Then she saw her husband, garbed only in a loin cloth, working side by side with twenty men on the eastern wall of Oxborough. Sweat glistened off his chest and arms, his dark hair was plastered to his head, and she wanted to throw herself against him and ask him, very quietly, if he would come with her to create more of the wildness of the night before, if he would let her take him again as she wished.
She sighed, knowing he could not leave his men. Unless the rain came down in torrents. She closed her eyes a moment and prayed hard. When she looked up again, she swallowed. He looked hard and lean and healthy, a man with strength, a man with a wife who very much appreciated him. By Saint Catherine’s knees, she prayed that one day he would come to feel about her the way she felt about him. She shook her head, leaning closer to Marella’s neck. No, she couldn’t love him. It wasn’t done. Theirs had been like most marriages, fashioned of money and possessions and
power. They each had a role to play. It was just that there were some roles ^ V she enjoyed playing more than others.
She thought again of looking down at his face even as she moved over
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him, and shuddered with the memory of those minutes. She did not think, though, that she had shown true wildness in her blood when he had brought her to pleasure. She had not bitten him or raked his back with her short fingernails. She had just yelled a bit, as she always did. As for Severin, she did not know how he could ever be wilder than he seemed to be naturally.
I Perhaps she would ask Dame Agnes and Alice about this. But it
wasn’t quite time. Severin waved to her and she waved back. They rode into the inner bailey and she gave Marella over to Tuggle, who immediately crooned a litany of strange sounds to Marella, who butted her head into his chest.
A bit later she saw Dame Agnes with Lady Moraine and-what was that all about?-there was Alice with Gwent. Now, what was Alice saying to him? Was it more about this wildness in the blood? Aye, she thought, the previous night had been a revelation-but was it really a revelation or merely another diversion that men and women shared? She would see.
What was Alice speaking to Gwent about?
Severin did not come to their bedchamber until far into the night. He did not awaken Hastings. But he was there early the next morning when she woke up, lightly caressing her shoulders, the hollows, the bones, kissing the pulsing cord in her throat.
“You did not come to me,” she said, smiled up at him, and touched her fingertips to his mouth.
“Nay,” he said. He fell onto his back and stared at the ceiling, now visible in the early dawn light. “The storm has passed.”
She said nothing, knowing there was something on his mind, content to wait.
“I must travel to this Rosehaven place. None knows what or who is there. Your father went there three or four times a year, taking money with him each time. I will leave this morning.”
“I went with you to Langthorne, Severin. Did you wish that I had not gone there with you?”
He was silent. Finally, he turned to face her. “I do not know what to expect at this Rosehaven. I do not wish to place you in any danger.”
“How can I be in danger if you are beside me?”
“You are nattering me, Hastings, to gain your own ends. Tell me, why do you wish to go to this place?”
“I want to know who is there. I want to know why my father journeyed there for so many years, faithfully, time after time. Something
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drew him. Is it a debt to King Edward? A debt to a friend about whom I know nothing? Is there a mistress there?”