Adair heard the door open and, assuming it was Elsbeth, asked, “What is it, Nursie? Can it not wait until I have cured this wretched headache?”
“I think I have waited long enough, madam, to exer-cise my rights over you,” Llywelyn FitzTudor said. His young voice almost squeaked in his excitement, and he could almost taste his victory over her as he walked across the room.
Adair was up and off her bed in a trice. “How dare you enter my bedchamber without my permission, boy!” She wore no shoes. “What do you want?”
“It is past time, madam, that you became my wife in every way,” FitzTudor answered her. He began to loosen his trunk hose and doublet.
“Get out!” Adair said in a cold, hard voice.
“No! I shall have your virginity of you, madam, and none shall say I was not man enough to do the deed,” he told her stubbornly. He tossed his upper garment aside.
“You shall have nothing of me,” Adair said angrily.
“Not my lands, nor the title, nor my virtue, my lord!
When the snows go, you go! Now get out of my chamber or I shall begin to scream for help.”
“The door is locked, and it is my right to have you,”
FitzTudor declared. He moved around the bed in an attempt to corner her.
“Get back!” Adair warned him. “Get back, take your clothing, and go. If you do not I will do what I must to defend myself.”
He laughed aloud. “You are a mere girl,” he sneered.
“A weakling of a female.”
Adair said nothing more. Reaching out, she grabbed the earthenware pitcher from the table by the bed and smashed it over his head as hard as she could. His legs gave way and he began to fall. Adair walked around FitzTudor and, going to the door, opened it and shouted,
“Beiste! To me! To me!” The dog came up the stairs of the house with a roar that emanated from deep within his furred chest. “Take him away,” Adair ordered the dog.
Beiste went over to where FitzTudor lay in a crum-pled heap. He sniffed at the boy just as FitzTudor opened his eyes and, seeing the creature, made a strangled whimpering sound in his throat. Beiste snarled.
Then, opening his mouth, the dog clamped his teeth gently about the boy’s still-shod foot. FitzTudor fainted, his eyes rolling back in his head as Beiste pulled him from Adair’s bedchamber out into the hallway.
“Good dog!” Adair praised her animal. “Go back to Anice and the pups now.” She shut her chamber door and relocked it. Spring, she decided, could not come soon enough for her. What in the name of all heaven had possessed FitzTudor to attempt to assault her? She intended on moving him to a bed space in the great hall and posting a man at arms at her door each night. Elsbeth would sleep on the trundle in her room until Adair had sent the boy back to his family.
She would plead with Uncle Dickon to convince the king to arrange for an annulment, and if the Earl of Pembroke objected to it she would threaten to tell everyone in the kingdom that his by-blow was incapable of mounting a woman and doing his duty by a wife. It would be her word against the boy’s. And she would wager that Jasper Tudor would not wish to have his family embarrassed publicly by a cry of impotence against his son. Adair smiled, pleased with herself and her plan.
February faded away and March quickly followed. FitzTudor complained about having to sleep in the great hall, and berated Anfri for his bad advice. April came, and with it Andrew Lynbridge, who rode up to Stanton Hall early one morning. Finding Adair in the great hall, he greeted her.
“There is an early cattle fair to be held today at Brockton. Would you like to come? The beasts will be a bit scrawny, but the farmers who have housed themover the winter won’t want to feed them any longer, as they are low on feed,” he told her.
“Albert, do we have feed? And how many can we take?” Adair asked her majordomo. “And how long until the meadows can be grazed?”
“Another few weeks for the meadows, my lady, but we have feed enough. Stanton folk will be happy to see cattle back again. We can easily care for two dozen.”
Adair nodded. “Aye, I should like to go with you then, Andrew Lynbridge.”
“Go where?” FitzTudor demanded as he crawledfrom his bed space.
“To Brockton,” Adair said impatiently.
“I cannot allow my wife to travel in the company of another gentleman without me,” FitzTudor said.
“I am not your wife,” Adair said wearily. “Why must you persist in this fantasy? The snows are gone. I shall send you and your wretched servant south this week.”
“You will not leave Stanton Hall without me by your side,” FitzTudor insisted.
