Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] Read Free

unmercifully for cursing her neighbor’s crops.”
    “So you’ve told me many times. If I take a solemn oath never to curse anyone’s crops, will you stop lecturing me?”
    He turned his serious eyes on her and straightened until his head touched the low ceiling. “There are many ways to make people hate you, Martine, not all of them self-evident. There are punishments more horrible than you can imagine for ‘crimes’ you would never think of as crimes. Take Master Abelard, for example. The greatest man I’ve ever known. For the ‘crime’ of loving Héloïse, he was punished with castration. Then, years later, when he returned to teaching, there was the ‘crime’ of applying logic to the study of theology—a crime which, incidentally, I practice myself, but with discretion. For that crime, he was not only excommunicated, but sentenced to perpetual silence at Cluny. The most brilliant man in the known world not permitted to speak! Indiscretion is dangerous, Martine. You must learn to watch what you say.”
    “Yet, if I keep silent, I’m seen as aloof and haughty.”
     “It’s... the way you keep silent, Martine. You’re so... so...”
    “Would you have me meekly hold my tongue, with downcast eyes and a blush upon my cheek? ‘Twas my mother’s way. ‘Twill never be mine.”
    He began to say something, then merely shook his head and abandoned the attempt at reprimand. With a glance at her drab tunic, he said, “Sir Edmond will probably be there to greet us when we dock tomorrow. Mayhaps you would want to wear something more...” He shrugged.
    Her stomach burned with apprehension at the thought of meeting her betrothed. Nerves frayed, she snapped, “Why should I care about pleasing a man I’ve never met? I didn’t choose Sir Edmond. You did, you and Thorne Falconer. And I didn’t choose to get married. You chose it for me. Make no mistake, the only reason I agreed to this marriage was because you want to be free of me.”
    He crouched next to her, compelling her with his eyes to look at him. “It’s not what I want, little sister, it’s what I need. I need to regain my faith, and I can’t do it in Paris, surrounded by students who hang on my every word as if it were Holy Scripture. I need this pilgrimage. My soul needs it.”
    She took a calming breath and rested a hand on his shoulder. “They say you’re the best-loved teacher Paris has seen since Abelard. They’re begging for you at Oxford. Do you think God wants you to waste your gifts by leaving your students and prostrating yourself at every shrine between Compostela and Jerusalem?”
    “Yes.” The intensity of his gaze took her aback. “I think God wants me to humble myself. I think that’s exactly what He wants.”
    She sighed. How pointless to try to talk him out of it at this late date. “And you’ll only be gone a year?”
    He covered her hand with his. “Perhaps two.”
    “Two years?”
    “And when I come back, I’ll be teaching at Oxford, not Paris, so we’ll see each other quite—”
    “Rainulf, I need you! You can’t leave me for two years!”
    “You’ll have a husband to care for you. You won’t be alone.” He patted her hand and said carefully, “You know, it’s not impossible that you might even grow to love—”
    She clapped her hands over her ears and turned from him.
    “Martine, for God’s sake.” He reached for her, but she pulled away and wrapped her arms around her up-drawn legs.
    He shook his head. “You act as if love were some dreadful curse.”
    With her back still turned, she said, “Isn’t it? Look what it did to my mother. It made her weak, it destroyed her. She worshiped Jourdain. Worshiped him! She thought he’d marry her when your mother died, and he let her believe it. But barons don’t marry their mistresses, do they?”
    Quietly he said, “No. They don’t.”
    “She didn’t know that. She trusted in love. She was a fool.” Martine turned to face her brother. “I’m not.