It took her half the time to reach the spot where she’d not been able to reach her aunt, and again she tried with no response. Another ten minutes south was far enough, though, and her efforts were rewarded. “Aunt Christiana?”
“Madelina! When I didn’t hear from you again yestereve, I worried for you!”
“We’re fine. I must ride forty minutes south of my new home to be able to reach you, but that doesn’t feel like such a far distance. I’m just glad we won’t entirely lose touch.”
“Your new home is good? Alex’s parents treat you well?”
“Yes, they do. Alex does not like me communicating with you this way, though. He feels it’s rude, and I’m not sure why. I will have to make sure to do it at times he is distracted.”
“Like creeping out of bed before he wakes?” Christiana asked in her mind. “That’s not a good answer, Madelina.”
“I know, Auntie, I know. I will do my best to get along with him and give him time to adjust, just like Aunt Eva suggested. Give everyone my love, and I will return to my new home now. I miss you all already.”
“You are certainly missed here. Remember, your place is with your new husband, not sneaking off to talk to me. We love you!” Christiana felt sad in her thoughts, and Madelina was certain she understood. Her aunt was losing her, and if she was going to be obedient to her husband, she was losing their ability to communicate as well. It was a difficult situation.
On her way back, she rode just as swiftly, hoping that she would be back in the castle before anyone noticed she was missing. Her hopes were dashed as she rode into the castle grounds.
Alex was on his horse, heading toward her, pulling in the reins to stop as she stopped in front of him. “How is your aunt?” he asked, guessing correctly at her errand.
“She is fine, and my family is fine. They were worried about me when I couldn’t communicate with them again last night. Now they won’t worry again. They needed to know I was safe.” She hoped she could make him understand that they were important to her, and she couldn’t let them worry.
“I see. Don’t you think you should have had an escort riding with you? You didn’t think you were unsafe out on a horse by yourself in the early morning hours?” He knew she was intelligent, but in that moment, he wanted to shake her for not using the mind God gave her. How could she ride off and not even tell anyone she was going?
“I always thought my family was being overprotective by making me leave with an escort.” She moved her thumb to indicate the bow and arrows over her shoulder. “I was armed and ready to defend myself if needed. And don’t forget, I do have the power to control the weather.”
“You think that power could keep a man away if he wanted to hurt you?” Alex dismounted and took the reins of her horse, leading it to the stables. “I’m very upset with you right now, Madelina. You put yourself at risk, and I won’t stand for that.”
“I’m still my own person, Alex, whether I’m married to you or not. I was careful, and I didn’t allow myself to be caught by anyone. If you need a demonstration of my power so you can see just how I can use it, I’d be happy to show you.” Her mother and aunts had spent hours and hours locked away as children working on learning to use their powers to the best of their abilities. That had never been necessary for Madelina because the fate of the world was not on her shoulders. She used them when she needed to, and when she accidentally used them, but there was no reason for her to train to use her powers.
He didn’t respond as he led the two horses into the stable and then offered her a hand to help her down. She accepted, wondering exactly what was going through his mind. He was angry, there was no doubt about that, but what was his anger about? Was he angry that she hadn’t taken an escort? Or because she had dared to speak to her family without his permission?
He held her hand and led her into the castle and up the stairs to their room. Once he’d closed the door behind him, he crossed his arms over his chest. “That was a very foolhardy thing to do, and I’ll have your promise you won’t do it again.”
“Won’t do what? Leave the castle grounds alone? Or talk to my aunt?” Madelina found she was just as angry as he was, and when thunder started rumbling there in the room, she worked hard to calm her emotions.
“You have every right to talk to your aunt. I’m not trying to stop you from doing that.”
“Good because I won’t stop. I love my family, and I have the right to speak to them when I can.” No matter how angry he was, she wasn’t going to back down from this. He wasn’t going to give up contact with his family, so why should she?
He shook his head. “You have the right to speak to them when I’m available to ride with you. I don’t want you going alone because it’s not safe. You’re obviously a gentlewoman, and you could be taken for the money your family will pay.”
“I was safe. I just needed to tell my aunt that we arrived safely and tell her that I couldn’t communicate with her from my new home. Why can’t you see I couldn’t allow her to worry?”
“So you let me worry instead? How do you think I felt when I woke up and you weren’t beside me? How do you think I felt when I then searched the castle and you weren’t here? What about when I found that your mount was missing?” He shook his head. “Your family may have been slightly worried when you didn’t communicate, but they knew it was a possibility. I didn’t know you would be foolish enough to leave my safe home in the early hours so you could let them know you were fine!” The last word was a shout, and instead of backing down, Madelina stood up to him and walked closer.
“I am an adult. I have the right to make decisions for myself. I am a skilled healer and a woman of power. I will not be forced to hide in this castle to be kept safe. I’ve done that my entire life, and it won’t happen any longer!”
“You don’t think that as my wife, you need to obey me when I tell you not to leave my property without an escort?” he asked, his eyes flaming with anger.
“As your wife, I think you know that I’m a reasonably intelligent woman. You have to know that I’m not going to do anything that will put my life in danger.”
“But you already did! We’re not close enough to Scotland for the raids to come here or for the fighting to be here, but the fighting is close enough that it’s just not safe to be out on your own. Ever!”
“I will not cower inside this castle. One of the reasons I wanted to marry you was because you were impressed with my skills, and you understood that I needed to be free . . . I thought you did, at least. You’re as bad as my father with trying to keep me locked up and calling it keeping me safe.” Madelina couldn’t believe her sweet suitor from days before had turned into an angry husband already.
“Were you not taught that a woman obeys her husband? Everyone knows that women cannot just do what they want because they are weak.”
“I am not weak!” Her anger got away from her, and she used a blast of wind to knock him off his feet. “I am strong!”
Alex lay there on the floor for a moment, deciding then that he needed to leave before his anger got the better of him. Already he knew that he needed her to learn to be a wife and not just a woman who felt she had her own freedom. He didn’t want his mother to have to talk to her, but perhaps that was the answer. He knew his mother had always been obedient to his father.
He left the castle, going right back to the stables and having the lad there ready his horse. He knew he was acting strangely, but he needed time to think on what to do with his disobedient wife.
After he had left the room, Madelina threw herself on her bed and cried angry tears. She couldn’t believe she had become so angry she had knocked her husband down with her powers. She needed to apologize to him, to let him know she would never hurt him intentionally, but he was already gone.
It wasn’t long before she heard Letice crying in the room next to hers, so she got to her feet and checked on the girl. An unmarried maiden had time for crying and emotions. A married woman had to take
care of her responsibilities. Especially if she was a mother.
She walked into the room and sat down on the bed beside the little girl. “Why are you crying?”
“I couldn’t find you.”
Madelina realized that the girl was still sad after the loss of her parents. She needed to be a better mother to her.
Chapter Seven
Alexander rode for a couple of hours before returning to the castle. He didn’t act as if anything had happened—at least not in front of his parents. Once Madelina had Letice down for her nap, she asked if she could speak with him.
He nodded, following her up to the room they were sharing. His parents hadn’t noticed anything odd between them because they were in the process of getting all their personal belongings ready to move to the dower house. The furniture would stay in the castle, but all of their clothes and special items had to be moved. They had lived in the castle for more than thirty years, so the process was tedious.
Once they were in their room, Madelina looked at Alex with tears in her eyes. “I am so sorry I used my powers against you. I have no excuse. I wanted to show you I could defend myself against an attacker, but that wasn’t the right way to do it. Can you forgive me?”
Alex sighed, wrapping his arms around her. “We were both very angry with each other this morning. If you need to talk to your aunt about something, I want you to tell me, and I will take you to the location where you can reach her. I think that’s a fair compromise.”
She nodded. “I will let you know.”
“Thank you.” He kept his arms around her, his hands moving up and down her sides. They hadn’t been able to make love since they’d left her home, and he missed having the special time with his wife.
He scooped her up in his arms and laid her on the bed, ready to rectify their situation.
“Alex! It’s still daytime.”
He grinned. “At the moment, that’s the furthest thing from my mind.”
This time there was no need for an apology. Her pleasure was as great as his, and she understood why he’d apologized before. She fell asleep in his arms, thankful they were back on good terms with each other. They’d been married less than a week. They couldn’t possibly already have a troubled marriage.
While Madelina slept, Alex went to his father, hoping to find a good way to ask him about how to properly train a wife in obedience. He should never have married a lady who was so independent. Her independence made her hard to control.
“Father? May I have a word?” His parents were together, going through their things in their bedchamber. They would leave soon, and he wanted to take advantage of his father’s greater experience before he left.
“Yes, of course.” His father looked at his mother. “We’ll talk in the sitting room below stairs. I’ll be back up to help when I can.”
His mother frowned. “You’re just trying to get out of helping, Ralph. This is not women’s work, you know.”
“I know. I’ll be back soon!” His father closed the door and grinned at him. “Thanks for the rescue, son.”
Alex shook his head. “Just tell her to have one of the servants help her.”
“Are you joking? I need to be able to live with her for the rest of my life.”
“I guess that’s what I want to speak to you about. I need to know how to make my wife obedient. Is there something I can do to train her to follow my lead?”
His father sat down in a comfortable chair in the sitting room, and he laughed. He covered his face with his hands and calmed himself down, then he looked at his son, and he laughed some more. “Seriously?” he finally was able to choke out.
Alex frowned at his father, taking the seat across from him. “Obviously Mother is the model wife. She obeys you in everything. How did you train her to be that way?”
His father took calming breaths and wiped the tears from his eyes. “There is no training a wife to be obedient. If a woman is treated with the utmost respect and made to feel like you value her and her opinions, she is more likely to want to follow your lead, but you married a woman of power, son. She has the ability to change the weather. You can’t expect her to be someone who easily follows you.”
“She rode out this morning, knowing I would want her to have an escort. She wanted to make sure her family didn’t worry about her because she could no longer communicate with them in her mind.” Alex sighed. “I found her riding back to the stable, planning to hide the fact she’d left.”
His father nodded. “I know right now it all seems insurmountable, but I will tell you that you don’t want a weak woman. If you married a woman who backed away from you every time you raised your voice, she would drive you crazy. Instead you have a strong, self-reliant woman. There is nothing wrong with that.”
“But sometimes she needs to listen to me and worry about her safety.”
“Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn’t. What did she plan to do if something happened to her?”
Alex frowned. “She had a bow and arrow that she uses with great skill. She also has the ability to call up her powers, and she gave me a dose of those this morning when I confronted her about it all. She knocked me over with her wind, and I landed on my backside.”
Ralph threw back his head and laughed. “Welcome to the world of marriage, son. She is not one who will be controlled. The only thing I can tell you is if you are a good, strong leader who makes it clear you value her more than anything else in your life, she will eventually be easier to make suggestions to, and she might follow those suggestions.”
“Are you saying that instead of telling her not to go and talk to her aunt without me again, I should suggest that she might want to take me along next time?” Alex couldn’t believe his own father was suggesting such gibberish.
His father shrugged. “Take my advice or leave it. You wanted someone more experienced than you.” He got to his feet. “Now I’m going to go back upstairs and help your mother pack up our bedchamber, so I can keep the peace in my marriage.”
Alex watched his father leave the room, feeling more than a little surprise. His parents’ marriage seemed perfect to him, and his mother always seemed to do what his father said. How could his father not have better advice for him than that?
He went out to the courtyard, where the men were training, and picked up a sword. He had a need to do some real fighting to get out some of his aggression. Making love with his wife had helped but not nearly enough.
Madelina was talking to the servants about what they planned to make for supper, trying to be the kind of good wife her husband was looking for, when she heard her name shouted from another part of the castle. She ran, following the voice. Alex was being helped into a chair, a great cut on his shoulder. “What did you do?” she asked, immediately tearing away his sleeve to get a good look at the injury.
“I wasn’t paying enough attention during training, I guess.” Alex felt like a fool admitting it, but his mind had been on her, not on his training.
“Let me get my herbs,” she said softly. “I’m going to clean this properly and stitch it closed. It’s not going to be comfortable, but it will keep out infection.”
He sighed. “All right. Get what you need.”
She was back a moment later with her bag of herbs and a needle and thread. His mother was right behind her. “Will you go and get a bowl of water as hot as you can stand it from the kitchen please?” Madelina asked. She didn’t watch to see if his mother had done what she asked. Instead she took a glass of water she had been drinking from earlier and added a pinch of herbs to it. “Drink this down. It will help lessen the pain of what I’m about to do.”
Alex frowned at her, but he did as she told him. It was only a moment before he started to feel woozy. “What was in the glass?”
“Something to make you tired and feel less pain. You’re going to need to sit back as I work on this.” She saw her mother-in-law approaching with the bowl of water and a clean cloth. She immediately dipped the cloth into the wa
ter and began to carefully clean the wound. She knew from past experience that if she left even a tiny piece of dirt in the wound, it could become infected, and he could die from it.
She worked and made sure the wound was meticulously cleaned. Her mother-in-law stood beside her, wringing her hands together. “What else can I do?”
“Go check on Letice, would you?” Madelina asked.
“Yes, of course!”
Madelina was relatively sure the child would still be sleeping because she took long naps, but she needed her mother-in-law out of the way. She didn’t need to feel her son’s pain as Madelina worked to heal him.
Thirty minutes later, she had the wound stitched closed. “You’re going to have to spend the rest of the day in bed, I’m afraid. Quite probably longer than that.” She nodded to the two men who had helped him inside. “Can you get him up the stairs?”
She cleaned her mess up, and carefully put her herbs away, mentally thanking her mother for getting all of the herbs ready to travel with her. Then she climbed the stairs and walked into her room, sitting on the bed beside her husband, who was sleeping peacefully.
She wished she could get her mother to come and finish healing him, but unless an infection set in, she would not risk angering her new husband by riding to contact her aunt. She’d been relying on her mother for many years to back her up with her healing, but now it was time for her to stand on her own two feet.
His mother knocked on the door, carrying Letice inside with her. “How is he?”
Madelina smiled. “I have cleaned the wound and given him some medicine for the pain that will also help him sleep. As long as infection doesn’t set in, he’ll be fine in a week or so.”
“And if infection does set in?”
“We could lose him.” Madelina had learned at her mother’s knee that you should never lie to the family of an injured person. It was her job to set clear expectations, and she wouldn’t make things easier just because she could. Truth was always the best.
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