand through his dark hair. He cursed. “I did not come here to argue with you, yet within a very few moments, you throw a stool at me and I am shaking you as I would the branch of an apple tree. Perhaps I will let the Beale woman remain at Oxborough. Perhaps I will let her guard you. What say you to that?”
Hastings was rubbing her arms. They were bruised from the previous night. They ached. She looked at him, seeing the anger in him, but more than that, she saw confusion writ on his face. “What do I say to that,” she repeated slowly. “If you do what you threaten, then I will mix allium with felwort. I believe that the two together, slipped into your wine, will make your bowels so watery you will have to sleep in the bailey.”
He turned on his heel and left her, slamming the door behind him.
Actually, she had no idea what to mix with what to make a man’s bowels watery. She knew how to stop it though—ground borage mixed with rose petals, violets, and anchusa.
She wondered as she returned to her herbs how Severin would look in a tunic that wasn’t gray. Perhaps a light blue. She would gather some purple stock. Aye, it made a wonderful pale blue dye.
MacDear cooked an egg and pork stew for Trist that evening. Hastings saw many of her people looking at that stew, wanting it at least as much as they wanted the chunks of beef that floated in a rich brown gravy. There were peas fresh from the Oxborough garden, onions that were fat and sweet, and a brace of partridges for the lord.
Eloise sat beside Hastings, looking at the food but making no move toward it. Hastings served small portions of everything on the brightly shined pewter plate. She smiled at the child. “I have prayed, Eloise, with Father Carreg. He told me that God wants to see His children well fed and thus you must eat to please God.”
As a lie it would serve, but not for all that long. Hastings had already spoken to Father Carreg, a man who surely loved God and loved a well-baked pheasant as well. It would take time. She looked down to a trestle table where Beale sat, her head bent. Suddenly, the woman raised her head and stared at Hastings. Hastings drew back, her back pressed against her chair. The look of pure malice made her tighten all over.
“What is wrong?”
Hastings just shook her head. The woman would be gone early the next morning. She would forget Beale’s venom in time. She said, “MacDear bakes the pheasant in special herbs. He will not tell me the recipe. I always try to guess and he will tell me mayhap if I am right, but he will just shake his big head when I am wrong. He tells me I am ignorant and must keep studying before I learn what he knows. I have known him all my life. I remember how he would let me help him knead bread in the bread trough. I sunk nearly to the top of my arms in that dough.”
This, Severin thought, as he cut off a chunk of the partridge with his knife and slipped it into his mouth, must be how a husband came to know about his wife. He didn’t mind her speaking of things of this nature to him. He found himself picturing her as a small child but only for a moment. He said, “It is very good. I taste basil, do I not?”
“Aye, and fennel. There is also a goodly amount of salt, and that is what makes it so tasty. We have always been lucky at Oxborough. My father loved salt and thus was willing to buy it even when it was in short supply and the price very high. I once went without hair ribbons so he could buy salt.”
Aye, he thought, as he ate the peas, he would have no difficulty with this husband business. He turned to watch Hastings as she coaxed another bite of peas into Eloise’s mouth. The child was fidgeting. She kept looking down the trestle tables. He followed her vision and saw the woman Beale. He tore away a chunk of bread and chewed on it as he watched her. She looked up then and he was smitten by the longing in the woman’s eyes. At that moment, Severin could not imagine Hastings striking her. Surely she had been overly harsh. The woman looked very alone and sad. Perhaps he should allow her to remain at Oxborough. Perhaps Hastings would come to deal well with her.
He would speak to Hastings about it. No, he would tell her what would happen once he had made the decision. He said to Hastings, “We will continue to buy salt, no matter how high the price.”
“Very good, my lord.”
He wondered briefly if she laughed at him, but no, that wasn’t possible. He nodded and turned to Gwent, who sat on his right. He’d taken the steward’s place, and the man, Torric by name, looked as sour as the woman Beale. He wasn’t old enough to look so pinched, his mouth so seamless and tight. Even his shoulders were stooped forward. As for the rest of the Oxborough people, they were less wary of him now. They behaved as people did in most large keeps. There was laughter, arguing, shouting, children leaning against their parents’ sides, already asleep, dogs chasing bones tossed to them, fighting with each other, growling and leaping about.
He felt good. He was the master here. He finally belonged. His line would follow, even though he had to share her name. Langthorne-Trent, Baron Louges, Earl of Oxborough. Ah, that was his and his alone. He leaned back in the former earl’s elegantly carved chair with the Oxborough crest beautifully etched into its back. A lion stood tall on its back legs, its claws sunk deep into a griffin. Behind was a bower of roses, blossoming wildly, and he could tell that the lion would return to that bower once he’d killed his prey. The motto carved beneath the crest was EN AVANT. Forward.
He turned as Gwent said, “The steward was not pleased when I told him that you were learned, that you read and ciphered. His eyes shifted to and fro when I told him. I fancy he mayhap has lined his pockets with pilfered gains.”
“I will see to it on the morrow. If the man has cheated, I will find it out and kill him. I will let you punish him first, Gwent. I know well your hatred of thieves. Keep him under your eyes tonight so that he has not the chance to change his records.”
“Aye, I will keep close to the mangy little squirrel.”
Severin didn’t long remain in the great hall after Hastings had taken Eloise’s hand and led her up the solar stairs, just long enough to drink another goblet of Graelam’s Aquitaine wine, just enough time so she could see to the child’s needs and put her to bed.
He yawned hugely, aware that his men were looking at him, grins on their ugly faces, knowing that he would bed his new bride. They would be drunk on laughter were they to know that he wasn’t bedding her because of her monthly flux. Let them believe that he was plowing her belly. He’d been soft with her. He should not have allowed her to dictate what he did. She might be an heiress but she still belong
ed to him. Aye, he’d been as weak as a puking timid lad.
She wasn’t in his bedchamber, not that he’d expected her to be there. No, she would be in her own chamber and he would have to order her to come to his.
When he came into her bedchamber, holding a lighted candle high so he could see her, Hastings was pressed hard against the mattress of her narrow bed, the covers drawn to her chin, staring at him.
“No, give me no arguments. You will accustom yourself to being with me, to lying next to me in bed, to hearing me breathe in sleep. When I take you, it will be as nothing. You will not even care that I look at you. Aye, Hastings, you will accustom yourself.” He strode to the bed, picked up her bedrobe, and said, “Stand up.”
She didn’t want to but she knew she had no choice. She pushed back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her shift slid up her thighs. She grabbed the bedrobe from him and wrapped it tightly around her. She’d known he would come. Aye, she’d known.
“Come,” he said, and held out his hand. It was a large hand, long blunt fingers, darkened from the sun, the backs covered with black hairs.
She pictured Eloise finally slipping her small hand into her own and smiled. She thrust out her hand, felt his enclose hers, and walked beside him to the large bedchamber. He did not ask her to remove her shift, just the bedrobe. She had never before slept with another person, not even her mother when she’d been a little girl. It felt strange. At least the bed was large, the covers sweet-smelling since Dame Agnes had had the servants wash them in lavender water after her father’s death.
He did not touch her. She lay stiffly on her back. Suddenly she felt soft fur against her check and she smiled.
