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in, to guard the door as a “kindness” to his cousin, he would have explained if he had been asked, but Martyn had not bothered, the arrogant bastard.
    Holding down his gorge, Giles glanced at Lionel and away again. There was nothing human left there on the floor, just a writhing, twisting, grunting hulk, all drool and twitching. If ever Lionel had clear knowledge of what he was when a fit came on him, he would have shut himself up to die and been done with it. But he did not know and he never would if Martyn had his way. Dog-vomit Martyn would keep him ignorant of it to doomsday and protect him as much as might be in the bargain because Martyn would be out his profitable place if anything permanent happened to Lionel, damn them both.
    Between them, Martyn and Edeyn were forever protecting Lionel from seeing what he was—a long-jawed, scar-faced, shambling farce of a man living out a sham of a life to everyone’s inconvenience. Why Martyn did it was plain enough. Lionel was profit to him and a sure place in life. It was Edeyn who was hard to understand. To Edeyn Lionel was… what? Giles had never quite been certain, but it was sure she had never seen him in writhe and spasm on a floor, never seen him as he fully was. She only knew he was “afflicted,” and so in need of her woman-hearted sympathy. But then, she was so soft she had even spent hours nursing her sick greyhound bitch last winter when any fool could tell it was going to die. When he had had enough, he had put the bitch out of its misery and everybody’s way with a heavy pillow. It had been a mercy all around, for everyone, but Edeyn had taken it like a woman, badly and with tears, and then, like a woman, in a few days forgotten all about it. She had even forgotten to ask him for the dog he had promised her in the bitch’s place.
    It would go the same with her over Lionel. Grief and misery for a while and then she would forget. The baby would be a distraction, too. She’d not be thinking of much else in a while. That was one of the useful things about women: give them sport in bed and set them breeding and they were satisfied until it was time to do it to them again.
    He chanced another glance at Lionel. The fit was nearly done. The thrash and writhe were fallen away to only twitching. Soon he would lie quiet and then rouse, a little more witless than usual and exhausted for a while but no great harm done. By the time the rest of them came in at evening’s end, Martyn would have seen him clean and into bed to sleep it off. But there would be tomorrow. Tomorrow night probably, if the pattern held. The fit had been a brief one and that meant that almost assuredly tomorrow night— pray God not sooner—Lionel would have one of the great ones, the wildly violent ones that left him nigh to mindless with exhaustion for hours afterward.
    Exactly as Giles needed him to be.
    Chapter 6
    When supper was finished in the great hall, household and guests rose from the benches and moved aside for the hall servants first to clear away the food and dishes and tablecloths, then the tables themselves, opening the hall for whatever the household chose to do with the evening—talk or singing or dancing.
    Left to her own choice, Frevisse would have been satisfied to seek out the manor chapel, say Compline with Dame Claire, and be gladly done with the day. But it was not her choice. Lady Lovell had been gracious enough to do her and Dame Claire the honor of having them sit at the high table. They must be gracious in return, which meant joining in at least the evening’s conversation. Not the singing nor the dancing assuredly, but at least the talk.
    In the general shift of folk while the servants cleared the hall of all but the chairs and benches left for comfort, she drifted apart from Dame Claire who had fallen into talk over supper with one of Lady Lovell’s older ladies about the particular benefits of certain herbs. There presently seemed to be a cheerful disagreement