Dawn had just turned the eastern sky rosy and sent the birds in the treetops into their shrill morning cacophony when Finnula crept down the stairs from her bedroom. Avoiding the bottom step, the one that creaked so, even though she knew perfectly well that the entire household was still abed, she stole into the kitchen, where she skewered a hunk of black bread with her knife and gnawed on one end of it while tugging on her boots. She had just downed a cup of leftover ale and was wiping her lips on her sleeve when the back door swung open and, to her dismay, Robert came in.
“What ho,” he said cheerfully, seeing that his little sister wore both braies and quiver. “Going a-hunting on your wedding day? Forsooth, Finn.”
She glared at him. What was he doing up so early? Last night’s feast ought to have rendered him semiconscious. He’d drunk over two pitchers of ale on his own. Why wasn’t he prostrate in bed, moaning?
Lowering a heavy bag of flour he’d had slung over his back, Robert straightened and eyed the small bundle that rested on the bench by Finnula’s hip.
“Not running away, are we, Finn?” Loping toward her, Robert reached for the bundle, but Finnula snatched it from his reach, holding the cloth bag to her chest.
“What if I am?” she demanded hotly. “Are you going to stop me?”
“I’ll most certainly try.” Robert sat down where the bundle had rested, too close for Finnula’s comfort. She scooted farther on down the bench. “What can you be thinkin’, love? Runnin’ away from Lord Hugo? I thought you liked the fellow.”
Finnula scowled at the stone floor. “I do,” she admitted.
“Then what do you want to run away for? Has the man hurt you in some way?”
Finnula shook her head.
“Cheated you somehow?”
Again, a negative shake of her head.
“Robbed you?”
Finnula considered confessing that Hugo had indeed robbed her of her maidenhead, but remembering that it was Robert she was speaking to, she thought it wiser to remain silent. Besides, she hadn’t exactly been robbed of her virginity. She had, more accurately, thrust it at Hugo, in a manner that still caused her to blush when she recalled it.
“Then what is the matter?” Robert wanted to know. “He seems a fine man to me. I know you don’t want to be married to another Fitzstephen, but the son’s a spot better than the father, don’t you think?”
Sullenly, Finnula shrugged.
“So what are you running away for? You should be the happiest girl in the shire. You’ve snagged yourself a rich and handsome husband. Mellana is beside herself with jealousy.”
Finnula lifted her head and said, “But that’s just it, Robert. He is rich and handsome. He could have any woman he wanted. So why me?”
“Why you?” Robert looked down at his little sister with a constricted brow. “What do you mean, why you?”
“What I said. Why me? I’m not rich. I’m not beautiful. I’ve got nothing that would tempt a man like Lord Hugo—”
“Obviously you’ve got something,” Robert interrupted. “Or the man wouldn’t be marrying you.”
“I don’t know why he’s marrying me,” Finnula insisted. “Except that he said he couldn’t get me any other way.”
Robert’s eyebrows lifted at that. “Ah,” he said. “He loves you, then.”
“Loves me? Bah!” Finnula sprang up from the bench, violently pitching her bundle into a far corner of the kitchen. “I have yet to hear any such sentiment from his lips. Love! He knows not the meaning of the word.”
She saw her brother smile. “Ah,” Robert said again, passing a hand over his mouth to hide a smirk. “So that’s the way of it, then?”
“What do you mean?” Finnula stamped a booted foot. “What do you mean, that’s the way of it?”
“Only that you’re quibbling over trifles,” Robert said. He leaned back, so that his spine rested against the tabletop. “You want him to declare his undying devotion to you, to go about crying how much he needs you, as if he were Mellana’s bloody troubadour. You want him to write verse praising your beauty and sing songs of unrequited—”
“God’s teeth, Robert,” Finnula said scornfully. “That isn’t what I want, and you know it. A simple ‘I love you, Finnula’ would suffice.”
“That’s what all you women want,” Robert disagreed, in disgust. “You want romance. You want flattery. Well, the only way you’re going to get those things out of Lord Hugo is if you play the part.”
Finnula, who’d been pacing the kitchen with a scowl upon her face, halted and stared at her older brother. “Play the part? What part?”
“The part of the fair damsel,” Robert said, waving a dismissive hand. “The highborn lady, with the creamy white skin and helplessly fluttering eyelids.”
“What?” Finnula looked at him as if he were demented. “What are you talking about? What about my eyelids?”
“Finnula, if you want him to sing the praises of your beauty, you’ve got to look beautiful…or at least look like a woman, for God’s sake. Bashing about in those leather braies isn’t going to inspire words of worship from him.” Robert stared at her critically. “And why don’t you do something with your hair, instead of tying it up in that donkey’s tail?” Finnula’s hands flew defensively to her braid. “Can’t you wear it down, with some gewgaws in it? Mellana knows how to do it—”
“And look where it’s gotten her,” Finnula observed, dryly.
“Precisely. Finnula, I don’t know why you’re feeling so sorry for yourself. You’ve got your man. If he isn’t everything you’d like him to be, ’tis up to you to change him. That’s what you women seem most keen on, anyway.”
Fingering her braid, Finnula stared at him. Surprisingly, her brother’s words made a certain amount of sense. She certainly hadn’t acted much like a maiden worth worshipping; more like a maiden in need of a horsewhipping.
“Rather than running away,” Robert said, with a glance at her bag, crumpled in the corner by the woodpile, “why don’t you stay and fight for what you want?”
Finnula had no reply for that. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and, leaning on one hip, regarded her brother with narrowed eyes. “You knew I’d try to run away this morning, didn’t you?” she demanded. “That’s why you got up so early. You didn’t really have work to do at the mill, did you?”
“Lord Hugo warned me you’d try to make a run for it,” he admitted, with a grin.
Finnula inhaled sharply. “What? He told you—”
“He mentioned something last night.” Robert stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles and looking, for the first time, like a man with a headache.
Finnula snorted disgustedly. “Well, I like that! After I gave him my word!”
“A lot of good your word is,” Robert sneered. “You tried to make a break for it in spite of your promise not to.”
Her shoulders slumped dejectedly, Finnula sank down onto the bench beside him. After a short silence, during which both brother and sister studied their boots, she asked, shyly, “Robert?”
“Aye, Finn.”
“Will you help me?”
“Help you what, Finn?”
“To act more…maidenly.”
Robert made a face. “Can’t you ask one of the girls? You’ve got five sisters to choose from. Four of ’em’ve already won husbands, so they obviously know what they’re doing. Why ask me?”
“Because.” Finnula swung her legs back and forth, in the same manner as when she’d been small. “I trust you most. Please?”
Robert sighed. “Finnula, my head’s about to split in two—” Seeing his little sister’s crestfallen expression, he sighed. “Oh, very well. Though what you think I know about these kinds of things, I can’t imagine…”
As it happened, Robert Crais knew a great deal about those kinds of things. After granting him a reprieve of a few more hours of sleep, Finnula consulted him regarding her toilette—hair straight or curled? up or down? were her fingernails clean enough?—and her wardrobe—was her kirtle too tight? her bliaut too loose? flowers or jeweled combs in her hair?—and found that after twenty-five years in a household full of women, her brother had garnered a vast wealth of opinions on such matters. When his sisters were through scrubbing, anointing, perfuming, grooming and dressing their youngest sibling, Robert inspected the results and found, with a minor adjustment here and there, that Finnula passed muster.
“I don’t know why you think you aren’t beautiful,” was his comment, when Finnula, resplendent in her wedding clothes, made her final trip down the stairs from her bedroom.
Looking down at herself with skeptically raised eyebrows, Finnula said, “What, me? Mel’s the beauty in the family, Robert.”
Robert snorted. His headache had not gone away, and he’d been forced to imbibe in some hair of the dog in order to temper it. Tankard in hand, he circled Finnula, critically examining every aspect of her habiliment.
Her wedding clothes were not new, though they’d been worn only once before, nearly a year ago to the day. A simple white kirtle of the finest linen fit her with glovelike closeness. Over that she wore a bliaut of white samite, with sleeves so wide and full that they fell almost to the floor. Around her waist was anchored a girdle of silver-link, her only ornament, save a coronet of fresh wildflowers that had been twined through her loosely flowing auburn curls.
Finnula looked, to Robert, like every man’s dream of a blushing bride. Satisfying himself on a single point, he demanded that she lift her skirts to her knees, and when he saw only bare leg and no braies, he relaxed.
“Well, Finn.” He hiccupped. “You’ve outdone yourself. A more beautiful bride I’ve never seen.”
This assertion caused indignation among the other Crais sisters, who’d gathered in the kitchen to view the results of their morning’s labor, but Robert waved their protests away.
“She’s got the richest groom,” he insisted. “That makes her the prettiest. And now, if mine ears don’t deceive me, that’s the church bell, tollin’ the hour. Methinks Her Ladyship’s carriage awaits.”
Finnula’s sisters ushered her into the yard, where their husbands waited with a dogcart festooned with ribbon and flowers. Following village tradition, the dogcart was hitched to a small white donkey, and though Finnula balked at actually seating herself in such an undignified conveyance, she gave in with ill grace eventually, and the merry party—many of whom were holding pitchers of Mel’s Brew even as they approached the church—made their way to the pulpit.