Free Nothing Else Matters by Susan Sizemore Page B

with embarrassment. Her face flamed as wel and she cringed inside and out from Roger’s blunt words. Everyone in the hal was staring at them. Many were laughing, with Lars’ braying sounding the loudest.
    “I want grandchildren,” Roger’s voice rose above the laughter and murmurs.
    “I’l bed her in my own time.” Stian’s voice sounded composed and reasonable in contrast to Roger’s shouting. At least he sounded deadly calm. The arm around her felt like a band of cold iron.
    Roger didn’t take any notice of Stian’s reaction. “You can’t bed your wife if you’re not at home.”
    Stian growled a low, thunderstorm rumble. Eleanor felt the sound more than heard it. “Father.”
    Roger pointed toward the stairs again. “Go on,” he commanded. “Spend some time with your wife.” He beckoned Edythe with his other hand. He offered
    his son a wide smile as Edythe hurried to his side. He took Edythe by the hand. “Make love to your wife and I’l do the same with mine.”
    Eleanor was amazed at the easy way Edythe smiled and fluttered her eyelashes at Lord Roger. Here she was burning with shame at the man’s words,
    while Edythe looked eager for the act he suggested.
    Stian stood planted in place, as unmoving as a piece of red granite. “Who’l mind Harelby while we frolic?”
    “Dame Beatrice, of course,” Roger answered easily. He spared a fond look for the frowning chatelaine. “As ever.”
    “Aye,” she agreed. “As ever.” She turned her narrow-eyed gaze on Stian. Her expression was annoyed but her words were gentle. “Mind your father, lad.
    And you,” she said to Lars as she shoved him off the dais and toward the door. “You can go hunting. I’l have a dozen rabbits for the cook pot before I’l let you back in this hal .”
    Roger spoke to the gaping household over the sound of Lars’ blasphemous protests. “Have you no work to occupy you? Come, my lady,” he added, “we’l
    fol ow Stian and Eleanor up the stairs.”
    Stian hesitated a few more moments. To Eleanor he stil looked like a thunderstorm preparing to break but he seemed to relax a bit as the people in the hal hurried away from the confrontation. Roger looked more amused than angry and Edythe looked sublimely serene.
    Eleanor felt relieved just to have the confrontation over when Stian grabbed her hand and hustled her up the stairs. So relieved that she didn’t think to be concerned about what would happen once she and her husband were once more alone.

Chapter Eight
    “Now what?” Eleanor asked, amazed that she was becoming more annoyed than frightened by the situation.
    Stian put his hands on his narrow hips and glared, not at her but at the heavy wooden door. “’Tis al a jest to him.”
    “Lord Roger?” she asked, and he nodded. “What is al a jest?”
    Instead of giving her an answer, Stian laughed. The sound with very little humor in it. “Life is a jest,” he declared then threw himself onto the bed and said,
    “Come here, mouse.”
    She knew she should obey instantly, that she should cozen and cater to him, that she should continue taking Edythe’s sensible advice. Instead, Eleanor set about exploring her surroundings.
    She knew that she should be used to the idea of living with someone other than Edythe by now. The fact that Stian and she had a room to themselves at
    al amazed her. Privacy was hard to come by, a privilege Eleanor was neither used to nor expected.
    It was so unexpected that she looked around her in wonder at the curtained bed, the chests, smal table and the chair that made up the furnishings. A
    tapestry of faded green and white stripes covered the cold stones of the room’s outside wal . There was a smal window in one high corner and a thick
    tal ow candle on a shelf next to the bed. A book, bound in red leather, lay on the shelf next to the unlit candle. Her bags were piled on her clothes chest beneath the window.
    The sight of her things, sitting in such a commonplace way in what had