Godiva Read Free

enough.”
    â€œYes,” Godiva agreed comfortably. “Occasionally he even wants to divorce me.”
    â€œOccasionally you are very foolish with your . . . talents,” Leofric said. “Remember with King Harold’s—”
    â€œWill you never let me live that down?” Godiva sighed.
    â€œYou propositioned Harold Harefoot?” the abbess demanded, eyes widening.
    â€œOf course not,” Godiva said in a disgusted voice. And then brightening, she pitched her voice just over Edgiva’s shoulder: “Welcome, Sweyn. You are arrived in good time to hear my husband thoroughly embarrass me. I believe you will enjoy the story.”
    The abbess’s face had grown stony, and she took a step away with the gravity of a religious ritual. Leofric, desiring an attentive audience, reached out and rested an avuncular hand on the arm of Sweyn, who, dressed all in fawn-colored leather, now looked like a trapped deer.
    â€œWhen Godiva was still young,” Leofric began, “Harold Harefoot was the king, and one of his housecarls took an interest in her.”
    â€œI remember this,” Edgiva said, relenting, returning her attention to them.
    â€œUnderstand, I had nothing to gain from his interest,” Godiva told Sweyn emphatically. “He was no threat to either Leofric or me; there was no information, favor, or agreement we wanted from him. There was no reason to encourage him.”
    â€œNot that Godiva always needs a reason to encourage men,” said Leofric cheerfully, smiling at Sweyn, whose blush was now so deep it verged on purple.
    â€œBut he was very forward,” said Godiva, also to Sweyn. “He actually intended to get under my skirts, where I had no intention of allowing him.”
    Leofric continued: “After dinner, somehow—she claims she knows not how this happened—”
    â€œAnd I don’t!” said Godiva. “Only that I was exceptionally naive and foolish—”
    â€œPinned, she was pinned against the outer wall of the stable,” her husband continued. “She was trying to stop him, of course, because she did not want to be fined for allowing a man to grope her in public—”
    â€œThat was not my prime concern—”
    â€œâ€”but he would not be dissuaded. He told her that I already knew myself to be a cuckold and I would not care, which is not true, by the way,” he said, a confiding aside to Sweyn, who looked so mortified that Godiva genuinely felt pity for him. She pressed a ringed hand against Leofric’s hand to stop him, and took over the storytelling.
    â€œI started to say ‘I am not a whore,’ but as I spoke the words I realized he would disregard that. So I decided to try a trick I learned from Edgiva—”
    The abbess gasped, mortified. “What?” she demanded, crossing herself and turning almost as violet as Sweyn—at whom she glanced nervously. “I have never —”
    â€œI mean the trick of indirect resistance,” said Godiva. “Your hallmark tactic. That is all. Calm down, Mother.” It was a rare treat to tell Edey to calm down, Edey being perhaps the calmest woman she had ever known. Turning her attention to Sweyn, and ignoring his blush, Godiva continued, “Since I could not overpower him and since I could not change his belief in what I was, I decided to use his perception of me against him. So I kept speaking, and what I said was, ‘I am not a whore . . . whom you can afford.’ ”
    â€œShe said, ‘I am sitting on a gold mine and there is a high charge to enter it,’ ” chuckled Leofric. “ ‘You must pay the master of the mine—my husband. In person. With gold. And he has the privilege of witnessing it . ’ All of this, she said to the cur.” He delivered this again to Sweyn, who appeared increasingly confounded.
    â€œAnd he looked just as you do now, Sweyn,”