Maud had leapt off as soon as they were in front of the house. Aurie was still grinding the paste in a bowl, adding hot oil from the pot hanging in the hearth a few trickles at a time to make sure she got it to the right consistency, when Maud stormed in. Her elbows were already hurting from pressing the stone mortar into the pestle and sweat stung her eyes from the effort. Since she used all of the eucalyptus from one of her jars, she was glad to be able to save the rest of the salve once she finished with his leg, and there would be a lot. She had added some lavender to make the smell of horse bearable when he sat at the table.
Nobleman, my ass. Aurie knew she didn’t need to use the mortar and pestle at this point in the process, but grinding something into a stone until it was nothing but dust had made her feel much better about this ridiculous plan of his. Marry our daughter to that? Is he out of his mind? The man looked like he hadn’t bathed in weeks, hadn’t washed his clothes in much longer, and smelled like his horse more than he did his wafting sweat that made her crinkle her nose when the breeze blew the wrong way.
“Father can go to the Rivers,” Maud stomped to the hearth and peered into the large pot of stew.
“Father?” Uh-oh.
Maud slapped her hips and huffed. “Oh, I have many other words for him right now, and so will you. That…that…THING made me ride on his lap all the way here! Made me, maman. Like I’m his…his…his…whore!”
Aurie stopped her grinding and found herself staring at the distant wall. ‘He could have us all hanged!’ Balor had said. ‘Seems like a good fellow, if you ask me…We should have him for supper…Nobility, Aurie. Right next to us, imagine!..I saw he needs some repairs done, offer to help him when he comes by. Roof needs to be almost completely redone…He needs a woman…A good woman can help him learn our ways…A good woman…The right woman would be good for him…I imagine he’s got an eye for a woman with strong Talkrois blood…” She dented the table when she slammed the mortar down and leapt from her chair. The shit planned all of this from the moment he left Pierre’s office!
She stomped to the door and threw it open, ready to kill her husband with her bare hands. Alden and Balor were helping the offlander from his horse even as he was waving for them to get out of his way. Of course, Balor was insisting that he brace on them. But he was having none of it. Somehow capable even with his ankle looking like a balled up stack of linens pressing at the seam of his trousers and boots to breaking.
All three looked to her at once. Alden went wide eyed at the sight of her and wisely hurried to ‘check on the wood for the fire.’ Balor smiled like a crazed idiot, like the man beside him was the king himself or something. But the offlander, which surprised her nearly as much as the destruction he had left instead of making her a widow, looked to her as if she were the only person who could save him. It wasn’t a smile on his face. Not a trickle of appreciation. He was discomfited and silently pleading for her to make Balor stop.
She softened instantly, all of her fury fading as the offlander hopped to regain his balance from Balor’s forceful help. The redheaded fiend only slid closer and asked if he was alright to walk up the steps toward her, oblivious that she was seriously considering finishing what the offlander didn’t in the village.
She let out a long breath. “Maud, finish the salve,” she called over her shoulder and went to the other side of the offlander with a duck under his arm. “Well, come on then. Let’s get you inside.”
Draka protested without a sound. She swatted his chest. She tried to hide her surprise at how hard it was. Like slapping bricks. “That’s enough of that, come on.”
“I was just telling him about how you threw your first Ribbon Dance because I was sneaking you the prettiest stones from the river whenever pa and I came to Alcer for taxes,” Balor beamed as they made their way to the door.
Great, now the offlander will start bringing Maud rocks. Though, the way he turned to Balor again and again with looks that conveyed disbelief, confusion, and sympathy, nearly made her snicker. Perhaps Maud had nothing to worry about.
“I didn’t know you when I had my first Ribbon Dance,” Aurie spat. “And I didn’t throw it. One of the others unhooked mine.” She knew that would cut at him. It might have been harsh, but the prick needed to be brought out of the clouds. They stumbled through the door and barely made it to the chair she had Maud pull out for him. He sat hard with a huff.
“It’s done,” Aurie grumbled with hands on her hips.
The offlander nodded what she could only take as a thank you from his halfhearted grin. Then, he eyed the skinned deer she had hanging from one of the pot hooks over the hearth in curiosity. She had tied the hind legs together at their thin ankles and hung it so the cavity of the hollowed ribcage was open to the fire, like she would a rabbit in preparation for stripping the meat into a stew. The forelegs hung too far and more than half of them was resting on the hearth platform. She spent more than an hour scrubbing to clean it when she first saw the thing. The inside of the ribcage was browning, but the outside, after an entire day of hanging there, was still pink except for the bottom edge of the ribs, where it was nearly ashen. The only knife they had was too dull from descaling fish and cutting vegetables for it to do much more than indent the meat, otherwise she would have cut it apart and tried that in her stew. She’d never had deer before. A part of her wondered how it would taste in place of a rabbit or a marten.
He pointed. She straightened, taking the opportunity to shoot Balor a fiery glare, and looked over her shoulder to it, “What?” He shook his head and lifted himself out of the chair. Her glare turned on him, “Get back in the chair before I beat you with it.”
The way he blinked at her made her gasp at his audacity. If he doubted her resolve, he had another thing coming. And it would be the perfect way to show her husband what he was in for as soon as the man was gone. She intensified her glare, forcing her lips to pucker over a stiff jaw with eyes so narrow from tightening her cheeks that
Alden gulped loudly. The look she practiced for years as a warning to her disobedient children. The glance he returned looked like he was on the edge of laughing at her. He limped to the deer and braced himself on the edge of the hearth to look around the floor for something.
“I said get back in the chair. You might be all high and mighty in your own house,” which he had yet to be as far as she could tell, “But you’re in my house and you will do as I say.”
He shot her a defiant grin and lifted the long iron poker with a look of, ‘That will do.’
“The fire is stoked enough. The bottom of it is already burning, so I let the fire die a bit,” The man was acting as if she wasn’t even there. She threw her hands in frustration at Balor, who only shrugged.
Maud was the one who asked the question her fury was blocking the words to, “What are you doing?”
He glanced nonchalantly at her, then lifted the deer by the inside of its ribs as if it didn’t take both her and Maud to get the damned thing high enough to hang, until its head was near even with his face. And with a wink, he thrust the poker straight down its gullet and out the rear. The women gasped. Balor flinched. Alden looked more fascinated than when she caught him spying on the Greshon girls bathing in the river.
He tipped the rod so the deer looked like it was mid-gallop across her hearth and set the ends on hooks that had been used for ladles and pots since before she and Balor had taken the house over from his late parents. It fit perfectly. Were the hooks there for this reason? She blinked in astonishment at the sudden realization.
“Huh,” Maud stood beside him with her head tipping to one side and her hands on her hips. “Who knew?”
That made him silently chuckle at her. He liked her. Damn Balor to the Rivers for being right. But the way he crouched his one leg while sliding the other out didn’t seem like that of a man trying to impress a potential mate. He pointed happily at the pink meat that glowed red from the fire beneath it with a hand on the poker handle. Aurie bent to see what he was pointing at. He snapped his fingers at her, she turned to him and he rotated the poker handle, making the meat rotate with it. The hooves scraped the inside of the hearth as they went, which definitely bothered him, but he had shown her what she needed to know.
“And then we put it in the stew?” Maud asked. Dumb question. Of course they’ll put it in the stew if she has to tear the meat piece by piece.
The horror on his face spoke volumes. The mere suggestion offended him more than if she were cooking his horse, by the sight of it. He shook his head and made a gesture of tearing at it on a plate and lifting it to his mouth.
“You just eat it as it is? Without broth?” Maud followed him as he straightened with a shrug. He began to limp back to the chair.
“What do we season it with, then?” Aurie grabbed him by the elbow and forced him back into the chair. Again, he shrugged. He really didn’t know. She should’ve known. Why would any man know what to season food with other than salt? Then, he pointed to the pot as if it were his best guess. That might work. Over her shoulder to Maud, she said, “Spill broth on it.”
Maud nodded and shifted herself in front of the ladle to hide her shaky hands reaching for it. Aurie knelt in front of him and went to unbuckle his boot. She caught his heel before he could slide it back from her. She might have looked up to him with annoyance in her eyes, but she was glad for the gesture. He didn’t want her to feel obligated to do any of this. He didn’t see them as servants. She had to tuck her chin to keep him from seeing her grin.
Which faded when Balor tapped her shoulder and said, “No, have Maud do that. You tend the deer.”
She was beyond fury when she looked up to him, but Balor returned it with a look she had only seen once before. Once. And it was the one time she had been unable to sway him. If the offlander weren’t right there, sitting in front of her, she would have leapt in his face and fought Balor with her worst, but knew that would make her look the villain in all of this to the noble offlander. She stood, shot him the glare again, brushed her knees, and went to Maud.
“Go and tend his wound,” Aurie said with a comforting hand on her daughter's back.
“No.” Flat. Sincere to its depths.
Through gritted teeth, Aurie said, “Indulge your father for now. I’ll handle this once he’s gone.”
“Please stop this, I beg you,” she whispered.
“Just do it. Pa’s in a mood and we don’t want to embarrass ourselves.” She hated that she had to say that. The poor girl was being presented to him like a vendor displaying his cherries.
Maud shoved the ladle hard into her hands and reached for the smaller pot of warmed water. “No,” Aurie stopped her. She didn’t want her shakiness to cause her to burn herself. “I’ll bring it to you.”
“Maybe my shakes will make him disgusted,” Maud continued to reach for it.
Aurie shook her head, “Will you just go?”
Maud walked stiffly to take Aurie’s place kneeling in front of the offlander while Aurie grabbed the wraps and cloths she had pulled from a drawer under the far window and grabbed the pot of water. Aurie dropped them beside Maud and set the pot on the floor beside them. Again, he tried to pull his foot away, but Maud snatched it with a tug that made him hiss. Aurie winced at her roughness. She had every right to be angry but the offlander was certainly not at fault. He seemed just as perplexed by Balor as the rest of them were.
“Easy!” Balor growled at her. “The man is injured!”
Maud shot him a look that mirrored Aurie’s. Though, it was somehow fiercer. Balor swallowed dryly and shifted back from her. Then she shot the look to the offlander, who met it with heartfelt sympathy, which softened Maud’s expression.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“I’m going to take off your boot and sock,” Maud said as she began to unbuckle the bootstraps. “I have to clean it before I put the salve on.” She began to slide the unbuckled boot from his foot, but his hand shot to her wrist with a threatening shake of his head. “I have to take it off. I told you!”
He shook his head again and peeled the leather top in concession. Aurie had grabbed the bowl of salve and was about to set it beside Maud when she glanced at his ankle. She nearly dropped the bowl at the sight of the purple and brown swollen mound. The skin had thinned and peeled, not only from the swelling but also from years of being without any socks to pad it against the leather of his boots. Maud gasped with a whimper at the sight. No wonder the man always looked on the verge of tears.
Maud swallowed like the strong woman she was raised to be, nodding encouragement to herself. “Your sock must be tucked in the boot. If I take it off, I can pull it back up and make sure you don’t lose your toes.”
He shook his head.
“Fine, but if you lose toes, don’t look to me,” Maud grumbled as she dipped a fistful of cloth into the hot water. Aurie was glad for the hot water being first. Hot water always softened her shaking.
As Maud began washing the man’s ankle, he shook his head with a distant glance toward the door, as if regretting ever walking through it. Once again, he made Aurie feel better. However…She grabbed Balor by his shirt and jerked him into their room and shut the door behind her.
“What are you up to?” She growled at him, barely above a whisper.
“What?” As if he didn’t already know.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re dangling our daughter in front of that man like he’s already asked for marriage. This is wrong in more ways than I can count and you know it!”
“I absolutely am not. He’s a noble. Subjects wash and tend them all the time. I’ve seen it with Lord Taggerty more than once.”
Aurie’s jaw tightened even more. She shoved at him, “Servants, Balor. Servants and slaves do that for their masters. We are landed! And you had her ride with him? What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that maybe she wanted to ride the ‘pretty horse’ back to the house and he certainly couldn’t walk, though he was willing to do so.” He was dodging and she knew it.
Outside their room, Maud wiped at the welling tears. She drew in a breath after putting a wrap over the top of the bulge of the offlander’s ankle and looked up to him as stone faced as she could muster, “I have to do this tight. It will hurt. You should put the wooden spoon in your mouth to keep from breaking your teeth.” Under her breath, “They’re nice teeth.”
He only shook his head and waved for her to continue with his eyes fixed on the bedroom door. Though it was closed, they all could hear her parents arguing. Even Alden, who was laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling blankly. She took another long breath to prepare for his scream. Then, holding the wrap end firmly to the bridge of his shin, she began wrapping the swollen ankle, tugging with all of her might. He grunted, barely winced, the entire time.
Inside the bedroom, Aurie stomped away from her husband with hands up in frustration. “No one believes that.” She was no longer whispering.
“What do you mean, ‘no one?’ Who did you tell?” Balor growled back as if she had betrayed him.
Aurie spun on her heels, “Leta. It just came out when we were trying to think of how to cook his plowing beast!”
“Leta? Now the entire village will know. Preston can’t keep his mouth shut about anything and you know she told him!”
“First, I can tell my sister anything I want, and don’t you ever try to stop me,” Aurie poked at his chest, her face inches from his. “And secondly, they already know!”
“Great. Ruined. All of it, gone to shit before it even starts,” Balor plopped on the bed in furious defeat. “I should have known to keep my mouth shut with you. Anything I try for this family is always ruined because you women can’t stop yourselves from gossiping.”
Aurie fumed. Her voice lowered in volume and tone. “You are unbelievable. What was ruined? You sucking up to an offlander? Why don’t you go and shake your ass at him yourself and see how our daughter feels for once.”
“He’s gone,” Alden shouted through the door.
“Shit!” Balor leapt to the door and swung it open.
Aurie brushed past him to find Maud gathering the cloths into the pot of water to carry back to the hearth, an empty chair in front of her. Hooves clomped from beyond the front door as Alden shut it with a hanging head and downturned eyes.
“We could hear everything, you know.” Alden said dismissively as he went back to laying on the bed.
“Look what you did!” Balor growled as he went for Maud. “Did you finish tending him at least?”
Aurie couldn’t move. She felt heavy, drained. How could he do this to them? She never imagined he would treat any of them like this, let alone Maud who had always been his precious girl. He was a stranger. Twenty two years of marriage and she felt as if she was standing in a room with a foreigner.
“Yes, father,” Maud tossed one of the unused cloths into the pot with a splash and faced him with doubled fists. “I did what you commanded like the good little servant girl I am. I’m tired of both of you telling me that I need a husband. Every. Single. Day. It never fails,” she looked to the ceiling then back into Balor’s eyes in disgust, “You think I didn’t try at first?”
“Try?” Balor nearly shouted in her face. Aurie’s eyes were wandering. She knew she needed to intervene before he backhanded Maud across the room, which until this day she thought was impossible for him to do. But in this moment, as his fingers curled tightly into his palms, she wasn’t so certain any longer. “You call tossing the ribbon to the ground trying? Five, Maud, five Ribbon Dances and nothing! You should have stumbled into a husband by now. Maybe it’s my fault I raised you to be a snot nosed brat that eats us out of house and home!”
Maud’s anger was marled by tears, “I dropped the stupid ribbon because I couldn’t hold it tight enough, Balor. And wrapping it around my hand is cheating!” Balor’s knuckles were going white. Maud’s breath stuck in her throat. She called him by name. She had to do something. She rushed to them as Maud continued, half roaring, half screaming, “When none were left my age, I gave up. And all of them are like you. Immature brutes who bully everyone around them until they get what they want. So, yeah, I threw the last two because why should I bother? I don’t want a child I wiped the ass of as a husband.”
“That rules out the entire village at this point!”
“Balor, stop,” Aurie slid between them.
Balor jabbed a finger over her shoulder at Maud, “Tip your nose all you want at those boys, but you won’t find a match anywhere without my say so now. Your dowry isn’t big enough for one of your fantasy heroes to even look at your skin and bones! You think you’ll do better in Alcer? How about you ask your Aunt Bella how that worked for her when your grandfather had to beg the entire market to marry her for a week because she was too old to pick up a ribbon from a pole? And she was younger than you by more than three years!”
“That’s enough!” Aurie shoved him back. He was no Smith. He had never raised his hand to any of them, but looked furious enough that she slightly winced. His hands stayed at his sides. “What has gotten into you?”
Behind her, Maud burst into tears and pushed past her toward the ladder to her loft. Balor gritted his teeth as he watched, raking a hand through his red hair.
“I’ve never seen you like this. Never. What is wrong with you? She doesn’t deserve any of this.”
Balor bit his lower lip, shifty eyed. After a moment—and a few calming breaths—he said, “He’s the only option left. I threw our lot on him. None of the villagers will touch her, even Egan’s boy. Not that I liked him that much. That bastard makes his wife a raccoon if she looks at him wrong. And every boy grows to be the man his father was to his wife, I’ll not have my daughter suffer the same. Though, Dalfur’s the only one who might fight his father for her now.”
“You what?”
“Yes,” Balor pointed at the ground with a foot sliding forward as if he were preparing for her to strike him. “I made a decision for the family. I’m allowed to do that from time to time, though the lot of you seem to have forgotten. She needs a husband and he’s in need of a woman, as you saw. Unmarried and a noble, he’s perfect for her.” Louder, so Maud could hear, “Being that she’s got her head in the clouds, always daydreaming about being a Lady in some castle.”
“All girls fantasize about being that,” Aurie was quick to remind him. Even she had done the same.
But he was just as quick with, “Girls, Aurie. Girls fantasize about that. She’s a woman! Maybe she should start acting like one for once and stop being so damned self-centered. We won’t get enough from the harvest now to feed all of us through the winter without the offlander’s help. We can’t sell in the village and Alcer has always undercut us after that blasted Lord Taggerty’s war taxes started. Berone might pay a bit with the war coming, but the Baron is more likely to seize it than drop a pence. He’s what we have.”
“And that was the right decision for you to make?” Aurie shook her head at him. He doomed them into starvation without a single word to her. How could he do this to them?
“He’s a noble. How many times do I need to tell you, woman? And she can live her little dreams at his side. I didn’t think she would act like I had stabbed her in the heart!”
“He’s old enough to be my father!” Maud shrieked from the loft. “Maybe you should sell me to him like the Beronois do with their daughters so I actually get a good one this time!”
Aurie leapt to stop Balor from charging through the table to get to her. “Stop this. Just stop, both of you! And you,” she pressed her hand, shaking nearly as much as Maud’s on her worst days, on his tensed chest, “you should have spoken with me first. I can’t believe you did this without me.”
“I had to. Once the others knew, they’d be sending their girls to him in their knickers, ruining her chances. Senna’ll spread her thighs for him if he so much as looked in her direction, believe you me. I am doing what is best for the family.”
“This isn’t you,” Aurie shook her head at him. “You always have included me in things like this. That’s what makes me love you so much.” Tears welled in her eyes, her face stretched with heat and trembling. “What did you do to that man? What happened to the husband who has been beside me all these years?”
“His daughter had another birthday.” The way he looked at her with those blazing golden-brown eyes, his face taut like a growling wolf made her take a step back from him. His voice was dark and flat. Stone.
The heat in her face cooled with trickling tears. She could hear Maud’s muffled crying into her pillow. All she could do was shake her head at him in disbelief. She felt the pull to be a ‘good wife’ and stand by her husband’s choices. But she was also a woman and a mother who needed to protect her daughter no matter who it was against. She once thought that her husband understood this. Even felt much the same as she. He was supposed to be her protector. A protector wouldn’t let them starve for his ambitions. That was Balian’s way. These were too similar to how she imagined his brother treated Coralin and made her throat dry.
Aurie shakily nodded, unable to bring herself to look Balor in the eyes when she finally realized what must be done. This will not be how they were treated. The Clevlan women were not slaves to be bought and sold. Nor were her family’s women. Poor as they were, they never subjected themselves to such humiliation.
She found the strength to meet his glare with a cold gaze. “His Lordship’s servants shall do as he commands.”
Alden shot upright in his bed. Maud’s crying stopped. Balor’s eyes were white bloodshot disks of fury.
“We servants will clean his Lordship’s castle and return to their hovels. His Lord’s bed is prepared, as is our duty as loyal servants to his highness, so that he may have all the room he needs for rest before a long day of managing his estate.”
Balor’s mouth fell open. His eyes glistened. “Aurie…”
She glared and curtsied with a widening of her dress, “Goodnight, your lordship.” And she stood with a whirl toward the ladder to Maud’s loft, never glancing back at the stranger standing in her husband’s place.
Maud met her at the top with wrapping arms as Balor slammed the front door behind him. They both cried in each other’s arms, soaking their shoulders. When Maud leaned back from her, Aurie only met her glossy green eyes. She stood with her daughter. Her darling, trembling, sweet daughter. Balor won’t break them. Not her. Maud was as unbreakable as her mother.
Alden’s arms hugged Aurie’s legs from below. “I’m here for you, too, Maud.”
