Hilda threw open the door to the bedroom.
“What’s this I hear?” she cried. She glanced around, but her gaze quickly focused on the second pair of boots on the floor beside Sigefrith’s feet. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “Packing?”
“Only changing my boots,” Sigefrith sighed.
“But you’re going, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“What about me? What about me? What about your baby? It’s coming any day!”
“I know, Hilda,” he grumbled, “but I believe I have already done my part in its creation.”
“Oh, that’s right!” She let out an hysterical laugh. “A fine role you play in it! You have the fun of putting it in, and I have the agony of getting it back out again!”
“Do you not think I would spare you that pain if I could?” He rose from the bench so that she would, at least, not have the advantage of height.
“If you wanted to spare me that pain, you would spare yourself that pleasure!”
“You are my wife.”
“That’s right! And that’s why! Because you couldn’t spare yourself that pleasure!”
“I don’t recall forcing you to do anything.”
“Not then.”
“Not now either!” he shouted, finally losing his calm in the face of this accusation. “When have I ever forced myself on you?”
“Oh, you don’t hold me down, but you’re too stupid to figure out when a lady isn’t willing.”
“Then tell me, if I’m too stupid! Good Lord! Don’t make me out into a brute! I don’t want you badly enough to force you.”
He tried to walk past her to the door and brushed her arm with his own as he went by.
“What? You aren’t a brute?” she shrieked. “Shoving your pregnant wife, that isn’t a brute?”
“Shoving you? I barely touched you!”
“If that’s barely touching, I thank God you consider you don’t force yourself on me! I don’t doubt it would be fatal!”
Sigefrith swore under his breath and turned back to the door. He was startled to see Haakon standing in the hall and looking up at him with wide eyes.
“Oh now, runt,” Sigefrith said as gently as his agitation allowed. “Papa told you to wait with the horses, didn’t he?”
“I wanted to ask you something,” Haakon whimpered.
“You go wait with the horses, and you may ask me when I come down. I only need a moment to speak to Mama.”
After he had heard the door close and Haakon’s little boots begin descending the stairs, he spun around and grabbed Hilda by the arm, furious now.
“Do you see what you’ve made me do?” he hissed. “Do you know what he just saw?”
“He saw his father being a brute with his mother!”
“That’s being a brute?” he said savagely. “You may thank God you don’t know what being a brute is!”
“Oh, I have some idea! Go ahead, Sigefrith! I know you can hardly resist! Do as your father does! Hit me! Hit your pregnant wife! Like a real man!”
He trembled with what was, he realized, a visceral desire to do as she asked.
After a moment she threw back her head and laughed, supremely insolent. “You can’t do it! What a coward! Even in this, you aren’t the man your father is! Good Lord, I think I wouldn’t mind being hit if only I could have a real man for a husband!”
“God forgive you!” he roared at her as if it were a curse, and he flung her arm away and went out the door behind his son.
Chapters
Man, is it just me or is Hilda becoming bitchier by the day? I really don't like her.