Susan Spencer Paul (10 page)

Finally he noticed her, but only because everyone else in the hall had stopped talking. He gazed at her with an odd expression, then stood, but he did nothing else, and said nothing. Lillis waited for him to speak, to welcome her at the table or simply to tell her to sit down somewhere, but he only stood and looked at her as though she were some kind of specter. It became clear after a silent moment that he wasn’t going to ask Barbara to move down. He wasn’t going to say or do anything.

Not knowing what else to do, and not willing to stand there a moment longer making such a fool of herself, Lillis turned from her husband’s gaze and looked for a place to sit. There was only one table where places were still empty, and with as much grace as she could manage, Lillis lifted her skirt and made her way toward it, wishing with every step she took that those in the room would turn their attention back to their food. The fact that she had no cause as the Lady of Gyer in sitting with the servants didn’t particularly bother her. At the convent the table was a place for eating, not for arrangements of social status.

Seating herself, ignoring the silence, she selected a round of bread from a platter on the table and began to cover it with the different offerings of meats and fish and vegetables. And then the fracas began. With an angry oath directed at his elder brother, Sir Willem left the table in disgust. A moment later Alexander whispered something to the lady Barbara that caused her to burst into tears, which enraged her brother, John, who stood and said something that in turn enraged Alexander, who delivered a blow so stunning to his cousin that Lillis thought the poor man might not waken for a week. It seemed that everyone in the great hall, other than herself, watched this spectacle with great interest. But Lillis continued to eat. She was very hungry, and really didn’t care how or why the family of Gyer went about destroying themselves. They were quite the strangest people she’d ever known, and best left alone.

But she was only allowed the bliss of a few mouthfuls of food before her husband came striding purposefully toward her.

“I want to speak with you,” he said, grabbing her arm the moment he reached her.

“I’m eating,” she informed him stiffly, yanking her arm free, “and I’m hungry.”

“If you are, then it’s your own fault.” He pulled her physically out of her seat and dragged her from the table. Lillis had no choice but to go with him.

They didn’t get very far, however, before Alexander sensed that every eye in the room was still upon them. He stopped long enough to turn his angry glare at the stunned castlefolk.

“Eat!” he thundered at them in general. “And you!” he shouted at the musicians. “Play!”

Everyone complied at once.

Satisfied with this response, Alexander escorted Lillis from the room. They didn’t go to his private chamber, as she’d assumed they would, but instead passed the doors to that room and continued down the hall, stopping in front of another set of double doors. These Alexander pushed open, then drew Lillis into a chamber already well lit with candles. His rough handling caused her to stumble, but she quickly regained her composure, straightened and looked about her. It was a solar of some kind, decorated with a more feminine hand than Alexander’s working chamber was and with long windows that opened out onto what appeared in the darkness to be a garden terrace.

They were alone for the first time since their wedding night. She heard him bolting the doors behind her. For some reason her hands trembled, and her heart pounded in her chest. She drew in a breath, folded her hands together in front of herself and waited for him to speak.

Alexander fought his own battle, standing against the door and staring at Lillis’s turned back. For a woman who’d spent the past three days starving herself, she looked damned good, especially dressed as she was in the blue surcoat he’d seen her in before and with her white hair arranged in one thick braid that traveled the path of her femininely curved back. The shock that had rendered him speechless when he’d first seen her, so suddenly, so unexpectedly standing before him in the great hall, looking more beautiful than he had remembered, now seemed magnified a hundredfold. He had the oddest desire to pull her into his arms and kiss her, an idea so utterly foolish that he had to wonder at how he could possibly even think it.

“You will explain yourself, madam.” His voice sounded hard, even to his own ears.

Lillis stiffened at his angry tone. “My lord?”

“I want to know what you mean by your behavior of the past three days,” he clarified curtly. “I assume you have some reasonable explanation for locking yourself away and denying yourself all manner of human comfort?”

“I do, but I cannot think why you should want to know it, sir.” How strange it was, Lillis thought, to suddenly have a husband to call
sir,
to have a husband calling her
madam,
in the way that married people did.

He made an irate sound. “You are my
wife.
I am your
husband.
” He sounded as if he were explaining elementary knowledge to a naive child. “Everything about you concerns me.”

Her expression was faintly amused as she turned to look at him. “You have little reason for concern, my lord. The land is yours regardless what happens to me.”

Alexander’s eyes narrowed, and he gazed at her with a displeased frown. “You do not know me well, Lillis Baldwin,” he said quietly, “nor yet do I know you, but you had best learn not to speak to me in a manner such as that. My sufferance is long, but not without limit.”

Chagrined, Lillis looked away from him again. He spoke the truth. As her husband, lord and master, Alexander of Gyer could do whatever he wished to her if she proved disobedient. And, in truth, did she want the man to think her a shrew? A woman without gentility and honor?

“I was fasting,” she murmured contritely.

Alexander was sure he hadn’t heard right. “Fasting?” he repeated with disbelief.

Eyes lowered, she nodded. “Yes. It is a very good way to settle one’s thoughts when one is—unsettled.” A faint blush crept to her cheeks, and she rushed on in explanation. “Fasting is a practice used often by the sisters at Tynedale, sometimes as a method of punishment or penance, but more often as an expression of faith. It truly can be most—spiritually cleansing.”

Looking at her, seeing the slight paleness of her skin, the thinness of her face, Alexander said, “I have no wish to deny you a practice of faith, madam, but in future you will express your intentions
before
you commence starvation. Otherwise I will assume that your behavior is childish and willful, and shall have no choice but to punish you.”

“In future, my lord, I shall not be at Gyer to subject you to such an activity,” she informed him matter-of-factly, then, when she looked up to see the anger on his face, added, “and, in truth, my fast was not an entirely honest one. Each day the maids brought trays of food, and each day I took some bread and fruit and ate them. It wasn’t much—not enough to be missed—” she made a guilty, childlike face that gave Alexander’s heart a strange twinge “—but I was terribly hungry, and I’ve never truly been good at the practice.” Then, to make her confession complete, she admitted ruefully, “At Tynedale, whenever the nuns would cause me to fast, I’d sneak food beneath my surcoat and eat it in my bed at night.” She glanced at him for understanding. “I’ve never been very good at it,” she said once more.

No one had ever spoken to him in such an open, honest manner before. At least, no one to whom he was not related. Her simple words moved over Alexander like some unseen force, giving rise to an unwanted feeling inside him. He didn’t even really know this woman, he told himself insistently, or anything about her, save that she was his enemy’s daughter, yet, looking at her, he couldn’t keep himself from imagining Lillis as a young girl, a smaller, younger version of the beautiful Amazon she was, getting into all manner of trouble and mischief, and sneaking bread and sweets into her bed at night to keep from being hungry.

The desire to kiss her kindled into something fierce and, worse, unsettling, for Alexander was nothing if not controlled, logical, clearheaded—these were the qualities,
his
qualities, which had made Gyer what it was. But at the moment those things had traitorously fled him, leaving him staring at her, at his lovely wife, who hated him, and wondering, like some lust-sodden idiot, what it might be like to make love to her slowly and thoroughly, as he’d been unable to do on their wedding night.

Their wedding night! He remembered it vividly, remembered every moment. The misery of it—and the wonder of it, to find himself possessed of such a woman. Her full, rounded body, her soft, white skin—that hair, tickling his arms and back—and being inside her—his wife—

“What has happened to my maid? Have you sent her to Wellewyn?”

He stared at her.

“My lord?”

“What?”

“My maid. Edyth. I’ve not seen her these past three days.”

Giving a shake of his head, Alexander made himself think more clearly. His body, aroused and hard beneath his tunic, he had little control over, but his mind, at least, he might force to his will.

“Yes, she’s at Wellewyn,” he replied as easily as he could, strolling toward the fire. “I sent her the morn after our wedding, and have had word back that she arrived safe and in good time.” He set one hand on the mantel, and stared into the flames. “She took with her the sheet and a copy of the marriage contract, along with a letter from myself.”

“But there’s been no word, yet? From my father?”

She sounded so anxious that Alexander glanced at her briefly. “No, nothing from Jaward of Wellewyn yet. I admit, I did expect a reply by now, but he may be trying to find a way out.”

“Or he might be ill,” Lillis suggested.

Alexander made a snorting sound. “He’s trying to find a way around what’s been done, but he’ll not be able to. He’ll not, and when he’s understood that there is no escape he’ll send me word.”

“Yes,” Lillis agreed quietly, looking at her husband’s broad back, thinking what a big man he was, and how heavy, and how that big, heavy body had felt pressed into her own. “And when he has, will I then be free to leave?”

“We’ll speak of that when I’ve had his reply.”

“But—”

“Why did you rend my pillow?”

“My lord—”

“Answer me.” His tone held no room for argument, and Lillis tamped down the need to have her freedom made sure.

Drawing herself to full height, gazing at his turned eyes, she said simply, “If you must ask that question, sir, then I can only think you know little of women. Or that perhaps your nature is cruel, or your humor odd. I believe I am the one who should ask instead what you meant by leaving me such an insult. I was not aware I had done anything to warrant it, but if I have I beg you tell me, so that I’ll not do it again. I should not like to be treated to such as that in future.”

“Your tongue,” Alexander said with a shake of his head, “certainly needs no sharpening, my Lady Gyer.” He turned back to the fire and murmured, “If we must speak of odd humor, let us speak of God’s, to put such a tongue against the body and face of an angel.”

Lillis blinked.
“What?”

“Nothing.” This came out on a weary sigh. “It was no insult, the brooch. You took it as a kind of payment, did you not?” He glanced at her once more, saw her set face and said, “You did. The worst kind of insult, being paid for your land, for your maidenhead. I will admit guilt so far as that I did think your sensibilities might be soothed, but in truth, it was meant as a wedding gift. The piece belonged to my mother, and is meant to be the Lady of Gyer’s, along with a full chest of other jewels. They are yours now, as you are the Lady of Gyer, and shall in turn be inherited by our eldest son’s wife, or, should you only give me daughters, to the one who inherits my lands and title.”

Utterly shocked, Lillis sputtered, “S-s-sons!” and was just barely able to get the word out of her mouth.

“Mmm,” Alexander sounded out indifferently. “Or daughters.”

“But—! But you said—you
promised
me that you’d not—not—” She wasn’t entirely sure how to go on, but at least Alexander of Gyer had given her his full attention.

“Not what?” he asked with a slight frown.

“Do you not remember, my lord? When you told me of your decision that we wed, you said you would never demand your husbandly rights.”

“Yes, and so I did,” he admitted readily, seeing no problem with this. “I’ve no intention of forcing myself upon you more often than is necessary for the begetting of heirs, and not at all once you’ve given me a sufficient number of children. I am a man of my word.”

Lillis’s mind whirled; she wondered if perhaps the combination of her hunger and the shock of his words might actually cause her to faint.

Alexander was at her side in a moment, his hands on her arms, his face filled with concern. “You look unwell, Lillis. Come and sit by the fire and let me pour you a cup of wine.” Setting her in a chair, he turned to fetch the drink. “It’s that damned fasting,” he stated angrily, pushing the goblet into her shaking hands. “I will never again allow you to behave so foolishly for so long. One day of it is as much as I’ll countenance in the future, and none at all when you’re with child.”

Lillis gratefully drank the wine while Alexander, muttering about the idiocy of certain religious rites, leaned against the mantel and watched her. She felt much calmer when she was finished.

“My lord,” she said as she set the empty goblet aside, “please let us have an understanding of this. You assured me before we wed that once my father’s land was legally yours I should be able to leave Gyer and do as I please, live as I please—”

“So I did.”

“But you never spoke of children, you did not say that you would require heirs of me, and I’m afraid I assumed that once our marriage was consummated I should not have to receive you in my bed again. Ever.”

The muscles in his face tightened. “Are you trying to tell me, madam, that you mean to refuse your duty to provide me heirs?”

“Of course not! I simply mean to remind you of your promises, sir. If you required children of me, why did you not tell me beforehand?”