SirenSong (10 page)

Then he said gently, “Alys, will we eat today or not?” and
she started out of the unhappy thoughts masked behind her quiet features and
jumped up to see whether the tables were laid for dinner. Raymond rose also,
and William nodded dismissal at him pleasantly.

When they were gone, he covered his eyes with his hands and
let out a long breath. He hoped he would be able to eat enough so that Alys did
not notice he was out of sorts. Welcome a war in Wales? He would welcome a
cataclysm that shook the earth! Anything that would take him away from Marlowe
would be welcome. How the hell was he going to sit here, two miles away from
Elizabeth? He could feel the muscles in his legs tense with the desire to get
up and go to her.

Ridiculous! For ten years they had lived two miles apart.
But he had not known how much contempt and dislike she felt for her husband. He
had not held her in his arms, nor tasted her lips, nor realized that she had
loved him as quietly and hopelessly as he loved her all those years. If Mauger
should die… William removed his hands from his eyes and they made fists. No.
Mauger had done nothing in himself to merit hatred. He had his faults—he was
vain and ambitious and a bad landlord and he cared nothing for his wife's
comfort and self-respect—but he was not cruel or brutal or even dishonest.

There was no way out of this coil, none. Why had Elizabeth
not stood fast? When his father had first announced to him that he was to marry
the heiress of Bix, he had said no flatly. He would have Elizabeth of Hurley or
no one. For days his father had reasoned and pleaded, then he descended to more
direct methods of persuasion. William had been beaten, confined to a dank wall
chamber, threatened with everything old Sir William could think of. He would
have endured forever, or died, but Elizabeth had yielded. Why? Why? Stop being
a fool, William told himself. She was thirteen, a frightened child in a strange
keep with no one to turn to. She did not betray you. She could not help it.

Chapter Five

Lady Elizabeth had sat quietly as her husband and the man
she had loved all her life discussed the knight who had come to William’s keep
and the pending trouble in Wales. She did not really hear what they said,
although her body seemed to throb in response to William’s voice. Why had he
yielded? Elizabeth asked herself bitterly. He was older than she, stronger than
she. If she had been able to resist being beaten, locked up, fed nothing but
bread and water, and not much of that, why had William broken the oath they had
sworn to each other?

She rose when the men did, but did not accompany them out of
the keep. Like a sleepwalker she said a formal farewell and issued a formal
invitation to her guest to return. Then she went up the stairs to her own
chamber and closed the door. There she sat in a chair beside the banked embers
of the morning’s fire. She tried to free her mind of old grief, but the feeling
of being betrayed had been renewed, almost as fresh and bitter as when her
father had first told her that William was married. Perhaps she would not have
believed him if he had not enjoyed telling her so much. They had been through
the familiar pattern…

“You will go to Ilmer and marry Sir Mauger.”

“I will not. I will escape on the road and take sanctuary.
If I am watched too close, I will refuse at the altar. If I am made unconscious
and answers given for me, I will escape from Ilmer and take sanctuary and seek
annulment by right of forced unwillingness. I will marry no man except William
of Marlowe.”

She had waited, braced for the beating that would come, eyes
full of tears, trembling and wincing away from the pain of blows on her already
bruised body—but no blow had fallen. Her father had laughed.

“You will not marry William, for he is wed already to Lady
Mary of Bix.”

And while she was still stunned, he had led her out to
confront William’s father, who had confirmed the news. Seeing her battered
countenance, old Sir William had looked distressed. “You must understand,
Elizabeth, that marriage is not a matter of childish dreams. With your brother
Gilbert already contracted to my daughter Alys, there is no reason for another
blood bond between Hurley and Marlowe. Your brother John must be provided for.
Your daughter’s portion is simply not enough for my heir. William has accepted
Lady Mary. She brings a most comfortable estate, plus the keep at Bix, into our
family.”

What galled her worst of all was that “has accepted.” The
words rang in her head for months so that all through the trip to Ilmer and her
marriage, she was like a lackwit. She thought of how she had suffered, the pain
and fear and hunger and thirst—and William “had accepted” a better offer. She
hated herself for being a fool, hated William for having made a fool of her,
hated Mauger simply for existing. But life rolls on.

The shock of her husband’s blatant infidelities as soon as
she was with child had, oddly enough, restored Elizabeth’s balance and her
sense of humor. It was when she heard herself muttering, “I will kill him,”
that she began to think rationally.
Kill him for what
? she asked
herself.
Do I want him abed with me
? The answer was no. She had made it
clear that she found her husband loathsome. Was it so unnatural that he should
salve his pride by bedding a mistress openly?

Aubery’s and John’s births had given her someone to love,
and then all her father’s plans had come undone. First William’s sister Alys
had died in childbirth and the child with her, then Gilbert and John… That
memory hurt. Such a senseless, inexplicable way they had died—and Elizabeth had
loved her brothers, who had always tried to shelter her from their father. So
they had come back to Hurley, she and Mauger, for her father had been broken
when his sons were killed and he had not outlived them long.

By then Elizabeth no longer hated William. She herself had
made expedient adjustments to life for the sake of her own comfort and she
understood such expediencies better. Was she not already thinking in terms of
advantageous marriages for her boys? It was just as well she had adjusted
because Mauger, casting his eyes over the lands of Marlowe, insisted that they
be good neighbors and dear friends with those so close to them. He had ridden
over to visit, had seen five-year-old Alys, and had come back full of a
proposed union of the estates. How he induced William to come to Hurley,
Elizabeth did not know, but the instant their eyes met she knew William had not
forgotten. And as soon as she saw him with Mary, another pain had been salved.
William was no happier with his wife than she was with Mauger.

He had been stiff at first, formal and awkward, but time had
smoothed their meetings until the easy exchange of thought and laughter between
them had become a pleasure once more. Then Mary died. For months misery and
jealousy tortured Elizabeth again. This time William would choose a wife for
himself and, naturally, he would choose a girl he could love. But William did
not marry. Years passed and Elizabeth grew happy, even though she often lay
awake at night tortured by unfulfilled desire. She mothered his daughter,
teaching her the women’s skills that Martin did not know.

And now… Mauger had had many mistresses, but none of them
had been so incredibly stupid as Emma. In the presence of a noble visitor, the
preceding whores had the sense to make themselves scarce. William’s rage had
undone her. It had showed her that he had never shamed his wife in the same
way, no matter how little he cared for her, and the rage had also salved a hurt
she did not know she had borne. The passion she had hidden so long broke its
bounds. She would have given herself to him with joy, if only he had not said
those words.

I will honor you as you deserve
. How dared he! He had
betrayed her once. When it became convenient, would he not betray her again?
Even as the bitter thought passed through her mind, Elizabeth knew it was
unfair. William had loved his father. It is a hard choice between love and
love, and William was only seventeen, his best friend the richest earl in the
kingdom. The need for a greater estate must have been very clear to him, even
if she, who had never been to court nor mixed with those far richer than
herself, did not then understand. She understood now. Mauger never ceased to
cry of his poverty, of his need to make a show to impress those who could
advance his sons’ positions.

Because life had taught her tolerance, Elizabeth did not
wound William by speaking her bitterness aloud. Besides, she loved him. That he
had given her up for profit was a weakness she could never forget nor
completely forgive, but it had no effect on her love. And he had been steadfast
for five years. He could have married and married very well. Yet, he did not
marry. Surely that was for her.

The bitterness faded. Elizabeth’s green eyes glowed as she
recalled instead the heat of William’s mouth, the blessed strength of his arms
around her. She wanted him…wanted him! Yet all the things she had said were
true. She loved her sons. Was it right to burden them with a mother who could
rightfully be called “whore”? It would bring war. William’s hope of concealing
her at Bix was foolish. It would certainly be the end of any hope that Alys
would wed Aubery.

That, at least, would be no disadvantage, Elizabeth thought,
temporarily diverted from her own troubles. It had been some years since she
had thought that that marriage could possibly be happy. At first, when Aubery
and Alys were children and played pleasantly together, Elizabeth had been as
enchanted with the idea as Mauger had been, and supported it warmly. In recent
years, however, she realized that Alys had been mothering Aubery, that she was
far older than he in emotions and outlook, and that as Aubery matured and
noticed this, he strove constantly to dominate Alys. This, Elizabeth knew,
would be disastrous to a marriage between them. Both Alys and Aubery had much
good in them, but Alys needed a man who would appreciate her strength and
Aubery needed a woman who would appreciate his.

She had already mentioned this problem to William. He agreed
that it was something to consider but felt that it was too soon to reject the
relationship out of hand. Elizabeth understood that the attraction of having
his daughter so near him, of not losing her entirely, made William unwilling to
face the facts. That had annoyed Elizabeth at the time, but now when she
thought of it her throat tightened with unshed tears. Poor William. He was
lonely.

She was lonely also. Perhaps she and William… No. It was
best not even to think of it. She was still young enough to get with child, and
that was surely a way to come home by Weeping Cross. Mauger had not been in her
bed for many years. Tears filled her eyes. She had said she needed William’s
friendship, but could they be friends now?

She heard a shod horse clattering over the planks of the
drawbridge over the inner ditch. It seemed to her that Mauger and William had
stood talking a very long time after they had left her. Had Mauger noticed
anything different in her manner? William’s voice had been as usual—or had it?
Elizabeth had not dared look at him. Had Mauger noticed that? She was of so
little interest to him, except that she saved him the cost of a steward, that
he had never noticed previously how much she looked at William.

But Elizabeth was totally mistaken. Although it was
generally true that Mauger, who was by no means stupid, did not pick up the sly
double entendres his wife used to relieve her feelings about him and that he
did regard her as a dull and docile domestic animal, he was enormously proud and
possessive. He had no intention that any other man should be able to use his
property or cuckold
him
and was always alert to signs of incipient
betrayal.

Elizabeth’s rejection of him and lack of interest in any
other man during the first five years of their marriage had nearly convinced
Mauger that she was a sexless creature only capable of breeding. Then William
of Marlowe had come to Hurley and could not, no matter how he struggled, keep
his eyes for long from her. That had set up a train of thought in Mauger’s
mind.

Marlowe was a rich holding, richer than Hurley partly
because the town of Marlowe held the docks for the river traffic. The tolls
were shared, since Hurley commanded the river also and could stop the traffic
if the demands of its holder were not satisfied. Yet the profit from the town
itself, from the merchants and artisans who sold to the boatmen and repaired
the boats, went to Marlowe alone. It would be very nice, Mauger thought, if he
owned Marlowe too. And the hot spark in Sir William’s hazel eyes held out a
hope of how that could be arranged.

Within the year the families visited back and forth
frequently and the children were fast friends. Mauger proposed that Alys and
his son be contracted in marriage. William, his eyes on the happy children and
his memory full of how Elizabeth and he had played and loved, young as they
were, was ready to agree. There was no thought in William’s mind that Mauger
desired Marlowe. Mary was alive and, in fact, breeding when the proposal was
first made. Although many babes had died, Alys lived, and the next to live
might be a son.

It was Mary, limp, colorless Mary, who objected. She did not
wish her daughter to be contracted until she had a son alive and likely to live
to maturity. There would be plenty of time for a formal contract. Let it go for
now as a hopeful possibility. If she had no son, she pointed out to William
when they were alone, Alys, heiress of two rich holdings, could look far higher
than Aubery for a husband.

William had explained to Mauger, saying frankly that he did
not care for a greater marriage but that Mary asked very little of him, ever,
and he would not go against her will in this, especially at this time. Mauger
was annoyed, but he concealed it well, comforting himself with the fact that
the longing in William’s eyes when he looked at Elizabeth grew and grew. It
would do no harm to let the man heat up a little more. Then, when the children
were betrothed, he would thrust William and his wife together. Doubtless the
man would try to take her. He would hear of it, spy on them, rush in on them,
an offended husband, and kill the insulter of his wife. By right of the
betrothal of the heiress to his son, Mauger would then hold Marlowe. Mary could
go back to Bix. He would arrange for her to die there after a decent interval
so she could not marry again and complicate the inheritance.