Joscelin swallowed. His mind was so full of conflicting thoughts and emotions that he was at a loss. ‘I do not know what to say, my lord.’
De Luci laughed. ‘I have thought for some time that you should settle down and breed some sons to follow you in service to the Crown.’
‘Women should be kept busy,’ Ironheart agreed, exposing his chipped teeth and cavities in a broad grin. ‘The bed, the distaff and the cradle: that’s the way to run your household.’
Having seen what the bed, distaff and cradle had done for his father’s wife, Joscelin wondered if Ironheart really believed what he was advocating or whether he spouted it blindly from force of habit. ‘I would rather not season my dinner with wormwood,’ he replied, and turned to de Luci. ‘My lord, I will be pleased to accept what you offer me, providing the lady is willing.’
‘She has no choice in the matter,’ Ironheart growled.
‘Then I am giving her one.’ Joscelin looked defiantly at his father until Ironheart dropped his gaze and spat his disapproval into the rushes.
‘Very well,’ said de Luci with a grave face but a twinkle in his eye, ‘only if the lady is willing but I expect you to persuade her on that score.’ His own wife had had no say in the matter of their marriage but he remembered wanting her to agree to the match of her own volition. First and foremost, it was pride. De Luci did not believe there was the slightest possibility of Joscelin giving up an opportunity like this for the sake of a woman’s word. He wagged an admonitory finger at Ironheart. ‘It damages a man’s esteem, William, to think he has to force his bride to marry him.’
‘It never damaged mine,’ Ironheart snapped. ‘Good Christ, if anything, Agnes was forced on me, the sulky bitch.’
‘And if you had had to force my mother?’ Joscelin asked.
A shadow crossed William’s face. ‘Then perhaps she would still be alive,’ he said bitterly. ‘I warned her to be careful while she was with child but she went her own way, as usual, and I was idiot enough to let her.’
An uncomfortable silence seized the room. Joscelin knew he had stepped upon forbidden territory but sometimes it was the only way of fighting back. The subject of his mother was seldom raised in conversation. For all that Ironheart believed in plain speaking and honesty, she was one subject that he kept locked away in his own personal hell. He blamed himself for her death and his guilt was a wound so deep that it was still bleeding.
Joscelin inhaled to speak, and thus break the stifling silence, but a draught from the door-curtain made him stop and glance round. His eyes widened in dismay for Linnet de Montsorrel was standing on the threshold. From the look on her face, it was plain she had heard every word of their discussion and was fully prepared to be as unwilling as a heifer smelling a slaughter shed.
Ironheart, a superb general, went straight into the attack. ‘Is it your habit to eavesdrop?’ he demanded with a glare that made it obvious what he thought of a woman’s interruption of a man’s domain.
Her face blanched of colour but she stood her ground. ‘No, my lord,’ she answered with dignity, a slight tremble in her voice. ‘I came to fetch the coneys. My son had a nightmare about them being killed and I wanted him to see that they are safe. I heard you talking and, since it concerned me most intimately, I had no qualms about listening.’
Ironheart spluttered.
Linnet faced Joscelin. ‘You want me to consent to be your wife?’
‘I ask of you that honour, my lady,’ he answered with a bow.
‘Honour,’ she said with weary scorn. ‘What an over-used word that is.’
Ironheart clenched one fist upon his belt buckle as if he were contemplating unlatching it to use upon her. De Luci’s face wore an expression of shock, as if a butterfly had just bitten him.
‘My son has need of me,’ she said and, taking the coney cage from the bench beside the justiciar, she raked the men with a look of utter contempt and walked out.
‘By Christ, she needs her hide lifted with a whip!’ Ironheart snarled.
‘I don’t want a wife like the lady Agnes who cowers every time you raise your voice,’ Joscelin answered, staring at the swaying door-curtain.
‘That is precisely the kind of wife you do want!’ Ironheart retorted. Striding across the room to the nearest flagon, he sloshed a measure of wine into a cup and, raising it on high, toasted his son. ‘To the lady’s willingness! ’ he mocked, eyes bright with cruelty.
‘William, enough!’ de Luci admonished.
‘I will gain her willingness.’ Joscelin clung to his temper. ‘And I won’t have to beat her to do it.’
Ironheart grimaced. ‘No, I know you. You will flay your own hide and offer it to her for a saddle blanket.’
‘Perhaps I’ll offer her yours instead,’ Joscelin snapped. ‘You don’t know me at all!’ And he stalked from the room before he committed patricide.
Reassured that no one had butchered his coneys, Robert had fallen asleep, one small hand lightly touching the cage. A lump grew in Linnet’s throat. Quietly she rose from his bedside and went to the laver. Tilting the reservoir, she poured water into the pink-and-cream marble basin beneath and splashed her hot face. De Gael’s words had been courtly, but they were dross. He was as calculating and ambitious as any other landless wolf. A castle, a comfortingly heavy strongbox, someone to mend his clothes, see to his food and pleasure his bed. Servants, herself included, to call him ‘my lord’ and fetch and carry at his whim. And she was supposed to be honoured? Say no, and the soft words would be replaced by a bludgeon. Feeling dizzy and sick she held her wrists in the cold water and tried to breathe more slowly.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Maude advanced on Linnet from the other end of the room where a maid had been preparing her for bed. She wore a chemise and her grey hair lay in a frizzy plait on her bosom.
Linnet laughed bitterly. ‘Giles is barely in his coffin and already I’ve been given a new “protector.”’ Her mouth twisted on the final word.
Maude’s expression grew concerned. ‘You mean de Luci has appointed a permanent ward to look after Robert’s inheritance? What about Joscelin? Is he still taking you north tomorrow?’
Linnet stared through waterlogged lashes into the older woman’s bemused, homely face. ‘Joscelin,’ she said stiffly, ‘has been given full custody of everything by right of marriage. My son, myself and our lands. All he requires is my consent and even that can be obtained by a handful of silver to the right priest.’
Maude looked astonished. ‘Richard de Luci has offered you in marriage to Joscelin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, well, well.’ Maude folded her arms and assimilated the fact with pursed lips. ‘What did Joscelin say?’
‘That wedding me was an honour, that he desired my willingness,’ Linnet said in a scornful voice. ‘Of course, it’s an excuse for him to take what he wants without a bleat from his conscience. He was paying lip service to honour, and I told him so.’
‘You said that to Joscelin?’ Maude’s expression became guarded.
‘I said it to all three of them,’ Linnet answered, drying her hands on the rectangle of bleached linen hanging at the side of the laver. ‘Giles believed in honour, too.’ She yanked her gown and chemise to one side and showed Maude the livid mark of the bite on her neck, the yellow smudges encircling her throat, the friction graze of the leather key-cord. ‘Here’s the proof.’
Maude unfolded her arms and put them around Linnet in a warm embrace. ‘Oh my love, not all men are so tainted,’ she said in a voice tender with compassion. ‘My husband never took his fist to me, nor did he reproach me because I was barren. We were very fond of each other. I still miss him terribly.’