Chapter Two #3
The woman had the manners of a raging bull, but he almost didn’t care. She was positively delightful to look at and at that moment, Garren knew he was in a huge amount of trouble. A mediocre or even ugly woman would have been far easier for him to deal with objectively.
“Aye, my lady,” he said evenly.
“Tell me about it.”
“What do you wish to know?”
Derica cocked a well-shaped brow. “Well… the women, for instance. I hear they act like a pack of wild animals.”
“No worse than a daughter barging into her father’s solar uninvited.”
Garren heard a few titters, though he could not be sure where they came from. He thought perhaps the brothers. Derica, however, simply cocked her head. A challenging smile creased her lips. “I am welcome anywhere in my father’s house, invited or not.”
Garren smiled back. They simply smiled at one another, like hungry wolves, a standoff that made Garren want to laugh out loud. She was amazingly audacious. He looked at Bertram.
“Do you raise your daughter to behave so, my lord?” he asked. His gaze disapprovingly returned to Derica. “No wonder she has had no husband yet.”
Before Derica could verbalize her outrage, Bertram spoke. “She knows how to behave, I assure you. At the moment, she chooses not to.”
Derica would not be left out of the conversation. “I am not in any way insolent. It is my right to inspect the man who would be my husband, is it not?”
“It is not,” Bertram said flatly. “Leave us now. We will send for you when the time is correct.”
“I will not be discarded, Father. I have every right to inspect Sir Garren just as you are.”
“Later, Derica. Do as I say.”
“I will not. I have every right to….”
Bertram took her by the shoulders and turned her back towards the door. Before they reached it, however, a large figure in flowing silks and perfume appeared and threw massive arms around Derica. The largest woman Garren had ever seen held Derica, weeping hysterically.
“My darling, my sweetling,” the woman wept in a deep, husky voice. “I told you not to come down here. Your fate will come soon enough; you do not have to hasten it.”
Garren looked at the woman; he could hardly believe it was Derica’s mother.
She had a huge wimple on with miles of sheer fabric, flowing all about her like waterfalls of color.
She also wore an appalling amount of rouge on her lips in an attempt to make herself more attractive.
But no amount of color could disguise the obvious.
As Garren looked more closely, he swore he saw stubble on the fat cheeks.
“Remove her,” Bertram waved his hands at the pair. “Both of you, leave us.”
The huge woman wept and wept. Derica removed herself gently from the embrace and in turn, embraced the woman.
She cast a long glance at Garren; he would never forget the look in her eyes.
He didn’t know why the expression affected him so, but it did.
Her eyes seemed to reach out and grab him.
Quickly, thankfully, she left the room and he could refocus on the task before him.
Still, the Marshal’s words echoed in his head.
I hear Derica de Rosa is a beautiful woman.
God help him, he had been right. The stakes of the game grew.
*
It had been, in fact, one of the longest afternoons of his life.
Bertram de Rosa, having been the more congenial out of the group of de Rosa men, had turned into something of a barracuda when his daughter had left the room.
It was as if, suddenly, a taper had been lit in his mind and he pounded Garren with questions for several hours.
Politics, religion, and education – no subject escaped him.
It was if he suddenly had to know everything about the man, immediately.
By the time the sun set, Garren was exhausted.
Sup was a few hours off, but he fully expected the interrogation to resume at mealtime.
At the moment, he was grateful for the intermission.
It was the first time he is been at Framlingham and discovered it to be an enormous place.
The wall walk seemed to go on forever. He had made his way up onto the battlements, watching the last of the sun, the dancing colors across the deepening sky.
It was peaceful and he welcomed it. Now and again a sentry would pass him and hardly give him a glance.
A chill breeze was kicking up. Garren leaned back against the stone, his big arms crossed and his brow furrowed in thought.
The Lady Derica de Rosa, he repeated over and over in his mind.
He pondered the long honey-colored hair, silken-looking with its loose curls.
He thought about her great green eyes, huge things that stared back at him as if they could read into his soul.
He mulled over the shape of her face, the way her lips curved into the shape of a rosebud.
He even liked the contours of her nose. She was rather tall for a woman, and rather robust, with delicious curves.
Not that she was heavy by any means, but she wasn’t a frail little thing, either.
She was quite tasty in his opinion. The Marshal hadn’t lied in the least.
A gust of cold wind came up, whistling past his ears.
He was standing near the northeast tower when he heard something that didn’t sound at all like the wind.
There was someone lingering in the shadows of the tower, just inside the top of the stairs.
He didn’t flinch or try to see who it was; he simply stood there and waited.
Whoever it was would make themselves known soon enough.
His dagger, well concealed, was within easy reach.
Another gust of wind arose and he caught the distinct scent of flowers. He didn’t know which kind because he wasn’t very good at that sort of thing. But the scent alone told him who was lying in wait for him.
“You know,” he said casually, “if your father finds you out here with me, without an escort, we would both be in for a good deal of trouble.”
There was no immediate reply. After a moment, he heard soft footfalls coming towards him.
Very leisurely, he turned his head to see Derica emerging into the moonlight.
She looked beautiful, dressed in a burgundy surcoat and a matching heavy cloak.
Garren wasn’t sure if he should smile at her or just look at her. He settled for just looking at her.
Derica gazed back. She wasn’t sure what to say to him, or why she had even followed him for that matter. The only reason she could manage to pinpoint was curiosity. Pure, wild curiosity.
He wasn’t as she had expected or imagined.
Garren was taller, taller than any of her uncles or brothers, and his shoulders were enormously wide.
He had sand-colored hair with a hint of copper in it, cut close to his head.
His eyes were clear blue, she had noticed, and his jaw was very square.
It gave him a rather brave appearance, she thought.
She could believe that he spent so much time in the Holy Land, fighting the infidels.
Surely those dark-skinned natives must have been afraid of him.
He wasn’t deformed, maimed or pimple-faced, as once suggested.
He was, in truth, a large and quite handsome man, and therein laid her curiosity.
The moment she had set eyes on him, everything she had feared had taken flight and now she found herself with an entirely new set of fears. The fear of attraction.
They gazed at each other in the ghostly gray light, each appraising the other.
It seemed that all they had done in the two times they had met one another is stare at each other in an attempt to satisfy the insatiable interest about the person they were going to spend the rest of their lives with.
It was a hunger that grew by the moment.
“Well?” Garren finally said.
Derica seemed to snap out of whatever silly trance she found herself in. She’d never in her life experienced anything so strange. “What do you mean?” she asked.
He wriggled his eyebrows. “About your father. If he finds you here, he’ll berate us both.”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard the question. “Why is it you have never married?”
Garren couldn’t help it; he laughed softly, his straight white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “I must say, you are direct.”
Derica realized she sounded like an idiot and her cheeks grew hot. Trying to recover, she leaned back against the wall a few feet from him, trying to act as casually as he was.
“I simply meant that you’re obviously old. Why is it you have never married?”
Garren laughed harder. “Old, am I? How old do you think I am?”
“Thirty years, at least.”
He was greatly amused. “Thank you for the compliment, but I am nothing of the sort.”
“Oh. How old are you, then?”
“Thirty-one years.”
Her jaw dropped, just as quickly shut. “Good Heavens. I had no idea….”
“That I was as old as God himself, eh?”
She shrugged; he grinned. Garren turned back to the night sky, noting that the wind was picking up.
“It is getting rather cold,” he said. “Mayhap you should return to your chamber.”
“You did not answer my question.”
“What is that?”
“Why have you not married?”
“I have never had the time or the inclination. Had my father not set up this betrothal, I would not have considered it.”
“Why not?”
“I just told you. I have never had the time nor….”
Derica looked at him, then. “You mean to say that you have never met a woman you have wanted to marry? Not even in all of your travels?”
It was Garren’s turn to shrug. “I have met a few interesting women in my lifetime. But it would have been unfair to marry any one of them and then leave her while I go about my vocation.”
He could see the thoughts racing through her mind. “Then you are telling me that you plan to give up your vocation? That you are ready to stay in one place? Is that why you have agreed to our betrothal?”
He could sense something behind her questions, something he couldn’t quite single out. “I agreed because my father went to a lot of trouble to secure this marriage for the future of my family lineage,” he said carefully. “At some point, I will need to produce an heir to carry on the le Mon name.”
It wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “So that’s all I am? A breeding cow?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”
Derica wasn’t quite sure what she had been driving out, but the breeding stock line hadn’t been it. She felt insignificant the way he described his views on the marriage. Pushing herself off the wall, she headed back toward the tower and the stairs. Garren called after her.
“Lady Derica?”
She didn’t answer. With every step, she felt more and more distress and had no idea why. Garren called out to her again and she whirled on him just as she reached the steps.
“I am not breeding stock, Garren le Mon,” she nearly shouted at him. “If all you wanted was a brood mare, you should have had your father select someone else. I am not interested.”
She had a lot of fire, Garren would admit. He moved away from the wall and walked towards her, slowly, watching her body language. He was a man who had made a living from watching the twitches of others and he could tell just how furious she was, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.
“Isn’t that what marriage is, my lady?” he asked. “To perpetuate the family lines, to strengthen allies? If there is something else involved, then I am ignorant of it.”
Derica felt as though she had been slapped. She didn’t understand why she suddenly felt so hopeless. He had entirely logical views of their marriage. She wasn’t sure what her views were at all.
“As am I.”
Garren watched her fade down the steps, into the darkness of the tower.
He knew that somehow he had offended her, but wasn’t sure how.
Still, he wished he knew her well enough to ask for her forgiveness for whatever it was that he had said.
At this moment, he felt the distinct twinge of regret for something he didn’t fully understand.