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“Now, however, you’ve proved your superior wit time and again, and so I have to suppose your hesitation was nothing more than a woman’s natural caution when faced with a momentous transition.”
He could irritate her even as he sought to compliment her! “Could it not be, as I said, a sincere desire to avoid the grief that accompanies a marriage to a warrior?”
“That wouldn’t make sense, and you are a sensible woman.”
Another compliment, another irritation. Didn’t he understand that some emotions didn’t respond to reason?
She stared at him, so solemn, so earnest.
Of course he didn’t. He lived in his man’s world as the ultimate specimen of success, and illogical emotions had no place there. Edlyn could talk until next week, and until he experienced the pain of worry when a lover stood in the way of danger, he would never understand.
Recognizing defeat, she sank down on a bench and indicated the place beside her. “Tell me what you think about our sons.”
Instead he dragged a stool forward and placed it facing her. Seating himself, he took her hands. Immediately, the work in the great hall slowed and all the servants found a reason to linger close.
Neda’s voice called them to attention. “Get you to your chores!”
They scattered, and Hugh spoke. “I think little of your plan to place the lads in the monastery.” She tried to interrupt, but he said, “Let me finish. While I know you have your reasons, I see the fire and spirit of Robin in each of the lads. Parkin’s a wild man, and he needs to be trained to control that wildness. Allyn’s kind and thoughtful, but he has a temper he must learn to control. I fear if they were placed in the monastery, their father’s fire and spirit would be extinguished forever. Certainly their father’s line will be extinguished, and I know you loved Robin too much to allow that to happen.”
She knew what he was saying, and she spoke around the lump that formed in her chest. “You want them to be trained for the knighthood.”
“It is the right and fitting thing to do.”
She didn’t know what was right and fitting anymore. She’d made her decision to have them become monks, but Allyn and Parkin had hated the idea. Although she had previously rejected Hugh’s counsel in this matter, his sincere horror at that fate, even for the sons of his enemy, had given her pause. And the monks themselves seemed to have reservations about the boys’ fitness for the contemplative life.
Her indecisiveness made Hugh eager. “Let them settle here,” he said, “and know this place for their home. Then when they know we will be here when they return, we’ll send them out to be fostered.”
Hugh didn’t comprehend the impossibility of what he proposed. Picking her words with care, she said, “Noble sons are sent away to strange households to be raised and trained by other men for one reason, and one reason only—to strengthen the ties between those two families. Once a knight has fostered a lad, he’s almost a godfather. The families are close. Their influence is as one.”
“That’s true.”
“Allyn and Parkin are sons of a traitor to the king.”
When Hugh realized she was actually discussing this in a reasonable manner, his eagerness knew no bounds. “You place too much importance on their being the sons of a traitor. Because of my position, we can get anyone in the kingdom to foster our sons.”
Her head buzzed as she strove to move old prejudices and paralyzing fear aside and act as a mature woman would. “I have no doubt you can use your influence and get Allyn placed, but who’s going to foster Parkin? Who’ll take care of my rambunctious lad?”
“Just because he’s high-spirited—”
“Not because—” She took a breath. She had to tell him, but such confiding went against the years of reticence. “They’ll take a traitor’s son perhaps. But a traitor’s bastard?”
Hugh just stared. He acted as if she were speaking a different language suddenly, or as if she had changed the parameters that ruled the world. “A bastard?”
“Parkin isn’t truly my son. He’s the son of my…of the earl of Jagger and my maid.” She saw the moment it all made sense to Hugh, and she couldn’t bear his shrewd expression.
“A bastard off a commoner,” he said.
“Robin got bored waiting for me to calve, as he so charmingly put it, and she was sleeping beside our bed anyway, so he…” She hadn’t felt this pain for a long time. She thought it over and done with. But Hugh’s reaction brought it back.
He dropped her hands and rose. He circled her, water dripping from the hem of his surcoat as he walked.
She appreciated his need for movement. Right now she would have given anything to hold that spindle, to have something to occupy her hands and her eyes while Hugh stared at her. But the spindle remained on the other side of the fireplace, and she didn’t think she could rise.
She hated that Hugh pitied her, yet the woman she was now also pitied that lass she had been. Robin’s wife, with the swollen ankles and the distended belly and the mate who found her so repulsive. She had been young and so grateful to Robin for marrying her, but the gratitude had faded when his grunts of pleasure had combined with her virgin maid’s sounds of pain. Her maid’s shame and guilt had made Edlyn look at Robin in a new light, and her love had begun its slow death.
In sooth, Edlyn had been a poor, odd creature when he’d wed her, but even she deserved a husband who went outside their bedchamber to ease his overfull loins. So she cringed as she remembered her early anguish, but she kept talking. “So I knew the baby was Robin’s right from the beginning. When Parkin’s mother died in the birthing, Allyn was only four months old.”
“They’re not twins.” Hugh still wrestled with reality.
