and melancholy and sudden fits of temper, and yet…yet you were able to make your marriage tolerable. You learned to deal with his demons, to defer to him when need be. Lady Maude, can you not do the same with Lord Geoffrey? It might well mean your life!”
But Maude was already shaking her head. “No, Minna,” she said, “I cannot do what you ask of me. It is true that I deferred to Heinrich, I do not dispute that. But I was only eight years old when I first met him, and he was a man of stature and significance, crowned by Our Holy Father the Pope. It did not diminish me to acknowledge his authority. And whilst it is true that he was a solitary, secretive man, aloof even in…intimate moments, he never begrudged me his respect. He treated me as his empress, and there was dignity in our marriage.”
She paused, and her hand strayed to her face, her fingers brushing against her throbbing, discolored cheek. “How can you compare them, Heinrich and Geoffrey?” She all but spat the second name. “Heinrich was King of the Germans, the Holy Roman Emperor. But Geoffrey…he is a callow, willful boy, a selfish, boastful whelp who thinks a wife is just one more possession, another mare to ride at his pleasure! You cannot imagine how demeaning it is, Minna, to be subject to a stripling’s whims, to have no rights at all, not even over my own body. You know how I fought against this marriage, but it has been even worse than I’d feared, more than fourteen months of pain and humiliation and misery. I cannot compel Geoffrey to show me the respect a wife deserves. I cannot even deny him my bed. But I will not let him strip away the last shreds of my dignity. I will not beg or grovel before him. I will never give him that satisfaction!”
“My lady, I would never ask that of you. But there must be some ground between defiance and submission. Can you not try to find it? Pride is admirable for certes, but it can also be dangerous, and if you-”
“You do not understand, Minna, not at all. Pride is the only defense I have,” Maude said, and turned away so abruptly that Minna realized she was struggling to hold back tears. She was not a woman who wept easily or often, and knowing that, Minna said no more. Maude had moved to the window. Picking up the mirror again, she stared at her reflection for a long moment. And then she said, “Help me braid my hair, Minna. The abbot will soon be here.”
“My lady, you do not have to do this. I can tell him you are ailing-”
“No!” Maude was very pale, and that ugly blotch of a bruise stood out like a brand, but her dark eyes glittered with a glazed, feverish intensity. “I will not cower up here in my chamber. I am no coward, and I will not hide away like one. I cannot stop people from gossiping behind my back, but I can damned well dare them to do it to my face!”
IT was dusk by the time Geoffrey returned to his formidable stone fortress above the River Maine. He felt wretched, his head pounding, his stomach still queasy, for he was not accustomed to drinking so much. Dismounting in the stable, he surprised the grooms by insisting upon unsaddling his mount himself. He lingered in the stable for almost an hour, rubbing his stallion down, feeding and watering it as the grooms looked on in bafflement. But he finally ran out of chores, and with a leaden step, he crossed the bailey, entered the great hall. To his relief, Maude was not there. He was acutely conscious, though, of the stares, the speculative glances, the eyes averted whenever he turned around. They knew, all of them. So did the townspeople. Most likely every last one of his vassals did, too. Had they begun to wonder how he could govern Anjou, a man unable to rule his own wife? Stalking from the hall, he rapidly mounted the stairs to Maude’s bedchamber.
They were ready for him, having heard the jangling of his spurs on the narrow stone steps. He wasted no time on preliminary skirmishing, saying curtly, “Minna, leave us,” vexed but not surprised when she looked to Maude for confirmation of his command. But he knew how to pay her back, and as soon as she’d reluctantly withdrawn, he slammed the bolt into place, knowing she’d be hovering on the other side of the door, listening.
Leaning back against the door, he said, “Alone at last,” more for the eavesdropping Minna’s benefit than for Maude’s. His wife had yet to say a word. She knew more ways to unsettle a man than any woman he’d ever met, silence being only one of them. She was standing in the shadows behind the table, but he was sure she’d not stay there for long. However much she might fear him, he knew she’d fear showing it even more.
As he expected, she soon circled around the table. But he drew a sharp breath as she moved into the lamp’s light. Jesu, her face was swollen up like a melon! He had not realized he’d hit her that hard. Not that he was sorry. She deserved it, by God she did.
He found, though, that he did not like to look at her bruises, for they were uncomfortable reminders of his own failure. He had his share of the notorious Angevin temper. His father had always claimed it was Lucifer’s legacy, passed down from the Devil’s daughter, said to have beguiled a long-dead Count of Anjou into taking her to wife. But Geoffrey had never given that accursed anger free rein, not as his father had, for it was very important to him-being in control at all times. That was why he’d suffered through so few drunken dawns like today’s, why he’d learned at such an early age that words could be crafted into weapons, giving him power over others. Yet not over Maude, never over her. No matter how often he vowed not to let her goad him again into a heedless, fool’s rage, it always came to that: someone he did not even know shouting and raving at her like a madman, losing more than his temper.
Maude watched warily as he moved about the chamber, slanting toward her an occasional sideways glance that gave away nothing of his thoughts. He guarded his secrets well. In that, he was a worthy opponent, for she rarely knew what he was thinking. What was he doing here? Not to offer an apology, for certes! What did he want of her? To share her bed? God, no…not after last night’s ugliness. Surely he could not expect her to…not so soon? But of course he would, if that was what he wanted. Had he not proved that often enough?
“We need to talk, Maude,” Geoffrey said abruptly. “Things must change between us. This constant quarreling must stop. I am bone-weary of entering this bedchamber and having it become a battlefield.”
“I assure you it gives me no joy, either, Geoffrey.”
“Then you ought to be willing to do your part. Are you?”
Maude hesitated, searching his face intently. Was he sincere about making a new beginning? Or was this some sort of trap? “What do you want of me?”
“It is very simple. I want you to start acting like a wife.”
She should have known better. “You mean obey you in all particulars?”
He ignored her sarcasm. “Why not? You alone would think to question that, for the rest of Christendom recognizes it as a natural right, that a wife owes her husband obedience.”
“And does the husband owe nothing? Is that all marriage is to you, a lifelong debt incurred by the woman?”
She saw the muscles tighten along his jawline, but he surprised her, then, by saying coolly, “So tell me what I owe. I cannot very well satisfy a debt unless I know what it is.”
“I want you to treat me with courtesy. If I balk at obeying you, it is because you shame me in front of others. In truth, you speak more kindly to your dogs than you do to me. It would not unman you to ask instead of order, and you’d get better results.”
Geoffrey could feel heat rising resentfully in his face. “I was willing to treat you well. You were the one who-” No, not again. This time he would not be provoked-by Corpus, he would not. “Fair enough,” he said brusquely. “I show you courtesy and you show me respect. Anything else?”
“You truly need to ask? Look at my face!”
“That was as much your doing as mine!”
“What are you saying-that I wanted to be hit?”
“I am saying it would not have happened if not for your shrew’s temper and poison tongue. You do not want it to happen again? That is fine with me. Just do not give me cause, as easy as that.”
Maude clenched her fists in the folds of her skirt. Her breathing had quickened, but she couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs and she felt as if she were going to suffocate on her choked-back rage. She said nothing, but gave Geoffrey a look of utter loathing, a look that was not lost upon him.
“We are agreed, then,” he said, “that we stop entertaining all of Anjou with our feuding. From now on, we do our squabbling behind closed doors. Is that understood?”
“Yes, I understand. All your talk of change was just that-talk. You do not want to make peace between us. You do not even want a truce, merely a public pretense.”
“A ‘public pretense’ is the best I can hope for-dear wife. If you were to tell me otherwise, I’d know you lied. You can no more sheathe your claws than a wildcat can, and as for your bed thawing out…well, we’ll see the Second Coming first.”
Maude flushed. “If my bed is cold, the blame is yours.”
