Page 71 of Wed By Proxy

“I was just entertaining the notion,” he admitted grudgingly. “I find myself in need of an advocate at present. How do you fancy the job?”

Footsteps approaching forestalled the old woman’s immediate response. A tray was born in with the ale and oatcakes he had demanded. Drinks were poured and a platter set down between them. Helga helped herself to an oatcake as Guy took a swig of ale.

“Let me guess,” she said, tapping her chin. “Your task for me is to try and weasel your way back into your wife’s good graces?” she suggested.

A dull flush rose in Guy’s cheeks. “Am I so easy to read?” he asked, glancing away.

“All too easy,” she scoffed, offering the cake to her bird. Tancred resolutely turned away from her peace offering and she sighed. “Besides,” she added loudly. “How can I plead your cause, when it was I who denounced you for a traitor in the first place?”

Guy wheeled around. “What? What do you mean?”

“It was I,” explained Helga impassively, “who told your wife you entertained another in her place. In short, that you betrayed her.” At his incredulous stare, she nodded her head gently. “Yes, I confess it freely.”

“Why?” he thundered. “Why would you do such a thing?”

She drew herself up. “It was necessary,” she said in her portentous voice. “I am not one to shirk my duty.” Tancred gave a loud croak.

“You try my patience, old woman. A vastly pretty husband you’ve made me out to be!”

Helga looked at him thoughtfully. “Think!” she said sternly, “of the results of my ploy. Your people pity the wronged wife who walked into your fine banqueting hall and found you carousing with another woman sat at your table, dressed in splendor and jewels.”

Guy gripped his cup. “I was not carousing!”

“No one,” Helga interrupted him loudly, “even mentions that the wife was an outsider, a hated southerner in the retelling.” She paused letting this significant fact sink in. “They whisper of her peasant garb, her bare feet, her sweet little pregnant belly…”

“She wasn’t barefoot!” snapped Guy. Then his head whipped up. “Pregnant?” he echoed. “Nay…”

“They recognize the old story,” the woman carried on, ignoring his words and nodding her head. “The Wicked Lord and the Other Woman. Their sympathies lie firmly with the abandoned wife, humiliated and scorned…”

“I didn’t abandon her!”

“You denied her her rightful place,” she said firmly.

“Because I didn’t realize—” Guy scraped his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I can’t forget the look on her face,” he said, passing a shaking hand across his face.

Helga leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder. “Take heart.” Guy mopped his brow. “This way is far better,” Helga persisted. “So, your tenants will eye you askance for a few months. They’ll whisper you’re no better than you should be. What would you rather? Mathilde endure twenty years of being shunned as the enemy of your people. Would you prefer your tenants threw dirt and stones at her when she was unaccompanied? Called her ‘the southern bitch’ behind your back? Rued the day you were forced to wed her? For them to tell each other the Kerslake girl was your true love?”

“No!” Guy burst forth. He looked appalled. “Is that—?” he hesitated. “Is that what would have happened?” He felt sick.

Old Helga’s blue eyes turned dreamy. “It’s what I foresaw lay ahead for you, if I did not act.”

Guy broke out in a cold sweat. “Then you were right to do what you did,” he said hoarsely.

She nodded gently. “Well, I thought so,” she murmured. “I know the little one, she suffered, but it was a fleeting pain, not to be sustained. You’ll find she is surprisingly resilient. The important thing is that a true understanding of heart and mind is established between the two of you.”

“How am I supposed to achieve that?” demanded Guy bleakly. “Any understanding between us has been shattered. She trusted me, and I—” his voice lowered. “I broke that trust.”

Helga nodded her head sagely. “Now you have smashed the rotten foundations, you can start to rebuild.”

“Rotten?”

At his angry tone, her eyebrows rose. “Do you deny this match was entered into in the wrong spirit?”

“There was nothing rotten about our beginnings, nothing at all!”

“Your hand was forced,” Helga reminded him. “You did not want her.”

“I don’t care! She was meant to be mine,” vowed Guy vehemently. “It was fate. If it hadn’t been this way, it would have been another.”