Great Maria Read Free Page A

said. “Adela tells me you are mooning over that calf Roger d’Alene.”
    Maria went hot as if she stood before an open oven. She would never talk to Adela again. Her father took her right hand and opened her fingers out of their fist.
    “Maria,” he said. “I think you should be married.” He kissed her fingers.
    “Married,” she said, amazed, and leaped up. “Papa. To Roger? I can marry Roger?” She threw her arms around him.
    The old man patted her back. “That isn’t what I have in mind.”
    She stood up, cooling. “What?”
    Her father smiled at her. “Not Roger.” He pulled on his chin. “His brother—Richard, the middle brother.”
    “Richard!” Maria cried. That was the gray-eyed knight. “No. I want Roger. I’ll go to a convent first.”
    “Now, Maria. Come here and listen to your old father.”
    “You want me to marry him? Why do you want me to marry him?”
    “Come here.” He beckoned to her. A deerhound lying under the window came over to him, and he slapped it away. “Maria. Do as I say.”
    She went reluctantly over to pull up a stool beside his chair and sit down. Robert took her by the hand.
    “I have no son. All I have is you, puss. Therefore you have to marry and make me a few grandsons.”
    He went on a little about how in his old age a man’s heart yearned for grandchildren to continue his line. Maria stopped heeding his rambling voice. She had never before thought of having children; she herself had been so recently a child.
    “You aren’t listening to me,” her father said patiently.
    “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
    “I want you to marry Richard. He’s older than Roger, he can take care of you. Roger’s not much more than your age, he’s just tilting with Richard over you.”
    “I’ll wait for Roger.” Her father made things more complex than necessary.
    In the seams of her father’s face the sweat lay glistening like jewels. Beneath his heavy eyebrows his small pale eyes were unblinking. At last he patted her hand.
    “Listen to me. Richard is ambitious. I have to give him something to keep him satisfied a while. Trust me. I’ll watch over you.”
    She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, staring at him, affronted. “Papa, don’t you love me anymore?”
    “Of course I love you. Of course I love you.” He took her hands again. “Puss, don’t ever think I don’t love you.” He sighed. Still holding both her hands in his right hand, he wiped the sweat from his face on his other sleeve. He looked her in the eyes. “Very well. Maybe he can convince you. Will you talk to him—when he comes back? Tomorrow.”
    “I won’t marry him.”
    “Talk to him.”
    “All right.” She would talk to Roger as well.
    “Good girl.” The deerhound still stood beside her father, who cupped its lean head in the palm of his hand. He nodded at her. “You’ll come around to it, you’ll see, one way or another.”
    He bent over the dog, talking to it. Maria went out of the hall to the stairway. She felt dizzy, as if she had drunk too much of something strong. If it was not her true love, at least someone wanted to marry her. Going downstairs, she broke into a run from sheer good feeling.
    ***
    Maria went into the end of the hall, where her father usually sat, and stood looking at the hanging on the wall. Her mother had made it. Once she had thought it beautiful but now since she herself had learned to weave she marked the twisted weft and the loose stitches. She turned away from the hanging, putting her back to the wall.
    The gray-eyed knight was coming in the door. He shut it and put the bolt across it, which startled her, and walked slowly across the room toward her. He was stocky and broad-shouldered, his legs heavy-boned, but he was not tall: when he came up to her she had to lift her head only a little to meet his eyes.
    “Your father says you won’t marry me.”
    “I love another.” She disliked having him stand so close to her. She backed away from