Page 48 of The Maiden

“Jura, I do not understand you at all. If you want to meet her smelling as you do, that is all right with me. I just thought—”

“You never thought at all!” she shouted at him, and ran away into the forest.

She hated herself for how she was acting, hated the new emotions that were raging inside her. Until this Englishman with his foreign ways had come to Lanconia, she had understood herself. She had known her place in life, where she was and where she was going. She had also understood men. Lanconian men valued strong, sensible women. Thal had shown her maps and asked her opinion of proposed campaigns, and when he thought her answers childish he had told her so—usually at the top of his lungs. Daire had expected her to be strong and fearless, and the two battles they had been in together, he had expected her to protect his back.

But what did this Englishman want from her? He was angry if she protected him, angry if she kissed him. He didn’t want her to ride beside him. He didn’t want to hear her ideas about what they should do to capture Brita. He said he wanted her to hide and cringe in the forest yet here he was fawning over a woman who had terrorized two generations of men. Jura thought that she had done a bit of her own terrorizing today but all she was told was that she stank.

She grimaced as she thought of Brita in her white dress. The stupid Englishman was taken in by her, but Jura knew the woman’s history. She may have said she called off her men, but two of them had chased Jura for hours. What other lies had she told?

No doubt she had told her men to gather an army and attack and kill this Irial king.

Jura left the forest and went back toward the house. Tonight she would stay outside and guard the peasant’s hut, and she would be able to give the fool of an Englishman a warning when the Vatells attacked.

Chapter Ten

JURA WOKE WITH a start as her body fell forward. She was leaning against a tree and she had managed to stay awake most of the night, but her fatigue had been too much for her a few hours before dawn.

“You’re safe,” said a voice near her.

She turned startled eyes toward Rowan. He was lounging on the ground near her, looking as if he had been asleep.

“How long have you been here?” she snapped, rubbing her eyes.

“When you fell asleep, I moved beside you.”

She straightened, trying to ignore the catch in her back.

“Look,” he said, nodding toward the peasant’s hut where the plump wife was emerging from the door and scratching. “They are awake and we are safe. I told you you should trust me. Brita is interested in my plan to unite the tribes. We talked for hours last night.”

She looked at him and saw the early-morning light touching his golden hair. His eyes were as blue as lake water. “You have washed the grease from your hair to help you talk? Have you found out what she wants so much that keeps her from trying to kill two Irials?”

Rowan grimaced. “Jura, please meet her. She is an intelligent woman and I think you might like her.”

Jura realized she was being childish; after all, this woman was Daire’s mother, and she had always loved Daire, so perhaps she would like her. She stood. “I will meet her.”

Rowan stood also and smiled at her. “You won’t regret this,” he said confidently.

Jura kept her back completely straight as she entered the hut where Brita sat on a small stool on the opposite side of the brazier. She looked up as Jura entered.

Jura felt that she knew this woman instantly. Brita was a woman who had lived always in a man’s world. Jura had, of course, heard Brita’s story and she had often wondered how a woman could gain control of an entire tribe and, even more difficult, retain that control, but as soon as she saw Brita’s glittering black eyes, she knew. Jura saw the ambition and the force behind those eyes. Once Jura had asked Daire why his mother did not fight Thal for the return of her oldest son, but now Jura saw that Brita would not endanger her throne for anyone, even her own son.

And Jura also saw that Brita considered Jura her enemy. The hairs rose on the back of Jura’s neck as she looked at this beautiful woman, and she wondered what she had that this queen wanted.

“So,” Brita said in that husky voice of hers, “you are the woman who left my son at the altar and betrayed her best friend in order to win an English king.”

Jura’s first reaction was to defend herself and explain, but she did not. “Yes,” she answered. “It is better to be the queen of the Irials than of the starving Vatells.”

Behind her, she heard Rowan groan but she kept her eyes on Brita. They understood each other and it was now open war.

“A maiden queen from what I hear,” Brita said softly as she looked Jura up and down, smiling at Jura’s wearing of the deep blue Vatell guardswoman tunic and trousers, a bow and arrows at her back. She was in sharp contrast to Brita in her beautiful white gown with a gold necklace set with heavy emeralds lying across her abundant bosom. “Perhaps your husband does not desire so mannish a woman. Perhaps he would do better with a true woman.”

So, Jura thought, she wants Rowan. “He was easily won and easily lost,” she said, then turned to leave. Rowan was blocking the doorway, and she had to push past him to get out.

She walked about a mile through the forest to a small stream, then tore off the hated Vatell clothes and plunged into the cold water to swim and wash the stink from her body. In all her life she had never been so unhappy. Even when both her parents had died so soon after one another she had not felt so lost. Then Daire had been there to take care of her and he had always been there—until now. Now this Englishman had come into her life and made her miserable. He complained about everything she did. If she saved his life by protecting his back, he told her she should have run into the forest.

He made her feel undesirable and unwanted.

She got out of the water and, wet, put the Vatell clothes back on.