Tempt Me With Kisses (19 page)

“I tell you, it’s unnatural,” Ganore declared, her harsh, firm voice audible through the slightly open kitchen door. “She’s put some kind of spell on him, that’s what, to make him marry her.”

Fiona hesitated, taking a deep breath as she prepared to enter.

“Besotted, that’s what he is—like he’s drunk or insensible,” Cordelia said, just as firmly and just as loudly.

Delightful
. She should go inside and break up the “condemn Fiona” conversation they were having. She really should.

“Aye, or too long without a woman in that big bed of his. I told him time and again he should find a wife, a good Welsh lady like his sainted mother, but did he listen? No! Just growled like a bear and paid me no mind!”

So, Caradoc had not married when or who Ganore told him to. Obviously the woman took this as a personal affront—but really! Why should Caradoc listen to her?

“And look where it’s got him,” Ganore continued. “He’s being led around by the nose by that redheaded Scot. Mark my words, if she’s not bewitched him, he’ll wake up soon enough when he’s had his fill of loving her and realizes what he’s done. I wouldn’t be in her shoes then, I can tell you!”

“There are ways to have a marriage ended,” Cordelia noted with grim satisfaction.

“Aye, it’s easy enough,” Ganore agreed.
“And…”

Fiona held her breath.

“We should all pray hard she doesn’t get with child. Not that I think she will. Barren she is, and I can tell. Her hips are too thin and she’s too pale by far under those spots on her face. That’s another reason Caradoc should get rid of her.”

She had not gotten with child by Iain, thank God, but she would love to bear Caradoc’s offspring. And it was far, far too early yet to be speculating about being barren. Why, they had not yet been wed a month.

“Otherwise, he’ll feel duty-bound to keep her,” Cordelia added, “and there won’t be a word anyone can say to make him change his mind.”

“I’d even wager she knows she’s barren and that’s why she came here bragging of her money, shoving it under Caradoc’s nose. Sly and deceitful, that’s what she is.”

She
had
been deceitful, not telling Caradoc about Iain. But that relationship was in the past, forever in the past. She had been so careful coming here, surely Iain would never find her, and the past could stay buried.

“He’ll turn her out if she is,” Ganore said. “He needs an heir.”

“I think that, of all things, he would make her go if she were barren,” Cordelia confirmed.

She suddenly felt sick. What if that were so? What if Caradoc sent her away?

She had left Dunburn by her own choice, but to be sent off....

Her pride rebelled against that distressing thought.

And what was she doing anyway, listening at the door like a silly girl? She need pay no heed to whatever those two spiteful women said. She should be ashamed of herself, and if what she heard distressed her, that was a fitting punishment.

She pushed open the door and marched into the kitchen, ignoring everyone save Gwillym.

“We shall have fish tonight,” she said in her most commanding manner, one that would brook no protest. “Whatever is freshest.”

“Doesn’t know what day it is,” Ganore muttered behind her, followed by a stifled chorus of snickers.

Fiona fixed her steely gaze on Ganore. She had tried to be understanding and patient, and all she got was disrespect and scorn. “I rule this household the way Caradoc rules the estate, so we will eat what I decide. Do you understand me, or must I make it simpler for you?”

The woman shrugged, her expression still impertinent.

It was past time that Ganore learned once and for all that things had changed, at least as long as Fiona was at Llanstephan.

“Do you forget how to address your lord’s wife?” she demanded, her voice as firm and sure as if she were commanding an army in battle. “And how dare you sit while your lord’s wife speaks to you?”

Their gazes met and held, old, shrewd brown eyes against snapping, younger green ones that would not yield. Finally, Ganore got to her feet. “I understand, my lady.”

“Good,” Fiona snapped as she marched out of the kitchen into the courtyard.

The wind whipped her gown around her legs as she strode toward the gate and struggled to regain control of her seething emotions. Above, heavy gray clouds scudded across the sky, a fitting heaven for her dark mood.

Why couldn’t these people accept their marriage, or her? What had she done that was so very bad? She could not help where she was born, or the color of her hair. She had married their lord and allowed him to keep the estate. Were they really so ignorant of what would have happened if Caradoc had lost it? Did they think some other Welsh lord would get it? Richard would turn it over to a Norman nobleman who would surely have little sympathy and even less mercy for his Welsh tenants.

Nevertheless, a horrible sense of defeat tugged at her. She would probably never win over the servants or Cordelia or Father Rhodri. They would always be cold and distant and critical, and she would be virtually alone again.

At least she had Rhonwen to talk to, and her time with Caradoc to look forward to.

By the time she reached the
ffridd
near the river and realized where she was, her pace had slowed from its furious march.

She looked about as she surveyed the hectic activity before her, not sure what to do. It was like a crowded market on fair day. Men ran about with struggling sheep in their arms, while others cut off the fleece. Boys tore up and down the line of benches where the shearers sat, handing out leather strips or collecting them. Others picked up the shorn fleeces and took them quickly to women folding and rolling them at wide trestle tables. The noise was incredible, from the sheep bleating in the pens, to the men and boys shouting unintelligible commands or answers, to the women chatting at the tables.

She looked for Caradoc, an anchor in this storm of motion.

The men shearing either sat on benches or stood, bending over the sheep in such a way that Fiona’s back ached just to look at them.

At last she spotted her husband straddling a bench near the big enclosure and shearing a sheep. Dafydd was next to him, also shearing.

Like the others, Caradoc was too intent on his task to do much save cut. He might never notice her here. She took a few steps forward, then hesitated. He might not want to be interrupted at his work. And what was she going to interrupt him with? Complaints.

He didn’t need to hear them when he was so busy, if ever. She didn’t want to sound like a weak, helpless woman who couldn’t manage her household, or who whined that people didn’t like her. After all, servants weren’t necessarily supposed to like their mistress; she just wished they would.

She wrapped her arms around herself and contemplated going back. But returning to the castle meant returning to a tense and uncomfortable household, and she didn’t want to do that. She had told Rhonwen she wanted to watch, so watch she would.

Unnoticed by anyone, she sat on the little rise of the hill where she had been with Caradoc on the day of the gathering and observed the frantic activity below.

Some men had the unenviable task of carrying a sheep from the pen to the shearers. Back and forth they fairly ran with their burdens, one arm around the neck of the sheep, the other holding the wool of the side.

The actual shearing itself seemed to go incredibly fast. She kept her eyes on Caradoc after one of the carriers brought him a sheep. First he trimmed the fleece on the animal’s belly. Then, when he was nearly done and without looking up, he called out a single word and one of the running boys handed him a thin leather strip with which he swiftly bound the animal’s legs. Then he laid the sheep on its side on the bench, its head between his muscular thighs. Arching over it, he started to cut the wool from the neck to the rump, moving back and forth between belly and back with amazing speed, the cut fleece folded over the side like a piece of cloth.

Next, as easily as if the sheep weighed little more than its fleece, Caradoc flipped it over onto its other side and started to clip until the whole fleece was kept on by a few strands that Caradoc quickly snipped, freeing the fleece to fall to the ground. He untied the animal’s feet and, now shorn, it scampered off back up the hill.

By the time a young man collected the fleece, another man was already depositing another sheep on Caradoc’s bench.

What had seemed chaos was actually a well-regulated procedure. At one point, Caradoc looked up and she waved, but he didn’t see her. He was checking the cloudy sky, and as he did so, there was an ominous roll of thunder.

More rain would be disaster for the shearers, she knew, so she tried not to pray or even hope for it, although more rain would mean Caradoc would have to leave what he was doing, and come back to the castle with her.

Then she heard another unexpected sound: running footsteps and Rhonwen calling her. “My lady!”

Fiona scrambled to her feet and hurried to meet her. Maybe Ganore had taken sick, she thought hopefully, then condemned herself for that selfish wish.

Her face red, her forehead beaded with perspiration, Rhonwen came to a halt. “A visitor has come, my lady,” she said, panting.

Merciful Savior!

Her whole body tensed, as if someone had shot an arrow through her, and her stomach lurched with dread.

“A Norman, Sir Ralph de Valmonte.”

Not Iain, thank God. A Norman. Not Iain
. “Did he say why he has come? It is about the taxes?”

“I don’t know, my lady. He doesn’t speak Welsh, and I don’t understand the Normans.”

Thunder rolled again, close this time. In its wake, there was a moment’s silence until the voices began again, sounding even more urgent. She looked at Caradoc, whose hands were moving faster. Still nobody had seen her on the rise, or Rhonwen, either. If they had, they obviously thought it of no great significance.

“I shall go back and greet him. You wait here, and when the men stop work, tell Caradoc about Sir Ralph—not before. They should keep shearing for as long as they can.”

One look at the man waiting in the hall was enough to tell Fiona that Sir Ralph de Valmonte was a typically well fed, pompous Norman nobleman, certain of his worth and place in the world. She had seen his sort many times in the cities where her father went to trade. Now as then, she wanted to wipe that satisfied smirk from his face.

Unfortunately, given his rank, she had to be polite.

As she approached him, he ran an impertinent gaze over her, measuring her beauty and her worth, and probably finding her lacking in both. Well, this would not be the first time she had fallen short in a man’s estimation.

She, in turn, scrutinized him. His thinning, mouse-colored hair cut around his face in the Norman fashion only made his plump face look rounder. He was finely dressed in a long indigo tunic of velvet, belted with a wide leather strip embossed with silver studs and clasped with a huge silver buckle. She suspected the belt was intended to make him look slimmer or rope in his girth, but instead he looked like a barrel with a band around it. The shirt beneath his tunic was pristinely white, and his black leather boots shone from polishing.

There was a loud crash of thunder, and a heavy rain began to fall. The men would have to stop shearing, so Caradoc would be here soon.

She stifled a sigh of relief. She was too new to her status as a lord’s lady to be as confident in this situation as she wished to be.

However, until Caradoc arrived, she would do the honors as befitted her station as best she could, and hopefully in such a way that neither this Norman, or the servants peeking out of the kitchen corridor, would find fault with her.

“Greetings, Sir Ralph,” she said in Norman French as she reached the dais and bowed. “I bid you welcome to Llanstephan Fawr.”

The Norman gave her an insolent little smile to go along with his equally insolent scrutiny. “And who might you be, sweeting?”

“I am the wife of Lord Caradoc, Lady Fiona.”

The man’s eyes widened and his smile disappeared. “Sir Connor said nothing about his brother being recently wed.”

“I do not think Sir Connor yet knows of his brother’s marriage.”

The Norman’s brow rose in more surprise.

“We have not been married long,” she said by way of explanation.

She spotted Una peering out of the door to the kitchen corridor and signaled her to come closer. “Would you care for some wine?” she asked as the woman reluctantly obeyed.

He looked doubtful.

“It’s from France,” she assured him.

“If it is from France, I will.”

Fiona wasn’t about to bellow the request across the hall, so she waited until Una drew near. “Please bring wine for our guest.”

Una looked as if she would rather eat a sword.

Sir Ralph leered at the maidservant. “What’s
your
name, sweet?”

Una was far from the first blush of youth, and while she had a pleasant enough face–when she wasn’t sneering–she was not particularly attractive. Sir Ralph had to be one of those men who flirted with maidservants as a matter of course, treating them as objects for his amusement or perhaps practice.

He could use all the practice he could get.

When Una didn’t answer at once, Sir Ralph frowned and turned to Fiona. “Hasn’t she been taught to reply to her betters?”

“She’s Welsh, Sir Ralph,” Fiona calmly answered. “She cannot understand you.”

But she understood the tone well enough, Fiona was sure. Any woman would—and be just as disgusted as Una looked to be.

“Please fetch some wine, Una, for this fat fellow,” she said in Welsh, smiling a false smile all the while.

Una was clearly taken aback by Fiona’s epithet. “Aye, my lady,” she mumbled as she bowed. “At once.”

Bang!

The door to the hall burst open and an obviously disgruntled Caradoc came striding in, dripping wet. Behind him came an equally sodden Rhonwen.

Caradoc came to an abrupt halt when he saw their guest, then marched forward. Between his plain clothes and soaking state, he looked more like an irate shepherd than the overlord, and it was quite clear from Sir Ralph’s sneer that he assumed that was indeed the case. “What does this fellow want?” he demanded, as if Caradoc stank.