Hetty gets off her feet
“Ach! Alred! We were just about to go down!”
He greeted her with a reprimand: quiet, but not indulgent. “It is still early, Hetty.”
Hetty’s brief burst of happy excitement fizzled out. She knew what he meant. Her “quiet time” had not been served. The sun was still high enough to dapple the floor with diamonds of green and ruby light.
Once around the bed, he stopped abruptly before the tall chests as if surprised by the sight of his own boots and slippers. “Have you seen my old riding boots?”
Hetty tiptoed in after him. “Osric took all of your old boots downstairs some time ago. They were becoming so many…”
“I just saw Osric. He said he thought they were in here.”
“Perhaps he forgot.”
Alred looked over the row of boots once more, and turned to Hetty with a skeptical frown.
“I am quite sure he did,” she faltered.
“He did, my lord,” Hattie said. “I remember. We laughed at how many more shoes you had than Hetty.”
Hetty sent her a grateful smile. When she looked back to Alred, he was smiling at Hattie too.
“I shall have to have a word with that man!” He picked up his new boots and stepped around the bed. “If there is one person who is not permitted to laugh at my vanity, it is my valet!”
Hattie said, “Ach, Osric was not laughing, my lord, you may be sure.”
“Oh? Could you tell, behind the towering pile?”
Hetty giggled, but Alred passed with scarcely a glance.
“Do lie down, my beauty. It pains me to see you on your feet, and all the more so now that I have been made to understand how lamentably less well-equipped they are.”
“I am wearing my new slippers,” she said, “so my feet are quite comfortable.”
She followed him through the screen, but he stopped and stood his boots before the door as if to block her escape.
“Ah, but Hetty,” he said, smiling, as he turned back to her, “new slippers are the most pernicious kind.”
“But they are not so very new…”
“Then let us not wear them out, my dear.”
He took her arm and turned her gently around, but the hand on her back was firm.
Hattie said, “She has not had her wine yet, my lord.”
Hetty looked back over her shoulder, surprised by this betrayal. Only a moment before Hattie had seemed as excited to go down as she. While she was distracted, Alred shuffled her a few steps away from the door.
“Not had her wine yet!” he said.
“I wanted to sew a little first,” Hetty protested. She twisted herself halfway around in an attempt to face him again. “But we shall have hot wine downstairs—we shall offer Sigefrith and Rua a bit of refreshment before they go.”
Alred’s brows arched questioningly up, but his eyes narrowed, until his lids were smooth and the wrinkles beside them deep.
Hetty asked uneasily, “You remember Young Sigefrith was to come today to take Rua for a visit?”
“I had some idea.”
“Did he not just arrive?”
“Did he?”
“Hattie went to look out Osric’s window and saw him in the court.”
Hetty looked to Hattie for confirmation, but this time her maid was silent. Alred’s hand resumed its pressure on her back.
“Is that not where you were going?” she asked. “Is that not…”
As he ushered her through the screen, she looked back at his new boots, standing stiffly with their heels butted up against the door. She had imagined at first that he meant to ride part of the way with Sigefrith and Lasrua, but now she did not know what to imagine.
“I was about to ride out to the bean fields with Aldwyn,” he said, “and I don’t want to keep him waiting, my dear…”
“But will you not go down to greet Sigefrith?”
“I am certain Gwynn is doing us honor as we speak. Hattie?”
“But, Alred, we cannot let Sigefrith go away without seeing either of us, when both of us are here! And will you not make Rua your farewells?”
“Hattie, my dear, will you get your lady’s wine? Hetty, I shall go down and see them off, if that is what you desire. But I daresay Young Sigefrith would rather see Gwynn than my ugly self.”
Or perhaps Alred would rather not see Young Sigefrith. He had just missed him the last time Sigefrith had visited—or had he? Had there been another urgent visit to the bean fields that day?
Hetty’s heart beat faster, and she began to feel out of breath. “But may not I go down as well? I did not see him last time, either.”
“But, Hetty, you need your rest,” Alred said. “And Young Sigefrith is not the most restful gentleman of our acquaintance…”
He did not want her to see Sigefrith. Exceptions had been made for the likes of Bertie or Ethelwyn in the past. He did not want her to see Leofric’s son. Why? Because Sigefrith so resembled his father? Because Sigefrith might be carrying a message?
Oh, might he? Might he? If he did?
“I do not mean to—to—to dance!” she pleaded. “Only greet him and give my regards to his wife and mother. It will be very restful. I shall sit—”
“Hetty, you know you need your quiet time—”
She shoved off his pressing hands. “I do not want to be quiet!”
The sound of her own voice startled her as much as it did the others. She could not recall the last time she had screamed; she must have been a small child. It came almost as a surprise that she still could. It was like discovering in herself a magical power.
She shrieked again: “I do not want to be quiet! I want to make a sound!”
“Hetty—”
“I want to be loud! I want to see my friends! I want to go up and down!”
“Hattie?”
Hetty heard a pitcher clatter against a cup held in a shaking hand. Her maid called, “I come! I come! Du lieber…”
“I do not want wine! I do not want a nap!”
“Hetty, please, calm yourself…”
“Hier, Hetty,” Hattie said, “trink mal…”
“Nein! Ich will nicht trinken!”
Hetty flung out her arms, trying to cast off the people pressing in around her. One thumped against Alred’s hard chest, but the other knocked Hattie’s arm, and beads of dark wine splattered the floor.
Her maid gasped, “Hetty!” but her husband turned his head and shouted, “Osric! I need you!”
“No! No!” Hetty battered blindly with her arms, afraid of being captured, of feeling her arms pinned against her sides. She knocked the cup out of her maid’s hand. “I want to go down! I want to see Sigefrith!”
The door flew open, sending Alred’s boots tumbling against the bookcase.
Hetty screamed, “No! Go out!” but they were not her orders that Osric followed.
“Help me get her to the bed,” Alred said to him. “She’s hysterical.”
“No! I am not! I only want to go down!”
Alred’s hand slid down her flank and hip as far as the back of her thigh: a touch more intimate than she had felt from him in weeks. In squirming away from it she lost her balance and fell back against Osric’s chest.
“I am not hysterical! I only want to see Sigefrith! Let me see Sigefrith!”
Osric’s arm circled her shoulders and clenched her close, pinning her arms at her sides. Hattie stooped to bundle her skirts around her legs and guide Osric’s hand beneath her knees to lift her up, both feet off the ground.
“Sigefrith!” she shrieked. “Sigefrith! Sigefrith!” She screamed for Sigefrith all the way to her bed.
