“Poaching, eh?” he said as he drew within a few paces of her.
“Scarcely,” she snapped back. “Not everyone out in the woods is a poacher, and if I were, I would not be so stupid as to trudge about openly on the path to Granny’s Cottage.”
She startled him; obviously he was not expecting a mere woman to stand up to him. His eyes narrowed, and his lips compressed into a thin line. “Well, we’ll just see about that,” he snarled. “Turn out that basket!”
“And just who are you to order me about?” she retorted, holding the basket close to her body when he made a grab for it. She had begun angry; now she was furious, and that fury drove out any vestige of fear.
“Woodsman Eric von Teller!” he barked. “Now turn out that basket!”
Anger did strange things to her. It made her think more clearly, and her thoughts moved faster than usual.
He was trying to intimidate and humiliate her. Very well, she would give him a taste of his own arrogance right back.
“Oh.” She sniffed derisively, looking down her nose at him. “The Gamekeeper.” He reddened as she opened the lid of the basket and turned back the cloth so he could see that there was nothing more sinister in there than ham and beef. “There. No snares, not so much as a pheasant feather nor a tuft of rabbit fur.” He made to grab for it, anyway, and she pulled it away.
He smiled nastily; whatever thoughts were going through that head of his, he still hadn’t realized that he wasn’t dealing with a peasant or some little servant girl. “So, woman, playing the coy with me? Do you want me to come take that basket from you?” He made a grab for her arm, but she evaded him. She thought about kicking him, but decided against it. She didn’t want to goad him into retaliating physically.
He swore as he stumbled over a rock in the snow, and whirled to face her. “Little vixen! I think you need a touch of taming down, and I am just the man to do it!”
Her cheeks flamed, but with rage, not with embarrassment. She straightened her back. “I generally find that a man who bullies women is one who is a coward before men,” she said cuttingly. “By all the saints, Gamekeeper, you should be tied to the tail of my horse and whipped for your insolence!”
He started again, suddenly realizing that she was not what she seemed. She glared at him. “I am Master Trader Henri Beauchamps’s daughter, and I am not to be trifled with. You have seen that I have not been poaching, now be on your way, and be grateful that I am too busy today to bother with punishing your insolence!” She raised her chin and stared down her nose at him, aping Genevieve at her most superior. “Your manners leave a great deal to be desired. You had better mend them and learn your place before you encounter someone less forgiving than I.”
He started again at her father’s name, and his eyes darkened further with anger at her threat. But he backed away, and made a sketch of a bow.
“I beg your pardon, Mistress Beauchamps,” he said, making a pretense of groveling. “I thought you were a peasant wench — ”
She thought about giving him a tongue-lashing there and then. Thought about ordering him to take her to his master so she could report his behavior.
But on second thought, doing either of those things would do no good and potentially much harm. She knew he wouldn’t dare raise his hand to her, but he would take out the anger such a dressing-down would build in him on the next helpless creature that had the misfortune to cross his path. So instead, she continued aping Genevieve. The insults would get under his skin like screw-thorns.
“Be off with you,” she said, haughtily. “I do not care to waste more of my time with your foolishness than I already have.”
He bowed again, and slunk off into the forest. She stood there for a moment longer, still shaking with anger and taking long, deep breaths to calm herself down. Only when she was certain of her own temper again did she continue her journey.
Granny’s Cottage was at least as old as the oldest building in the city, but rather than showing its age, what it displayed was just how comfortable and cozy one could make a little building when one had several hundred years to improve it. The thatch was probably as thick as Bella was tall, the tiny windows all had glass in them, the floor was closely laid slate covered in cheerful rag rugs. There were four rooms, opening into one another: Granny’s bedroom with a canopied bed big enough to sleep four, a workroom and stillroom where she made her medicines, the kitchen and a sort of parlor. The gray stone walls had long ago been sheathed on the inside in lath and plaster. Pretty little bits of embroidery had been framed and hung on them. The settle in the parlor where Bella sat was piled with cushions and draped with crocheted and knitted blankets made up of a motley assortment of odds and ends.
Granny herself was of a piece with her cottage: tidy, compact, efficient; a little shabby, but one should never equate shabby with dirty. She had snow-white hair piled up under a spotlessly white cap, a white apron over her patchwork skirt and brown linen shirt. She moved lightly, and surprisingly quickly.
“Oh, that wretched, beastly man,” Granny said, arranging honeycakes on a plate, putting the plate on a tray with two mugs and pouring tea into the mugs as Bella stretched out her feet to the fire. “Why Duke Sebastian continues to keep him, I do not know.”
“Well, he tried to maul me at the Wool Guild masked ball last night,” Bella replied crossly. “He didn’t know who I was, of course — I imagine he thought I was a servant in my mistress’s castoffs. I managed to give him bruised ribs and an equally bruised foot. If I hadn’t been at such a disadvantage in the snow today, I would have given him a black eye to match. Hasn’t anyone ever complained about him?” she continued, still flushing a little with anger.
“He frightens people too much,” Granny replied, handing her a cup of tea in the thick, white-glazed pottery mug. “And of course, most of those who come out here to me are poor. Who would listen to them if they complained in the first place? And in the second, in order to lodge anything, they would have to take their complaint to a Royal Court, since the complaint is against one of Duke Sebastian’s chief servants. You know what that would entail.”
Bella snorted. “First an endless wait, which means a day or more of lost wages, to see the King’s Sheriff. Then you would have to persuade the Sheriff that the complaint was valid. Then, when the complaint was accepted, you would have to come back to Court for days and wait in line for your case to be heard — ”
Granny settled into her rocking chair, and picked up her own tea mug.
“But why not take the complaint directly to the Duke?” she wanted to know.
“Because no one has seen the Duke since he came of age,” Granny replied with a shrewd look. “In fact, the only one of his servants I have ever seen is the Woodsman. Which would make it a bit difficult to complain. You must remember, Duke Sebastian’s father died when he was young, and the Woodsman has been acting as his Guardian. And even though the Duke reached his majority a few years ago, he has remained in his Manor, and let Eric continue to oversee his lands.”
“No wonder Eric’s got above himself,” Bella growled. “I’ve half a mind to go through the complaint process myself. I was insulted, he tried to lay hands on me and he implied he intended indecencies on my person. And I have time no servant or farmhand can afford to spend on the process.”