Page 31 of The Maiden

“Or is it that you do not want the people to think you cannot take your wife’s virginity,” she said softly. She could feel his breath on her lips.

His eyelids lowered. “I can take it all right, make no mistake of that.” He glanced down at her lips and back to her eyes. “But I will not.”

She moved away from him. Whatever his stupid English reasons were for rejecting her, he was doing just that, rejecting her. It was another reason in her long list for hating him. “I will remain here and—”

“No!” he said loudly. “Whether you want it or not, you are my wife and you will act as such. If you do not share my bed, you will share my room, or tent, as it may be. I will let nothing stand in my way of uniting the tribes. If the people want to see me with my virginal wife, then they will see me—and I will be able to see that you do nothing evil behind my back.”

“If I put a sword through you, it will be in your heart not in your back.”

“I assume that is meant to ease my mind,” he said dryly.

“Take it how you want,” she said, glaring at him, then her expression turned to curiosity. “How do you plan to unite the tribes? Conquer them?”

Rowan moved away toward the window. “In a manner of speaking. I want to marry them to each other so that in a couple of generations they will be so interbred they will not know which tribe they are. They will only be Lanconians.”

Jura smiled at him. “And how do you plan to do this? Ask them to marry people they hate?” Her smile disappeared. “You know nothing of us. The tribes would die before giving up their identity. Why don’t you go back to your England and leave us in peace before you cause a war—if you live that long?”

“And will you return with me?”

Jura was aghast. “Live in England, where the women must beg the men for their favors?”

Rowan opened his mouth to explain but closed it again. “I will not try to explain to you. Your duty is to obey and nothing else. You are to go with me as I travel across Lanconia and nothing else. I want no advice from you nor any comments. You are to be a proper wife.”

“An English mouse, you mean,” she said. “You will find a Lanconian woman not so easy to subdue as your pale English dolls. I will go with you. What does it matter? I will be a widow by the next full moon.” She turned on her heel and left the room.

As she moved along the dim stone-walled corridors toward the main hall, she thought of what a fool the man was. As if he could march into the main city of each tribe and ask them to please stop hating each other. She was right, someone would kill the fool within days.

And as for his not bedding her, that was truly puzzling. Was it that he did not desire her? That seemed a ridiculous thought or maybe all Englishmen were as passionate about women as this one was about her. Or perhaps he could not consummate their marriage. She shrugged. Who could understand the thoughts of a foreign idiot?

“You are Jura,” said a small, breathless voice. “You won.”

Jura looked down to see the little son of the Englishwoman. She suspected he was younger than his height indicated, and, to her, his pale skin and hair looked like bread that had not been baked long enough. The wall torch made the boy look as if his face were carved out of a pearl.

“What do you want?” she asked, looking down at the child. He was a young enemy now but he was indeed her enemy.

“I saw you,” the boy said, his eyes as round as blue meadow flowers. “I saw you win. I saw you beat everybody. Would you teach me to run like you do? And wrestle? And shoot a bow?”

Jura couldn’t keep from smiling. “Perhaps.”

The boy smiled up at her.

“There you are,” said a voice at the end of the corridor. It was the young man called Montgomery and Jura’s hand instinctively went to her knife, but the young man was merely gazing at her in a way that Jura knew was complimentary. Her hand relaxed.

“This is Jura,” the boy said proudly.

“Yes, I know,” Montgomery said, and smiled. Jura saw that he was going to be a splendid-looking man and she smiled back at him.

“What is this?” Rowan shouted from behind the trio. “Montgomery, have you nothing to do but drool over my wife? No armor to clean? No weapons to sharpen? No lessons to study?”

“Yes, my lord,” the boy said, but he gave Jura another smile before he left.

Young Phillip, at the sound of his uncle’s shout, had moved between Jura and the wall, his arms going around her thigh and holding on to her. Jura looked down at the boy in surprise.

“Phillip!” Rowan said sharply. “What do you think you are doing?”

“This is Jura,” he said as if this were an answer.

“I know full well who she is, now come away from her.”