Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,259

had a difference of opinion. Today he was not amused. “I said nothing,” he protested. “We were talking and suddenly she ran off. Go after her, Joanna, and find out what’s wrong.”

“Richard, she’s your wife! You’re the one to go after her.”

“You’d be better at it than me,” he insisted. “I am not good at dealing with female vapors or tears—” Warned by the look on her face, he stopped himself, but not in time.

“‘Female vapors’?” she echoed incredulously. “When have you ever seen Maman or me succumb to ‘female vapors’? When have you ever seen Berengaria give way to an emotional outburst of any kind? Has she even shed a tear in your presence? If she is distraught, she has a damned good reason for it—and it is your responsibility to find out what it is!”

When Richard didn’t reply, she read surrender in his silence. She stayed where she was, though, watching him with an implacable expression until he turned and started for the tent entrance. Only then did she clap her hands, signaling for the musicians to resume playing and for the guests politely to pretend that the queen’s flight had been nothing out of the ordinary.

RICHARD WAS NOT HAPPY with his sister. But a sense of fairness that he thought often surfaced at inopportune times compelled him to admit that he’d wronged his wife. Berenguela had none of the vices he attributed to many of her sex; she was not flighty or overly sensitive or sentimental. He still thought Joanna would have been better at offering comfort or ferreting out womanly secrets. Since she’d balked, he had no choice, though, and he entered Berengaria’s tent with the reluctant resolve of a man venturing into unknown terrain. His appearance created a predictable stir among her attendants. Thinking they were fluttering about like hens that had just spotted a hawk, he started to dismiss them; remembering in time that it was pouring rain, he settled for waving them away from the screen that afforded Berengaria her only privacy.

She was lying on the bed, but she rolled over when he said her name, looking so surprised to see him that he felt a twinge of guilt. She’d obviously been weeping, for her eyes were red and swollen. “I am sorry,” she said, “for making a scene.”

“Have you forgotten my family history, Berenguela? By our standards, you’d have to fling a glass of wine into my face to make a scene.” Sitting beside her, he reached over and wiped her wet cheeks with a corner of the sheet. “Tell me what is wrong.”

“You were right,” she confessed; her voice was muffled, as if she were swallowing tears, but she met his gaze steadily. “My flux did come today . . . almost three weeks late.”

“Ah . . . I see. You’d thought you might be with child.”

“I’d never been late before, Richard, never.” A solitary tear trickled from the corner of her eye, slowly flowed down her cheek, and splashed onto his wrist. “I was so sure, so happy. . . .”

“Berenguela . . . I have no doubts that you’ll give me a son. But it must happen in God’s time.”

“That is what my confessor keeps telling me, too,” she said, and it was obvious to him that she took no comfort in this truism. He was quiet for a few moments, trying to decide what to say.

“I think it might be for the best if you do not conceive whilst we are in Outremer,” he said at last, and saw her brown eyes widen. “Think about it, little dove. You have already experienced more discomfort and danger than most queens could even imagine. Think how much worse it would be if you had to endure all this whilst you were great with child. Then what of the delivery itself? Do you truly want to give birth in a tent? And afterward . . . you’d be fearful every time the baby sneezed or coughed. This is not a kind country for infants, for women and children. Hellfire, lass, it is no country for any man not born and bred here; we all sicken and die much easier than we would back in our own lands.”

Her eyes searched his. “You truly would not be disappointed if I do not conceive until we go home?”

“I’d be relieved,” he admitted. “Had I known what it would be like here, I doubt that I’d have taken you and Joanna with me. You could