"Ah, could you not just have bedded her?"
Tearle didn't speak for a while. "Perhaps." He didn't say more but just sat there looking at his wine goblet.
Margaret sat on the chair next to him. He was as near to being a son as she was ever going to have. "I have heard about these Peregrines. Are they as rough as I have heard?"
"Worse."
"Then perhaps some softness in the girl's life would do her good. Perhaps soft music and soft words would win her. Perhaps if you let her see you as you are, she would come to love you."
"I have told her I will petition the king for an annulment. I mean to keep my word."
"Did you tell her when you would send the messenger?"
Tearle smiled at her. "No, I did not. But I did say I would give her an annulment, which means I am not to touch her."
Margaret laughed. "Do you not know that there is much more sensuous pleasure than what goes on in the bed?"
Tearle gave her a look to say that she was half mad.
"The girl moved from me when I but meant to touch her arm," Margaret said. "And she looked at my gown with lust in her eyes. For all her boy's clothes, I think she hungers for what a woman has and wears. I think that roses might win your lady."
"Roses?"
"And music and tales of love and silk and gentle kisses placed behind her ear."
Tearle looked at the woman for a long while, his mind racing with his thoughts. He remembered the way Zared had reacted to his kisses. Perhaps she did not hate him as much as she said she did. If he had not allowed his jealousy to overcome him, what might have happened? Perhaps it was possible to win her with a bit of courting. He smiled at Margaret.
Chapter Twelve
« ^ »
Nothing that Zared had ever experienced had prepared her for life in the Howard house. At supper she sat at a clean table and ate delicious food, and her new husband treated her as though she were fragile and precious.
The calmness of the servants, the general peace of the whole house was new and interesting to her. In her own home it wasn't unusual for her brothers' knights to come storming into rooms demanding that someone come and settle a fight. Her brother Rogan regularly slammed his battle ax into tables to make a point. But at Tearle's the questions were whether she had enough wine or whether her soup was hot enough.
After supper a handsome young man came and played a lute while he looked at Zared with liquid eyes.
"What is he saying?" she asked, since the man was singing in French.
Tearle looked at her across a silver wine goblet. The whole room glowed with the light from the fireplace. "He is singing of your loveliness, of your beauty, and of the beautiful way you move your hands."
Zared looked startled. "My hands?" Her brothers had always complained that she had no strength in her hands, that she could barely lift a sword. She held her hands in front of her and looked at them.
Tearle took one in his own and kissed her fingertips. "Beautiful hands."
"What else is he saying?" she asked, looking away from her husband to the handsome young man.
"He says only what I have told him to, for I wrote the song," Tearle answered, an edge to his voice.
She looked back at him in wonder. "You? You can write songs in another language?"
"Songs and poetry. I can play the songs as well. Should I demonstrate?"
"If you can write, then can you read? Liana can read. Could you read me a story?"
Tearle stopped kissing her hand and smiled at her, then signaled the man to leave them. Another soft command from him and a servant brought five books into the room. "Now, what shall you hear?" When Zared looked blank, Tearle smiled. "I know. I shall read you Héloise and Abelard. That should appeal to you."
An hour later Zared was sitting in front of the fire trying not to cry, for the story he had read to her was very sad.