Trader Henri Beauchamps’s daughter, and I am not to be trifled with. You have seen that I have not been poaching, now be on your way, and be grateful that I am too busy today to bother with punishing your insolence!” She raised her chin and stared down her nose at him, aping Genevieve at her most superior. “Your manners leave a great deal to be desired. You had better mend them and learn your place before you encounter someone less forgiving than I.”
He started again at her father’s name, and his eyes darkened further with anger at her threat. But he backed away, and made a sketch of a bow.
“I beg your pardon, Mistress Beauchamps,” he said, making a pretense of groveling. “I thought you were a peasant wench — ”
She thought about giving him a tongue-lashing there and then. Thought about ordering him to take her to his master so she could report his behavior.
But on second thought, doing either of those things would do no good and potentially much harm. She knew he wouldn’t dare raise his hand to her, but he would take out the anger such a dressing-down would build in him on the next helpless creature that had the misfortune to cross his path. So instead, she continued aping Genevieve. The insults would get under his skin like screw-thorns.
“Be off with you,” she said, haughtily. “I do not care to waste more of my time with your foolishness than I already have.”
He bowed again, and slunk off into the forest. She stood there for a moment longer, still shaking with anger and taking long, deep breaths to calm herself down. Only when she was certain of her own temper again did she continue her journey.
Granny’s Cottage was at least as old as the oldest building in the city, but rather than showing its age, what it displayed was just how comfortable and cozy one could make a little building when one had several hundred years to improve it. The thatch was probably as thick as Bella was tall, the tiny windows all had glass in them, the floor was closely laid slate covered in cheerful rag rugs. There were four rooms, opening into one another: Granny’s bedroom with a canopied bed big enough to sleep four, a workroom and stillroom where she made her medicines, the kitchen and a sort of parlor. The gray stone walls had long ago been sheathed on the inside in lath and plaster. Pretty little bits of embroidery had been framed and hung on them. The settle in the parlor where Bella sat was piled with cushions and draped with crocheted and knitted blankets made up of a motley assortment of odds and ends.
Granny herself was of a piece with her cottage: tidy, compact, efficient; a little shabby, but one should never equate shabby with dirty. She had snow-white hair piled up under a spotlessly white cap, a white apron over her patchwork skirt and brown linen shirt. She moved lightly, and surprisingly quickly.
“Oh, that wretched, beastly man,” Granny said, arranging honeycakes on a plate, putting the plate on a tray with two mugs and pouring tea into the mugs as Bella stretched out her feet to the fire. “Why Duke Sebastian continues to keep him, I do not know.”
“Well, he tried to maul me at the Wool Guild masked ball last night,” Bella replied crossly. “He didn’t know who I was, of course — I imagine he thought I was a servant in my mistress’s castoffs. I managed to give him bruised ribs and an equally bruised foot. If I hadn’t been at such a disadvantage in the snow today, I would have given him a black eye to match. Hasn’t anyone ever complained about him?” she continued, still flushing a little with anger.
“He frightens people too much,” Granny replied, handing her a cup of tea in the thick, white-glazed pottery mug. “And of course, most of those who come out here to me are poor. Who would listen to them if they complained in the first place? And in the second, in order to lodge anything, they would have to take their complaint to a Royal Court, since the complaint is against one of Duke Sebastian’s chief servants. You know what that would entail.”
Bella snorted. “First an endless wait, which means a day or more of lost wages, to see the King’s Sheriff. Then you would have to persuade the Sheriff that the complaint was valid. Then, when the complaint was accepted, you would have to come back to Court for days and wait in line for your case to be heard — ”
Granny settled into her rocking chair, and picked up her own tea mug.
“But why not take the complaint directly to the Duke?” she wanted to know.
“Because no one has seen the Duke since he came of age,” Granny replied with a shrewd look. “In fact, the only one of his servants I have ever seen is the Woodsman. Which would make it a bit difficult to complain. You must remember, Duke Sebastian’s father died when he was young, and the Woodsman has been acting as his Guardian. And even though the Duke reached his majority a few years ago, he has remained in his Manor, and let Eric continue to oversee his lands.”
“No wonder Eric’s got above himself,” Bella growled. “I’ve half a mind to go through the complaint process myself. I was insulted, he tried to lay hands on me and he implied he intended indecencies on my person. And I have time no servant or farmhand can afford to spend on the process.”
“Think it through, first,” Granny advised. “Just have a honeycake and think it through.”
When Granny took that tone of voice with her, Bella generally did as she advised. So as the rosy-faced, white-haired old woman rocked gently and sipped her tea, Bella considered the implications.
If she went through the usual route with the King’s Sheriff, the very first thing that would happen, once the complaint was actually brought into the Court, would be that her word would be pitted against Eric’s. Eric could, and certainly would, claim that it had been she who had been forward with him, or that she had been mistaken, or that it had never happened at all. It would be a case of her word against his, and it would be next to impossible to find any other women he might have molested or men he had bullied to bring their own complaints forward to bolster her case.
Even if she was believed, there would still be doubts by some. She was, after all, considered to be an aging woman, a spinster, and he was a handsome man. Some would look at the situation and be sure that she had gone running after him, then made up the story out of revenge for being rebuffed. Genevieve would certainly wash her hands of the situation, and Bella’s reputation would suffer in some quarters.
And what would she gain if she won against him? The worst that would happen to him would be that he would be publicly reprimanded and perhaps ordered to apologize just as publicly. He might be watched carefully for a time, but no one could dismiss him from his post except the King and his master. It didn’t sound likely that Duke Sebastian would dismiss someone he relied on so heavily, and this was no matter for the King to get involved in.
“Bother!” she said aloud, crossly, knowing that Granny had already come to the same conclusion
