The Marriage Test

by Betina Krahn

  His face blanched as he turned to Axel and Greeve.

  “Bring Bertrand to me. Now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Things were exceptionally quiet in the hall as His Lordship ushered her to a seat on the dais to wait for the knight to be brought from the barracks. The baron joined them and His Lordship removed his helm and gauntlets—handing them off to a squire—then called for Grandaise’s best wine to be served straightaway.

  She watched him pace the dais and was unable to understand why her charge was met with such skepticism from him and the rest of the knights. He had mounted an armed force to retrieve her from Verdun, but he refused to believe her story about who had betrayed her into captivity?

  “I’m telling the truth, milord,” she said, looking from him to the baron and back. “I have no reason to lie about who abducted me.”

  “Nor, we thought, did Bertrand,” His Lordship said grimly. “He was brought back to Grandaise beaten and bloody.” He looked to the main doors of the hall, where Axel and Greeve had disappeared. “If he wasn’t beaten by Verdun’s men, then who beat him?”

  She shook her head, having no explanation and feeling suddenly like she was the one against whom evidence was being gathered. She had a number of other things to tell him, but if he wouldn’t believe her on this, he surely wouldn’t believe the rest of what she had to say.

  It seemed an age before Greeve reappeared in the doorway and strode quickly through the hall with Axel panting along behind. Greeve glanced with a misery-laden smile at Julia before announcing to his lord:

  “He’s gone, milord. His bed, his garments, his armor—everything.”

  “Absconded,” Axel added. “His horse is gone from the stable.”

  “Dear God.” His Lordship broadened his stance, bracing, looking shaken by the news and its implication. “Bertrand. Verdun’s foil. He never gave a single indication … and he was brought back injured …” He stood for a moment, letting the news sink in before lifting his head and forcing himself to shake off the vile feeling of betrayal.

  “Let it be known,” he announced to all in the hall, “that if Bertrand de Roland is found on Grandaise, he is to be seized and brought immediately to me.” A muscle flexed in his jaw as he took Julia’s hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “Come. You look tired, demoiselle.”

  “I feel fine, milord.”

  “Believe me, demoiselle, you are more fatigued from your ordeal than you realize,” he declared, pulling her toward the arches leading to the steps. She was surprised that he whisked her away so forcefully. But she was even more surprised when he took her straight to the chamber she had shared with Regine instead of his own quarters.

  For a moment, he stood looking around the sparsely furnished quarters, as if collecting and assembling his thoughts from the chamber’s unused corners.

  “Why did you bring me here, milord?” Some of the tension visible in his face migrated into her.

  “I wanted to tell you out of others’ hearing …” he said, looking at the bed, the table, the stools, the floor. She braced privately. “There will be no change between us or in my household as a result of what we were forced to do today.”

  “I don’t think I understand, milord. What are you saying?”

  “Verdun contrived this wedding to ruin me with the king. No doubt his messenger is on the way to court even now with word of our vows.” He dragged his hands up and down his face. “I don’t yet know how the king has responded to the word I sent him of your abduction. But I am sure Verdun will try to make it appear that I have violated the truce and the king’s command in wedding you.

  “To make matters worse, it will also appear that I have just violated my agreement with your abbess and the duke of Avalon. If my lands and title are not stripped from me by the king, I may lose them to the duke and the convent in reparation for dishonoring our agreement.”

  Dishonor? Reparation? He was speaking of their vows in such terms? She fell back a step, found herself at the edge of the bed, and sat down with a thud. She hadn’t expected him to be pleased about wedding her—not at first—but she could scarcely believe that he thought being bound to her in wedlock was nothing more than his enemy’s damaging contrivance.

  “I wedded you to keep you safe, but a wedding does not a marriage make. As long as the vows are unconsummated, you may still be allowed to return to the convent. I will seek an annulment, but if that fails … I believe you may still take vows with my permission.”

  “I don’t want your ‘permission.’ ” She felt as if everything in her chest was melting, creating a hollow where her heart had been. “I don’t want to go back to the convent. I’ve never wanted to take vows.”

  “What you want has nothing to do with it.” He stalked closer to her, his arms pressed tightly to his sides. “I am bound by honor to fulfill my agreement with your abbess and the duke.”

  “You speak of honor—what about honoring the vows we spoke this day before a priest?” she said, anger rising into the stunned void inside her.

  “We spoke words—that is all.”

  “Words that were powerful enough to make Verdun release me,” she declared hotly, shooting to her feet. “Words powerful enough to make you fear the king could strip you of your lands and title.”

  “What I am saying is … words don’t make a real marriage.”

  “Tell me, milord, what do you think does make a real marriage?”

  Something in the tone and timbre of her voice made him look at her, and the moment he did it he knew it was a mistake. Her cheeks were flushed, her burnished hair was sweetly tossed, and her eyes flashed like faceted emeralds … dark-centered wells of feeling and response he had experienced and been unable to forgive himself for wanting again and again.

  “I-I don’t know.” He felt an alarming surge of heat that had nothing to do with anger. “But I do know that this”—he gestured between them—“is not it!”

  He backed with jerky motions to the door and exited. After he cleared the landing, it felt like he was falling down that incline of steps … catching himself with first one leg and then the other … always just one lurching motion away from being flat on his face.

  His talk with her had been every bit as bad as he feared it would be. She thought their vows had somehow affirmed and ennobled the desire between them, and made it into something acceptable. But with duty, diplomacy, and destiny all against it, how could it be anything but a disaster?

  He was a lord; she was a cook. He was ordered to marry another; she was promised to God. He had to think of an irate king and duke and bishop and abbess, while defending his lands from a dangerous, grasping neighbor; she didn’t want to think of anything but their mutual desires. She had no idea of the dire ramifications of what had just happened to them. All she cared about was—

  What? Being held in his arms … melting against him … the way she had as they rode back from Verdun? If he had anything to do with it, that would be the last time he suffered the sweet torture of holding her in his—

  He stopped in the hall as wave after wave of memory fanned through his senses … the softness of her against him, the prisms of tears in her eyes, the way she curled against his chest and made him feel as if she were melting into him. It suddenly felt like the very foundation of his determination was dissolving and leaching from him like chalk from old bones.

  She cared for him. He swallowed against the emotion filling his throat. And he cared for her more than would be wise to admit, even to himself.

  The intensity of his longing suddenly jarred him back to reality.

  But a noble marriage wasn’t about harbored passions and feelings run amuck. Marriage was about advantages of property and power and alliance, about duty and heirs and obligation. Marriage was an organizing, civilizing influence to be entered into with deliberation. Not at the tip of an enemy’s sword.

  He scowled and proceeded into the hall.

  Why the hell couldn’t he have t
hought of such things when he was talking to her just now?

  Julia stumbled to the bed and sat down, feeling drained and hollow and strangely more bereft and alone than she had as a prisoner at Verdun. She had said marriage vows, but according to her groom, wasn’t truly married. She was to go back to the kitchens and cook and pretend nothing had happened.

  She looked down at the ivory lutestring silk of her gown. It was a lady’s gown. A fitting bridal garment. For a wellborn lady.

  The hollow feeling in her center grew.

  She closed the door, untied her side lacings, and drew off the lovely gown to pack it away in the small chest she had brought with her from the convent. Sophie had kept her other, better gown, so the only thing she had to wear was an older brown woolen one she had cleaned with fuller until it looked the color of rusty ashes. Thinking that it would have to do, she donned it over her chemise and tied the laces at the sides. She looked down at the patch on the skirt that covered a hole burned by a popping ember, and reached into her chest for one of the two aprons she had stitched long ago when learning to sew. As she pulled the drawstring over her head and wrapped the fabric around her, she fingered the girlish, uneven stitches and recalled the hope and anticipation with which they had been made.

  She had a sudden and powerful yearning for old Sister Archibald, with her sage advice and warm, sensible wisdom. Her throat tightened and her eyes began to burn. A moment later she was running down the steps and out a side door, headed for the one place on Grandaise where she could come close to the comfort she missed … the chapel.

  Father Dominic, the priest who served the lord and people of Grandaise, was busy tending a small plot of earth at the side of the chapel when she arrived. When he saw Julia running for the chapel doors, with tears streaming down her face, he rose and dusted the soil from his hands and cassock. He entered the chapel and found her kneeling by the altar railing, pouring out her heart in a stream of sobs and half-audible prayers.

  “Here, here, my child. It can’t be all that bad,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. She gave a start and looked up. Seeing it was the priest, she swallowed back a sob and turned to sit on the step in front of the railing.

  “The sun still treads its appointed course, the seasons come and go, and the Creator still looks upon it all with a smile. Everything else is subject to change, my child.” He smiled. “Including human hearts.”

  “Not all hearts, Father. Some are made of stone.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her palm. “Or they wish they were.”

  “Hardened and stony hearts are God’s own personal grief,” he said with a sigh, sitting down on the kneeling step beside her. “They’re the very reason for all of this, you know.” He waved to the chapel and altar and their trappings. “The Almighty wants to crack open our crusty and difficult hearts … to fill them with such peace and joy and goodness that they overflow into the world around us and make it a better place.” He gave a rueful shrug and looked around them. “Unfortunately, we have quite a way to go.”

  She nodded and he gave her hand a squeeze.

  “It may help you to know that many fervent prayers were answered by your return to Grandaise.” Father Dominic chuckled. “I saw faces at mass in these last few days that I usually only see at Christmas and Easter. We are all grateful for your safe return, demoiselle. Or should I say ‘my lady’ ?”

  She winced.

  “I’m not anyone’s ‘lady,’ Father. Least of all His Lordship’s.” She halted and struggled with how best to say what was on her mind. “What makes a marriage, Father? A real and true marriage?”

  “Ah.” The little priest nodded, understanding now what was troubling her. “I’ve heard of these vows of yours. The village, the barracks, and the barns are abuzz with talk of them.” He searched her troubled face. “Unfortunately, the church law is not as clear as we would wish it to be on such matters. There is the matter of spoken vows—which, I take it, were said.” She nodded. “Then there is the matter of volition. The vows must be said of one’s own will. Which, I take it, may be where the problem lies.”

  “The vows were forced,” she said dejectedly.

  “And then, there is the matter of consummation. I take it you have not …”

  “How could we have?” She looked so horrified that he smiled.

  “I thought not. I do hear all of the confessions, hereabouts, you know.”

  “Are there laws prohibiting nobles from marrying … non-nobility?”

  “No. In fact, there have been some famous instances of French noblemen wedding common-born women. But, didn’t I hear that you are wellborn?”

  “My father was a baron. But a poor one. And not well-known.”

  “A status shared by half of the nobility of France.” He chuckled and clapped his hands on his knees. “It appears to me, my dear, that your problem is mostly a matter of volition—willingness. If you want to be married, you are.”

  “But what if only one of us wants to be married?”

  He scratched his tonsured head and sighed again. “Then I believe one of you will simply have to convince the other … one way or another.”

  Trudging back up to the house, her thoughts were on her conversation with Father Dominic and on convincing His Lordship they were truly married before he could convince her they weren’t. That was no small task, considering that he would have to accept her as his lady wife while knowing as he did that it meant he would have to stand up for her to the duke and the abbess and even the king.

  She bumped into something and jerked back with a gasp. Her feet had, out of habit, carried her to the kitchen door, where a moveable pink wall named Fleur stood munching stolidly under the watchful gaze of her keeper.

  “Welcome back, milady,” Jacques said, dragging his hat from his head and giving Fleur a nudge with the staff he carried. “Go on, Fleur—give ’er a nod.”

  The pig looked up, and Julia could swear she bobbed her head before going back to her bucket of peels and slops. Jacques grinned, revealing a new gap in his teeth. Feeling an odd trickle of warmth, Julia smiled back and ventured a scratch of the pig’s bristly ears.

  Just then, one of the potboys ambled out the kitchen door, saw her, and darted back inside to shout to the others: “She’s here! Laydee Jul-ya’s here!”

  Heartbeats later she was being dragged inside the kitchen, where the folk bowed and curtsied awkwardly and some grabbed her hands to squeeze. The heat-polished faces and the familiar smells of flour and cabbage and onions and roasting fowl unleashed a torrent of emotions in her; it was all she could do to keep from dissolving into tears.

  “Sister Reggie, she was a great help,” Old Mae declared, putting an arm around Regine, who blushed becomingly. “Kept us all hard at it.”

  “Helped us remember what was in th’ dishes,” Old Albee added. “I’ll ’ave ye know, I been changin’ my grease regular.”

  “I’m sure you all did very well.” Julia blinked away moisture as she patted his huge, scarred hand.

  She looked around the substantial stone walls, glowing hearths, and soaring ceiling. This was her kitchen, her home, the source of her strength and her hope. Whatever she did to win his heart and her future, it would have to begin here.

  “I’m proud of you for working so hard while I was gone.” She reached for an apron and began to roll up her sleeves. “Now, let’s get to work and make this a fine supper for His Lordship and his guests.”

  They stared at her with mouths agape, until one of the older girls spoke up.

  “But surely ye ain’t gonna still work in th’ kitchens … are ye, milady?”

  “Of course I am. I’m still head cook. It’s what the Almighty and His Lordship have put me here to do, and it’s what I intend to do until they tell me otherwise.” She looked around with a growing sense of determination and her gaze fell on the wooden trough used for mixing dough.

  “Look at those lumps. Oh, Cheval”—she looked to the brawny roaster with a stubborn smile—“we ha
ve work to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  All evening as Julia oversaw the cooking and planned the week’s menus and acquisitions, the kitchen folk watched her with mounting dismay. Even they knew a lord’s wedding day was supposed to be a time for feasting and merriment. But their lord hadn’t mentioned a keg, pudding, or wafer, much less a whole feast of celebration. Even stranger, their new lady spent the balance of her wedding day working like a common cook. Then she closed down the kitchen and sent the other cooks off to their rest before she went to hers.

  It wasn’t right. They wagged their heads as they shuffled off to their beds.

  Sister Regine agreed with them.

  “So, you’re sleeping in our room tonight,” she said as Julia trudged along beside her, up the steps toward their shared chamber.

  “And every night,” Julia responded. “For the foreseeable future.”

  “I thought husbands and wives were supposed to share bed and board. If you’re married, why are you not sharing either one?”

  “The problem seems to be that we were wedded at sword point. Since we didn’t have the proper ‘volition,’ His Lordship is of the opinion that ours isn’t a real marriage. And he’s determined that our ‘almost-marriage’ won’t change anything in his life or his household.”

  Regine folded her arms in indignation.

  “Well, if you ask me—and I’m very well aware that you didn’t—that man could use a few changes. In fact, he could use a wife.”

  “How is that?” Julia opened the door of their chamber. “What could a wife give him that he doesn’t already have?”

  “You honestly don’t know?” Regine looked surprised, then her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t pay attention in Sister Rosemary’s lectures on marriage.”

  “I was always getting called out to the kitchens,” she said crossly. “Unlike some of the girls, I had a full slate of duties to attend.”

  “Then listen carefully and I’ll try to summarize. Sister Rosemary’s ‘principle of necessity’ is that a wife is indispensable in three areas: a man’s heart, a man’s home, and a man’s future. Her ‘principle of pride’ is that there are three areas in which men believe they need no help or interference: their passions, their possessions, and their futures. It doesn’t take but half a wit to see that the ‘principles of necessity’ and the ‘principles of pride’ are bound to clash.”