“A shift, of course. Why?”
A linen piece of cloth that might come to the middle of her thighs, a piece of cloth that would, once wet, leave nothing left unseen. Oh, God. That damned rock lying beside his right hand wasn’t as hard as he was now. “And what about me?”
“I have seen naked men, Jerval,” she said patiently, “from the time I was five years old and finally realized there was a difference. You can strip to your skin if you wish.”
He knew of course that he couldn’t—he simply couldn’t. He would scare her witless. He wouldn’t be able to control himself—he just knew it. It would be too painful. He said, shaking his head, “No, I don’t wish to swim today. I wish to sit right here, with the nice wind off the sea blowing around us, and speak of the future.”
“Very well, if that is what you wish. What future?” She sat down again, still fingering her necklace, caressing the smooth pearls, and he wished her fingers were on him, stroking him.
Now was the time. No reason to put it off. She’d kissed him. She believed him honest and kind. She believed him as fine as her father. Damn. No matter. Forget her father. Surely there was no finer opportunity than right now. He picked up her hand. Calluses, he saw, lightly touching his fingertips over her palm. Dirty nails, but not all that bad. Slowly, he raised his eyes to her face.
He felt the words rumble deep inside him, so many words, spilling over each other. He said finally, “I want you to come back to Camberley with me.”
She merely smiled at him. “Now that I know you as my friend, why naturally I should like to visit Camberley. Perhaps we could go Scots-hunting.”
She was as obtuse as one of the black Welsh boulders strewn across the landscape, though he might be insulting the boulders.
“I don’t want you simply to visit,” he said patiently. “I want much more.”
At last, he thought, she was coming to understand what he was talking about. Her head was cocked to one side and she was looking him straight in the eye.
Spit it out. Just spit it out the way your father spits bones into the rushes. “I want you to be my wife, Chandra. I want you to come to Camberley with me, to live with me, to love me, to have my children, to smile at me until I am finally forced to leave you, hopefully so far into the future that neither of us can grasp it.”
Naturally she hadn’t heard or understood his wit, perhaps just that bit of it right there at the end. It was wit, he knew it was, and he was nearly smiling at himself. But no, she was still looking straight at him, but now her mouth was hanging open, her eyes suddenly unseeing, all of her frozen, and he knew, quite simply, that she didn’t want to believe this, that she wanted nothing to change between them.
She wanted him as her playmate. By all the saints’ toenails, it was enough to make a man curl up on the ground and groan with frustration.
“Chandra?”
Very slowly, she pulled away from him and stood. She was still fingering the necklace. “No,” she said finally, and turned away.
Instant rage turned his blood hot, made him see red. “Just no? That is all you can say to me? Just a niggardly no?”
“That’s right. No.” She had the gall to walk away from him, her stride long, looking like a damned boy.
“Chandra, wait! By all the saints’ prayers, you did not understand me. I want you for my wife. I am asking you to wed me.”
“I understand you well enough, Jerval.” She stopped and turned back to him, her hands splayed in front of her to keep him away from her. “What I don’t understand is why you would do this to me. I believed that you liked me, that perhaps you even believed me somewhat skilled, that you enjoyed being with me. But this? What is in your mind? Are you perhaps ill?” Her eyes lit up with that, and she nodded as she added, “Yes, that is why that rash of nonsense came leaping out of your mouth. You are ill and perhaps even fevered, and that is why you didn’t want to swim with me. You know you are sick and you could perhaps die if you got wet.”
He just stared at her, absolutely amazed. Could she actually be serious? “I swear to you I am not ill or fevered. I am in my right mind. It is time for us to be more to each other than simple friends. Marry me. Be my wife. Belong to me.”
She said nothing at all to that; she just ran to Wicket, climbed onto his broad back, and was off and away. He rose slowly, staring after her, his hands on his hips.
His first marriage proposal hadn’t gone especially well. Then he realized that he’d forgotten to say anything of love to her. Would it have mattered? Did she even have a single idea what love was between a man and a woman?
CHAPTER 9
Richard was speaking with Crecy when Chandra burst into the Great Hall and ran to where he was standing beside the huge fireplace. She was panting and she was pale, very pale, almost as pale as that time when she was thirteen and had been felled by that strange sweating fever that had attacked the village. He’d never left her side.
Then he knew, of course. He waited.
Chandra said, “Crecy, forgive me, but I must speak to my father now. It cannot wait.”
Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps her mother had been tearing at her again, telling her how unnatural she was. No, it wasn’t that. Anything Dorothy said now, Chandra merely flicked away without a thought. He said, “We will finish this later, Crecy.” He waited a moment, until Crecy was out of hearing, then nodded to her.
“Father, he has changed. He must leave. There is nothing more for him here.”
Her face was no longer pale; it was flushed red now. She looked as if she’d run from the Croyland harbor back to the keep. Her hair was flying about her head, and she was still panting hard.
“Who has changed?” But he knew, knew that Jerval had spoken to her of being his wife, and this was the result. No surprise, really, but he had prayed, prayed until he’d been out of words. He sat down heavily in his big chair and tapped his fingertips on the beautifully carved wooden arms.
“Jerval, of course.” She came down onto her knees beside his chair and grabbed his sleeve. “We were having such a very nice discussion of things. Look at the necklace he bought me Everything was as it should be, as I would want it to be, and then he did that. He wants to wed me.” She actually shuddered. “He said he wanted me to belong to him. Can you imagine such a thing?”
Richard gently pulled away her fingers, praying for some kind of inspiration. He knew it was coming. Why hadn’t he practiced what he would say to her? He had to say something, and so he did. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. “I thought you liked Jerval de Vernon.”
“Of course I like him. He does everything so well and he teaches me and laughs at me, but I don’t care. The men like him. He has humor in him that makes everyone smile. He is strong and he is kind. He is very good.”
“You have painted the image of an estimable man.”
“Well, aye, I suppose that I have. But listen to me, Father. I didn’t wish to hear what he had to say to me. Don’t you understand? He wants me to live with him, to bear his children. He wants me to leave you and go away to this place Camberley. Father, you know that I cannot leave you, that nothing like that was ever to happen to me. That is why you didn’t let Graelam have me. You wanted to keep me here, with you. I belong here. That is what you must tell Jerval. Then you can tell him he can either change back to what he was before an hour ago, or he must leave. There is no middle ground here.”
Spit it out, nothing else to do, and so Richard said, “Jerval de Vernon is here because I asked him to come.”
She cocked her head to the side, exactly as he did it, and said slowly, “Why would you do that?”
“Listen to me, daughter. You are a beautiful woman, the pride of my body. I have held you overlong with me, and that’s the truth of the matter. If Graelam had taken you, it would have been my own fault. I should have let Jerval wed you at least a year ago.”
She sat back, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. She was aware of voices in the Great Hall—there were alwa
ys noise and voices and animals running about, fighting, yapping. But the voices were distant; they didn’t touch her. She said even more slowly now, clearly disbelieving still, “You want me to wed Jerval? You knew? That is why he is here?”
“Aye, certainly. I wanted to give you both the chance to judge if you could like each other. You do. He spoke because he was finally ready to speak, because he knew that you were ready as well. Evidently he was wrong, but no matter. What’s done is done.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.”
He reached out his hand and lightly began to stroke her dirty braid. “Chandra, Croyland cannot be your home forever. Surely you must realize that. Don’t you understand? Graelam wanted you, as have others. I even turned away Earl Malthorpe, a cousin of King Henry.” He could see that she wasn’t impressed. He remembered that he had agonized over that, but after having met the man, he knew that his proud daughter would slit Malthorpe’s throat because he, unlike Jerval de Vernon, wasn’t kind or nice or anything good at all. Just rich. Just related to the damn king of England.
“I met Jerval four years ago and I knew he was the man for you, no other, just him. And now everything has come together as I wished it to. You will marry him, and our two houses will be united. It is a good alliance, Chandra.” Not splendid, like the one with Earl Malthorpe, but good enough.
“You cannot mean it,” she said slowly, her eyes never leaving his face. “You cannot mean to send me away.”
It smote him, the rawness in her voice, that look of pain in her eyes, but he had to hold firm. “I wish it. Jerval’s father, Lord Hugh, also wishes it. Jerval has decided he will have you. You like him, you have admitted it. You will continue to deal well with him. He will not try to change you, Chandra. He admires you. Why should he try?”
“He is a man, Father. Whatever else he is, he will want to rut me. He will own me. He will force me to be his broodmare. It is something I won’t do. It is something I cannot do.”
His voice was harsher than he’d intended. “You are a woman, Chandra. You will do what you must do, and that is bear an heir for your husband.”
“How can you give him control over what I am to do and how I am to act?”
He eyed her, seeing her urgency, her fear. By the saints, he hadn’t realized she was so very afraid of mating. He would speak to Jerval, caution him, tell him to go easy. He said, “Listen to me. There are few choices for any of us. Do you believe I wed your mother because I loved her? I wed her because it brought me a huge dowry, brought me even more land. That is what marriage is all about, alliances between great families. There was no choice at all for me. But I have given you to a man you like, to a man who admires you and likes you. You are a very lucky woman. At least Jerval de Vernon is besotted with you, and if you aren’t utterly without sense, if you don’t push him to the wall, he will treat you just as you wish.”
“But a woman must obey her husband—it is her vow before God. You wish me to forget who I am and become a soft, devious creature and manipulate my husband to get what I want? When I want something, Father, I want to get it for myself, not plead and act weak and helpless to make a man do what I want. Do you hear me? I won’t become his chattel, I—”
He jerked her against him, cutting off her furious words, and buried his face in her dirty hair. He felt her holding herself stiff and unyielding, and he stroked her until she eased and nuzzled her cheek against his neck. He remembered the pain he had suffered the year before when he had been gored by a rampaging boar. Chandra had been distraught with fear for him, and had nursed him herself, ministering to his every need as if he had been her beloved child. He felt the pain again, gnawing at him, but there simply was no choice. He said, “I have taught you to be strong, Chandra. You will do what you must, just as I have done. Do you not wish to have children, be mistress of a great holding, set your own mark upon the world, see your children grow into strong men who will carry your blood into the years ahead?”
He felt her shaking her head against his shoulder, and he continued, more quickly. “You cannot remain at Croyland. You weren’t fated to spend your life as a woman who does not know womanhood, a woman who does not experience all that a woman is meant to be. Perhaps I should not have encouraged you to ignore what God intends. You must trust me, Chandra, trust me that I do what is best for you.”
“I want nothing more than to remain at Croyland,” she whispered, raising her face from his neck. “My life is here, not far away with a stranger, a man whom I must obey, a man I do not even know.”
“You know Jerval. I have given you ample time with him. You know him much better than most girls know their future husbands. I have watched you with him, watched you smile and laugh, watched you enjoy his company. Look at the beautiful necklace he bought for you.”
She just shook her head against his neck.
So stubborn she was, so utterly unbending. There was so much of him in her that it was frightening.
It was time now for obedience, time to show her that he really meant his words. “It is what you will do. You will wed Jerval de Vernon. Your loyalty to me will become his. You will trust him as you now trust me, and obey him as you obey me.”
“You’re forcing me to leave because I was not born your son.”
“No, that isn’t true. I am forcing you to face what you are—a woman who must make her life as a woman should. You have a destiny to fulfill, Chandra. You will not hide from it. You will not refuse to face it.”
Words lay dead in her throat. She felt hollow, empty, like a reed flute crushed underfoot when a minstrel tossed it heedlessly away.
She started to turn away from him, but he grabbed her arm and held her still. “Accept what must be done.” Then, because he knew she would probably take a knife and gullet the man who wanted to marry her, he dropped his voice until it sounded mean and low and vicious—a tone he had never before used with her—and said, “Listen to me. You will behave with the greatest respect toward Jerval, Chandra. You will not scream curses on him, you will not demand that he leave, you will not insult him to make him despise you. You will endeavor to remember that before an hour ago, you held him as a good friend. You will obey me in this or I will send you to a convent and you will spend your remaining years on your knees in endless prayers.”
He saw from the utterly frozen look in her eyes that she believed him. Good.
Jerval was coming out of the Great Hall, speaking to Mark. The afternoon sun was bright overhead. It was a warm day, the smell of the jakes not particularly noxious since the breeze was from the west. He saw Chandra and felt something very warm fill him. She was wearing a gown. Her hair was braided, thick and golden beneath the sunlight, and he saw that it was clean. He knew she’d spoken to her father, for Lord Richard had told him that she had. Lord Richard also said that she would wed him, no more than that. What had he said to her? Was he forcing her? Jerval prayed it was not necessary. What was in her mind now? Why was she walking away from him?
Chandra cursed her woman’s long, narrow-skirted gown and walked faster. She wasn’t ready to see him, not yet. Not ever.
A strong hand closed over her arm, steadying her, as she stumbled on a sharp-edged cobblestone.
“Slow down,” Jerval said. “You can’t race me across the cobblestones in a gown.”
He turned her slowly about to face him. Chandra kept her head down, staring at her toes. He was big, damn him. He was too big, blocking the sun.
“Chandra.” He wanted to tell her that she looked beautiful. He wanted to pull that braid of hers apart and rub his face in her hair. He cleared his throat. “Chandra,” he said again, no amusement in his voice, “we must talk, you and I.”
A raindrop fell on the tip of her nose, and she dashed it away and looked heavenward. “How can it rain? The sky was blue just a moment ago. Oh dear, was it a bird?”
He laughed; he couldn’t help himself. She was wonderful, this woman he would marry, no matter what she thought of him right no
w. “No, no bird. Come along to the stables. We can find some privacy there and not get rained on.”
The stable was dim and smelled of sweet hay and manure and horse. He led her to an empty stall and watched her seat herself on a hay bale.
He said, all calm and sure of himself, “You know what your father wants. You have spoken to him, have you not? Right after you left me earlier?”
“Aye.” She jumped up, shook out her skirts, and looked as if she wanted to run.
He started to grab her arm, then stopped himself. He said easily, knowing he had to be calm, go slowly, “You want to leave? We have just begun. Sit down.”
Slowly, he let his hand slide down her arm until his fingers laced through hers. He pulled her down beside him on a thick bale of hay and released her hand.
“Very well. What is it you wish to say?”
She was not making it particularly easy for him, he thought, studying her profile. “I wish you were wearing the necklace. It would be perfect with that gown.”
“No.”
“Face me when you wish to be rude.”
She didn’t mean to be rude, not really. She loved the necklace, loved to touch it. “All right. Here, I’m looking right at you. You gave the necklace to me as a bribe. I realized that soon enough. You thought I would do whatever you wished once that thing was around my neck, didn’t you? That I could be bought with that necklace. Well, it didn’t work.”
“I gave you that necklace because I thought you would like it. It pleased me to give it to you, to see your pleasure. Nothing more than that.”
She said nothing at all, but she didn’t have to. She thought he was a liar.
Jerval sighed. Why couldn’t something this important be just a bit less complicated? “You kissed me,” he said.
“Yes, as I would kiss a friend. Not a man.”
“I’m a man and your friend.”
Damn him, it was true, and so she forced herself to say, “Mayhap so.”