The ladies have an indelicate conversation

“Mama Gunnie!” Gwynn cried. “You smell so nice and spicy and appley!”

“Well, now, I guess the spicy and the appley are from the apple spice cake I made for dinner, but I can’t figure out where the nice is coming from…”

“That’s the smell of you!”

Gunnilda laughed and squeezed her, making a little maternal growl in her throat, and Gwynn hung on and on and on.

“How are my girls?” Gunnilda asked. “And what are you doing out in such weather! I’m surprised you aren’t turned inside out!”

“We’re just walking home from dinner at Bernwald,” Margaret explained. “Wynn said it looked like there was a storm coming.”

“And so you went out in it! Well, I hope you girls brought your nighties, ’cause I’m not letting you go. And who’s this young gentleman trying to blend in with my front door? Was it the wind that turned your cheeks that color, or was it ’cause I mentioned nighties?”

Gwynn squeaked, “Gunnilda!” and Domnall laughed foolishly.

“Well?” Gunnilda demanded. “That’s what happens if you leave me to make a gentleman’s acquaintance myself.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “Introduce them before she does further damage.”

“Allow me to introduce you,” Gwynn said. “This is our friend, Domnall, Murchad’s brother. You remember Murchad.”

Margaret repeated, “Our friend.” Gwynn ignored her.

Domnall said, “I’m glad to meet you, Mistress Ashdown.”

“And I’m that glad to meet you, Domnall! I’ve seen you go by lots of times. Now that we’re acquainted, you just stop in any time and see if I don’t have some cake.”

A door slammed around the corner, and young voice on clomping feet asked, “Did somebody say cake? Hallo, girls. Hallo, Domnall.”

“Oh! Beddy! You just ate! I was just going to cut some for these young folks.”

“We just ate, too,” Margaret said. “We were only stopping by.”

Gunnilda patted Margaret’s hip as she squeezed past her towards the kitchen. “You will at least have a cup of cider. I will not let it be said that I let you girls go out in this weather without something hot in your tummies. Beddy, you take everyone in by the fire and take these girls’ coats. I’ll just go put the cider on to warm.”

As soon as Gunnilda was out of earshot, Margaret said, “Beddy, Gwynn and I want to have a private conversation with your mother, so you must get rid of Domnall for us.”

Bedwig did not appear fazed by this request. Margaret had not yet discovered what it took to faze Bedwig.

“All right,” he agreed. He asked Domnall, “You want to go out and look at our new foal? He’s that cute. His name is Mystery ’cause we don’t know who the sire is. Must have jumped the paddock fence. Must have been a tall one, to get up on top of Damsel.”

Gwynn did not even blink, but Domnall’s shyly good-​natured expression blanched to a look of horror.

Margaret wanted to shake him. The three of them had already had conversations so indelicate that Margaret had been too shy to repeat them to Conrad, and yet the rest of the time Domnall compensated by pretending there was no such thing as sex in the world. One time he had marched Conrad outside and chewed his ear off for saying the word “stud” before the sisters. Conrad now got his revenge by privately referring to Domnall as “Gentleman Horse.”

“That will be perfect,” Margaret said. “Now, if you’ll just take our coats and scoot.”

“All right,” Bedwig said in reply to her reminder, nothing flustered by his own lack of etiquette. He went on to wait patiently for her to wriggle out of her own coat, while Domnall helped Gwynn with hers. Sometimes, Margaret thought, Bedwig was a little too placid.

Gunnilda returned just as Bedwig and Domnall were heading out.

“Where are you boys going?”

“Out to see Mystery,” Bedwig said, little dreaming of the earful he was about to receive from Domnall.

Gunnilda snorted. “If you guess his sire, Domnall, you win a prize. Are you girls sure you don’t want some cake? We have plenty left.”

Margaret could see Gwynn was tempted, so she waited.

Gwynn finally said, “No, thank you. We did just eat…”

“What about your young man?”

Gwynn’s cheeks and nose were already red from the cold, but the rest of her face flushed pink. The front door slammed only then.

“Gunnie!” she squeaked. “Don’t call him that!”

“Why not? Isn’t he?”

Margaret sighed. “Oh, he is! Don’t listen to her.”

Gunnilda asked, “Did he kiss you yet?”

“Gunnie! Of course not! It would hardly be modest.”

Gunnilda laughed. Gwynn fussed with the folds of her skirt and twisted up her lips to prevent herself from smiling. The fact was that Gwynn loved to be teased about Domnall. Margaret was generous enough to frequently indulge her, but Gwynn’s delight in it certainly took the fun out of teasing.

“They do at least hold hands,” Margaret said. “I don’t know if he has kissed her yet.”

Gunnilda sniffed. “It’s plain as plain he wants to.”

“I don’t think he dares. Our father took him into his study straightaway and had a very serious talk with him.”

Gunnilda laughed and clapped her hands on her lap as she sat. “Then he’s a brave one, if he’s still coming round. My! Isn’t it something to have a young man with a sword coming round again. I hope you bring him to visit me sometimes. It puts me to mind of when Bertie was that age, all elbows and skinny legs and sword. Or Malcolm, when he was coming to see Iylaine. Ah, me!” Gunnilda sighed and slumped back against the cushion. “I never much liked to see him coming then. But he’s been a good husband to her. There’s no denying he’s been a good husband.” She shook her head as if she thought it a shame.

Meanwhile Gwynn seemed to have determined that the conversation was straying too far from her and Domnall.

“We shall ask Domnall if he would like some cake,” she said. “But I daresay he’ll refuse. He’s shy.”

“Oh, pish!” Gunnilda patted Gwynn’s knee. “I’ll just wrap up a piece for each of you and send you home with them for a snack. Heaven knows if Domnall ever gets good cake down to home, with the cook they have! If she ever finds the time for baking, busy as she is flirting with all the menfolk.”

Margaret detected a bit of gossip coming her way, and she thumped down onto the chest to listen.

“Mind you, she may be making cakes these days,” Gunnilda continued airily, “but if she is, she’ll be saving the finest piece for the master. She’ll be setting her snares for Sir Aengus henceforward, and that you may tie to.” Gunnilda scowled and sniffed. “Telling folks my cider’s gritty! If she ever says it to my face, I’ll just tell her she must have got mixed up and drunk a cup of her own bath water, that’s what. Gritty!”

Margaret shrieked with laughter. Gunnilda did not often speak ill of her neighbors without cause, but woe betide those who gave her cause!

Gwynn merely smiled and patted Gunnilda’s knee herself. “Your cider is as limpid as a crystal stream, Gunnie. That means very clear. But Meggie and I have something important to ask you today, and we must hurry before the boys return. May we?”

The sisters had decided that Gwynn, as the eldest, was to speak. Gwynn had believed Margaret would have found it easier, but she thought it her duty. In truth, Margaret was relieved.

“Of course you may,” Gunnilda said.

“Thank you. Gunnie, we wish you would go see Hetty.”

Gunnilda sat up slowly. “Gwynn, I can’t… I can’t just go call on the Duchess. I heard she wasn’t well…”

“You can call on her, because of the baby. You can say you came to see how the baby is doing. To see whether it’s upside-​down, as David and Meggie were. Perhaps it’s not too late to turn it right-​side-​up. Or is it?”

“But… Gwynn, honey, doesn’t she have her own women for that? I’m not a midwife…”

“But you will be there when the baby comes,” Margaret said. “Our father would never think of letting it come without you there, after the close calls we’ve had.”

“But, honey… I’ll go, if I’m sent for, but it doesn’t seem like I’ve been sent for yet…”

“Simply go,” Gwynn said. “If you tell Father it’s on account of the baby, he would never refuse you. But it’s not truly on account of the baby. That is, if you can help with the baby, so much the better. But we want you to tell Father that Hetty must be allowed to leave her room, and come among us and receive friends again. She hasn’t been allowed downstairs in three weeks, even though she is not an invalid at all. We are only allowed to visit her for a few hours a day, and the children have to leave if they start to cry or fuss. And Baby-​Flann is still a baby! How can he not cry or fuss?”

“But, honey… if the women said she mustn’t…”

“It wasn’t the women,” Margaret said. “It was Joseph. He said she mustn’t be allowed to go out or have visitors, because she’s hysterical.”

For a moment, Gunnilda seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

“That means she’s delirious and can’t control herself,” Gwynn explained. “But she is perfectly calm! She only got a little upset one time when she wanted to go downstairs to greet Young Sigefrith, but Father wouldn’t allow it because it was her quiet time. And she was upset when Father had his accident, but who wouldn’t have been?”

Margaret said, “We think it will only make her more hysterical if she is not allowed to go about her day and see her children and her friends. So we wish you would tell Father she must walk about and keep herself busy so that the baby doesn’t turn upside-​down.”

“But—girls!”

“And there is one more thing, Gunnie,” Gwynn said darkly. “Domnall’s sister—Lady Maire—had hysteria, so he knows all about it. Joseph told Aengus that the cause of hysteria is a—”

Gwynn faltered, but only for a moment, and looking back on this afternoon Margaret would be proud.

“—a lack of carnal relations,” Gwynn concluded. “Maire and Aengus had kept separate beds for many months before Maire became hysterical. And it doesn’t help if the man and the woman only lie together in the same bed, you know. They must have relations.”

Margaret added, “We think Hetty and Father must have stopped when Hetty learned she would be having a baby.”

“But they ought not to have,” Gwynn said. “And Joseph must have told Father so, but in spite of that Father packed up all his things, and now he sleeps in a separate room in the tower. So we wish you would remind Father of his duty as well. A man may have relations with his wife even when she is great with child, you know.”

Gunnilda finally broke through her astonishment to gasp, “Girls! I cannot remind your father of his duty!”

Gwynn’s face fell. “But you must!”

“And what is this nonsense, first of all? A woman has to—to have relations or she gets hysterical? What about nuns? What about old maids?”

“Only passionate women, Gunnie,” Gwynn explained. “Most women are in no danger.”

Margaret contributed her own theory: “I suppose passionate women don’t want to be nuns or old maids.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Gunnilda said. “Are you going to let a man tell you what a woman wants and needs? Not even a Christian man, what!”

“He’s a doctor, Gunnie.”

“He’s a nattering know-​it-​all, is what he is! Locking a poor mother away from her children, obliging her to have relations on pain of insanity, and then shaking his head all clever-​like when she tries to bust out of there! There’s words for that, but I won’t say ’em before you girls.”

Gwynn sat up eagerly. “So you’ll go?”

Margaret blinked at her in astonishment. She could not decide whether her sister was being very silly or very sly. Gunnilda did look as if she had set her foot down in a snare.

“But, girls, I don’t know what I can do…”

“You can talk to Father,” Gwynn said. “He would listen to you. I don’t know what other woman he would listen to. He often used to come to your house when he wanted a little advice.”

“Well… I don’t know, but I guess he might really have been after a little cake…”

“Oh, pish! You know he thinks you exceedingly wise, and so do we. And he does need your advice, even if he doesn’t ask for it any longer. So will you go, Mama Gunnie? We simply want everything to go back to the way it was before.”

Gwynn opened her dark eyes wide and batted her pretty lashes. She was not being sly, Margaret decided. Wide-​eyed, innocent, and trusting was simply what she was, indelicate conversations notwithstanding. Only the iciest of hearts could have refused.

Gunnilda sighed and shook her head. “I’ll go. I’ll go. I don’t know what I’ll say, but I’ll go for you girls.” She managed a small smile at the last. “But just in case, I’ll wrap him up a nice piece of cake.”