“You will come and play the game with us?” she asked Ranulf. “It is a most unusual game and requires great skill.”
“Nay, I am not in a mood for games. Go with them since you seem to enjoy their company.”
She started to tell Sir John she would not leave her husband when the older man pulled her arm, motioning for her to come.
“Do not fret,” the man told her when they were alone. “I was just so at my wedding. Scared me half to death. I knew all my life had ended. I felt Maggie to be a stranger, although I had known her for years. Now come along and show us this cursed game and enjoy yourself! He will recover by himself.”
“I hope you are right, but he seems a different person from the one I met.”
“And he is. He is a husband now and not a carefree bachelor.”
“If that is so, then I should have run away with him and not married him.”
Sir John gaped at her. “You are like a daughter to me and I at times thought you were to be one, so I will do a father’s duty and tell you not to speak so again but to Father Hewitt. Your words are a sin, and you must repent them.”
She lowered her head so he could not see her eyes. “Yes, Sir John.”
“Good. Now come along to the trucks table.”
Lyonene could not enjoy the game or any of the merriment, for her eyes always strayed to the silent Ranulf, who joined in nothing and only sat and drank. Each time she tried to approach him, she was laughingly whisked away to a far side of the hall. Only Geoffrey talked to Ranulf, for the other guests were very aware of his status as one of the king’s eleven earls.
The tables were set for supper and the free-flowing wine, ale, beer, verjuice, must and metheglins added to the already high spirits of the guests.
“You are enjoying yourself?” Ranulf made the question seem like an accusation.
“I will find a way to slip away to the garden. You will meet me there?”
“I could not deprive you of your beloved guests.”
“Please, my Ranulf, I do not know the cause for your anger. I pray you to tell me that I may not displease you more.”
More words were impossible, for just then the band that played from the balcony surrounding the Great Hall tripled its sound and the room filled with loosely clad dancing girls. The guests roared their approval, and the tables were quickly cleared so the guests could join the dancing.
The dances fit the temperament of the people, now filled with drink and food, for they were rowdy, energetic and romping. Lyonene found herself flung from the arms of one man to another. She was breathless from the fast-paced dances.
“So now you have sold yourself to be a countess.” It was Giles, Sir John’s son, and by the color of his eyes, he had been drinking heavily.
“Release me, Giles! How dare you come here in this condition!”
He held her wrists and pulled her into a dark window seat set in the six-foot thick stone walls. “You are the one who dares! What does your new husband say of us?”
“Of us?” She was incredulous. “There is naught to say of us. I have known you since we were children, ’tis all.”
“What of our talk of marriage?”
“Our talk of marriage was about who we would marry, and when. We did not speak of marriage to each other.”
“Did you not know I always meant my wife to be you?”
“Giles! You are hurting me!” He did not loosen his grip. “You have had overmuch to drink. Go home and sleep, but do not say more of these false things to me.”
“False! You call my love for you false? What is it you love most about him, his gold or his earldom? Does it please you to be a countess?”
Although it hurt her toe through the soft leather slippers, she kicked his shin with all her might. The surprise made him relinquish his hold enough that she escaped him. She near ran to Ranulf’s side.
“Do not say to me you grow tired of the attentions of so many guests who have fallen to your charms.”
She turned on him and curled her upper lip in a snarl, then left him. She made her way to the door of the hall and went below to the cold winter garden. The coldness of a dark stone bench felt good, for her temper boiled in her.