“What?”
“You said ‘quite enough’ threw themselves at me,” he said, all feigned innocence. “I assume you were counting.”
Stephen seemed not the least bit winded, which only added to her irritation with him.
“One may as well attempt to count the stars,” she said, attacking once more. “I prefer to devote myself to some useful purpose. Perhaps you should try to do the same.”
He stepped into her thrust to block it. For a long moment they stood inches apart, the tension of sword pressed against sword between them.
“To what use would you put me, fair Isobel?” Stephen asked, then waggled his eyebrows at her.
She laughed and stepped back. “You are impossible!”
“You should laugh more often.” He wiped his brow on his sleeve. “Come, let us take a rest.”
He spread his cloak on the dirt floor where they could rest their backs against sacks of grain piled high against the wall.
“Now,” he said, stretching his legs out, “will you tell me the rest of your story sober, or must I ply you with strong wine to get it?”
Isobel closed her eyes. “I hoped I had not truly said all those things to you.”
He picked up a loose straw from the floor and twirled it between his thumb and finger. “What of your mother? Did she argue against the marriage?”
“My mother could not be bothered to leave her prayers long enough to speak for me.” Hearing the bitterness in her voice, Isobel pressed her lips together.
Stephen touched her arm. “It might help to speak of it.”
Would it? She never had anyone she could tell it all to. There was so much she could not share with Geoffrey, even now that he was grown. Why did she feel she could tell Stephen now? She did not understand the reason, but she did.
“It was for her that he did it,” she said in a whisper.
Isobel watched bits of dust floating in the air as she tried to recall the laughing mother of her early childhood.
“After we lost our lands, my mother wanted to escape this life. She devoted herself to prayer, morning to night… until she seemed to forget us altogether.”
After a time, Stephen asked, “Your father thought regaining your lands and position would restore her?”
“I knew it would not, but he would not hear me.” In her frustration, she’d screamed at him that he could increase their lands a hundredfold and still she would not change.
“Did your mother say nothing to you about the marriage?”
The memory always lay just beneath the surface, scraps of it coming to her unexpectedly and catching her unawares. For the first time, she tried to recall the whole of it.
She remembered her heart pounding in her ears as she ran across the field and through the castle gate.
“I found her on her knees in the castle chapel.” Chest heaving from running so hard, she stood waiting for her mother to acknowledge her until she could stand it no longer.
“You will let him do this to me?” she asked, her voice coming out high-pitched and shaky.
When her mother’s lips continued moving in silent prayer, Isobel clenched her fists to keep from taking her mother by the shoulders and shaking her.
Finally, her mother lifted her head and looked at Isobel. Except for the lack of expression, her face was as lovely as ever beneath the plain headdress.
“I asked your father,” her mother said in a quiet voice, “to delay the marriage until your next birthday.”
“He would do anything—anything—you ask of him,” Isobel said, her fingernails digging into her palms, “and all you can ask for me is three months!”
“Your father says Lord Hume will leave you a wealthy widow. That is the most a woman can hope for in this world.”