Unbidden (The Evolution Series) (36 page)

“Samuel is going to get the damned salt!”

“Samuel and a cart and an ox will be away from Alda for four more days, and on the fifth day our people can resume butchering the hogs that continue to consume food. But at least today we have iron bloom, whatever that is!  We have no forge and no blacksmith, but thank the Lord above for the iron bloom.”

Doeg sniffed
. “I would have thought you would have had the salt here ages ago if it was really so important.”

She moved on him so quickly he backed up a step
. “You dare criticize
me
,” she hissed, “you who probably do not even know if there is a pig or an ox or a goat on all of your great land. I do not know how you Bavarians fared this summer, but we have had a very good year. The livestock is fat and healthy, and because of that we need more salt. I will not apologize to you or anyone else for that fact.”

She shoved her way between them to stalk away.

Chapter Thirty-one

David had felt the headache encroaching since early in the day. The packets Rochelle had given him over a month ago were long gone, used in the week after the tournament, the monster in his head awakened by The Black’s poorly aimed rock. He’d hidden his brewing and consumption of them from her, wanting to spare her worry and, if he was brutally honest, his own pride. Of course, his pride was already more than a little bruised by his mistakes of the last few days. He’d been almost to the point of asking Rochelle for a dose of her remedy when Ardo arrived. The ugly scene that followed precluded asking any favors of her.

He wiped his hand down his face in the dark office while pokers of pain radiated
from his forehead, searing precursors of the inferno to come. The salt had not really been his fault, though he could see Rochelle’s side of it. Samuel had fulfilled the master’s orders before the mistress’s. She’d known nothing of David’s needing — well, wanting — iron bloom, and he’d known nothing about salt or pigs or helping tenants through the winter. This, and Doeg’s constant harassment about coming to Bavaria, was enough to give any man a sore head.

He braced his elbows on the desk then carefully leaned his head forward into his hands
to press his fingers to his temples. He knew he should find Rochelle to ask for her help before he was dragged into the gaping maw of agony that surely awaited him. She might still be angry, but he knew she would never withhold her care from him.

A light knock at the door drew his attention
. “Enter,” he said loudly, though the combination of his voice and the light that poured through the opening portal pushed a torch into his brain. He deliberately lowered his hands and blanked the pain from his face, preferring to settle this argument before she began fretting over him.

Rochelle approached him tentatively, stopping on the other side of the desk
. “I do not wish to end the day at odds with you,” she ventured softly.

“Nor I with you.”

She gifted him with a brief tender smile, but took a deep breath, obviously intent on saying her piece. “I know you are eager to learn and contribute, and despite what I have said in the past, I am content to share the load with you. But we must find a way to work together. We have to be pulling in the same direction, or our people and activities will be in constant chaos.”

“I agree,” he replied
. “You should not have spoken of it in front of the men if I am ever to establish myself.”

“I know,” she agreed
. “I should have held my tongue. It is just that I am as comfortable with them as you are with your brother, and in the heat of the moment I said too much. It was wrong of me, and I am sorry for it.”

Looking back later, for days and days following, he knew this was the moment he should have realized she didn’t know Doeg was in the room with them, sulking in a shadowy corner
. David had been enduring his brother’s criticisms of Rochelle and his cajoling for a trip to Bavaria, remaining silent only because of the increasing pain in his head. Doeg had finally stopped talking a few minutes before Rochelle entered.

She leaned across the desk to brush a lock of hair off his forehead
. “It is so easy when it is just the two of us, alone,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” he answered, about to mention that they were
not
alone when she bent further over, placing tender kisses on his face. David sat stiff, the pain thrumming in his skull despite her gentle ministrations. She’d just brushed her lips over his, soft and warm and welcome, when Doeg cleared his throat sharply.

Rochelle straightened and whirled, the backs of her thighs coming up hard against the desk.

“I see how the mistress rules the master,” Doeg said thinly. “Very much as I suspected.”

David dropped his head back in his hands
. “Doeg,” he said with warning. His brother would not be so easily stopped.

“A few little kisses and draping herself ove
r the furniture is all it takes to keep you in the harness.”

“Doeg!” David said sharply, causing the pain to sear through his brain
. He clamped his jaw shut, trying to master it.

“How dare you?” Rochelle cried into the dark recess of the room
. “Why are you always lurking in the shadows, listening to conversations that do not concern you?”  She turned to David accusingly. “This was a private moment.”

“Nothing has happened in this room about which my brother may not know,” he grit out
. He heard her harsh inhalation, but it took him a moment to carefully move his eyes to her mortified face. She crossed her arms over her chest and hunched her shoulders as though trying to cover herself, to make herself smaller. She looked miserably at the center of the desk, then down at the floor, clearly embarrassed. Or ashamed.

He belatedly realized she was thinking further back than tonight, to an afternoon liaison they’d shared on that very desk a day or so before Doeg’s arrival, with her bent over in just the vulnerable position she’d assumed a few minutes ago, their fingers twined, his love words whispered in her ear
. A woman completely submissive to a man, safe despite being trapped by his weight, passionate in one of the baser sexual positions a couple could share. She’d harkened back to a beautiful hour of such intimacy, such trust and privacy, an experience he would never in a million lifetimes relate to another soul. But, she thought he’d just told her he would. Or already had.

The pain of his headache pealed through him
. It made his voice harsh. “Rochelle, I did not mean what you think.”

Doeg cut through him,  “Oh, stop being such a milksop!  A man means what he says.”

Rochelle glared at the dark corner. “Do you not have an estate of your own to run?  Atrum Calx?  Dark Stone, a fitting name I would say. Go spread your discontent there where you belong!”

“Coincidentally enough, your husband and I have been discussing just such a journey.”

“By all means, continue!  Heaven knows I would not want to delay that conversation, nor your departure.”  She strode from the room, closing the door heavily behind her.

Doeg chuckled
. “Silly chit.”

“Doeg, you go too far
. You
will
treat my wife with more respect.”

“I will talk to any simple woman exactly as I please.”

“Stop referring to her as simple!” David said severely. “She is anything but, and could probably teach you a thing or ten about the running of estates!”

Doeg shot out of his chair as if he’d been burned
. “Is that so?  Perhaps I will take you up on that offer!  I am sure our father would be open to her suggestions since you are no help.”

“Wonderful!  Just leave me in peace,” David practically begged.

Doeg stalked out, giving David the blessed, quiet darkness. He could hear his brother talking in the hall, but the agony had come, screaming around him, making the muffled words gibberish to him. Crossing his arms on the desk, he put his head down, certain he could smell his wife’s scent.

The pain was somehow worse with the knowledge that it could be avoided.

He needed her. He needed her to heal him, to put her soft hands against the anguish of his head. He even managed to say her name a few times. No one heard.

Later, he didn’t know how much later, Doeg roused him
. Words swirled and clanged in his head, meaning nothing.

“Bring her,” David croaked
. “Bring Rochelle.”

His brother left him, and David was sure salvation would come in minutes.

When Rochelle left the office, she slung herself into a chair by the fire
. She would wait for Doeg to leave her husband, then return to him to find out what in God’s name had just happened. Marian studied her from across the flames. Rochelle didn’t know how to answer the obvious question in her eyes.

Doeg didn’t keep her waiting long
. He emerged from the office with the same look he’d had after Riculf’s visit to Theo’s house. The cat had caught another mouse.

“We leave for Bavaria in the morning,” he announced
. “Pack your things and pack lightly. I know you like to travel fast. I have developed a taste for it myself.”

Rochelle blinked at him, stunned
. “I am not going anywhere with you,” she blurted.

“Your husband says you are,” he replied, gesturing to the door behind him with his thumb
. He smiled, then started toward his sleeping quarters. When she made a move in the direction of the office, he barked out, “Do not even think to go in there to change his mind. Your insolence earlier reminds him of how you humiliated him with Riculf, and again outside today. You should remember your place, which is wherever your husband says it is. Be ready by dawn.”

“Rochelle,” Marian breathed when Doeg finally left the room
. “What goes on?”

“Doeg is turning David against me.”

“Nonsense!  David loves ye.”

She stared at her mother for a moment
. “I know. I know he does. Why is he acting like this?  Why would he want us to go to Bavaria now?  He said he did not want to go, but Doeg will not stop harping about it and has somehow convinced him.” 

They sat silently, both chewing on this sudden change of plans.

“Perhaps he is testing me,” Rochelle ventured. “To me, the tournament and my betrayal feels as if it happened in another lifetime. Maybe he still thinks of it and wonders about my loyalty.” 

“What
does Bavaria have to do with any of that?”

“David
once asked me to trust in his faith in his brother. Maybe he is seeing if I do.”  She sighed. “Maybe he just wants me to meet his father.”

“I cannot like it,” Marian grumbled.

“Nor do I.”  She huffed out a resolute breath. “If David is going, then I am going. I do not trust Doeg, but I am also not going to give up my husband without a fight.”

In the chilly predawn, Rochelle walked to Regret’s side, searching the fog for David’s form. He had never come to bed nor had he been in the office when she glanced through the door this morning. Doeg tapped his foot impatiently as Rochelle hugged her mother. He all but tossed her on the gelding’s back.

“Where is David?” she asked.

“I saw him in the office not an hour ago,” Doeg said, already reining his own horse to the gate.

“We must wait for him,” she cried shrilly.

“He will catch up to us when it suits him.”

“Certainly we can wait a few hours!”

“He wishes for me to bring you now.”  The cold blue eyes challenged her to argue with him more, or worse, dismount to go question her husband.

Rochelle swallowed her protests
. She lowered her voice to speak to Marian urgently. “You must find him. Something is wrong. Promise me you will find him.”

Marian nodded, her
green eyes wide and frightened. Rochelle saw Magnus on the porch. She called him to her. David had posted his dog with her since almost the moment they’d met. Surely he would want her to take him now.

Rochelle followed Doeg blindly north then east for the first day, vaguely aware of passing through Strazburg very late, constantly checking behind them for David’s form. She imagined her husband galloping to her, grabbing Regret’s bridle as he begged her to come home. Or he would gallop to her, knock Doeg off of his horse, and beg her to come home. Or some combination of those things.

H
e did not come.

They rode until dark when Doeg made a camp with an inadequate fire
. He barely spoke for the entire evening, except when he announced happily,  “Maybe he will leave you at Calx for the winter.”

Rochelle had every intention of sneaking away that night wh
ile Doeg slept. It appeared Doeg did not require sleep. Every time she opened her eyes he was alertly poking at the fire.

Her only comfort and protection was Magnus
. She kept him near her any time she was out of the saddle, knowing that he would turn against David’s brother if necessary.

Her worry for David ate at her
. She told herself over and over that David would never have been physically overpowered by Doeg, that he had been safe inside the house when she’d last seen him, that the logical explanation was that Doeg had simply taken her away with her husband’s permission. While that truth hurt her deeply, it was better than any alternative she could think about.

Beginning on the second day, she paid close attention to landmarks along the road
. Her sense of direction away from Alda was notoriously terrible, but she memorized the path home as best she could, knowing she would set out on her own return journey if given the chance.

Snow began to fly on the third day, setting up a night of misery
. Rochelle couldn’t help but imagine how different it would be if David were curled behind her. She wondered if he slept safe in their bed. The thought of that chilled her as much as the weather, that he might be ensconced at Alda while Doeg dragged her across the empire. Her thoughts preyed on her. She swung the gamut of imagining him healthy or dead or every possibility in between. Healthy meant he’d sent her away from him, her home, and their marriage. Injured or dead meant Doeg had finally succeeded at whatever nefarious motivation drove him. If that was the case, however, what did he want from her now?  For what purpose would he kidnap her?  Exhaustion eventually stemmed the wild flow of her thoughts, letting her sleep.