“Enough of that nonsense, Hastings. You use your herbs and their lore to distract both yourself and the person you’re speaking to, particularly if it isn’t something you want to hear. I’ll wager you even treat Lord Severin that way. He says something and you tell him a brief story about one of your plants.” Dame Agnes frowned. “Why are you being so careful with the foxgloves? They’re not good for anything, you know that. Why do you have them here with your healing herbs? ”
“They’re beautiful, no other reason.”
Dame Agnes shook out her skirt, moved to smooth the cover on Hastings’s bed, and turned, saying, “Listen to me. Everyone knows that Severin forced you. Alice informed even Eric the falconer, and you know that his mouth flaps looser than Belle’s breasts. The lowest servant in the kitchen knew before the evening meal. There is no laughter, no loud conversation, no arguments below in the great hall. Severin’s men have tried to be normal, but they are met with sullen silence. It is like someone has died. Their only sounds are slurping, chewing, and belching.”
Hastings straightened. “I suppose Severin told you to fetch me down?”
Oh no. I suspect your husband would just as soon leave Oxborough. Purely it is a great holding and he is now a man of wealth, but there is no P easure in it for him. He eats, he even speaks occasionally to Eloise, but nothing else. The marten is stretched out beside him and stares at him, unblinking.”
There,” Hastings said. “There is the truth for you. You act as if this
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«II
is all my fault, but Trist knows better, he knows his master’s cruelty, his lechery, his-”
“If you were a child, I would slap you. Unfortunately you are now a grown woman, indeed, the mistress of Oxborough and the three other keeps that now belong to Lord Severin. Listen to me, Hastings. You are a woman. You are not stupid. Alice told me how you have no notion of how to maneuver a man like Lord Severin into paths that are pleasing to you. She told me it smote her to see you floundering about like a fish in a net, insulting him for no good reason, enraging him until he had no choice but to punish you. And, of course, he did. Did he hurt you badly when he took you?”
Hastings felt the stiffness in her legs. She still felt a soft pulling deep inside. A man had come into her body. He’d touched her womb. He’d felt her belly and her hips to see if she would easily bear his children. The bastard. If only she told Dame Agnes what he’d done, she wouldn’t be blaming Hastings for all this. But he had done so much more and Alice had told Dame Agnes. She couldn’t believe Dame Agnes was speaking to her like this. Blaming her. It wasn’t right. Surely she wasn’t to blame for her new husband’s actions, surely.
“Nay, he didn’t hurt me, but that is not the point. I do not suppose that Alice admitted that Severin very nearly took her in his bedchamber, notlShllet from me?”
Dame Agnes laughed. She laughed. “Aye, she said she thought you’d gone behind the screen to dress. She said she was removing Severin’s boots, bent over, her bottom to him, and showing him that she would bed him willingly if he chose. What is wrong with that, Hastings? Alice is a fine, strapping girl.”
“He is my husband.”
“I want you to put away your herbs. I want you to come and sit on your bed and listen to me.” There was a light knock on the door.
“Enter,” Hastings called.
It was Alice, and she was looking as unhappy as Hastings had ever seen her in her life. She looked furtively toward Dame Agnes.
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Dame Agnes said, “Alice, would you like to help me give our mistress some instruction?”
Alice perked up at that. “Hastings? Are you all right? Did he hurt you? I don’t see any bruises.”
This wasn’t right. Hastings stared at two women she’d known all her rfe He wasn’t to blame unless he beat her? “He humiliated me.”