His children! The offspring of his stolen seed!
The potent liquid burned all the way down, the heat of it spreading, spreading, dulling Wulfgar's senses, blurring the horrid images.
Chapter 15 A CHILD NO MORE
"You must give love time to blossom, my lord," Temigast whispered to Lord Feringal. He'd ushered the young lord to the far side of the garden, away from Meralda, who was staring out over the sea wall. The steward had discovered the amorous young man pressuring Meralda to marry him the very next week. The flustered woman was making polite excuse after polite excuse, with stubborn Feringal defeating each one.
"Time to blossom?" Feringal echoed incredulously. "I am going mad with desire. I can think of nothing but Meralda!"
He said the last loudly, and both men glanced to see a frowning Meralda looking back at them.
"As it should be," Steward Temigast whispered. "Let us discover if the feeling holds strong over the course of time. The duration of such feelings is the true meaning of love, my lord."
"You doubt me still?" a horrified Lord Feringal replied.
"No, my lord, not I," Temigast explained, "but the villagers must see your union to a woman of Meralda's station as true love and not infatuation. You must consider her reputation."
That last statement gave Lord Feringal pause. He glanced back at the woman, then at Temigast, obviously confused. "If she is married to me, then what harm could come to her reputation?"
"If the marriage is quickly brought, then the peasants will assume she used her womanly tricks to bewitch you," Temigast explained. "Better for her, by far, if you spend the weeks showing your honest and respectful love for her. Many will resent her in any case, my lord, out of jealousy. Now you must protect her, and the best way to do that is to take your time with the engagement."
"How much time?" the eager young lord asked.
"The spring equinox," Temigast offered, bringing another horrified look from Feringal. "It is only proper."
"I shall die," wailed Feringal.
Temigast frowned at the overwrought lord. "We can arrange a meeting with another woman if your needs become too great."
Lord Feringal shook his head vigorously. "I cannot think of passion with another woman."
Smiling warmly, Temigast patted the young man on the shoulder. "That is the correct answer for a man who is truly in love," he said. "Perhaps we can arrange the wedding for the turn of the year."
Lord Feringal's face brightened, then he frowned again. "Five months," he grumbled.
"But think of the pleasure when the time has passed."
"I think of nothing else," said a glum Feringal.
"What were you speaking of?" Meralda asked when Feringal joined her by the wall after Temigast excused himself from the garden.
"The wedding, of course," the lord replied. "Steward Temigast believes we must wait until the turn of the year. He believes love to be a growing, blossoming thing," said Feringal, his voice tinged with doubt.
"And so it is," Meralda agreed with relief and gratitude to Temigast.
Feringal grabbed her suddenly and pulled her close. "I cannot believe that my love for you could grow any stronger," he explained. He kissed her, and Meralda returned it, and glad she was that he didn't try to take it any further than that, as had been his usual tactics.
Instead, Lord Feringal pushed her back to arms' length.
"Temigast has warned me to show my respect for you," he admitted. "To show the villagers that our love is a real and lasting thing. And so I shall by waiting. Besides, that will give Priscilla the time she needs to prepare the event. She has promised a wedding such as Auckney-as the whole of the North-has never before seen."
Meralda's smile was genuine indeed. She was glad for the delay, glad for the time she needed to put her feelings for Lord Feringal and Jaka in the proper order, to come to terms with her decision and her responsibility. Meralda was certain she could go through with this, and not as a suffering woman. She could marry Lord Feringal and act as lady of Auckney for the sake of her mother and her family. Perhaps it would not be such a terrible thing.
The woman looked with a glimmer of affection at Feringal, who stood watching the dark waves. Impulsively she put an arm around the man's waist and rested her head on his shoulder and was rewarded with a chaste but grateful smile from her husband-to-be. He said nothing, didn't even try to take the touch further. Meralda had to admit it was. . pleasant.
*****
"Oh, tell me everything!" Tori whispered, scrambling to Meralda's bed when the older girl at last returned home that night. "Did he touch you?"
"We talked and watched the waves," Meralda replied noncommittally.
"Do you love him yet?"
Meralda stared at her sister. Did she love Lord Feringal? No, she could say for certain she did not, at least not in the heated manner in which she longed for Jaka, but perhaps that was all right. Perhaps she would come to love the generous lord of Auckney. Certainly Lord Feringal wasn't an ugly man-far from it. As their relationship grew, as they began to move beyond the tortured man's desperate groping, Meralda was starting to see his many good qualities, qualities she could indeed grow to love.
"Don't you still love Jaka?" Tori asked.
Meralda's contented smile dissipated at once with the painful reminder. She didn't answer, and for once Tori had the sense to let it drop as Meralda turned over, curled in upon herself, and tried hard not to cry.
It was a night of torrid dreams that left her tangled in her blankets. Still, Meralda's mood was better that next morning, and it improved even more when she entered the common room to hear her mother talking with Mam Gardener, one of their nosier neighbors (the little gnome had a beak that could shame a vulture), happily telling the visitor about her stroll in the castle garden.
"Mam Gardener brought us some eggs," Biaste Ganderlay explained, pointing to a skillet of scrambled eggs. "Help yourself, as I'm not wanting to get back up."
Meralda smiled at the generous gnome, then moved to the pan. Unexplicably, the young woman felt her stomach lurch at the sight and the smell and had to rush from the house to throw up beside the small bush outside the door.
Mam Gardener was there beside her in an instant. "Are you all right, girl?" she asked.
Meralda, more surprised than sick, stood back up. "The rich food at the castle," she explained. "They're feeding me too good, I fear."
Mam Gardener howled with laughter. "Oh, but you'll be getting used to that!" she said. "All fat and plump you'll get, living easy and eating well."
Meralda returned her smile and went back into the house.
"You still got to eat," Mam Gardener said, guiding her toward the eggs.
Even the thought of the eggs made Meralda's stomach turn again. "I'm thinking that I need to go and lay down," she explained, pulling away to head back to her room.
She heard the older ladies discussing her plight, with Mam telling Biaste about the rich food. Biaste, no stranger to illness, hoped that to be all it was.
Privately, Meralda wasn't so sure. Only then did she consider the timeline since her encounter with Jaka three weeks before. It was true she'd not had her monthly, but she hadn't thought much about it, for she'd never been regular in that manner anyway. .
The young woman clutched at her belly, both overwhelmed with joy and fear.
She was sick again the next morning, and the next after that, but she was able to hide her condition by going nowhere near the smell or sight of eggs. She felt well after throwing up in the morning and was not troubled with it after that, and so it became clear to her that she was, indeed, with child.