Free SirenSong by Roberta Gellis Page A

ignored.
    There was, of course, no need for Alys herself to accompany
Raymond. She could have told Diccon, the master-at-arms, to go with him.
However, it seemed to her an excellent opportunity to discover more about
Raymond. Unfortunately, the expedition started on the wrong foot. Raymond’s
surprise when Alys said she would go with him made her bristle.
    “I know the land and the people best,” she said coldly. “As
my father is much away, the management of the estate falls to me. What is there
in that to make you lift your brows?”
    “But a woman—” Raymond protested unwisely.
    “I have never noticed that a bull is wiser than a cow or a
stallion than a mare—quite the contrary. Led by their noses toward a female’s
rump, they will fall into any stupidity. So a woman is no less clever than a
man, even though she cannot swing a sword, and she is less easily distracted by
pretty wives and daughters. Thus, my father trusts me better than a bailiff.
You should know, if you intend to serve my father, that most matters of the
farms are left to me.”
    Poor Raymond simply gaped. First, he had never been spoken
to like that by a lady in his life. Second, his mother and sisters were
far too great ladies to trouble themselves with running the house itself, and,
as for managing any estate, they would have fainted away with disgust if one of
the common serfs approached them.
    He heard Alys ordering the saddling of a palfrey for him.
“Do you think I am unable to ride a horse?” Raymond gasped, undecided whether
he should be outraged or worried that his destrier was being appropriated.
    Alys looked at him as if he were a total idiot. “I have no
idea,” she snapped, “but if your seat is as lacking as your wits, I cannot
guess how you won your spurs. What do you think you will learn if your whole
attention must be on keeping your stallion in hand? Papa is not too proud to
ride a palfrey. Are you better than he?”
    “Why should I need to keep my horse in hand?” Raymond asked.
    “It is plain you know nothing of overseeing a demesne,” Alys
said, looking him up and down. “Is it not the habit in your land to ride about
the farms? Do not the serfs come running to you, more especially the children?
No, I see by your face that you are astonished by what I say. Well, it is so
here, and I do not choose to have your destrier trampling Papa’s people.”
    Raymond opened his mouth to say sharply that it would be
their own faults if they did not know enough to stand clear of a war-horse, but
he recalled in time that he was a stranger. He remembered Sir William saying he
would find not only the crops but the people different here. He thought ill of
a difference that inconvenienced the lord to protect the serf, but he had taken
warning from Alys’s tone. For some reason, she did not accept his pose, and
Raymond thought it would be well not to increase her suspicions. However, once
he had gotten over the embarrassment of finding himself astride a docile, old
creature that could not, he judged, work up more than a trot without dropping
dead, he found what Alys told him of great interest. In no time he was blessing
the idly ambling palfrey, which was equally undisturbed by the farm dogs that
snapped at his heels, the children who rushed out from the hedges that lined
the road to run beside him, and the husbandmen who dashed suddenly from a gate
to wave agricultural implements in his face while they screamed gibberish at
Alys.
    The first time the latter happened, Raymond reached for his
sword—which he was not wearing because Alys had asked him caustically which of
her servants he was planning to hew down.
    “A son has been born in their house,” she said to Raymond.
“Wulf wants me to look at the babe.”
    When they reached the mud and wattle hovel, he asked, “You
are going in there?”
    “Yes, of course. Do you expect a two-day babe to walk out to
me? The woman has not been churched yet and cannot come out. I will not