"I can and I do," Edward said bluntly, little amused by Ulrich and his protestations of innocence. Perhaps also little interested. "Your chamber," he announced needlessly. "Your bath will be up anon, Lord William. Lord Rowland, yours will await you in the lord's chamber." With a nod, he was gone.
"A well-run holding," William said, laying off his helm and tossing Ulrich his mufflers.
"Yea, and a woman of strict composure," Rowland said, leaning against the doorway and the curtain that sheltered it, "as you found your bride. Her manner is all they share, I fear."
"Fear not, Rowland. She looks to make a man a fine wife."
"She looks of an age to have been a wife already."
"What matter?" William said, letting Ulrich help him with his chain mail. "Surely you do not begrudge her that?"
"Nay," Rowland answered, crossing his arms over his chest. "It is only... where stands her heart?"
Yet, in truth, he spoke of his own heart, given to Lubias and ne'er retrieved, even from her grave.
Chapter 3
She watched him ascend the stair, entering more deeply into Weregrave with each step, trying to learn something of the man from his willingness to delay the ceremony. Perhaps his actions revealed arrogance that Weregrave could not be taken from him; perhaps courtesy to her needs; perhaps only that he was easily led by his friend, William le Brouillard.
Perhaps nothing at all.
When he had turned upon the stair, his eyes instantly going to hers, studying her, she had covered herself with her women, rejecting his assessment. She could feel the intensity of his gaze. She knew what was said of Rowland the Dark; he was a man who saw into shadows and found shape and form where other men saw only darkness. An unhappy trait for a husband to possess. She knew that he was trying to lay her bare, to understand her as a man would want to understand the woman he was to manage. She refused him the opportunity. She would not willingly allow him to study her. Unfair it might be, but life was seldom, if ever, fair.
The women retreated to the sanctity of the solar, which abutted the hall, separated by only a wall, but a wall that etiquette demanded be barred to men. Within the solar, she was safe from husbands.
And priests. Father Timothy would await her in the chapel, in prayerful meditation. She would occupy herself with her embroidery until her next husband had bathed away the dirt of battle. As if it mattered.
"He is most courteous, is he not?" Perette gushed, her black curls quivering. "Very handsome, too, did you not observe, Nicolaa?"
Nicolaa smiled her response and picked up her needle, threading it with blue.
"He looked a fit man for any woman," Jeanne said, avoiding her place at the embroidery. "You will enjoy yourself with this one, granddaughter, or you're not fit to share my blood." She laughed at that and did not seem to care that no one joined in the laughter. It might have been that none dared.
"Hush, Mother," Agnes said, always quick to defend Nicolaa. "Can you not keep still? It is not your wedding day and it is not you who will soon ... that is, it will soon..."
"Aye." Jeanne laughed. "Soon and soon enough for that man. Have yourself a merry time of it, Nicolaa, and spare not a thought to your grayed grandmother who must do with thin strands of thread when a well-favored man grows hard and long within the walls of Weregrave."
"Keep still, Mother! Can you not keep to your embroidery?"
"My needlework," she grumbled. "Little point there is in endless toil—which is ruining my eyes, I can tell you— with no heirs to gift the goods to."
"Rowland or William—or even Ulrich, for that matter—looks fit enough to make any woman a mother," Blanche said. Blanche, a childless widow, was wont to make such remarks. Nicolaa had learned to let them pass.
"By Saint Winifred, hear yourself, Blanche," Ermengarde said. "How coarse you have become."
"I am not being coarse," Blanche said loftily. "I am merely being observant."
"Such cannot be observed," Nicolaa said softly, her eyes on her needlework, "and it matters not how fit Rowland the Dark appears to be. I am barren. 'Tis a fact well known."
"Think you he knows it?" Beatrice asked.
"If he knew, he would not be here," Nicolaa answered calmly, hoping it was the truth.
* * *
"She has had a husband before me, and I would know her history, yet to ask directly might offend," Rowland said.
"It is you who usually ferrets out such things, yet there is no way for you to hide here, not when you are lord of this holding. And I cannot," William said.
"Nay, you have not the skill for hiding in the shadows, listening to whispers," Rowland agreed.
Both heads turned to Ulrich.
"I will do it!" Ulrich said, his voice as joyful and determined as the look in his shining blue eyes.
"Aye, but can you?" William said, smiling.
"I can," he vowed, striving for seriousness. "Let me prove myself. I will succeed."
"You must tread softly, giving no offense," Rowland said.
"I will. I can. I did the same service in Greneforde when first we did land there, did I not?"
"Aye, yet you found out nothing needful."
"Yet I did not offend!"
"Aye, 'tis true." William said.
The decision was Rowland's and he made it. Ulrich must be used. He was willing, he had some skill, and he was the only one of them able to do it. Many battles had been fought and won with just such a list of qualifications.
"Go, then," Rowland said.
The squire was gone before any more instruction could be given, which was likely his intent.
"He will go first to that comely lass with the black hair," William said. "Perette."
"Aye." Rowland nodded ruefully.
* * *
It was not to be. There was not a woman to be found. Each one, whether aged or comely, was sequestered within the solar, a place no man dared enter unless expressly invited. It was a setback.
Ulrich had not yet found the opportunity to charm any of the women into issuing such an invitation. Given time, he would. He had all the optimism of a young man who had not yet failed in matters of romance.
With a lopsided smile and a shrug of his wide shoulders, Ulrich departed the tower, searching for a fellow squire on whom to pour friendship and gossip and learn of the history of Weregrave in return. He would be subtle—had he not vowed to be?—and he would be quick. Perhaps if he had found a maid he would have tarried a bit, but what pleasure in tarrying with a man?
It took less time than he would have supposed to pry out the secrets of Weregrave, but only because there were no secrets. Nay, all knew. It was only Rowland who was in ignorance as to the history of his bride and Ulrich commanded himself not to shake with outrage at King Henry's gift. Rowland, after all his suffering, deserved better.
Ulrich raced up the tower stair. Rowland met him at the door to William's chamber and faced him squarely. Rowland's expression was open and calm. That such news must be vomited out on such a man... Ulrich fought his anger. Rowland had bathed and dressed, to add honor to his vows of fidelity and constancy. Rowland deserved so much better than what Weregrave offered him.
"Tell me of her husband," he said.
Ulrich swallowed hard and tried to keep his voice from shaking. "Which one, Lord Rowland? Of which husband would you have me speak?"
"How, boy, what say you?" William asked.
"Tell me what you learned," Rowland said very softly.
"Of husbands, Lady Nicolaa has had four."
"Four! Is she four times a widow?" William asked.
"Nay, not ever a widow."
"Repudiated?" Rowland asked. What was so wrong with her that she had been rejected four times? He had seen no flaw.
"Nay, not repudiated," Ulrich said. "Though it is said her last husband was mouthing the words. Nay, king, overlord, and bishop have invalidated each marriage for one reason or another, leaving her husbands free to marry again."
"And did they?" Rowla
nd asked.
"Aye, each one, and in untimely haste. Each man taking a bride of greater worth or greater favor. Leaving no child behind."
He had heard of it. He had seen it once or twice in his life. A marriage invalidated for the thinnest of reasons or the weightiest. In one instance, a husband and wife found to be within the sixth degree of consanguinity after fifteen years of marriage. The wife had finished her days in a convent. The husband had died with a sixteen-year-old bride of considerable worth in his bed. And how had King Henry II come by his wife, Eleanor, she who had jumped from the bed of the King of France to climb in with Henry of England, dragging her Aquitaine riches along with her? Aye, it was done, though it was never well done.
"No child?" William said, his anger growing with his concern. "She has never quickened with child, even to produce it stillborn?"
"Nay, there has been no child, living or dead," Ulrich said.
This was the worst of it. A woman who could not produce a child left her line without an heir; all that had been achieved in this life was lost without a blood heir to carry the name and the legacy of a man into the future.
"You must not do this, Rowland," William said. "I know your heart softens for her even now for what she has faced, but you cannot chain yourself to a woman who is barren. Your future will be as barren as she is."
But what of Nicolaa? Four times cast off and each time by a husband who had sworn to stand by her. How bruised her heart must be to have been so used. That explained the stillness of her; she held herself in the stiff quiet of great pain, her body braced for the next buffeting at the hands of her next husband. It was as he had known. She was fearful—if not trembling in fear then frigid with the unending shock of it. How great was her need of a man who would stand true to her.
Had she loved any of her husbands? Had they left her for no reason but greater profit with another wife? He would not do the same to her.
Let her be barren. It did not matter to him. His future had died with Lubias.
He would remain with Nicolaa.
Claudia graduated from the University of Southern California with a BA in English. While there she became a member of Alpha Phi, one of the oldest sororities in America. A two-time Rita finalist, she has won numerous writing awards and honors since her first novel was published in 2000. She has lived for most of her life in Los Angeles, called Connecticut home for a decade, and currently lives in North Carolina with her husband.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Author's Note
Excerpt - To Burn by Claudia Dain
Excerpt – The Willing Wife by Claudia Dain
Meet Claudia Dain
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Author's Note
Excerpt - To Burn by Claudia Dain
Excerpt – The Willing Wife by Claudia Dain
Meet Claudia Dain
Claudia Dain Page 37
