Susan Spencer Paul by The Brides Portion Page B

over. Come, now—” she waved the four ladies who’d accompanied them toward Lillis “—the Lord of Gyer will be here shortly, and she must be made ready.”
    “But—” Lillis felt utterly bewildered as the women began to undress her.
    “Hush!” Aunt Leta admonished, removing Lillis’s chain girdle with care. “We’ve no time for talk. Hurry, Jehanne, and unbraid her hair. It must be brushed before we put her to bed.”
    “Edyth?” Lillis looked for her maid and found her standing in the shadows, tears pouring out of her eyes as she shook her head with misery.
    “Oh, my dear,” Edyth cried. “My poor, sweet lady.”
    Aunt Leta made a sound of impatience. “Poor, indeed! Do you suppose my nephew’s going to do anything to her that men haven’t done to their wives since God made Adam?”
    The words caused Lillis’s frozen rage to uncoil, and she came to life all at once. With nothing to cover her nakedness but her thin chemise, she pushed the women away.
    “No more!” she demanded furiously. “I’ll not be treated in such a manner, as if I were naught but chattel!” With a shaking finger, she pointed to the door. “Leave me at once. All of you, save Edyth.”
    “Don’t be a fool!” Aunt Leta snapped. “We’ll not leave until the consummation of the marriage has been witnessed. Are you so ignorant, my girl, that you don’t know this?”
    Lillis felt as if the breath had been sucked right out of her and, trembling, backed away from the women until she came up against a wall.
    “No,” she whispered in horror. “No, I don’t know... Witness the—?”
    “Witness the consummation,” Aunt Leta repeated firmly. “How else is Alexander to gain that land unless the marriage has been legally consummated? And how can he prove it’s been legally consummated unless there are witnesses? Without witnesses your father will have this marriage annulled as quick as this.” She snapped her fingers. “Now, cease this childish behavior and let us put you into the bed, else your lord and his men will find you without, as you are.”
    * * *
    Alexander watched Lillis go as Aunt Leta and the other women led her toward the stairs. She went with them in the same dazed state she’d been in all day, not really knowing where she was or what she was doing. He was rather stunned, too, by the speed and the reality with which events had passed. It would be understandable for Lillis to be more so. She’d not spoken a word to him during the day, other than her vows, and he wasn’t altogether sure that she remembered saying those. Indeed, he’d had a suspicion during the ceremony that if he didn’t tightly hold her hand she would collapse into a stupefied heap on the chapel floor.
    The wedding feast had been like a waking nightmare for him; a host of conflicting sounds and faces. The villagers and castlefolk who crowded the great hall laughed and danced and lost no opportunity to express their well-wishes to their lord and new lady; Barbara cried incessantly and miserably at one end of the long table; Willem looked as if he’d lost his best friend; and his bride sat silent beside him, staring at nothing. He’d been relieved when Aunt Leta had finally come to take her away to prepare her for the wedding night. Once the marriage was consummated, the ordeal would be over, for Lillis, at least. For him it would continue until every last stone of the dam that stopped the Eel River was torn down.
    Alexander wasn’t looking forward to what he must do this night. It certainly wasn’t going to be the joyful consummation he’d always imagined he’d share with Barbara; indeed, his coupling with Lillis of Wellewyn—no, Lillis of Gyer, now, he must remember that—promised to be nothing short of wretched for them both. When it was over...when it was all over, he would find a way to make up to her the humiliation he was certain she would suffer, and he would repay her a hundredfold during their marriage what the loss of her