John blocked his way. “I must do something to help a man in need.” Frantically, he searched his mind for something he “owed” Gilbert. “Your wife died in my house. It is the fault of the midwife who works for me. To repay you I will toss her out and pay for the care of your son.”
At that Berta began to protest, but a look from Alida shut her up. Alida wanted to stop what she could see was going to happen but she knew of no way. She had given her husband many daughters and two sons but all that pain was now being thrown away. It would have been all right if she could have switched the children without the knowledge of her husband. He would have loved her for giving him a son. But now he would know that she had failed and he would hate her. And what is more, he would give everything—all land and property—to this child who was not his.
“No, no,” Gilbert said with a great sigh. “You cannot throw your midwife onto the streets. I’m sure she is good. It was not her fault, it was mine. I breed sons of such great size that the women cannot bear them. Had I any consideration I would give my women small, golden girls as you do.”
“The horse you admired yesterday,” John said. “It is yours.”
Gilbert looked offended. “You think I would trade my son for a horse?” he said righteously.
“No, no, of course not.” All the horses in the world would not have made John part with a large, strong, healthy son.
Slowly, to give John time to come up with a richer offer for the boy, Gilbert sauntered over to where Meg held the babies. When John could think of nothing else to say, Gilbert helped. “I cannot take a nursing child from its milk. I must wait.” With another dramatic sigh, he said, “I wish I could leave the boy with you.”
At that John’s eyes widened.
“If there were only a connection between our families. Perhaps a marriage bond. I need a new wife.”
“Take your choice of my daughters,” John said quickly. “You may have any of them you want. For yourself, for your sons. Whatever you want. They are yours.”
“I will take that red-haired one,” Gilbert said instantly.
At that Alida gasped, for her daughter Joanna was only ten years old. “You cannot.” She looked imploringly at her husband.
John did not so much as look at his wife. “She is yours.”
“And what of her dowry?” Now that the bargaining was under way, Gilbert was dropping his guise of grief.
“Peniman Manor,” John said quickly.
Alida’s hands tightened into knots at her side. Peniman Manor was hers, given to her in her own right by her father. It was where she went whenever she had a chance, a place where she could have a beautiful garden that she knew was not going to be trampled by the hooves of men’s horses. It was a place where no man was welcome and it was where anything that she had ever owned or made that was beautiful was
stored. Her husband hated the place, with its tapestries and books and great bowls of scented herbs on the polished tables.
When Alida opened her mouth to protest, John turned a face black with rage toward her. “You have taken from me what was mine by right and now I will take what is yours.” He looked back at Gilbert. “Peniman Manor is yours, as is the girl. And I will keep the boy.” He was at last beginning to realize that getting the boy was only a matter of money.
“I do not know if I should leave the boy. He is a fine lad, is he not? Look how strong he is. Already the girl has stopped sucking but the boy continues. I guarantee that he will grow into a fine, strong man.”
With his heart beating in his throat, John tried to make himself think of this as bargaining for a horse. Except that he had never wanted a horse as much as he wanted this boy.
“Children die,” John said with a shrug that fooled no one. “I am not sure I should agree to keep the boy. What do I get from raising your overlarge son? He will no doubt eat me out of house and home.”
“It would be an honor for you to raise a boy who is connected to the throne,” Gilbert said as though affronted.
“Ha! I will raise him, educate him and then you will take him away and marry him to some puny girl who is nothing to me.”
Gilbert did so love negotiating. It made his blood course through his body. “Mmmm,” he said, rubbing his chin. “You are right, of course.” He always liked to flatter the other dealer. Gilbert’s head came up. “We will betroth those two. What say you to that?”
John wanted to jump up and touch the sky in joy but he didn’t say anything at first. “I spend a lifetime feeding him, clothing him, educating him, then he marries my daughter and goes to live in the house I must provide them. I can get husbands for my daughters and I do not have to raise them.”
It took Gilbert a few moments to figure out what John was after. “You want an heir,” he said softly and he was astonished. John was a fool if he trusted anyone, especially to leave all his property to a boy who was not his blood relative. For a moment Gilbert looked John up and down. John was nearly forty years old, and for all that Gilbert had led a life of debauchery that made his look much older, he was only twenty-eight. If John made this boy his heir, after his death Gilbert could come in, claim the boy and take everything.
“Do not do it!” Alida shouted at her husband, for she read Rasher’s thoughts as though he had spoken aloud. “Do you not see what he is after? He has found a way to steal all that you have. If you die he will take all.”
John turned a furious face on her. “If I die, what do I care what happens to my property afterward? Should I work all my life and leave it to a woman who gives me only daughters? Should I give it to those two worthless boys you gave me? One can hardly walk and the other is too weak to live.” He glared at her. “All of you can live on a dung heap for all I care.”
He turned back to Gilbert. “Give me the boy, we will draw up contracts, and I will betroth him to a daughter—I have enough of those—and I will make him my heir. While I am alive, he will be mine.”
While I am alive, Gilbert thought. If John died before the boy reached age, Gilbert would have control of him. Truthfully, Gilbert would have control no matter how old the boy was when John died. Gilbert had always thought so but today had proved that John’s heart was too soft. He gave away everything for something that could never truly be his. Blood was everything; contracts on paper meant nothing. When the boy was a few years older, Gilbert could say that he was lonely and meant to take the boy back unless John paid him more money.