“Best you hope I can, wench, or ’twill not matter how tired I am.” She became so still she did not even breathe. He laughed and hugged her closer. “Do I want you again, your silly antics will not prevent it, so go to sleep ere I change my mind.”
She breathed again and said no more. Warrickwastired, but not so tired that he did not appreciate the warm body pressed to his. There was a benefit to her softness after all, and he realized he could get used to it if he was not careful.
Chapter 24
God was merciful the next morning in allowing Rowena to wake to an empty chamber. She did not know how she was going to endure facing Warrick in the bright light of day after last night, but at least she had a temporary reprieve—but not from the memories.
She groaned as they assailed her, and buried her head beneath the pillow. She had been so sure she could resist begging Warrick, but with his fingers and lips tormenting her, with her blood soaring ever faster with need, the words he had wanted to hear had tumbled from her lips. And she had not cared then, had cared for naught but the exquisite pleasure he had withheld until she did as he wanted. The mortification and self-loathing had come after, but would last for much longer—most like forever. And she still could not bear the thought of facing him and seeing his gloating expression.
She would die, burn up with the shame of it, and he would laugh. Her weakness meant naught to him; his own triumph was everything. Aye, he would laugh, and she would hate him more than ever…
“Unbury yourself, wench, and put these on.”
Rowena gasped and swung around to find Warrick standing beside the bed with her shift and chemise in his hands, as well as the bliaut and shoes she had left in the weaving room. He was frowning at her—and had more to say in his brusque tone.
“Think you you can laze abed as you are likely accustomed, simply because I found some little pleasure in you yestereve? Nay, your status does not change, nor do your duties, which you have thus far neglected this morn. However, as I have already eaten, you need not serve at the high table until the evening meal, so go and break your fast now and attend to your other duties.”
He left before she could come up with a suitable scathing reply. Laze abed indeed. As if she would, especially inhisbed.
And then it dawned on her that she had faced him and survived it. He was not going to gloat about her shame? He was not even going to mention it other than that he had found somelittlepleasure in her? Verily, she did not understand him at all. He had passed up the perfect opportunity for further humiliation.
She glanced at the clothes left on the bed, and her confusion increased. She knewwhyshe had been given servants’ clothes—so she would be constantly reminded by their roughness of her new status. Yet here were her own undergarments back in softest linen to protect her skin. She would still have to wear the servant’s outer gown, but she would no longer be chafed raw by it.
She stared in bemusement at the door through which Warrick had departed. This cruel man refused to let her go hungry, refused to let her get chilled, albeit his concern in those matters was for the babe she carried. But now he refused to let her skin become abraded by the clotheshehad insisted she wear, and that was not for the child. That was only for her. Cruel? Aye, certainly he was—but mayhap not to the core.
Nay, what was she thinking? There was no kindness in Warrick de Chaville, not even a little. No doubt he had some ulterior motive in giving her back her underclothes that she just could not see yet, but was like to cause her embarrassment somehow. The hateful man. Did he have naught better to do than plot ways to plague her?
She dressed quickly, sighing with pleasure at the familiar comfort of her thin white shift and the snug-fitting red chemise that covered her ankles as was proper—for a lady, anyway. The coarse dun bliaut no longer touched her skin at all, but she found she would have a problem keeping it up on her shoulders, now that she had her smooth chemise under it instead of the rough wool that had at least kept the loose garment in place.
Regardless, she felt so much better wearing at least something of her own that she was almost smiling when she entered the hall, and did smile when she saw that Warrick was not there to unnerve her with those chilling silver eyes. She looked for Mildred at the hearth, but only Warrick’s daughters were there with their tutor, learning new stitches. She did not spare them another glance, so did not notice how they watched her all the way to the kitchen stairs, with looks almost as baleful as their father’s.
“Pay her no mind, my dears,” Lady Roberta admonished. “A lady does not deign to notice women of her sort.”
“But she passed the night in his solar,” thirteen-year-old Melisant pointed out. “Celia never passed the whole night with him.”
“Celia is hardly pleasant company with her haughty airs,” Beatrix said with a disdainful sniff.
Beatrix was the older daughter at ten and four, if you did not count the bastard, Emma, whom their father never even asked after, and whom neither legitimate daughter acknowledged as sister. Melisant was the prettier of the two, with her light blond hair and gray eyes, which had just enough blue in them to make them not so cold as her father’s. Beatrix had brown hair and eyes herself, and cheekbones too narrow. She would have been passing fair if her expression were not always so pinched and disapproving. But then, it was a well-known fact that Warrick had been betrothed to her mother at a young age, and her mother had been a plain-looking woman. Whereas Warrick had picked Melisant’s mother himself for her comeliness.
Beatrix did not hold this too much against her younger sister. She was older, after all, and her father’s heir. Melisant would have her mother’s dower property, but Beatrix would have all the rest—as long as there was no male heir. Which was why Beatrix had lived in dread of the Lady Isabella’s coming, and had silently rejoiced to hear the maid was now missing, possibly dead. It had taken Warrick so long to find her when he had decided ’twas time for another wife, and longer still to make contract for her. And he was so busy with his wars and increasing his property, which would be Beatrix’s property, that he would not have time to look for another wife.
But she did not like the rumors she was hearing about the new servant. Twice now it had been whispered to her that the wench was breeding, and that the babe was likely Warrick’s. That was not alarming in itself, for Warrick would never wed a lowly serf, and a serf’s bastard would never inherit Fulkhurst, even were it a male child. But the other rumor she had heard, that the wench was not truly a serf, but a lady born who had merely earned Warrick’s enmity—that put a different face on it.
She did not believe it. Even her father, who was utterly ruthless to his enemies, would not treat a lady so. But if itwastrue, and the girl gave Warrick a son, he might be induced to wed her.
Beatrix knew he wanted a male heir. Everyone knew it. But she could not bear it if it came to pass, not now, after she had lived her whole life with the expectation of having it all. Shewantedit all, needed it. She did not have Melisant’s prettiness. Only the promise of Fulkhurst would get her the husband she wanted.
“There she is again,” Melisant said as Rowena appeared in the hall with Enid in tow this time. “I wonder from where she got that pretty red chemise.”
“Spoils Father no doubt gave her,” Beatrix replied with narrowed eyes. “I think I will summon her and—”
“You willnot, young lady,” the tutor scolded sternly, fully aware of how spiteful her charge could be. “Do you make trouble for your lord’s leman, the trouble is like to come back to you. Remember that for when you have a husband.”
Beatrix glared at the old woman, but did not argue. She had found it easier just to ignore Lady Roberta’s sage advice and then do as she pleased when the pious old fool was not around.
Chapter 25
With the thorough cleaning done yesterday, Rowena and Enid finished early in the solar, so it was well before noon when Rowena climbed the stairs to the weaving room. But she nearly jumped out of her skin when one of the doors she had to pass to get there opened and she was yanked inside.
