RulingPassion (16 page)

The duke introduced her as the Earl of Highwaith’s daughter,
who’d been rescued by Lord Jeoffrey and remained under his protection pending
arrangements for her future. Rosalind could see the duchess jump immediately to
impolite but correct conclusions.

Rosalind curtseyed and said, “Your grace, welcome to
Blaisdell. I hope you will find all arranged for you comfort during your stay.”

The duchess sniffed. “I expect it to be.” She proceeded into
the house with no further word.

Smarting from the snub but trying not to let it affect her,
Rosalind turned and followed the rest of the group into the manor. When they
stopped in the great hall, she rang for a servant to show them to their
quarters, but the duchess overruled her by saying, “I would like to go straight
to our quarters to freshen up. The journey was not pleasant and I am much in
need of restoring. Show us to them immediately,
Lady
Rosalind, and have
a measure of spiced cider and cooled water sent right away as well.”

Rosalind stiffened her spine, gave herself a stern lecture
about keeping her temper in check, and led the duchess and her daughter to
their quarters. She wasn’t surprised when the two women agreed their chambers
were rather smaller than they might have expected, the furnishings not grand
enough and the air held a slightly disagreeable aroma.

“And there is no fire in the grate.” The duchess turned to Rosalind.
“I’m surprised, my lady, that such a thing could have been overlooked.”

“The weather has been so fine, no one else wished for one,
your grace,” she said. “But of course, I will have one laid for you
immediately.”

“Indeed. Are you sure this room was properly aired?”

“It was, your grace. I saw to it myself.”

“Hmmm,” the duchess intoned, implying volumes about
Rosalind’s competence.

“If your grace would prefer other quarters I am sure we can
arrange something.”

“Are these the best chambers you have?”

“Saving his lordship’s private chambers, they are.

“And what would you know of his lordship’s private
chambers?” the duchess accused. “Surely even you have enough sense of decorum
to know that a gentleman’s chambers should be off limits to any lady save his
wife.”

“Of course, in general circumstances, it’s true, but there
are occasions when my service to his lordship demands I enter his quarters to
retrieve something for him or bring something he wishes.”

The duchess sniffed again and remarked on how poor their
servants were if a
lady
performed such errands.

The servants arrived with the drinks the duchess had
requested. She naturally found fault with those too, but conceded with ill
grace she’d accept them to avoid creating additional work. Rosalind was very
careful to be sure her thanks held no shred of sarcasm.

Rosalind was eventually able to retreat, leaving them to
refresh themselves and rest from their journey. She heaved a huge sigh of
relief to be away and wondered how she could possibly survive two more days of
their biting words and haughty snubs. She’d have to, however, and bear it with
good grace, for Jeoffrey’s sake. Much, possibly his entire future, rested on
their approval of him. Fortunately it didn’t rest on their approval of her, or
there would be no hope at all, she thought, allowing herself a bit of humor to
wash away the bad odor they left lingering in her nostrils.

Dinner was an enormous challenge. Though her seating plan
had called for the duke to be placed at Jeoffrey’s immediate right with his
daughter beyond and then the duchess and herself, Rosalind noted that Lady Alys
took it upon herself to switch her place with the duke’s so that she sat on
Jeoffrey’s right. The duchess noticed and frowned over it, but said nothing.
About that, at least. She had a great deal to say about other things: the food,
the drink, the service, the surroundings, the accommodations, and the company.
None of it was positive.

Rosalind struggled through dinner, answering calmly when she
could and feigning difficulty hearing when she despaired of maintaining her
composure should she speak.

Lady Alys ate little but drank more wine than was wise. She
spoke too much, laughed too loudly, and flirted shamefully with Jeoffrey. The
duchess looked her way several times, her eyes angry, and once she leaned over
and murmured something to her husband. Her glance at her daughter suggested she
wanted him to try to restrain the girl. The duke shrugged and leaned over
toward Lady Alys.

The young woman huffed and looked irritated when her father
voiced his displeasure with her behavior. She shook her head and argued, then
finally sniffed again and turned back to Jeoffrey. Gentle as her own parents
had been with her, Rosalind would never have dared defy their wishes so openly.

She held her peace through dinner and the entertainment
afterwards, though the duchess’s constant harping and Lady Alys’ audacious
flirting combined to wear on her nerves. By the time she was able to crawl into
bed, the effort of keeping a rein on her temper had exhausted her. She knew
Jeoffrey wouldn’t be there that night, and she missed him, but only briefly
before she fell into a shallow sleep interrupted several times by bad dreams.

She woke with a foreboding she hoped meant nothing more than
a long day made difficult by a poor night’s sleep and the daunting prospect of
entertaining the duchess and her daughter all day.

It wasn’t to be so easy, however.

Rosalind kept her calm until midday when the duchess’s
criticisms grew even more frequent and intense after a morning walk to the
river and then a lunch that was neither abundant enough, nor grand enough for
her.

After a while, Rosalind was able to separate out enough of
her mind to recognize that much of the criticism grew out of the duchess’s
disapproval of the match with Jeoffrey, and was an attempt on her part to
convince her daughter the place wasn’t suitable for her. In that it failed
utterly. Lady Alys was far too besotted with Jeoffrey to concern herself with
whether the food or the quarters met some highly exacting standard.

Her failure did nothing to improve the duchess’s humor or to
sway her from the course she’d chosen.

But it wore on Rosalind’s temper like a tab of rough, stiff
cloth rubbing the skin until it started to wear away, leaving a bleeding wound
that grew worse each time the tab touched it.

If she could have found any decent excuse to stay away from
dinner, she would have. But as Jeoffrey’s hostess, duty demanded she be
present, and even the entirely real headache she had didn’t provide sufficient
justification for failing that obligation.

The duchess had expanded her list of complaints to include
the servants, who didn’t always respond quickly enough, and Jeoffrey himself
for allowing such lax attention from his staff.

Rosalind tried to explain the servants had been working
round the clock for nearly a week and they were trying to give them all some
time off by rotating who was on duty. It left them a little short, but not
unbearably so. While the duchess brushed off her explanation with a sweeping
gesture and “Servants should only be allowed time off when ‘tis convenient for
their betters,” Rosalind watched Lady Alys fawning over Jeoffrey.

She had watched Jeoffrey persuade the duke to sit next to
him that night, then they both had to hide grimaces of annoyance when Lady Alys
pretended to have lost her handkerchief and switched chairs while her father
gallantly sought the missing cloth. Lady Alys had flirted openly with Jeoffrey
since the beginning of the meal, but her advances were becoming cruder and more
blatant. She found excuses to touch him, wiping a pretend crumb from his lips
and brushing hair from his face.

Jeoffrey was just removing the young lady’s hand from his
thigh when her mother stated, “This is just intolerable. My cup has been empty
for a minute or more and no one has come to refill it. Does Lord Jeoffrey make
any attempt to keep proper discipline among his servants?”

The comment caught Rosalind already fuming about Lady Alys’
advances. It made her furious on behalf of her lord and his staff. With the
exhaustion accumulated from the previous days weakening her, Rosalind lost her
hold on her temper. She stood, picked up the pitcher nearby, and filled the
duchess’s cup, barely restraining herself from bashing it over the woman’s head,
but she could hold her tongue no longer.

“God’s blood, Madame! You proclaim our household discipline
inferior because a servant does not come the very second of your desire to do
something you could perfectly well do for yourself, while at the same time your
shameless hussy of a daughter makes the most disgustingly forward advances on
my lord. How dare you complain about discipline in this household when you fail
to enforce proper behavior on your own daughter?”

As the room when silent around her, Rosalind realized what a
devastating error she’d made.

Chapter Seventeen

All eyes in the room focused on her. Rosalind froze for a
minute, shocked by her own words. When it wore off she hoped a lightning bolt
would come and strike her down or the Judgment Day trumpet would choose that
moment to sound.

Neither happened and Rosalind had to face the fact she’d
just done the unforgivable.

The duchess stared at her, eyes wide and furious, mouth
agape, for a moment, then she drew a very long breath and said, “Well, I never…
This is completely outrageous. Your behavior, young lady, is quite beyond the
pale. You dare accuse me of allowing my daughter to behave badly, yet she would
never accost a guest in such a rude, insulting, infamous way.”

Rosalind stood there groping for something to say or do to
mitigate the effects of her behavior. The duchess’s words made clear how she’d
shamed not just herself, but Jeoffrey as well. She turned to him and saw him
watching her with shocked horror. She couldn’t meet his gaze.

She had to apologize, to say something to put things right.
If it could be done at all.

“Your grace, you are entirely correct,” she said, turning to
the woman, and forcing the words past the huge obstruction in her throat. “My
words were disgraceful and infamous and I very much regret them. I offer my
most sincere and abject apologies.”

She turned to Jeoffrey again. “And to you, as well, my lord.
I regret the shame I have brought on your household with my disgraceful
behavior.”

And then, watching him, she knew what she had to, though she
dreaded it with every fiber of her being. “My lord, I request that I be
disciplined for this shocking display of poor behavior.”

She did meet his gaze this time, and tried to read the frown
on his face as a gauge to how angry he was with her.

“You will get down on your knees right here and apologize to
each person. Then I think it best you leave us,” he said.

Rosalind started to breathe a sigh of relief, until the
duchess said, “Really, Lord Jeoffrey, think you ‘tis sufficient? Behavior such
as this would not be tolerated in my household and would be answered with a
severe punishment. I had heard you attempted to run a well-ordered household
with stern discipline.”

They both looked at Jeoffrey. Rosalind doubted any of the
others understood the depth of his conflict, and she hated herself for putting
him in this untenable position.

“My lord,” she said, holding his eyes, “I realize that with
guests present you might believe it wiser to conduct your discipline in
private, yet I feel such unbearable shame and remorse, I would have it expiated
here and now. I beg you to proceed as would be normal, regarding our guests in
the nature of family for this purpose.”

His hard, solemn expression didn’t change as he watched her
for a long, silent, nearly unbearable moment while he considered her request.
No one else could have read it, but she saw in his eyes the plea for her to
release them both from the unbearable situation and take the outlet he’d
offered. She held his gaze and refused to relent.

Finally he nodded. “So be it.” He turned to a servant who’d
frozen in place nearby when the crisis began and said, “Fetch Joseph and
Wulfram and tell them to bring in the punishment bench, then find Master
Chrestien and ask him to come and bring the straight rod with him.”

The boy nodded and left the room.

For a moment the stillness was so profound when one man
coughed it echoed through the room like the report of an explosion.

Jeoffrey said, “We will still have that apology, Lady
Rosalind. On your knees.”

The ground grew shaky beneath her as she dropped carefully
to her knees, adjusting the skirts of her houppeland. A tear broke loose and
ran down her cheek, leaving a hot wet streak. The air around her seemed to
thicken, grow gray and misty. She murmured another apology, heartfelt and
abject, though she would have no idea later what she said, and tried to keep
from falling over. Her body trembled so hard she was unsure of her balance.

Behind her she heard the scrape and clatter as the bench was
placed in position. She looked up when the groom walked up next to her to await
his lord’s orders. She couldn’t help but glance at the object he carried. A
straight rod it was, a fearsome length of supple wood, nearly a yard long and
perhaps half an inch in diameter.

“What is your will, my lord?” the groom asked.

Jeoffrey nodded to her. “Lady Rosalind has committed a grave
lapse in judgment and demeanor. She has been intolerably insulting to a guest.
You will put her on the bench, as is, and administer a dozen cuts with the
rod.”

The groom sucked in a hard, sharp breath. “Aye, my lord,” he
acknowledged, though she could hear the shock and dismay in his voice. The man
turned to her. “Lady Rosalind?” He offered a hand to help her to her feet and
she accepted the help gratefully. Blinded by the tears now flooding her eyes,
shaking so hard she could barely move on her own, she doubted she could make it
even the few steps to the bench without assistance. Terror stole most of her
breath. She’d thought he’d order two or three strokes, enough to let her know
she’d been punished, enough to be humiliating, not so much as to cause serious
pain.

“Face down on the bench, please, my lady,” the groom
requested. “Wulfram take her hands, Thomas her feet.”

She felt each of the young men holding her in place and
waited for the groom to flip her skirts up. He didn’t and there was a tiny
relief in that.

All relief died as she heard the whistling sound of the rod
cutting through the air and the smack as it met her flesh. The pain followed
right behind the noise, a dense, burning sensation across her derriere. It
wasn’t nearly as vicious as it would have been had not several layers of
clothes cushioned the impact, but it still smarted. She drew a sharp breath and
clamped her lips shut. She would not give anyone the satisfaction of hearing
her cry out.

The rod struck again, a little lower, and she flinched as it
spread an aching fire in her flesh. The young man stationed at her head held
her wrists firmly, preventing her from doing more than wiggling a bit, but not
hard enough to bruise or hurt her. She opened her eyes, but her arm blocked her
view of the room. It would also keep anyone from seeing her face as she
accepted the pain.

She turned her face to the other side and looked up over her
arm. The groom stood above her on this side. The rod rose again and flicked
down. Pain slashed through her but she kept still and silent while she fought
to absorb it. The groom was striking hard, but the clothes protected her from
the worst of it. “As is” Jeoffrey had said, and she understood his calculation
that the punishment would look more severe than it truly was.

Which didn’t mean it was fun or easy. Her tormentor worked
the cuts from the middle of her bottom down along the tops of her thighs and
then back up again. None of the strokes were particularly harder or gentler
than all the others, though as it went on, the cumulative burn, when he struck
over flesh already flaming, was enough to make her hiss through her teeth and
try to wriggle away from it.

By the end, she was so dizzy and numb from the effects of
emotion too mixed and forceful to hold easily, she barely registered the last
couple of strokes. She almost hated when it was over and the two young men
released her. She would now have to stand and face the witnesses to her
humiliation. The groom helped her to her feet and spoke very quietly. “I regret
having to cause you this pain, my lady,” he whispered almost in her ear. “We
respect what you did.”

“You did your duty and did it quite perfectly as always,
Master Chrestien,” she answered, just as softly. “I hold nothing against you.
In truth, I am quite grateful.”

She straightened herself and turned to meet Jeoffrey’s eyes.
She couldn’t bear to look at any of the others and didn’t. She detected a hint of
anguish and compassion in his stern expression, but none of that was in his
voice when he said, “Thank you, Master Chrestien. Lady Rosalind, you are
dismissed to your quarters, where you will remain until this time tomorrow, on
bread and water, meditating on your poor behavior, and I trust, resolving to do
better in the future.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Fortunately, she could exit the room without having to face
the duchess or Lady Alys again. Rosalind attempted to make her exit as graceful
and dignified as possible. The physical pain had already faded almost to
nothing, but her face still flamed with the emotional anguish. She was so lost
in the humiliation and fear of what her behavior might have done, she was
halfway to her quarters before she realized the gift Jeoffrey had given her. By
confining her to quarters for the next twenty-four hours, he spared her the
necessity of having to see or deal with the duke, duchess, or Lady Alys again.
They were scheduled to depart in the morning.

Once in her solar she curled up on the bed and finally let
flow the tears she’d been holding back for what seemed like hours. She had
cried herself into a half-doze when a soft, tentative knock sounded at the door
and Glennys entered.

“My lady? How do you?” the girl asked. She saw Rosalind on
the bed and came over. “Need you a poultice or some ointment?”

“Nay. I am not in that kind of pain.”

“My lady…” Glennys stopped and swallowed. “My lady, I wanted
to say I admire how very brave you were to speak up to that…to the duchess just
so, and to defend our lord and the household. All the staff… Well, we do know
what you did on our behalf, and we appreciate it. And then you were even braver
to let him punish you so he would not look bad before them. You are much more
truly a lady than some that have higher titles.”

“Glennys, I…I thank you heartily,” Rosalind said, surprised
and moved by the girl’s understanding and gratitude.

“Are you sure there is naught you need?” Glennys asked.

“Nay. My lord was careful to organize my discipline so it
would look and sound far worse than it was. In truth, there is no soreness
remaining at all.”

She let Glennys help her out of the lovely houppeland and
fancy shift and into a plain smock with her warm robe over it. Once she was
comfortable, she dismissed the girl, saying she planned to go quickly to sleep.

She had climbed into bed, but wasn’t yet asleep when another
knock sounded. The door opened carefully and Elspeth stuck her head in. “My
lady?” she called so softly it wouldn’t have roused her had she been asleep.

“I am awake,” Rosalind said. “Come in. Have you a candle?”

“Aye, my lady.” She went back to the hall and brought it in
to light the room. “I regret to disturb your ladyship, but there is something I
must needs do.” Rosalind nodded for her to go on, but for a moment the
housekeeper couldn’t seem to find the words.

“My lady, I just wanted to say, on behalf of all the staff,
that we regret you had to suffer as you did this evening, but we are very
grateful to you for defending us. Though it was not, perhaps, terribly wise of
you, it was gallant. I truly hope you do not find yourself in much distress,
and if so, I would see what we might find for your relief.”

The tears threatened again as she listened to the
housekeeper’s praise and concern. She remembered how slow this woman had been
to accept her presence and position in the household. This was more than she
could have ever wished.

“Truly, Elspeth, I am in no discomfort. In body, anyway. My
lord was careful to ensure the punishment would seem harsh but cause little
pain,” she repeated.

“Of course,” Elspeth said. “‘Tis harder to accept the
humbling nature of it. And to know that despic— That the duchess and the others
were enjoying it at your expense.”

Rosalind couldn’t hold onto the tears as the housekeeper put
her pain into words. “Aye,” she admitted.

Elspeth squeezed her lips together and her eyes narrowed.
She hesitated, drawing a quick breath, then she came and sat beside Rosalind on
the bed, put her arms around the younger woman and drew her head against her
shoulder. Rosalind was both shocked and comforted by the gesture, which
reminded her of something her mother might have done in similar circumstances.
She leaned into the woman, and let her tears flow.

“It was even worse,” she said, between sobs, “because I knew
I had embarrassed and humiliated Lord Jeoffrey. He put so much trust in me,
having me act as his hostess, and I disappointed him. And then I put him in the
awful position of having to choose between not correcting me and thus proving
the duchess’ accusations about the discipline in his house or ordering his
hostess to be punished in the presence of his guests.” She wept hard, soaking
the shoulder of the woman’s dress. “He must be very angry and disappointed with
me.”

Elspeth stroked her back gently and brushed hair away from
her face. “Nay, my lady, I doubt he is angry with you.”

“He must be.”

“Nay. Master Chrestien sought him out after dinner. He was
not happy about what Lord Jeoffrey asked him to do to you. My lord explained
the situation and how you both sought to find the best solution to a serious
error. But my lord also said he was not surprised you had finally been overcome
and unable to control yourself any longer. He was amazed you held on as long as
you had. He just regretted your lapse was so loud and public. In fact, I think
my lord blames himself somewhat for putting you in the position of having to
take so much of that harrid—the duchess’ complaints.”

“She will not be a comfortable mother-in-law for him.”

Elspeth sighed long and deep. “Nay. Nor comfortable for us
to have visiting. We all do as we must, however.”

“Aye.” Rosalind sniffed and sighed deeply.

Elspeth handed her a cloth and stood up. “My lady, if you
are sure there is naught else you need, I have work to do yet. I will bid you
goodnight.”