“The gown becomes you, my lady,” he said harshly.
Her face went carefully blank. “Thank you, my lord.”
“You will wear the necklace with that gown.” He could see the frisson of distaste in her eyes before she lowered her head.
He walked to his trunk and dug it out. He held it up, watching the precious gems gleam in the sunlight that poured through the small windows. “Come here,” he said.
She walked slowly to him and turned around, lifting her hair off her neck. She felt the weight of the necklace as it rested upon her chest, felt the chill of the thick gold against her bare neck. He fastened the clasp and stepped back.
She looked like a barbaric princess, he thought. He watched her lift her hand and lightly touch her fingers to the necklace. It did not particularly surprise him when her fingers fell away from it as if it burned her.
“You will be thus gowned for the coronation,” he said, and left the bedchamber.
He took her that night, quickly but not roughly, and she thought she heard him curse her when he stiffened over her. She lay very still even after he had rolled off her. When she made to rise to bathe herself, he closed his hand around her waist, pulling her back.
“Nay,” he said, “you will not wash my seed from your body.”
She was shocked when she quivered at his words, and had to remind herself that he saw her now as naught but a brood mare. She tugged and he released her wrist.
“Go to sleep, wife, we leave early on the morrow.”
Is there no way I can reach you? she cried out silently.
They arrived in London a full week later, filthy and weary, their horses and wagons splattered with mud. Kassia had ridden most of the way, even when it had rained, once she had convinced Graelam that riding in a wagon made her ill.
She didn’t know what to expect, but the sight of so many people packed into such a small area made her blink with surprise. And the filth! There was a constant stench of human excrement and rotting food. And there was so much noise from vendors screeching at the top of their voices at passersby.
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“All towns of any size are like this,” Graelam said when he saw her cover her nose. “It is not so bad where we will stay. The compound is on the Thames, but north of the city.”
“This is the house the Duke of Cornwall gave to you?” she asked.
“Aye, he deeded it to me upon my betrothal to Lady Joanna,” he said dryly.
Her eyes flew to his face.
“He insisted I keep it once he had deemed you worthy.”
A fine, misting rain was falling steadily and the ground was slushy mud. Bluebell slipped and Graelam’s hand shot out to grasp the reins and steady the mare.
Kassia started to thank him, but he said merely, “You are filthy enough. I do not wish you to have a broken leg as well.”
“Then you would have to wear that wretched necklace yourself,” she muttered under her breath.
“There,” Graelam said to her, pointing to his left, “is Westminster Abbey, where Edward will have his coronation.”
“It is beautiful,” Kassia said.
“Aye, King Henry spent much money to reconstruct it. He is buried there.”
They passed the White Tower, where Edward and Eleanor were now staying. “I do not know when Edward returned to London,” Graelam said. “But I imagine that immediately the Duke of Cornwall heard he was coming, he set the coronation into motion.”
Kassia was weaving in the saddle, so weary she could no longer appreciate the vivid sights. At last they reached a high-walled fortress. A thick-barred iron gate swung slowly open and their caravan passed into a muddy, utterly dismal yard. The two-story wooden building in front of them was square and looked gray and uninviting in the growing darkness.
“You will see to the inside, my lady,” Graelam said as he lifted her off Bluebell’s back.
She nodded, imagining with growing depression what awaited her within. To her utter astonishment, once inside the house there were scores of lighted candles and a huge fire burning in a fireplace at the far end of the long, narrow lower chamber.