Read Online By Grace Possessed by Jennifer Blake - Free Book Online

invoked against him.
    Even as these thoughts, fretted with anguish, ran like quicksilver through her mind, she realized he awaited her reply. “I will become a wife and mother only if a man will have me for love alone,” she said with precision. “What chance of that, think you, when all who don’t quake with fear require to know the size of a woman’s dowry before wondering if she has teeth or toenails?”
    “Love,” he said with a wry shake of his head. “It’s a thing for milkmaids and kitchen scullions, those with no property or hope of having any.”
    They had paraded down one side of the great hall and across the end, passing the screened corridor that led to the buttery, where butts of ale and wine were broached, the pantry, where bread loaves were sliced open, and also the kitchens. Savory smells of roasting meat basted with herbs and spices, simmering broths and fresh-bakedtrenchers wafted from it, along with the yeasty scent of ale. They skirted the outside entrance where cold drafts stirred the front hem of Cate’s gown and burrowed beneath its train. She shivered as they reached her hose-clad ankles.
    “Cold, are you?” he said, bending his head toward her. “Would you care to take a seat by the fire?”
    It was unlikely they could locate two places together. He would leave her then, and she was oddly reluctant to brave the great hall without his wide shoulders between her and the crowd. There were matters that still needed to be made clear between them, as well. “I’m warm enough as long as we keep moving,” she said, with a shake of her head that sent her veil shifting around her shoulders. “Meanwhile, I don’t believe you answered my question.”
    “Which one might that be?” he asked in dry inquiry.
    “As to what we are to do now.”
    “We wait, I think.”
    “Wait?” She gave him a quick look to be certain he was not teasing her again.
    “Upon my father’s answer. We may trust him for a swift refusal. Yes, and probably a blasphemous one, as well.”
    “He may be as profane as he pleases, so long as he is definite,” she answered with fervor.
    “Aye,” Ross agreed without inflection.
    She twitched the long train of her gown from under the feet of a manservant who darted past with a sloshing jug of wine, then walked on for a few steps while curiosity dogged her. “So,” she said after a moment. “You don’t believe love is possible for the higher orders.”
    “It happens, but not often.”
    “You have no expectation of it when you are wed, care nothing for how your lady may look or what she may feel for you or you for her?”
    He twisted his neck as if easing its tightness. “My father will consult with me, I make no doubt, or I with him, and the lady will be comely enough. But the deed will unite our holdings with those of some neighbor or distant kinsman.”
    “And this will content you.”
    “It’s the way of the world.”
    “I see,” she said, disappointed in some manner she could not name. “You will get a quiverful of sons on this comely female, while buying ribbons and other frippery for…for milkmaids.”
    He laughed, a deep, rich sound. “A quiverful, is it? Your faith in my prowess flatters me.”
    “No such thing!” She refused to meet his gaze. “I meant only to say that you would look elsewhere for love.”
    “I don’t know that I’d call it by such a name, though you may be right. It is, as I said…”
    “The way of our world. Yes, I know.”
    “You would marry for love, and to the devil with property, security, and a father for your children who has your same rank?”
    “Yes.”
    One brow rose until it almost touched the bonnet he had donned again as he left the king. “You seem very sure.”
    “It can be no other way, being ordained so by thecurse. Any man who attempts to wed me or my two sisters without love will surely die.”
    “But there is that caveat, the one way to avoid the curse’s dire consequences.”
    “If you care to call