“But you were disturbed by my observation that one of marriage’s primary purposes is to produce heirs.”
Derica shrugged, toying with the ends of her hair. “Sometimes the truth is disturbing.”
“It is. But why should the production of a child disturb you? All women want children, do they not?”
“My mother died giving birth to me.”
“I see,” Garren understood. “Then childbirth frightens you.”
Derica looked up at him, feeling an odd warmth coarse through her as their eyes met. “Not particularly,” she tried to sound uncaring. “It is a fact of life. One cannot avoid it.”
Garren sensed she was putting up a front but he let it go. “Many, many women survive it,” he said. “True enough that some die, but the same pertains to any risks you take in life. Some live, and some die, but it is better to have taken the chance than to have had no chance to take.”
For the first time since they met, he drew a smile from her, however reluctant. It was a beautiful gesture. “You speak like someone who has taken many chances, and has perhaps regretted the ones he never had.”
He met her smile, feeling the same warmth that she was feeling. “I think that can be said for all of us, not just me,” he said. “But there are things I wish I could have done, and things I wish I hadn’t done.”
She laughed softly, her straight white teeth reflecting the fire. “This conversation is becoming too philosophical for me. I am but a simple woman, after all.”
“You are indeed a woman. But I doubt you are simple.”
“So I have been told.” She was again feeling those familiar feelings associated with him, wildly curious to know more about him. “You never did answer my question when we were up on the battlements.”
“About what?”
“Whether or not you planned to stay in one place after we wed, or whether you plan to continue your wandering ways.”
The answer was obvious, for his mission. He had to say, act, or do anything to convince her he was who he said he was. But the answer that came forth was the honest truth, an inherent response before he could think it through.
“I will stay with you.”
She lifted one of those shapely eyebrows at him. “Is that a fact? You intend to stay here, with me, at Framlingham?”
He realized there was a fantasy life here for him to play out, to make plans that would never come to past and to tell her that the future would be as bright and wonderful as he said it would be. He shouldn’t have indulged the fantasy, but gazing into her sweet face, he couldn’t help his natural male instincts to give in to the role.
“We will not stay here,” he shook his head. “Do you think I want your father, uncles and brothers breathing down my neck at every turn, scrutinized like an ibis in the midst of alligators?”
Her eyebrows drew together, though she was smiling. “Ibis and alligators?”
“Creatures in the Holy Land. The latter always eats the former. Quite fascinating, really, but also quite deadly.”
“I would like to hear about them sometime.”
“We shall have plenty of time to talk about things like that.”
“I am sure we will, in this mysterious place you intend for us to live if we will not be here at Framlingham in the midst of alligators.”
She was sharp of wit. He liked that. Grinning, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees as if somehow that would move him closer to her.
“We shall not live in a mysterious place, I assure you. My father’s castle is to the north and east of Oxford, a very old place. Parts of it are hundreds of years old, but it is very comfortable.”
“Sounds intriguing. Does this castle have a name?”
“Two, actually,” Garren was warming to the conversation. “The origins of the castle, as I said, are very old. Parts of it were built at least three hundred years before the Normans came. It was part of a village back then, the house of the king, and was called Culthberg because Culth was the king who built it. But when the Normans came, they calledle chateau de le roi, or the house of the king. So Chateroy Castle it became.”
He had a deep, rich voice. Derica liked listening to him. He was not at all like the arrogant, aggressive man she had seen in her father’s solar earlier that day.
“A fascinating story,” she said. “How long has your family lived there?”