her pure and unsullied, though it had taken every grain of self-control he possessed when she was there under the same roof constantly, clay and night. He had not touched her, but she had soiled herself anyway. Though he told himself he had been ridiculous to imagine she'd never take a man to her bed, all the same he felt like a child who'd been carefully saving a sweetmeat to savour, only to have it snatched from his hand and gobbled up by another.
'When?' he demanded so furiously that Elena jumped violently, almost slipping again.
Raffe steadied her and tried to control his voice, 'When did you get with child?'
'I . . . don't know.'
'Don't lie to me! You were a virgin when you came to Lady Anne's service, you told her so yourself. So it must have been after you started working in the manor that you started slipping off to the barn. How long did you wait — days, weeks? And was it just this Athan or did you have a stable of sweating field hands?'
He'd made her confess the name to Lady Anne, but it almost choked him to utter it.
She stopped and stared earnestly up at him, a look of astonishment on her face as if she couldn't believe anyone would accuse her of such a thing. 'It was just Athan ... I've never been with anyone else and I never will, not even . . . not even if Athan said he didn't want me any more. I love him more than anything else in my life. I'm glad his son is in my belly, no matter what you or Hilda or Lady Anne think. I want this bairn! I want it, do you hear, because it's his baby!'
She turned her head away, but Raffe could hear the tears in her voice, and he knew they were tears of indignation and fury, not remorse. They walked on in silence.
Elena struggled to keep pace with Master Raffaele, but she refused to beg him to slow down. She was so exhausted after the night's events that she couldn't even decide if she was devastated or relieved to be leaving the manor. She would be with Athan every day now, lying in his arms every night as she had longed to do. There was no question of returning to her mother's cottage. Now that she was carrying his bairn, she was, in the eyes of the villagers at least, Athan's wife, and a wife always moved into her husband's home to care for him and his kin. Her stomach lurched as she realized that meant she would be at the beck and call of Athan's mother, Joan, who made that sour-faced Hilda seem as kindly as a fairy godmother by comparison. But now that she was carrying Joan's grandson, surely the woman would soften towards her?
Elena glanced up at Master Raffaele. His face was turned away from her, staring ahead down the darkened road. There was no mistaking his anger, it pulsated from him, and yet she didn't understand why he was so furious with her. Unable to comprehend it, she tried to convince herself that his foul mood had nothing to do with her. As Lady Anne had said, with Lord Osborn taking over the manor, they had far more to worry about than the fate of a village girl.
She had been so anxious about Athan and then being caught by Hilda that the whole incident in Lady Anne's bedchamber earlier that evening had simply vanished from her head. But now she realized, with a little guilt, that perhaps she should have told Lady Anne what she'd heard. She had understood little of what had been said, except one thing whoever the men in that chamber were, they were helping the king's enemies.
The villagers in Gastmere mocked their lords and rulers unmercifully behind their backs. They found ways to creep around the law when they could. They might hide a piglet or two, or a few chickens to avoid paying the tithes, or spirit away the odd fleece at shearing time before it reached the manor's barn. It was fair sport to hoodwink your masters provided you didn't get caught. But treason, that went far beyond a game. Treason meant torture and certain death in this world, and an eternal damnation in the next, for even Christ would never forgive the blasphemy of the subject who rebelled against God's own anointed king.