Winter Song by Roberta Gellis

from between
them and around him to press him closer, did not move to save her wimple when
Raymond began to pull at it.
    “I do not wish to interrupt so warm a greeting,” Sir William
remarked, “but perhaps it is just as well that I do so before it grows any
warmer.”
    Alys and Raymond jumped apart, coloring self-consciously. “I
have my father’s agreement for our marriage,” Raymond assured his prospective
father-by-marriage.
    “I should hope so,” William laughed. Then he sighed and put
out a hand to clasp Raymond affectionately above his elbow. “That is not quite
true, you know. I do not really know whether I am pleased or not. For Alys’s
sake, I am glad, but… Well, I suppose there is no help for it.”
    “Where is Lady Elizabeth?” Raymond asked.
    Sir William smiled. “Are you delicately implying that I am
greedy and want to keep my daughter, even after winning the wife I so long
desired?”
    “No, sir. I—” Raymond swallowed. In fact, he had thought
just that.
    Laughing at him, Sir William answered his question. “Elizabeth
is still at Hurley—we were both there. She will be along soon. Come and sit
down, my son.” William paused over the words and smiled. “That has a pleasant
sound— my son . Well, I cannot imagine your news was very welcome to your
father. Just how unwelcome was it?”
    “Not near so unwelcome as you think, sir,” Raymond responded
with a grin. “Of course, at first he near had a fit, not because the dower was
inadequate—he did not even stop to ask—but because Alys’s land was here in
England.”
    “I can see that. I cannot say that I am overjoyed to have my
daughter’s husband a Provençal.”
    “But then I had a thought.” Sensibly Raymond ignored William’s
remark, since there was no way of changing his nationality, and continued to
put forth his notion of using the revenues of Bix to pay for lands ceded to
Alys in Gascony.
    William sat up straighter as he listened, and a pleased
smile began to soften his rather grim expression. “By God,” he exclaimed when
Raymond was finished. “You have more than you realized. We—you, I, your father,
and Alys—are like to make more out of this than you ever expected. Have you
heard that Nicholas de Molis, the seneschal of Gascony, is hard beset between
Theobold of Champagne and Gaston of Béarn?”
    “Béarn? But surely he is King Henry’s friend. Eleanor is his
niece, and I heard that Henry and Gaston could scarce be parted when they were
in Bordeaux. And Henry gave such gifts to Gaston as to—”
    “But the gifts are used, the money spent,” William
interrupted caustically. “Wales is in arms. We have suffered severe losses
there.”
    “Are you summoned?” Raymond asked eagerly. “May I go with
you?”
    “Raymond!” Alys exclaimed. “Do you want to get killed before
we are even married?”
    “I will come to no hurt,” he assured her absently, his eyes
still on Sir William.
    “As Papa came to no hurt when he was last in Wales?” Alys
snapped.
    Laughter and love flooded Raymond at the anger in her voice
and the bright fury in her eyes. His mother would have fainted, his sisters
would be screaming, sobbing, and swooning by turns, and neither reason nor
command would stop them. Alys, on the other hand, might quarrel with him and
try to change his mind with reasons why it was unwise to go to war, but she
would not try to bind him by his heartstrings, nor make his life a misery with
moans and sobs and constant laments.
    “No, love,” he replied, laughing. “I certainly do not intend
to be wounded if I can save myself from it, and I will also gladly—most
gladly—marry you before I go. I will marry you right now, if it is your desire,
and again before I go, or each day until I go—whatever you prefer.”
    “So I can be a widow?” Alys retorted, still angry but nearly
won to laughter. She knew it was impossible to keep men from regarding war as a
pleasant sport.
    “Stop your nonsense, Alys,”