Chapter Two #3
Stephen had taken Joselyn into the keep, kicking down doors until he came to a room on the third level that had a small bed in it. It was a dirty room with an odd smell, but it didn’t matter. It was private for his needs. He entered the room, slamming the door and bolting it.
He put Joselyn on her feet, watching as she tried to push past him and open the door.
He grasped her around the waist and easily pulled her away from the panel.
She struggled against him, trying to smack his hands away.
He directed her over towards the bed but she was struggling so much that he ended up tripping over his own feet just so he would not step on her.
Together, they tumbled onto the stiff, dirty pile of straw that constituted the crude mattress.
Joselyn was buried underneath him, sobbing her heart out. Stephen shifted so he would not smash her but he didn’t get up entirely; she was still quite volatile.
“Relax, lady,” he murmured with his mouth against the back of her head.
She twisted and heaved underneath him. “Let me go,” she wept. “I must see to my mother.”
Stephen thought on his last vision of Joselyn’s mother as they had left the hall.
The woman had been completely engulfed in flames and he knew there was no point to try and save her.
Being a healer, and a very good one at that, he should have gone back into the hall to see if something could be done.
But he also knew that, in his experience, serious burns were almost always fatal.
And the woman had been consumed by the blaze, leaving little doubt that if she was not dead already, she very soon would be. He sighed faintly.
“There is no need,” he rumbled softly. “If she is not yet with God, she very shortly will be.”
Joselyn’s weeping came to an abrupt halt as if shocked by his words. When she resumed her tears a few moments later, it was with great anguish. Stephen pushed himself off of the bed, pulling her up with him. As he knelt beside the frame, he grasped her by the arms and forced her to look at him.
“You have my sympathies on what has happened to your mother,” he said with more emotion than he had exhibited since they had met.
“But I can tell you with certainty that the moment she entered the flame, there was nothing anyone could do for her. It is a tragic thing to have witnessed and for that, I am deeply sorry. But you and I have a duty to fulfill and we must move forward with it.”
Joselyn stared at him, her tears rapidly fading and a look of complete disbelief on her face. “Are you truly so unfeeling?” she half-demanded, half-pleaded. “You speak of my mother, not some unknown, unloved woman.”
His blue eyes were intense. “I realize that,” he said. “But I also know that there is nothing to be done for her. You must not dwell on it.”
She tried to yank free of his grasp. “You are the coldest, most heartless man I have ever had the misfortune to come across,” she hissed, managing to pull an arm free.
She began climbing across the bed, away from him, leaving her tartan in his grip.
“How can you show such callousness? If you are a Hospitaller as you said you were, then surely there is some compassion buried deep within your warring soul.”
He stood up, watching her cower against the wall. The tartan in his hand was tossed against the wall. It landed in the cobwebs.
“The compassion I have is carefully reserved, not to be given lightly,” he told her. “It does not belong with the dead.”
Joselyn remained pressed against the wall as he turned away from her and began unlatching his plate armor.
His reaction to her mother’s situation only reinforced that he was an aloof, heartless man.
God had never been particularly kind to her throughout her life and now she was saddled with an unemotional block of ice.
Though her mind was still in the chaotic hall, her attention was focused on the enormous knight who was now her husband.
He pulled off his wrist protection and moved to his breastplate, pulling it free and neatly piling the protection near the door.
The more he removed, the more her attention was drawn away from the hall and to the situation at hand.
Joselyn was not a skittish girl; she was practical and sensible.
She knew very well that she was now a married woman but beyond that, she knew little else.
Having spent eleven years in the cloister had only prepared her for life serving the church.
She knew virtually nothing of married life, of what was expected between a husband and wife.
But she knew enough to know that her husband would expect his husbandly rights this night.
Her experience with such a thing had been violent and painful.
She expected this encounter to be no different from the disposition her new husband was displaying.
But truth be told, she was still in shock; shock from the surrender, shock from an unanticipated marriage, and shock over her mother’s horrific end.
It was enough to deaden anyone, but Joselyn was not an average young woman.
She was a fighter. As Stephen removed the last of his plate armor and turned to her, she knew she could not surrender to the situation, as much as she wanted to.
It would be easier to submit. But she never did things the easy way.
“I need your help to remove my mail.” He pulled off his hauberk, or mail hood, and tossed it to the ground. Then he moved to the bed and held out his arms to her. “Will you pull, please?”
She gazed at him with a baleful expression. “Are you truly so hardened to everything?”
He looked at her, his arms still extended. “My mail, please.”
“Does nothing in this world affect you in the least?”
“My mail, please.”
“Answer me. As your wife, I would ask to be given that courtesy.”
The arms remained hanging in the air between them. “I have no answer to give. I am what you see.”
He was the most difficult person she had ever met. Frustrated, she reached out and grabbed the mail, grunting with great release as she pulled. Stephen bent over, allowing the mail to slide over his enormous body.
“My name…,” Joselyn grunted as one arm came free and almost sent her over backwards, “is the Lady Joselyn Julia de Velt Seton,” the other arm came free and she fell back onto the mattress with the weight of it, “and I am the eldest child of Sir Alexander and the Lady Julia de Velt Seton. My mother is a Northumberland de Velt and my father a Scot although he has Saxon forebears. I have been living at Jedburgh Abbey for eleven years where I was taught the arts of sewing, cooking, gardening, flower cultivation, shearing sheep and wool dying. I was also taught to read and write Latin and French, and I can play the mandolin. I am not a mindless, cowering female so you should know the manner of woman you have married.”
By this time, Stephen was standing over her with his hands on his hips, listening to her speech.
She spit it out rather angrily and he realized he very much wanted to smile at her spunk.
But he kept his smile hidden, his manner strictly professional.
He didn’t want to let his guard down, not even for a moment.
He’d known too many women in his lifetime that would use that sort of thing against him.
Until he knew Joselyn better, it was best to keep up appearances.
“Thank you for the education,” he said, bordering on sarcasm. “Since you are not a mindless, cowering female, I am assuming you realize that I am not undressing for my own comfort.”
“What do you mean?”
“We must consummate this marriage.”
She blanched but admirably kept her composure. “And if I refuse?”
“I would advise against it.”
The pale blue eyes flashed. “Why? Will you rape me, too, if I do not submit to your husbandly attention?”
“I will do what is necessary to accomplish the task.”
The man was as cold as stone and she believed him completely.
Joselyn felt the sting of tears as she gazed up at him, quickly averting her eyes so he would not see.
But it was too much; the strain of recent events took their toll and tears came as she started to unfasten the leather girdle around her slender waist. She stood up from the mattress and let the girdle fall to the ground.
By this time, the tears were rolling and she sobbed as she began to unfasten her surcoat.
The surcoat hit the floor and she went to work on her heavy hose, reaching underneath her shift to unfasten the ties and unrolling each one from her shapely legs.
She was weeping deeply by the time she yanked the linen shift over her head, exposing her naked torso to the cold room.
With a final yank of frustration and futility, she pulled her undergarments free and tossed them onto the floor.
“There,” she wept, covering her naked chest with her arms and wiping her face at the same time. “Do what you must. I have made it simple for you to take what you want.”
Stephen had stood still as stone throughout the entire exchange; even now, as she stood before him in all of her naked glory, his cornflower blue eyes were fixed on her face.
There had been a brief moment when he had visually inspected his new bride and what he saw did not displease him.
She was magnificent. He also knew that it took an abundance of courage to do what she had just done and he was impressed.
A small seed of respect sprouted for the woman as she stood a few feet away, sobbing pitifully yet prepared to do as she must. He knew it hadn’t been easy for her and in that instant, the compassion he kept so carefully guarded began to find release.