The Legacy (34 page)

She smiled. “Very well then, I will await you at home.”

He leaned down to kiss her gently again. The heat in his kiss began to sizzle into an open flame. The pressman coughed discreetly.

Wolf pulled back and muttered, “Yes, you’d better go. Now. Before we put on a show the men will never forget.”

As Sabina made her way down the stairs and through the roomful of men, she held her head high, ignoring the fact they had all likely eavesdropped on the very personal argument she had just had with her husband. She smiled regally at each one in turn; those who were wearing caps grinned and doffed them in respect and admiration, and those who were not tapped their fingers against their brows in salute. She laughed and waved merrily to them all as she walked out the door.

Well, at least someone is on my side.

S
abina toyed with the crispy crust on her roast duck, but could not do it justice. She could not work up an appetite for it. The events of the past few days seemed to have put her off food. She glanced up at Wolf and Peter, who spoke with great animation across from her at the table. They seemed just as disinterested in their meals as she.

Sabina knew what occupied them. The news of Elector Frederick the Wise’s death had put everyone on edge. Coming as it did during the crisis of the Peasant’s Revolt, the timing could not have been worse. Duke John of Saxony had succeeded him, but still the additional turmoil in the region had everyone on edge. Wolf and Peter could seem to speak about nothing else. As a consequence, the issue of what to do about the baron’s crimes had been set aside for now.

Sabina chaffed under the constraint. She stabbed a dagger into the tender duck, her sense of justice for her mother’s sake demanding something be done, and done soon. She had waited with increasing irritation for Wolf to discuss the matter, but his mind, and the mind of every other male in the region, was filled with discussions of troop movements, Hesse’s decisive victory at Frankenhausen against the peasant base there, Müntzer’s escape and disappearance, and the death of five thousand rebellious peasants throughout the region at the hands of Landgrave Hesse’s and John of Saxony’s troops. No room remained in his mind right now for much other than work and war.

Wolf worked constantly, dividing his time between the shop and his
de facto
position as a leader of respect and authority in Wittenberg. He had spent hours meeting with some of the peasant leaders, acting as a liaison between them and the nobility to try to maintain calm in the region.

Each night when he arrived home, he dropped wearily into the bed they shared, too tired for the promised talk they were supposed to have. She did not have the heart to press him. Still, he would reach for her in the darkness, loving her sometimes hastily, sometimes for hours, until he finally drifted off to sleep with her cradled in his arms. Then he would rise in the morning before she had time to speak to him and start all over again.

Though grateful for Peter’s company the last few evenings at supper, Sabina missed Wolf. To make up for his absence, Peter and Sabina talked for hours about the Behaim boys’ life before she had met them.

They were illuminating conversations. Though the love between the siblings was evident, Sabina had sensed tension involving Wolf and Günter. Peter gave the impression although they sometimes were at odds with one another, in a pinch each brother could always be counted on to support the others against outsiders. If there was more to the tension between them, Peter would not reveal it.

Sabina now pushed her peas around on the wooden trencher with her spoon, only halfway listening to the discussion flowing around her. The two men avidly thrashed out the latest war gossip, demonstrating the rumored locations of the troops through the expeditious use of the saltcellar and the Netherlands platters.

She sighed again. Unable to stomach the idea of food, she pushed her trencher away.

Peter looked up from the advancing bread rolls representing Hesse’s troops. “Are you well?”

“Yes, I am just… not hungry.” She grimaced. “Everything seems to have too much salt in it these days. I shall have to speak to Bea about it. Perhaps it is just me—what do you think?”

Peter’s gaze flickered slightly. “It tastes fine to me.” He looked at Wolf.

Wolf’s gaze narrowed, moved from Sabina to Peter and back again. “It is fine,” he said, his words clipped.

“Well, then, it must be me. That is settled,” Sabina snapped irritably, and stood up. “If you gentleman will excuse me, I believe I shall retire for the night and leave you two to win the war single-handedly for us all.” With that, she turned to leave.

Peter gave Wolf a quick glance, then stopped Sabina with a hand on her arm.

“Please forgive us for monopolizing the conversation. You must be bored. You know men—give us a good war to talk about, and we will,” he said with a rueful smile. He patted her hand. “Sit down and tell us about your day instead.”

She sniffed, but allowed him a small smile and sat back down. For Wolf, she hardly spared a glance. “I doubt seriously you would be interested in how the sugar beets are doing, or in how the market seems to be barren of good pigs these days, with so few farmers around to butcher them because they all seem to be marching about the countryside. The farmers, not the pigs,” she clarified.

Peter offered her a half-smile. “Ah, but you must be a veritable mistress of the pig market, because the pork loin yesterday was perfection.”

Sabina nodded in agreement. “We were lucky with that one. Bea has a wonderful recipe. We will have pig’s feet tomorrow—though I believe I will pass,” she added with a downturn of her mouth.

Peter watched her, a look of speculation in his eyes.

Wolf, who hadn’t arrived home in time to enjoy the pork loin supper the night before, sat back in his chair and eyed them both with growing annoyance as they chatted effortlessly. Ignorant of his forbidding expression, they fell easily into habits established over the past few days.

Something began to gnaw at the edges of Wolf’s awareness. Suspicion, perhaps? Jealousy?

Ridiculous, of course. Peter would never betray him in such a way. And Sabina?

Well, Sabina loves me. She wouldn’t betray the man she loves.

He nearly winced at the smugness of the thought. Would she? After all, she hadn’t said those words again since the day in his office. Mayhap she had second thoughts. He
had
been absent from home a great deal lately, it was true, but he could hardly be expected to be at her side constantly, now could he?

He watched Sabina laugh at some jest Peter made, and his eyes narrowed again.

Then again, perhaps he
had
been away from home too much. He knew he kept her well satisfied when they were in bed together; he’d made a point of that. However, women needed conversation as well as sexual intimacy; they were odd that way. A man could worm his way into a woman’s heart just by talking to her.

Wolf watched as she reached over and touched Peter lightly on the hand. The touch was brief, not even remotely sexual, but still …

Mayhap Peter should go back to eating his meals at the local tavern again. Wolf was just about to suggest that very thing when Nurse Barbara entered the dining room, carrying a sobbing Gisel in her arms. A shaft of concern went through him, immediately distracting him.

“What’s wrong? Is she ill?” He stood, about to hold out his arms for his daughter, when the nursemaid went right by him with an apologetic smile and stopped next to Sabina instead.

Surprised, he watched as Gisel turned to Sabina, arms outstretched, and cried, “Mama, Mama!”

Stunned, Wolf dropped back down into his chair.

“Forgive me,
Frau
Behaim,” apologized Nurse Barbara, “but it was as before. The same dream … the child was inconsolable. She wanted only you.”

“Oh, no matter, Nurse Barbara. You were right to bring her to me.” Sabina held out her arms for the sobbing girl. “I’ll take her.”

Barbara curtseyed and left the room.

Sabina rocked Gisel in her lap, gently stroking the little girl’s honey blond curls with a gesture that seemed both natural and familiar.

What was going on here?

“Mama, the bad elf is under my bed!” Gisel wailed. Sabina soothed her by kissing her cheeks and rocking her gently. Throwing an apologetic but distracted smile at the men, she rose with the little girl in her arms.

“Well, sweetheart, we will just have to go chase him away. I must have forgotten to do my magic ‘no elf’ spell before you went to bed tonight. Shall I do it now?”

Gisel nodded gratefully, and as Sabina retreated with the sniffling child in her arms, she murmured soothingly to her. Stopping by the door, she turned back to look at a still-stunned Wolf.

“Excuse me—this will not take long. Please, continue eating.” With that, she turned and left the room.

Mama.
Beth’s daughter had called another woman Mama. Wolf suddenly couldn’t breathe.

Peter looked at him, his brows drawn together in concern. “Wolf, are you well? You look a bit green.”

“I’m fine,” Wolf snapped. “What are you, the unquestioned authority on good health now?”

His brother blinked at the unwarranted attack. “Nay, I just thought—”

Wolf cut him off with an angry gesture. “Mind your own business,” he snarled. “And stay the hell away from my wife.”

Peter’s jaw dropped.
“What?”

Wolf stood, leaned across the table, and put his face menacingly close to his brother’s.

“You heard me.” He was spoiling for a fight, and subconsciously he acknowledged it was better to have one with Peter than with his wife, with whom his relationship was more tenuous.

Peter glared back at him. “I have no idea what’s gotten into that pea-brain of yours, but if you think for one moment there is something going on between Sabina and me—”

“Yes?” Wolf said, his voice dangerously soft.

Peter’s eyes narrowed. “You do. You think Sabina … or I would …” His fingers tightened around the dagger he had used on his duck, and then he carefully laid it down. He rose, placed his palms on the table, and stared back at his brother with barely concealed belligerence. “All she’d have to do is ask.”

At Wolf’s indrawn hiss of rage, Peter straightened up and casually flicked a piece of dust off his brown leather jerkin. “Unfortunately, the lady only has eyes for a certain
pig-headed jackanapes
who cannot see the forest for the trees.”

Incensed, Wolf felt his eyes bulge. “Oh, she told you, did she?”

Peter looked up, and his smile turned sly.

“She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. She’s far more discreet then the men who work for you. They found it very amusing.”

Wolf was horror-struck. His own employees gossiping about him? Well, he would put a stop to that. As soon as he returned to the print shop, he would—

“There, have I given you something else to think about?” Peter asked. “Other than the fact your daughter thinks of Sabina as her mother instead of Beth, whom she’s never known?”

Wolf visibly started at Peter’s perceptive jab. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come now, Wolf,” Peter sighed. “You no more believe there is anything going on between me and Sabina, than between me and—and Bea, for God’s sake. You’re just trying to distract yourself from what has been happening while you’ve been toiling away.”

“And that is …?”

“Sabina has become a member of this family. Well and truly. Your daughter, and everyone else around here, loves her. That’s the problem, isn’t it? In your mind, she has everything Beth should have, except one thing.”

Wolf eyed him warily. “What is that?”

“Your
love,
you idiot. That’s the only thing she truly wants, and you persist in denying it to her as if it will take something away from Beth if you do. Yet you know as well as I do you are bollocks over earlobes in love with her.”

Wolf straightened. Well, if he wanted a fight, he was surely about to get one.

“You’re insane,” he snapped. “Beth is the only woman I’ll ever love. Sabina knows that. I never lied to her about that. Certainly, it’s understandable given her feelings for me,” he continued, pacing about the room, “she might want more on my part, but I’ve given her everything I have to give. She’s a sensible girl—she understands there are trade-offs.”

“Does she?” Peter said doubtfully. “What about Gisel? Do you expect her to hold her love in reserve for a woman who is no longer alive, for some sentimental reason only you can understand?”

Wolf turned on him. “Sentimental?
Sentimental
? Beth is her mother! She’s the woman I’ve loved half my
life.
I’ve known Sabina but a few weeks!” Wolf felt the old familiar pain of time lost, of wasted opportunities.

After Günter and Beth had ended their betrothal in such bitterness, Beth and Wolf had waited a long time to marry and to have Gisel. It had all ended too quickly. The unexpectedness of it still bothered him, even today. They had made plans, dammit. But God had laughed at those plans and had left Wolf to raise their daughter alone.

He shook with rage. “Beth will never have a chance to watch Gisel smile, to laugh with her. She’ll never be able to watch her grow into a young woman, or teach her how to entice a man, or give her a shoulder to cry upon when the first boy she falls in love with breaks her heart. She’ll never breathe the same air as her daughter, watch the sun set on her, or see how much Gisel resembles her.”

He smashed one hand into the other. “It isn’t right she died. It isn’t right that Gisel will never know her true mother. She should be here!
She
should be the one Gisel calls Mama, not some stranger I was forced to marry for her inheritance!”

Peter suddenly paled, his eyes riveted to a spot beyond Wolf’s shoulder. With a sense of impending doom, Wolf swung around to encounter Sabina’s stricken face as she stood in the doorway, the devastation in her eyes unmistakable.

God, how much had she heard?

Sabina took a tentative step into the room, no longer riveted to the floor by Wolf’s incendiary words. She watched as both men flushed guiltily. She ignored the searing pain ripping through her, the unbearable hurt threatening to cut off her air and choke her with its blackness. She somehow managed to force her breath in and out, somehow managed to move her legs forward, into the room, to face him.