Free So Great A Love by Flora Speer

of more carefree days, or of
Arden, whom she was certain she would never see again.
    But now she was staying in the manor
belonging to Arden, and it seemed to her that he was everywhere.
She could not get him out of her mind. Her sense of his presence
was so unnerving that she began to wonder if Arden was dead and if
his spirit had returned to say a last farewell to his home. She
told herself the notion was a trick of her own unruly and disturbed
thoughts. Arden had stayed away from Bowen for more than a decade,
a fact which suggested his spirit would not yearn to visit
there.
    As she worked with Catherine, directing the
servants and cleaning and polishing, Margaret discovered she liked
Bowen Manor very much. It contained little in the way of luxury,
yet everything about the house and its surroundings was sturdy and
well planned. Bowen was not large, but it was built on a compact
scale that Margaret found far more pleasing than the huge, drafty
spaces of either Sutton or Pendance Castles.
    Bowen had a well-proportioned great hall that
boasted a large fireplace in the center of one long wall. Several
windows on the opposite wall were glazed with pale yellow,
diamond-shaped panes that let in a warm, southern light. Thanks in
large part to this soft light, the hall was so pleasant a place to
be that the men-at-arms gathered there for every meal, with Sir
Wace at the head table. Groups of men were often to be found in the
hall between meals, polishing their armor or leather harness,
playing at dice or board games, or simply sprawling before the
fireplace to talk, all activities that might in another manor have
been carried out in the barracks. At Bowen, the chosen spot was the
great hall.
    A short staircase led up from the entrance
end of the hall to the solar. The lord's chamber opened directly
off the solar on one side and, on the other side, a corridor gave
access to four small guest rooms. It was in two of these rooms that
Catherine and Aldis had taken up residence with every sign of
perfect contentment.
    There was a chapel that opened off the entry
hall below, though it was bare and unused, since few priests ever
came to Bowen, except when Royce brought one with him from Wortham
Castle on the visits he made twice a year.
    Bowen Manor was snug against the worst
weather and for the most part it was self-sufficient, thanks to
basement storerooms filled with preserved food; and, apparently, it
went unnoticed by the world outside the dense forest. For all of
these reasons, Margaret was delighted with it.
    Their housecleaning chores completed in late
afternoon, the three young women took advantage of Bowen's small
bathhouse, which was located just outside the kitchen door, between
kitchen and laundry. There they washed away the dust of travel and
of housework, and shampooed their hair. Margaret added to her
toilette a large splash of her own perfume. Aldis had packed the
tightly stoppered vial among the few belongings of Margaret's that
she had gathered to remove from Sutton, and Margaret was glad to
have the fragrance at hand, for it was a special concoction of her
own making.
    After they were clean they hastened,
laughing, through the falling snow to the kitchen and along the
passage into the great hall, where a fire burned and the tables
were being laid for the evening meal. Then on to the solar they
hurried, where they sat before their own, private fireplace and all
three combed their hair until it was dry and shining.
    “What a terrible snowstorm,” exclaimed Sir
Wace, stamping snow and ice off his boots as he came through the
front entrance and into the great hall below. His voice carried up
the steps to the solar as he addressed the men-at-arms. “It's the
worst I’ve ever seen. No man nor beast will venture out tonight.
Not even the wild Welsh tribesmen would care to cross the border
and cause trouble in this weather. I dare say it's safe to reduce
the number of sentries on duty. There's no point in subjecting more
men