“Her hair,” I corrected him grudgingly.
“Nice wide hips. She’ll bear easily,” he said with approval.
I glared at him. “Thank you,” I said icily.
He shocked me by grinning. “Get angry. I’d rather you were that than self-pitying. So. Tell me.”
And I told him. Probably much more than I would have in the guardroom, for here we were alone, the brandy went warm down my throat, and the familiar sights and smells of his room and work were all around me. Here, if anywhere in my life, I had always been safe. It seemed safe to reveal to him my pain. He did not speak or make any comments. Even after I had talked myself out, he kept his silence. I watched him rub dye into the lines of the buck he had incised in the leather.
“So. What should I do?” I heard myself ask.
He set down his work, drank off his brandy, and then refilled his cup. He looked about his room. “You ask me, of course, because you have noted my rare success at providing myself with a fond wife and many children?”
The bitterness in his voice shocked me, but before I could react to it, he gave a choked laugh. “Forget I said that. Ultimately, the decision was mine, and done a long time ago. FitzChivalry, what do you think you should be doing?”
I stared at him morosely.
“What made things go wrong in the first place?” When I did not reply, he asked me, “Did not you yourself just tell me that you courted her as a boy, when she considered your offer a man’s? She was looking for a man. So don’t go sulking about like a thwarted child. Be a man.” He drank down half his brandy, then refilled both our cups.