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villeins ran out ofclothes, were all nigh naked that summer I tried to curb her ways.”
    It would have been rude to ask why the girl was not simply ordered to do as she was told. And Wulfric was afraid to find out that she had so little respect for her father that she would have disobeyed him. But he had a right to know the worst of it—faugh, how could it be any worse than this?
    “She does not realize that she looks—ridiculous, dressed as a man?”
    “Think you she cares? Nay, she cares naught about her appearance. She has not the vanity you would expect a woman to have.”
    Wulfric sighed now. There was no help for it, he had to ask, “Why was this allowed to happen? Why was her behavior not curbed long ago, ere it got to be so—unwomanly?”
    As he had anticipated, the question caused Nigel no small bit of embarrassment. “’Tis my fault, as you may suspect. My only excuse is that I did not know Mili was not behaving as she aught to until it was too late. When my wife died, I—I lost my own reasoning. Even when I was here, I was not—here. I am not sure you can understand, the depths I sunk to in my mourning, but I have very little remembrance of those first years after she died.”
    “My father has said you loved her dearly,” Wulfric remarked uneasily, for Nigel looked now as if he were sinking down into that grief again.
    “Aye, I loved her, but I was not aware of how much until she was gone. My brother, Albert, God keep him, lived with us at the time. Itrusted him to see to my girls, but he was a widower himself, and—and he thought it amusing, Milisant’s boyish ways, so made no effort to curb her.”
    “But you said you were here—”
    “Aye, but rarely sober, lad,” Nigel admitted. “And my girls would often pretend to be each other—’twas a game they played. So when I would see Jhone, I thought ’twas Milisant, and so was unaware that aught was amiss, until, as I said, it was too late. When I did finally see her as she had become, she was already set in her ways, and refused to be reined in.”
    Wulfric stiffened slightly. “Refused?”
    “She has much fire, my Milisant, not like her sister, Jhone, who is somewhat timid. The fiery spirit and courage she gets from her mother. ’Tis one of the reasons I have been unable to use harsh measures against her. I am afraid she knows she reminds me much of her mother and thus uses it to her advantage.”
    ’Twas not a father’s duty to mold his daughters as he did his sons, and to be fair, Wulfric pointed out, “No one would expect you to have trained her, yet were there no ladies here to see to it?”
    Nigel shook his head. “There have been none here of high enough rank since my wife’s passing, other than those belonging to my household knights, but none of them have had the fortitude to butt heads with my daughter. When I finally came to my senses to realize Milisant was not getting the training she should have, I sent her to Fulbray Castle to be fostered there in the hopes that Lord Hugh’s lady could take her inhand. But ’twas too late by then, she had already gone her own way for too long, and after several years of trying, they sent her back with the missive that ’twas hopeless. They had tried everything they could without seriously hurting her, and mild punishments had done no good.”
    Wulfric wondered if the older man realized he had described a woman who was not fit to be a wife, that no man in his right mind would want such an unnatural female …
Jesu,
that was the very thing that was going to get him out of this marriage. Nigel himself would feel obliged to release him from the betrothal contract. It just needed to be pointed out, and Wulfric did just that.
    “I thank you for your honesty, Lord Nigel, but all things considered, think you she would make a good wife?”
    To his utter disappointment, Nigel smiled now. “Aye, I have little doubt of it, that children, and a husband she loves, are all that is needful to