Free The Barbarian by Georgia Fox Page A

and
angry. Might have known there was something amiss. This husband wasn't at
death's door, or too young—but he was in love with another. She'd been through
this twice before. It should no longer bother her. It should not.
    Turning over to
face the wall, she sniveled into her kerchief and felt her eyes sting as they
watered. Damn cold. It was the worst time in the world for her to get sick. Her
eyes would be red and puffy come the morning. What a sight she would be.
    No matter. This
was a marriage of convenience, as he'd said. He wanted her dowry and she needed
rescue from spinsterhood. What sort of idiot was she, to look for a straw of
hope and think she'd found one? His easy charm and the way he joked with
her—told his self-effacing stories of adolescent failures—had momentarily
blinded her to the truth of their situation. Thank goodness she hadn't let down
her guard and laughed at the thought of him landing face first in a cowpat.
    Amusing as it
might be.
    She heard rustling
and fussing in the pallet next to her. "My lady? Are you laughing ?"
    Was she laughing
or weeping?   A little of both perhaps at
first. But her dark sense of humor soon won out and chuckles shook the entire
length of her body. No point weeping over spilled milk, was there? In the dark
she could laugh to her heart's content. She'd save the tears until later for
there would surely be plenty married to that barbarian.
     
    ****
     
    Stryker convened
his counsel early the next morning. Many of them suffered thick heads from a
night of carousing, but Stryker had not participated in the revelry so he was
wide awake, bursting with a sunny vitality that made his counselors grimace and
groan.
    "I see we
have not done as much as we could to make this manor suitable for my
bride," he exclaimed, banging his fist on the table. "There should be
more comfort for her here."
    His oldest
advisor, Rolf—a remnant of his father's time—looked up slowly and yawned.
"But we built the lass a new privy."
    "Aye, with a
fancy wooden seat," one of the others chirped up, clearly annoyed at being
roused so early from his drunken sleep.
    "And we
cleaned up the pig shit from the hall," said another.
    Stryker leaned his
knuckles on the table and looked around at their dour grey faces. He'd been up
half the night too, but not drinking and playing with whores. He'd sat up in
his hayloft and thought about Amias of York, his high-born lady. When he first
heard that King William was sending him a bride, he'd viewed this new woman as
the king's attempt to appease him. She would be poor reparation for
Elsinora—the wife he'd lost to that Norman villain, Dominic Coeur-du-Loup.   
    But that was
before he met her and saw how she came bravely into his territory and faced him
without flinching. She held mystery in her rich brown eyes, treasure he would mine.
His compensation prize was sexually alluring in a way he'd never expected. She
was a challenge. Amias also held his interest as no other woman ever had. Stryker
realized that he wanted to impress her.
    And so far he had
not, that much was plain.
    "Rolf,"
he snapped impatiently, "do we not have a tapestry of some sort for the
wall. I remember something from my father's day. Tapestry with a crest upon
it."
    The old man
screwed up his face to think and then replied, "That ol' thing? It was
moth-bit and stank o' mold."
    "But where is
it? Surely it can be cleaned."
    "It was
buried with your father. His corpse was wrapped in it."
    Well, he couldn't
very well dig his father up, could he? "Do we have nothing else to
decorate the walls?"
    The men looked at
one another and grumbled, all slouching in their chairs, some with bloodshot
eyes and drool-encrusted mouths.These, he thought sadly, were his twelve best
men. Six were elderly and valued for their vast experience; six were young men,
needed for their new ideas, but who could also learn from the others and carry
the knowledge onward. Today, when he counted, they were a man short.
    "Where