“I’m not hiding.”
“Oh? Are you ill then?”
“No, not in the sense you mean. Please, Brent, what about Sabilla?”
“She’s all right. She’s weak, of course, but she will be fine, I promise.”
“It was my fault that she was flogged. She came to me to beg for fewer hours in the field. It was her first child, Brent, and she was in pain. I can’t believe that things like that happen.”
Brent very carefully folded his coat and laid it on a chair back. He said over his shoulder, “Byrony, stop blaming yourself. It isn’t your fault, what happened. You can believe me that I’ve spoken to Paxton. There won’t be any more floggings.”
She sighed deeply, and watched him strip off his clothes. The differences between them hadn’t really struck her before. They did now. His tall body was powerful, strong, and muscled. But even if he were short and flabby, she thought, veering back to the horrible incident, he would still control everything and everyone in his little kingdom. It was because he was a man that he was powerful, and because she was a woman, she was nothing more than a supplicant. She could do nothing more than beg, perhaps cry to get her way. She wanted to demand that he flog Paxton. She thought of her father. He had no kingdom, yet he was all-powerful to his wife. He could beat her, curse her, throw things at her at will.
“I will not be a party to this,” she said.
Brent turned to face her, naked, but oblivious of it. “Would you care to explain yourself?”
Two black boys carrying wooden tubs of hot water came into the bedroom. Byrony slipped deeper under the covers until they left the room.
She silently watched her husband climb into the tub.
“I’m waiting.”
“I want to leave.”
There, she’d said it.
Brent said nothing until he’d finished bathing. When he stepped from the tub, he slowly began to dry himself. “I was quite smelly,” he said. “I don’t suggest you use my water.”
“I bathed earlier.”
“Then get out of that bed and dress yourself.”
“I am also tired of taking orders from you. I am not one of your slaves. I will stay in bed if I want to.”
He laughed. Damn him, he laughed. She grabbed a small clock from the bedside table and flung it at him. It struck his arm and bounced on the carpet.
His laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. He rubbed his arm, a thoughtful expression on his face. “So you want to stay in bed, do you?”
“No, Brent, I don’t want any of that. I’m angry and I feel guilty—and—no.”
“There’s one thing a man’s entitled to, and that’s obedience from his wife. Haven’t I mentioned that fact to you before?”
He joined her in bed and when he took her cries into his mouth he felt her words to his soul. “I love you.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Brent. I’d heard you were home. Welcome, son.”
Brent took James Milsom’s offered hand and shook it. For an instant he stared at the man who was one of his father’s closest friends, one of his father’s contemporaries. He looked old, his face wrinkled, his iron-gray hair thin. Had his father looked this old when he’d died? He swallowed. Nine years was a long time.
“Yes, I returned to Wakehurst just last week. I must speak to you, Mr. Milsom.”
“I’ve been waiting for you, Brent. Sit down.”
Brent eased down in a large leather chair opposite James Milsom’s mahogany desk, and looked about the dark-paneled office. “I remember your desk and those pictures so well,” he said. “Do you still race your horses, sir?”
“Yes, indeed. There’s a new picture added to the lot—” Milsom pointed to a painting of a roan quarter horse. “His na