Read Online At The King's Command by Susan Wiggs - Free Book Online Page A

bobbling, Nance ran after them. “My lord, have a care—”
    “I’ll be all right,” Stephen said. “She doesn’t bite.” As he hastened from the room, he added, “Actually, she probably does, but I haven’t caught her at it yet.”
    When they emerged from the manor house, Pavlo launched into a barking frenzy. Slung upside down over Stephen’s shoulder, Juliana called a command to the borzoya , but saw that he had been tethered to a hitch rail.
    She felt the ground slope as Stephen stalked on, muttering under his breath, toward their destination—a swift-running river.
    “You would not dare,” she said through clenched teeth.
    “Your charms give me courage, darling,” he said. Handling her like a sack of cats he wished to drown, he threw her into the stream.
    A mouthful of water silenced Juliana’s screams. The cold shocked her, but not nearly so much as the cruelty of the man she had married. She planted her feet on the pebbly bottom and surfaced, her hand on her dagger, ready to do battle.
    He gave her no chance. He had waded out, fully clothed, and he, too, was armed—with a block of soap.
    Juliana howled like Pavlo when he was confined to a cage. She bruised her hands and feet against her husband’s hard body, all to no avail. Stephen de Lacey was relentless. He drenched her hair in a witch’s brew of noxious herbs, then scrubbed every thrashing, squirming inch of her, and dunked her as if she were an armful of soapy bed linens.
    When he finished, he did not even look at her, but turned and sloshed his way to the riverbank. “The towels are there,” he said, indicating them with a jerk of his head. “And supper is at the toll of six. We’re having company.”
    “I hope I gave you lice,” she yelled after him.
     
    Old Nance tucked a finger up under her hat and gave her head an idle scratch. Then she sighed heavily, the sound of a woman who was absolutely convinced of her own saintliness.
    “I’ve set the lady’s chamber to rights, my lord.” She waved her chubby arm, showing off the fresh rushes. “It were no small task, I might add.”
    Stephen offered her a straight-backed chair, and with a self-important rustling of fustian skirts, she lowered herself to the seat. He had hastily donned dry clothing and combed his damp hair.
    “Well,” she said, her manner brisk. “I’ll not devil you with questions, my lord. We’ll leave the gossips to mull over how it is that the baron of Wimberleigh came to wed a wild gypsy.”
    “Thank you.” Stephen pulled up a chair of his own, straddling it and folding his arms over the back. He wasgrateful she did not demand an explanation. Yet at the same time, he realized she alone would have understood, for she alone knew the nature of the blade King Henry held poised over Stephen’s neck.
    “Aye, ’tis not my place to ponder the whys and wherefores of your new wedded state. Lord above knows, my poor old mind is too feeble to grasp how you got in such a fix.” She clasped her work-reddened hands. “Now that you’ve seen to the bathing, my lord, the gypsy needs a set of clothes. As to her savage ways, we’ll see about them later.”
    “ Is she truly strange, Nance?” Stephen asked, trying hard not to relive the tempest in the millstream. “Sometimes I glimpse something in her manner, hear a note in her speech, and I wonder.”
    “She’s a gypsy, my lord, and everyone knows gypsies are great imitators.” The goodwife sniffed and poked her broad red nose into the air. “Much like a monkey I once saw. ’Twas a mariner at Bristol, see, and he…”
    His attention fading, Stephen nodded vaguely and planted his chin in his hand. It struck him that he had not entered this room in eight years. The chamber, with its adjoining music suite and solar, wardrobes and close-rooms, had been Meg’s domain.
    Though hastily aired and dusted for the new baroness, the room still bore Meg’s indelible imprint—the fussy scalloped bed draperies of fading pink