Esme waited with Mother Wilfreda in her solar for her father to come to them. As soon as she’d heard of her father’s arrival, Esme had gone to her room and donned a clean brown robe and matching veil over a white wimple. Large wooden prayer beads hung from her rope belt. She looked as much like a devoted novice as she could manage on such short notice. And how pathetic it was that, at four and twenty years of age, she still behaved like a girl trying to meet her sire’s expectations.
Her strategy the past ten years had been a good one—as far as it went. Avoid and delay. Oh, it might sound cowardly and meek, but women must needs fight with the only tools they had. Mother Wilfreda had taught her every aspect of running an abbey, which was not so different from running an estate. If she only survived long enough to take over her mother’s estate.
Well, her father’s unannounced visit might very well place a cog in the wheels of that plan. Leastways, he would try his best to do so.
Father Alaric had volunteered to greet the visitors out in the courtyard. Now, the sound of Lord Blackthorne’s booming voice grew closer and closer, mean and menacing.
“Where is she? Hiding, no doubt. And well she should. I have had more than enough of her willfulness. I thought by now you would have beaten some sense into the misbegotten maid,” her father said.
“Nay, Lord Blackthorne, she is not hiding. She awaits you in the solar with our good abbess. And be-be-beating? You expected us to whip Esme?”
“Good, abbess? Hah! The only good thing about that dried-up crone is she’s so old she’s bound to die soon.”
Esme gasped and looked at her aunt, who just shook her head at her father’s coarse tongue and blatant lack of affection for his dead wife’s sister. It didn’t even bear mentioning that her father and Wilfreda were about the same age, neither yet ailing.
“Relax, child. Do not show your fear,” Mother Wilfreda advised as she sat on a high stool before a table, grinding medicinal herbs with a mortar and pestle. A sweet aroma wafted through the air—cloves and something else, possibly chamomile. “Pick up your mending. Do something with your hands so he won’t notice their trembling.”
No sooner did Esme take a torn surplice in hand than the wooden door swung open and banged against the timber wall, almost breaking off the leather hinges. For a certainty, there would be dent marks in the wood.
“There you are, girl,” her father said, giving her a once-over which could be summed up in the sneer on his thin lips. Her father tended to call her “girl” overmuch, probably to put her in her place. There were no happy greetings after an absence of a year, no hugs of welcome. All to be expected. At forty and eight years, with only a sprinkling of gray in his black hair, her father could still be considered a handsome man, if not for the lines of cruelty that bracketed his eyes and mouth. He was a big man, and today he wore fine leather, calf-high boots, a chain shert with an attached coif over a wool tunic and braies, with sword and long knife scabbarded at his belt, all covered by a sweeping fur-lined wool cloak with a gilded brooch fastener. Similarly attired were her two brothers. Dressed for a fight, they were.
With me?
“Lady Esme.” Her brother Cedric greeted her with eyes as cold as her father’s. At least he did not call me “girl.”
His quick scrutiny took in her drab attire and dismissed her as beneath his contempt.
“Sister,” her other brother Edward said, with an emphasis on the word that said loud and clear he felt no bond with her, despite their shared blood.
Esme nodded her acknowledgment of their salutations, such as they were. The hostility is so thick in this chamber I could cut it with a knife. And so serious they all are. I feel like sticking my tongue out at the three of them. Well, that is mature, Esme. No wonder my father calls me “‘girl.”