Philippa chewed on some bread, saying finally to Dienwald, “Your steward, Alain. Who is he? Has he been your steward long?”
“I saved his life some three years ago. He is beholden to me, thus gives me excellent service and his loyalty.”
“Saved his life? How?”
“A landless knight had taken a dislike to him and was pounding his head in. I came upon them and killed the knight. He was a lout and a fool, a local bully I had no liking for in any case. Alain came to St. Erth with me and became my steward.”
Dienwald paused a moment, gazing thoughtfully at her profile. “Has he insulted you?”
She quickly shook her head. “Nay, ‘tis just that . . . I don’t trust him.”
She regretted her hasty words the moment they’d escaped her mouth. Dienwald was staring at her as if she had two heads and no sense at all.
“Don’t be foolish,” he said, then added, “Why do you say that?”
“He offered to help me get away from you.”
“Lies don’t become you, wench. Tell me no more of them. Don’t ever again attack a man who’s given me his complete fealty for three years. Do you understand?”
Philippa looked at Dienwald, saw the banked fury in his eyes, making his irises more gold than brown, and read his thought: A woman couldn’t be trusted to give a clear accounting, nor could she be trusted to be honest. She calmly picked up another rib from her trencher and chewed on it.
Dienwald was reminding himself at that moment that only one woman in all his life hadn’t been filled with treachery and guile, and that was Kassia de Moreton. For a while he’d been unsure about Philippa. She had seemed so open, so blunt, so straightforward. He shook his head; even a woman as young as Philippa de Beauchamp was filled with deceit. He should simply take her maidenhead, use her until he wearied of her, then discard her. It mattered not if she was ruined; it mattered not if her father kicked her into a convent for the remainder of her days. It mattered not if . . . “Perhaps Alain distrusts you, perhaps he fears you’ll try to harm me. That is why he wishes you gone from St. Erth, if, of course, he truly said that to you.”
Philippa found she couldn’t tell him of the steward’s venom. Perhaps he was right about Alain’s motives. But she didn’t think so. She merely shook her head, then turned to Edmund.
“What color would you like your new tunic to be?”
“I don’t want a new tunic.”
“No one asked you that. Only whether you wish a certain color.”
“Aye, black! You’re a witch, so you can give me a black tunic.”
“You are such an officious little boy.”
“You’re a girl, and thass much worse.”
“That’s, not thass.”
Dienwald overheard this exchange, smiling until he heard her correct Edmund. He frowned. Meddlesome wench. But even so, he didn’t want his son speaking like the butcher’s boy.
“You will not have a black tunic. Do you like green?”
“Aye, he’ll have green, a dark green, to show less dirt.”
His father’s voice kept Edmund quiet, but he stuck his tongue out at Philippa.
She looked at him with a wondering smile. “ ‘Tis odd, Edmund, but you remind me of one of my suitors. His name was Simon and he was twenty-one years old but acted as if he were no more than six, just like you.”
“I’m nine years old!”
“Are you truly? My, I was certain you were no more than a precocious five, you know, the way you act, the way you speak, the—”
“Do you want more ale, wench?”
So Dienwald had some protective instincts toward his son. She turned and smiled at him. “Aye, thank you.”
She sipped at the tart ale. It was better than her father’s ale, made by the fattest man at Beauchamp, Rolly, who, Philippa suspected, drank most of his own brew.