Free Roberta Gellis by A Personal Devil

jaw set. “You must believe me, Bell. I swear it is for your own good. If you think of me as ‘your’ woman, disaster must follow.”
    “Why?” he asked stubbornly.
    She sighed. “Because I have been a whore for ten years. I cannot wipe that out. You cannot wipe that out. I am an honest woman and a good and loyal friend— William will tell you that.” She laughed. “Many men will tell you that.”
    He winced, and she laughed again. She squeezed the hand she held.
    “That is why it would be a disaster. Think about it, Bell. Think about accepting me as I am for what I am.”
    “Master Mainard seems content with a retired whore,” he snapped back. Then his lips twisted. “Perhaps content enough to want to be rid of his wife.”
    Since they had arrived at the bridge, neither said any more until they had passed through the crush generated by the shops, the customers, and the peddlers. When they had turned up Gracechurch Street, Bell, who had not forgotten what he had said, increased his pace until he could walk beside Sabina.
    “Have you been happy with Master Mainard?” he asked.
    “Oh, yes!” she exclaimed softly. “He is so good to me. He is so good a man! You cannot imagine the good he has done.” Her mouth hardened. “That stupid Bertrild! She threatened Codi that she would send him back to his master, but he knew she could not. Because Mainard did not want Codi to feel trapped, he had explained to him that once he lived as a free man for a year and a day, his bonding as a serf was ended. He could live free anywhere and take any employment he wished.”
    “Then Codi had no reason to kill her. You know, Sabina, it is Mainard who had the best reasons to wish her dead.”
    “And I,” Sabina said stoutly. “I told you I wanted to kill her.”
    “Because you expected Master Mainard to marry you?”
    “Marry me?” She turned her face toward him, astonishment showing in her voice and every line of her body, even though her eyes could not open in amazement. “Why would Mainard want to marry me? I was a whore.”
    Bell winced, but he was not touching Sabina and she remained unaware that she had pricked him in a sore spot.
    “I think he loves me and will keep me,” she continued, “but that has nothing to do with marriage. I am sure that if he marries again, it will be to a woman of fine reputation about whose children no jests will be made.”
    “You will not mind if he marries again?” Bell asked.
    Sabina was silent for a long moment, turning her face forward as if she could see where she was going. Then she sighed. “Yes, I will care,” she said very softly. “I love him, and it will grieve me that he beds another woman, even if it be only to make children.” She sighed again. “And it will not be only that. If she will welcome him, Mainard will love her. He is gentle and needs love and so returns it readily. And it is his right to have children.” She squared her shoulders. “I can always go back to Magdalene.”
    “Then perhaps you did not really want Bertrild dead?”
    “Oh yes I did!” Bell was surprised at the vicious tone. “She hurt Mainard. I would gladly have killed her. Gladly!”
    “With a knife?”
    He was grinning, and she heard it in his voice and turned her head in his direction again, making an impatient gesture. “With anything I had in my hand, and I could have gone down to the privy in the yard.”
    Bell laughed aloud. “Yes. Without your staff so that you bumped into all the furniture and tripped over the sleeping apprentices, through a back door, which you could not find, carrying a knife, which you have no idea of how to use, just in case….” He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
    “Who said I did not have my staff!” she said, trying for indignation.
    “Because if you had your staff, love, you would have hit her with that. I remember how neatly you cracked Waleran de Meulan’s man on the head. If Bertrild had been dead of a