Chapter Five #2
But Curtis was watching her. He wasn’t as detached as he pretended to be, mostly because he was weary from the battle and unbalanced from his father’s directive.
He was trying to figure out just how he felt about the woman he was supposed to marry, even if he had no choice in the matter.
As he’d told her, his behavior toward her would, in large part, be dictated by her.
She could be civil or she could build their entire marriage on a raging battle between them.
He sincerely hoped she didn’t choose the latter.
“You still have not warmed to the idea,” he said after a moment.
“Not that I blame you. I’m not sure I have, but you and I are just small pieces of a larger game.
There are those who control this game, and they tell us what must be done to make it complete.
If you could save the lives of your men by a marriage, wouldn’t you? ”
She wouldn’t look at him. “As you said, it does not matter what I think,” she said. “I am going to be forced into this whether or not I want it.”
“Are you opposed to marriage in general?”
Was she? No, she wasn’t. But what Curtis didn’t know was that she’d been married once before, to an old man.
He’d been a friend of her father’s, and at the tender age of thirteen years, she had been wed to him.
Cadwalader ap Dai had been a very nice man, and very important to her people because he was part of the royal house of the ancient kingdom of Gwent.
Elle’s father had hoped that his daughter would breed a new generation of royals for Gwent, which would, in turn, become an ally to Powys.
Cadwalader had been kind and gentle, but mating between them had been a nightmare because his manhood would barely become stiff enough to complete the task.
That was all Elle knew of relations between a man and a woman.
She had been young and impressionable, and Cadwalader had been old and shriveled.
She could still see that wrinkly body and smell the scent of an elderly man who wasn’t fond of bathing.
He’d touched her as if he were afraid of her, and when it came time to consummate the marriage…
Elle had found it uncomfortable and embarrassing.
Fortunately, Cadwalader had no real interest in his young wife, and Elle always received the impression that he was fearful of her somehow.
It only occurred to her after his death that she represented his inability to perform as a man, because he rarely touched her, and when he did, it was yet another uncomfortable and embarrassing situation.
When they’d been married six months and she wasn’t pregnant, Cadwalader told his men that she was barren to save himself the embarrassment of admitting he couldn’t perform well enough to impregnate her.
It wasn’t as if Elle could dispute him. When he finally died eight months into their marriage, she did her best to forget about a man who had been completely forgettable.
But here she was, anticipating a marriage again, but not without great reluctance.
Her only experience with it had been a poor one, and she’d managed to convince herself over the years that Cadwalader couldn’t become properly aroused because she wasn’t particularly attractive.
Curtis had no idea what he was getting into.
Perhaps he needed to know, for his own sake.
Trouble was, she was so embarrassed about it that she could hardly bring up the subject.
“I suppose I am opposed to marriage in general,” she finally said. “I simply do not want any part of it.”
“Why not?”
She swallowed hard. “Because… because men do not like me, and I do not like them,” she said, which was a lie. She did like men, but to admit she did, when they didn’t like her, was shameful. “I do not want to marry a man simply so he can tell me what to do. I do not need to be ordered about.”
Curtis sat back in his chair, scratching his cheek. “That is a very narrow view of marriage.”
“How would you know?” she said. “Have you ever been married?”
He shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “Why? Have you?”
He’d asked the fateful question. If you break my trust, I will never give it again.
Those words were ringing in her head. Her relationship with the man was difficult anyway.
She didn’t want to add mistrust to the mix, because it would make it miserable for the both of them.
She simply wasn’t willing to lie to him.
She hoped she wouldn’t die from embarrassment.
“Aye,” she said, barely audible. “I have.”
That changed his whole mood. He set the quill down, staring at her as if she’d just said something surprising. “You have?” he asked.
She nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
She told him she’d been married, so she hadn’t lied to him.
But, God help her, she didn’t want to elaborate.
She’d never spoken of it, not during or after everything happened.
It was a humiliation she kept buried deep inside, and she was damn well not going to confess it to a Saesneg.
To Curtis.
But he wasn’t going to let her admit something like that and not tell him the entire story. Standing up, he picked up his chair and brought it over to where she was sitting. He plopped the chair down about two feet in front of her and sat on it, facing her.
“You will tell me everything,” he said quietly. “When were you married, and to whom?”
He was being surprisingly gentle. She had expected him to be irate with the news, but he wasn’t. He was being quite calm and… kind, even. Elle wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.
“It… it was a long time ago,” she said, hardly above a whisper. “You must understand that I am the last of my line. Other than Gruffydd, there are no other sons or daughters of Gwenwynwyn ap Owain. Legitimate ones, that is.”
He nodded patiently. “I understand,” he said. “Go on.”
She couldn’t look at him. “He was the last of a royal house of Gwent,” she said. “He was very old and I was very young. We’d not yet been married a year when he died.”
Curtis studied her for a moment. “No children?”
“No children.”
“Was the marriage consummated?”
Elle didn’t know why, but she burst into quiet tears.
She was a lass who never gave in to emotion, but here she was, weeping in front of a stranger.
It was so terribly humiliating, the question he was asking.
She didn’t sense he was doing it to be cruel.
He simply wanted to know, especially if he was being ordered to marry her.
It was his right to know. Before she could answer, however, the flap of the tent snapped back and the squire appeared with bundles of fabric in his arms. Behind him, men were lugging what amounted to a big iron cauldron.
Curtis quickly stood up.
“Put the pot over here,” he said, indicating a corner of the tent away from the door. “Fill it halfway with hot water, and be quick about it.”
The soldiers carrying the cauldron dropped it in the corner and fled the tent as Curtis went over to the bed where Westley was laying out some clothing.
“I found this,” Westley said, holding up a woman’s dress. “There were a couple of others, but they are not well maintained. I do not know if Mama knows, but Papa seems to have not paid much attention to them. She’ll be furious when she finds out.”
Curtis grinned weakly, inspecting the dress his brother was holding up.
It was made of brown broadcloth, with long sleeves, a rounded neckline, and a tailored bodice with a big skirt.
It was plain, and not particularly attractive, but he knew it was a dress meant for travel or work.
His mother didn’t care if it got dirty. He eyed it a moment before glancing over his shoulder at Elle, who was still quietly weeping.
“Mama is not a big woman,” he said. “She’s short.”
Westley nodded. “She is, indeed,” he said. “But she has big…”
He trailed off, suddenly embarrassed that he was about to comment on his mother’s bosom. Curtis snorted at his red-faced brother.
“Aye, she has,” he said. “Because she nursed a gaggle of foolish and ungrateful children, myself excluded.”
Westley looked at him with confusion. “What does that mean?”
Curtis thumped him on the head. “It means we should have drowned you when you were born,” he said. “I tried, but Mama said we shouldn’t.”
As Westley rubbed the spot Curtis had thumped, unhappy with his comment, Curtis turned to the other garments that the lad had brought.
Along with the brown dress, there was a blue one of nearly the same design, and then a couple of shifts that were wrinkled.
One had a big water stain on it, from water dripping through the chest and onto the garment.
It wasn’t that they had been treated poorly, but merely tightly folded and shoved down into the bottom of a chest. They’d been there for years.
There was also a small wooden box that contained the remnants of soap that smelled of lemons, a scrub brush made from frayed reeds, a comb, and a few other things that a lady might need, including hairpins.
It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
“This is adequate for now,” he told Westley. “When the lady bathes, she can borrow one of these. In the meanwhile, send for some food. I haven’t eaten since early this morning.”
Westley trudged out of the tent as men began to bring in buckets of hot water.
They had a big iron pot near the kitchen area, bubbling with hot water to be used for wounds and washing, so seven big buckets from that cauldron filled up the pot to a little over half full.
One last bucket of cold water made it so it wasn’t scalding.
With the soap and the scrub brush in hand, Curtis made his way over to Elle.