“Poisonous plants! How sinister you must think I am. I thought you might enjoy the garden as you have spent your life outdoors.”
Callie said nothing. Never in her life would she tell this woman that she would enjoy working in the garden. She would love being outdoors all day, away from the rigid rules and ridiculous schedules imposed on the unmarried women in this oppressive house. She would like the freedom to daydream and make up stories in her head.
But most important, she would be free to see Talis whenever possible. Now, she’d tell this woman whatever she wanted to hear, that she’d never see Talis again. If necessary, she’d make sacred vows never to see him again. She’d do whatever it took to appease this woman, then she’d go and do what she wanted to do—which was to see Talis.
Lady Alida began to talk, telling Callie all manner of things about honor and reputation and “saving herself” and whatever else she could think of to try to impress Callie that she must, must stay away from Talis. Talis needed to learn to be a knight, needed experience in life, needed…
Callie didn’t bother listening to much of it. She’d learned to put on her “listening” face, the one she used with Meg when she was saying something Callie found uninteresting. While her face looked as though she were listening, Callie let her mind wander onto a story, fantasizing that Talis would come to her in the garden. Just the two of them, alone, no one else around. Yes, she liked this duty of taking care of the garden and being alone.
It took Callie a moment to realize that her ladyship had paused. And from the way she was looking at Callie, Alida knew her daughter had not been listening.
Alida grabbed Callie’s chin in her hand, hurting her. “Do you not know that the way to get a man is to ignore him? If you chase him, he will never want you.”
Callie smiled in an ageless way at the woman. “Talis likes what I am and what I do.”
“Oh?” Alida said. “Then why is he not asking for your hand in marriage? If he wants you so much, then why is he not demanding to be allowed to marry you? Is it because he sees you for the greensleeves that you are?”
Alida smiled when she saw that she had at last made an impression on the girl. So, Alida thought, it was not what the girl felt for Talis; her concern was what Talis thought of her.
Knowing she had made her point, Alida abruptly dismissed the girl.
When Callie was gone, Alida called Penella to her.
“That girl is a problem,” Alida said. “She has no honor.”
Penella looked at her mistress quickly, as though to say, Look who’s calling the kettle black.
“Something will have to be done with that girl. I’ll not have her parading herself before my son. I won’t have her sneaking about with him at night as though she’s a harlot.”
For a moment, Penella paused with a cherry tart halfway to her mouth. Lady Alida was speaking of the boy Talis as though he really were her son—and as though this hard-headed girl belonged to someone else.
“I shall have Abigail Frobisher send her youngest son to me,” Alida said.
At that Penella nearly choked. Abigail Frobisher’s son was an eighteen-year-old boy whose only goal in life was to cause trouble. He was a very pretty lad, without a moral in his body, and he had been impregnating serving girls since he was fourteen. On his last visit, he had even put his hand on Edith’s waist!
“Yes,” Alida said, “I will have the boy come to stay and I will give him money if he will entice that girl to…to whatever.”
Penella finished the tart, making no comment whatever to these arrangements. Her ladyship did not want Talis and Callie to marry and she was certainly seeing to it that they didn’t. The old wet nurse had said that the children were jealous of each other. If anyone could cause jealousy, it was Lady Abigail’s youngest son.
But in Penella’s opinion, Lady Alida was going to more trouble than was needed to keep the children apart. There was more here than the woman was telling. But it was none of Penella’s business—she had learned the hard way to keep her own counsel.
“Go and ready my belongings for the journey to see Gilbert Rasher,” Alida said. “We will ride tomorrow. I have business to attend to.”
“Yes, my lady,” Penella said, slipping the rest of the tarts into her pocket.
31
It is done,” Alida said, her entire body shaking from fatigue as Penella undressed her and put her to bed. Alida’s health had greatly deteriorated in the last weeks of traveling. Two weeks ago she had been coughing only rusty bits of blood, but now she often brought up great clots from her lungs.
But it all had been worth it, she thought as she tried to sip the hot liquid Penella handed her. But she brushed the woman away, not wanting to see her, wanting only to be alone with her thoughts and her memories.
She and her small household had ridden hard for days to reach that filthy old castle Gilbert Rasher called home. And she had been greeted by a man eaten with hatred and a lust for revenge. When he had been told that she was John Hadley’s wife, it had been difficult to get him to stop raging long enough to make him understand that she wanted the same as he wanted.
Across a dirty table, his breath so heavy with the fumes of liquor that she felt faint, she finally made him understand that she was trying to help him.
After she told him that his son was alive and living at her house, it had taken an hour of shouting to keep him from jumping on a horse and ri
ding to get the boy.