“I did tell you the truth. You were fevered. At first you thought I was a woman named Joan. You yelled at me and accused me of betraying you. I tried to reason with you, but it was no use. Then you spoke that strange language and you called me Lila and you wanted her to cover you, to allow you to come into her body. I didn’t know what you meant, but you showed me. You wanted to suckle her breasts and you scolded me for still wearing clothes when you wanted me naked.”
“And so,” he said, his eyes hard and disbelieving, his voice filled with sarcasm, “you hurried to rip off your clothes, ready to do whatever I asked of you. There was a Joan—it’s likely I would speak of the bitch if I was out of my head. But nothing else, Daria. An innocent young girl wouldn’t allow a man to command her to sacrifice her maidenhead.”
“And you spoke of Cena but said you were too fatigued for her. She would have to wait.”
He tensed, resisting. But no, he could have spoken of both women. A fevered man could speak of any ghost or memory. A fevered man wasn’t, however, strong enough to force a virgin to give over to him.
“I have told you the truth, Roland. That I did it was perhaps foolish, but I lo—I wanted you to be the first, I wanted to know you”—to have your hands on me, feel you kissing me, holding me—I wanted the memory—“if I was to be forced to wed with Ralph of Colchester, I wanted just the one time for myself, for there would be nothing more that I could have.” There, now he had the truth, all of it. She watched the anger pale his eyes and tighten his expression.
He shook his head. It was foolishness and lies, all of it. “No. I cannot accept it. Why would you give yourself to me knowing that I believed you to be another woman? That I was speaking her name, seeing her, feeling her when I came into your body—knowing I believed it to be her when I kissed you and caressed you? It is absurd. No woman I have ever been with would do such a thing. And I have known many women, Daria. A woman would sooner stick a knife in the man’s ribs and curse him to hell.”
“Perhaps it is absurd. Perhaps I am absurd. I don’t know. I haven’t much experience with men and their ways, or ladies either, for that matter.” She looked at him and her eyes were as sad as her voice as she said softly, “All I know is myself and what I feel.” She drew a deep breath and blurted it out. “Rydw i’n dy garu di, Roland.”
He stared down at her for a very long time. Finally he said, his voice emotionless, “Lying bitch.” He turned from her and strode away, yelling over his shoulder, “Leave if you wish. I shan’t stop you. By all the saints, I care not if I never gaze upon your face again. Return to your uncle, or, if you’re afraid to, then return to the Earl of Clare. Perhaps he’ll still want you if he hasn’t plowed Tilda silly by now and finds he’s forgotten all about you and your dowry and his hatred of your uncle.”
He forced himself to keep walking. He forced himself not to turn back to her. She couldn’t love him, damn her lying heart. She couldn’t. It made no sense. No more sense than her recognizing him instantly, no matter his disguise. Who had told her the words in Welsh? He shook his head. He didn’t care.
He knew he must return to the king and queen, explain somehow. Convince them of the truth without their believing Daria to be a conniving whore. He cursed. What to do?
“The Earl of Reymerstone would kill me, and I wouldn’t blame him. Worse, he would kill her as well, and he would do it without hesitation, without mercy.”
Edward merely shrugged. “It isn’t as if you were a peasant, Roland. Your family is as old as his, and—”
Roland interrupted his king. “You don’t understand, sire. The man wanted Daria to wed Ralph of Colchester, and only him, because in return he would gain the lands he wants to add to his own.”
“And then the Earl of Clare abducted her?”
Roland nodded.
“The story is complicated, like one of your tales, Roland, with many twists and unexpected turns. Only this tale, well, it is up to you—regardless of all your protestations—to find a satisfactory ending.”
“You refuse to believe that I am not the father of this child? Have you ever known me to lie to you?”
The king looked troubled. “No, I haven’t. The queen is convinced that the girl is telling the truth. Listen, Roland. It is possible that you took her believing her another, is it not?”
“Not that I can imagine. Can you imagine it yourself, sire?”
“No.”
“She also claims that she is with child after but one time. One time and she becomes pregnant? I cannot credit that either.”
At that the king smiled even as he shifted restlessly in his chair. “I can, Roland. It happens frequently. I can attest to that.”
Roland fell silent. The king fell equally silent. He detested tangles like this. He wanted to face down the Earl of Clare and strip him of his power; he wanted to strip all the Marcher Barons of every drop of power they possessed; he, the King of England, wanted the power in Wales and he wanted to build castles to assert his power and bring the damned Welsh to their knees before him, their king—and here he was instead trying to solve a problem that had no apparent solution. None that was satisfying. Unless—“There is a way out of this perhaps. We can keep the girl with us until she is delivered of the babe. If the babe resembles you, then you can wed her. If it resembles the Earl of Clare—does he not have hair red as scarlet?—then it is proved.”
“And what if the babe looks like no other? Or looks like its mother?”
The king cursed softly. “What do you think, Robbie?”
Robert Burnell, silent to this point, looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Do you wish an opinion likely to conform to the Church?”
Roland snorted.
“Go ahead, Robbie.”
“The Church would hold that the woman, regardless of her rank or supposed innocence, was the one culpable. It would be her fault and none other’s. She would bear the censure and the condemnation and—”
“Hold. That’s enough, damn you.”