Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [282]
She had started to put it round her neck. Now she paused.
“Is that all you have to say?” Why didn’t he say he loved her?
He knew what she wanted, but now, suddenly the knowledge made him shy.
“There are plenty of others who’ll wear it if you don’t,” he announced proudly, and stared at her in triumph.
To her it was like a blow in the stomach. She felt her face go pale. For a moment she could not speak. She summed up her strength and held back the tears she could feel welling up.
“Take it then!” She could not prevent a sob breaking out. “I don’t want it, or you.”
He had gone too far. He wondered how to retract; but he was not clever.
“I’m not a bad catch for you,” he bluffed. “I’m a rich man.”
The silence that followed seemed to him very long; but her eyes had never been more violet as she controlled her tears and finally gave him a cold and contemptuous stare.
“You’re not a man, I assure you, you’re a boy. And I don’t want you. Please go away now.” She handed him the locket calmly. “I don’t want to see you any more.”
There was a sickening feeling in his stomach as Peter took it silently. Then, not knowing what to do, he turned on his heel.
She would come round.
But it was that same evening that her mother took Alicia upstairs and began to change her dress, telling the surprised girl with a smile:
“You must look your best tonight, Alicia.” When she asked why, her mother in turn had asked her, with a thoughtful look: “Who do you expect to marry?” And to that she had replied, not as she would normally have done: “Peter Shockley I suppose,” but instead, since she was still angry: “Who knows?”
Her mother nodded.
“Shockley’s a nice boy,” she went on quickly, “and I like him. But he’s very young. And he’s only a merchant. He’ll never be anything more.” She pulled Alicia’s hair gently back from her face, pinning it behind. “You’re a woman now, and you need an older man, not a boy.”
Alicia blushed. The words suited her mood. But she wondered what was coming. Evidently something quite unusual, for she had never seen her mother’s face so concentrated.
Now to her surprise, her mother slipped off the simple child’s bliaut tunic and linen cotte that Alicia was wearing, and produced a white silk slip which she whisked over her head. Alicia had never worn such a thing before and her eyes opened with delighted surprise as it fell in soft folds over her body.
“You’ve nice breasts,” her mother told her frankly. “We’ll show them a little.” And from the huge chest by her bed she pulled out a magnificently embroidered blue and gold dress which, after being gently gathered by a golden cord above the waist, fell in long folds to her feet. At the front, where the dress laced across, she left its plunging line as open as possible, so that the form of her young breasts thrust forward tantalisingly under the silk shift, making Alicia blush again. Next her mother folded a fine linen wimple in a band over the top of her head and fitted the linen cap, like a crown, over it.
Alicia stood in front of the polished bronze mirror in one corner of the room and surveyed herself. She had no idea that she could look like this, and the sight of the new person that her mother had just created made her heart race with excitement.
“And now, my child, you’re a woman,” she declared.
“Who is all this in honour of?” she asked.
“Your father has an important friend at Winchester,” her mother explained. “Your brother is bringing him here tonight. His name is Geoffrey de Whiteheath.” Alicia had heard her father speak of him before, in terms of respect. “It would be a great match for you,” her mother went on. “He’s a knight with a fine estate. He lost his wife and son in a fire last year. Now he wants an heir.”
“Will father make me marry him?”
Her mother hesitated.
“No. But he hopes you will. He and your brother have been to a lot of trouble to arrange it.”
Alicia admired both the men in her family. She was not sure what to think. She supposed she would like their choice.
“Is he very old then?” she asked anxiously.
Her