Page 67 of An Inconvenient Vow

The other woman placed down her pen and sat back in her chair. She wore a heavy wimple of starched white linen which revealed a dark widow’s peak and a high forehead. Her intelligent gaze scrutinized Sabina a moment in silence.

“Sir Jeffree hath requested that I free him from his vow.” Her voice was deep and commanding but not unattractive. “It seems rather a moot point as he has already married you,” she added dryly. “But then, I find it entirely typical of the male point of view.”

Sabina opened her mouth and then closed it again on whatever retort she had been about to make. “Did you free him?” she heard herself ask with grudging curiosity.

Meliora’s brows rose. “Tell me what difference would it make, either way?”

“None to me,” Sabina responded before she could stop herself. “But Jeffree, like many men, loves a grand gesture.”

The other woman gave a rich deep laugh and suddenly Sabina found herself imagining the Lady Meliora in clothes other than her plain black habit. In velvets and jewels, she would cut an equally impressive figure. She would have been a handsome girl at eighteen, Sabina thought. Especially to a boy of fifteen. Handsome, rather than pretty.

A wry smile curved up one side of the Reverend Mother’s mouth. “You are weighing me up, Lady de Crecy,” she said slowly.

“That must be a novel experience for you. I don’t imagine many people have the nerve to do that in your presence,” Sabina replied and earned another husky laugh in response. Meliora was attractive still, Sabina realized with a pang. Maybe Jeffree’s devotion was not so hard to understand after all.

“Hmmm.” The other woman nodded, picking up a paperweight and turning it over in her hands. She had elegant hands, long and white. “Jeffree said you were a widow I think?” she ruminated.

“Yes,” Sabina admitted.

“That must have given you some advantage. Some experience of married life to draw upon.”

“I suppose so,” Sabina agreed, though privately, she doubted it.

“Even so, I cannot imagine you find Sir Jeffree an easy spouse to manage.”

Sabina’s chin rose. Manage? “You speak of him rather as though he were a horse, Reverend Mother.”

“I suppose I do,” the other agreed musingly. “I am a good horsewoman,” she said rising from her seat and making her way toward the window. “But I never could brook any disobedience or deviation from my will.” She stood looking out over the fields a moment before looking back over her shoulder.

“On my seventeenth birthday, my father bought me a very fine stallion, of purest blood and pedigree. I was the envy of the neighborhood.” For a moment Sabina actually thought she was talking about Jeffree.

Then Meliora continued, “Anaska was his name. He balked once at jumping a hedge I put him to and sent me in a fury with him. Three times I turned him back and urged him on, and finally he threw me, rather than take it.” Meliora was silent a moment. “That horse saved my life, for later it turned out that the river had burst its banks, and if he had jumped, we would have ended in a flooded ditch.”

She turned about to face Sabina. “But I still insisted my father sell him, for I could not forgive his disobedience. Every time I looked at that horse, I remembered how he had dared to defy me. Tell me, do you think that was contrary of me?”

“I think it was absolutely ridiculous behavior!” Sabina answered with spirit.

Meliora looked contemptuously amused. “Yes, I imagine someone like you would struggle to understand such a thing,” she conceded.

“Do you know,” Sabina said, leaning forward in her seat. “Until this moment, I thought Jeffree was the most ludicrously proud person I had ever met.” She looked the other woman over impassively. “You would have made a truly terrible couple,” she said wonderingly as the realization dawned. “Beautiful,” she admitted, imagining a portrait of the two of them, both so tall and handsome. “But I’ll wager you would have been estranged within a twelvemonth.”

Again, Meliora’s eyes flashed with humor, and she gave a dry laugh. “More than likely,” she concurred. “Dear me, you are not at all what I had imagined when Sir Jeffree came in here all rampaging emotion.” She rose and crossed to a small refectory table where she decanted a gold filigree bottle and poured out two glasses of dark red fluid. “You will take a glass with me, Lady Sabina?” As she had already poured, it was not so much a question as a statement.

When Meliora placed the glass beside her, Sabina found herself murmuring her thanks.

Meliora resumed her seat and gazed at her over the top of her glass. “When I imagined Jeffree’s matrimonial future, I had pictured him succumbing to someone quite different.”

Sabina lifted her own glass to her lips, hoping to forestall her own comment. So, it seemed Meloria had not in fact expected Jeffree would live out his days a bachelor. Clearly, she had set but scant score on his word. Sabina hated herself, but could not forbear from asking, “Who did you imagine?”

“I thought either some celebrated beauty,” Meliora answered with a contemptuous curl of her lip, “who would have a main eye to his prospects, or some little doe-eyed schemer who would flatter and cajole him into marriage.” She regarded Sabina steadily. “I suppose his uncle’s title compelled him to marry at last.”

“Oh, did Jeffree not tell you?” Sabina was inordinately pleased to have one up on the all-knowing Meliora. “His Grace, the Earl of Bethencourt, is betrothed to my younger sister.” She did not actually know if this was still true, but she said it anyway to give the other woman pause.

Meliora lowered her glass. She regarded Sabina through enigmatic eyes. “Is that so?”

“Have you ever told Jeffree that story about Anaska?” Sabina asked abruptly, for suddenly she had to know.

Meliora looked taken aback. “No,” she answered after a moment’s pause. “No, I don’t believe I ever have.”