I was out walking later that morning when I heard the warrior call to me from the training field. "Calissande, come here to me."

I saw he was standing by his big brute of a horse, running his hand down the animal's neck.

I looked at him and shook my head. "Perhaps if you were to snap for me like a well-trained...dog, I would. But since you do not, I will not," I shouted back to him.

Then I turned my back on him and walked away from the training field. Seconds later, my warrior had caught up to me, shirtless and sweating from his morning's exertion. Never would I admit that the warrior without a shirt was magnificent. Never would I admit that his arms were my weakness with their thick muscles and the corded veins standing out so prominently. Then I thought of his body connected to hers and I felt my appreciation for his body fade. I continued walking until he grasped my arm gently and turned me to face him.

"You try my patience, my lady wife. I have explained everything to you. And still you persist in your anger like a child."

Had I a sword on me at that moment, I would have run him through. Instead, I used the only weapon I had at my disposal to make him leave me alone -- my mouth -- and I knew just the subject to force his retreat.

"You have not told me everything," I snapped at him. "You have not told me what you did with her in your bedchamber."

His light brown eyes widened, but the stubborn man held his ground.

"This is not right, Calissande. Never does a man discuss with his lady wife what he does with the camaspoza. It will upset you and disgust you, no matter what you were raised to believe you would do for your lord husband."

"I wish to know exactly what occurred between you two. It is the only way I can ever hope to find peace in this situation because otherwise, my mind stays busy with my imaginings."

"What good would come from this knowledge? I can see no benefit of you knowing such details."

I leaned toward him, my eyes narrowed in anger. "Everything you did to her, you owe to me. I want you to come to me the way you did to her."

As the meaning of my words penetrated his thick skull, the warrior, a man who led hundreds if not thousands of men into battle, who could kill a man twenty different ways without qualm using a sword, a chain or a battle axe, turned red. The warrior was blushing.

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. "If you ever hope to make this right, you will tell me what you gave to her that was rightfully mine."

"Calissande, ask me to kill someone for you, ask me to chain someone for you, ask me for feats of strength, ask me for jewels and gowns, but don't ask me for that."

I stared at him for a moment, needing to win this battle. Finally I shrugged. "Very well, if you will not tell me, I will use my imagination and the information my mother provided to complete the picture."

The relief on the warrior's face was obvious, but it didn't last long when I continued speaking, wanting nothing more than to wipe that smug look from his face and crush him into the dust.

"And then the next time I am in the village without you, I shall find some lusty, strapping man to take me into a barn, bend me over some hay bales and give me all of these things that you refuse to give to me. In fact, I do believe the smithy is single and very strong. Anyway, one way or another, I will get what I am owed. At this point, whether it is you or someone else matters not to me."

I didn't stay to take in the shocked look on his face; instead, I turned on my heel and scurried off, afraid he would see my cheeks turning red from making such a scandalous, outrageous threat.

"Calissande!" he roared from behind me.

Oh, goodness, I had poked the beast. Maybe too hard. I kept walking, possibly hurrying a bit faster.

"Calissande!" he bellowed again, sounding much like an enraged bull to my mind.

Once again, he caught up to me and turned me around, perhaps not so gently this time, his eyes blazing, his breath coming out in heavy gusts of rage. "You will not threaten me in such a way ever again, wife. I will level the village before I allow such a vile happening."

"Then tell me!" I shouted at him.

And, surprisingly, he did.

"I grabbed her by the neck and held her face down and fucked into her cunny hard. Is that what you wish to hear?"

Tears were gathering in my eyes now. No, I wanted you to be faithful to me. I wanted you to share your body only with me.

"Yes!" I hissed at him. "I want to know everything. Leave nothing out."

"I slapped her arse with my hand and with my belt. I fucked her cunny and then I pushed my cock into her arse and fucked her that way. Sometimes I had her on her knees, taking my cock into her mouth, making her practically choke on it, and then I would pull out of her mouth at the last minute and spend my seed on her face. Do you still want more?" He snarled the question at me.

The tears were falling freely down my cheeks now, but I had pushed this, so I would see it through. "Everything. Tell me everything."

"Whenever I fucked her holes, I always spent my seed on her back or her arse. Sometimes I fucked her so hard, I left bruises on her hips from my hands. There were occasions I bound her hands behind her back with my chain while I fucked her. Never was I gentle with her, Calissande. Never was there a tender moment between us. I took my anger out on her, and I was angry because I wanted it to be you under me like that, being fucked hard, going at you like an animal, and then I would immediately feel guilty for wanting to do that to my gentle lady wife. So now that you know everything, I hope you will understand why I did not want you to know anything."

This time, it was the warrior who turned away and stomped back toward the training field, every muscle in his body rigid.

I am not sure how long I stood there, staring after his retreating form, the tears sliding ceaselessly down my face, but I do know that he never looked back at me. It wasn't until the baby gave me two hard kicks that I came back to myself and turned and walked away.

For a long while, I sat beside the river, letting my mind flow like the water. I had no one to blame but myself for this morning's painful disaster. Sometimes what you think you want turns out to be the very last thing you should have asked for.

"You have turned disappearing into a habit, Calissande."

His voice was hard to decipher. It may have been irritated, possibly frustrated, definitely grumpy. Sighing, I said nothing to acknowledge his presence, wondering if that would make him take the hint and leave me alone.

The answer was no. He came and sat beside me, one leg straight out in front of him, the other bent with his forearm resting on his knee.

"Did you ever kiss her?" I blurted out after long minutes.

"I told you that is forbidden, Calissande."

"That is not an answer."

He huffed out a breath. "The answer is no. Never did I put my mouth anywhere on her, Calissande, because I kiss you with my mouth and it is reserved only for you."

"That is," I started sweetly, "the stupidest thing I have ever heard. You won't use your mouth on her because you kiss me with it, but it is acceptable to put your cock in her and in me? Cock or mouth, both are transgressions against me."

"I had hoped," he growled, "that you would be over your snit about her by now."

My snit?

Was he serious?

He thought this was a snit?

"You will never understand how the thought of you with another woman was like a knife constantly being jabbed into me, knowing what you were doing with her night after night in a room that I, your wife, was banned from. And since you will never understand, we should cease all discussions because they only make me hurt more."

"You have to understand that this is the way life is in my country. In most countries."

"So why is your claim that it is your way of life stronger than my claim that it is not my way of life?"

"I have told you that I am done with her, that I will not share my body with another any longer."

"Well, maybe I want to share my body with another to discover the appeal of your way of life. Maybe that would help me get over my snit."

"That's enough!" he snapped at me, both his eyes and his face fierce and intense. "That is twice now you have threatened that. If you ever took a lover, I would kill him and quite likely you."

I nodded. "So you can understand that I walk around all the time thinking of the different ways I would like to kill you. Painfully."

"I have done nothing wrong," he gritted out.

"In your world," I answered back. "But in my world, you have committed the most grievous crime against your wife."

"I grow weary of this, Calissande. I have tried to appease you, but you hold on to your anger like a dog with a bone."

He reached down and lifted me to my feet. Apparently he was done talking and sitting by the river, so I was done as well.

"And now you have no one to take out your frustrations on. How very sad for you," I pretended pity for him as I brushed the grass and leaves off my dress.

"At least she never talked back to me or caused me a moment's concern," he shot back at me, and I could see he was surprised both by his flare of temper and that he'd used her to poke at me.

"By all means, call her back to be with you," I invited him with a sweep of my arm. "I have so missed the way she was always smirking at me during the evening meal from where she sat at the lower tables. She always made sure her seat faced mine."

"I never noticed that," he said in disbelief. "I cannot believe she would do that. It is forbidden that she look directly at you."

I was sure he was lying. "How could you help but notice the looks she directed at me, triumphant and gloating because she had my husband's attentions and he would soon be with her that night instead of with his wife?"

He took a step closer to me. "Had I noticed, I would have corrected her swiftly and harshly; she would no longer have eaten in the hall with the servants. As for you wondering how I could not have seen her -- it is because I took no notice of her, Calissande. She did not exist for me. I did not see her. A camaspoza is no more than an object, no different than a plate or a shoe. I do not notice those things or give them any thought. They are meaningless objects to me that have a specific purpose and I use them when I must, nothing more."

He stepped nearer again, now so close to me that I could feel the heat from his body and he snagged me around the waist, his enormous hand pressing my large belly right up against his hard cock. This close, I was forced to look almost straight up at him, and I saw his eyes focused on my mouth, his breathing ragged.

"But you, my lady wife? When you are in a room with me, you are all I can see. So if I did not see her, you must know that it was because my eyes were focused only on you. They are only ever focused on you. You capture and hold my attention from the minute you enter whatever room I am in. So I did not notice her, but rest assured, my Calissande, that I notice you."

"I do not believe you."

"You do not take me at my word. Fine. If you cannot believe your lord husband, ask my men, then. They all have noticed that when you are around, I am lost to all else. They dare to taunt me about you when we train and then I must teach them lessons and show them that while I may be a man besotted by his wife, that in no way lessens my superiority on the field."

I turned and began walking back to Fernwick, at my limit for the day. My anger against him still burned and much of it stemmed from his refusal to acknowledge the ways he hurt me. He said nothing, merely walked by my side, his hand at my elbow should I stumble. Just before we got to the cottage, he turned me to him.

His face was as gentle as I'd ever seen it.

"Calissande, I know this was an unpleasant day for you. But now that you have the information you wanted, I hope you will let this misunderstanding go. It is time."

Oh! It was time I get over this hurt so deep because the warrior said so and he was tired of dealing with my upset. Maybe while I was stewing in so much hurt, I could give him a little of his own.

"Yes, warrior, I suppose it is time," I pretended to concede. "It is just hard to come to terms with the fact that while your camaspoza was blessed with the wonderful, exciting, blissful parts of you in the bedchamber, all I received was the boring, lackluster, very monotonous parts."

His jaw dropped and I hurried inside before he could find his voice.

Ha! Think on that for a while, warrior.