“Oh!” Sigefrith cried in surprise when he opened the door to his study, abruptly ending the little song he was humming.
Alred was inside, and Lady Margaret was in his arms. “Ah!” Alred cried in reply.
“What are you two scapegraces doing in here?” Sigefrith asked.
“We have been looking around to see what sort of things in a king’s study might serve as toys for a little girl.”
“You fool! Even Meggie knows that if you are looking for toys you should go to the nursery.”
“Ah, but if you are looking for the King, you should go to his study. Where the hell have you been hiding, Sigefrith? Everyone said you were here, and yet no one knew where you were.”
“I was only up talking to Eadgith.”
“Up talking to Eadgith? The only up from here is in her room.”
“Halfway to heaven,” he sighed rapturously.
“Wait just a moment, old man. Are you sure that’s wise?”
“What’s wise?”
“Visiting the girl in her bedroom? Were you alone with her?”
“Well – yes, we were alone, but – Alred!” he laughed. “Perish the thought! We were only talking. I’m old enough to be her father.”
“Try telling that to her father. You’re what? thirty-four?”
“As are you.”
“Not for a few weeks! Meanwhile, Eadgith is fourteen, if memory serves.”
“Precisely my point. Twenty years! I could be her father with years to spare.”
“Try telling that to Leofric. Care to guess by how many years he is older than Sir Leila?”
“How many?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Aie,” Sigefrith winced.
“Precisely my point. You might wish to reconsider these little visits to your young cousin in her chamber.”
“But Leila is a grown woman. Eadgith is only a girl,” Sigefrith scoffed.
“Is she? What were you doing when you were fourteen?”
“Nothing that I have any intention of reliving with Eadgith!” he laughed. “I assure you, on my honor, that I only chat with the girl. There’s no sin in enjoying the company of a chaste and charming young lady, is there?”
“Margaret, please stop pulling my hair or I shall put you down, and then you will be sorry. Listen, Sigefrith, a little advice from a man who once got his nose broken for ‘enjoying the company of a chaste and charming young lady’ – propriety is not as much fun as even the appearance of the contrary, but it is less damaging to the face.”
“I have no intention of taking off my clothes in front of the girl!” Sigefrith roared. “Good God!”
“Be that as it may, I suspect that were Leofric to learn about your private conversations with his daughter, he would damage more than your face.”
Sigefrith could not help but laugh. “I never dreamt I would one day find myself in the position of being suspected of indecent acts with the daughter of that old troll!”
“All right, old man. If you believe it is all perfectly decent, then you won’t mind if we ask Leofric his opinion?”
“Oh, that will do, Alred,” Sigefrith said, beginning to have doubts of his own. “She will be moving out of her little bedroom in only a few days, and then I shan’t be able to visit her in her chambers unless I climb through the windows or fight my way past her brother.”
“I hope you will do neither.”
“Certainly not, certainly not. But if you don’t like how it looks, O bearded vestal, I shan’t visit her here any longer either. Only suitably chaperoned, as if she were not my cousin, and as if she were not the little girl I bounced on my knee.”
“It is precisely the suspicion of knee-bouncing that we are trying to avoid.”
“Oh, God, I wish you hadn’t put the idea into my head,” Sigefrith laughed. “It does begin to sound pleasant.”
“I told you she wasn’t only a girl.”
“No,” he sighed, “I admit: only a girl, certainly not.”
Chapters
So...am I the only one who hopes Maud falls off the face of the earth and Eadgrith kind of maybe takes her place? Is it wrong of me to be thinking that?