Varda won’t leave her
The door opened with a thump and Varda had to suppress a sigh of irritation.
“Good evening Varda”, Radomir rasped.
“Good evening your Lordship”, she replied dully, not looking up at him.
She hated that he took the liberties to call her by her first name while she was forced by etiquette to use his title.
“How are you doing today my love?”, he asked shambling over to the side of the bed, where his wife lay deep in the throes of fever.
Varda realised then that he was staring at her over the bed, expecting her to answer for his wife. She rose gracefully to her feet and stared back at him.
“Unfortunately your Lordship she is about the same as last night, her fever has not abated yet. She is stable for the moment however, at least she is not getting worse”, Varda tried to dull the blade of her tongue on bland medical details, reducing the urge to slice it through his uncaring body.
He bent down his hulking shadow falling across his wife’s face. Varda could not help but think of the golden glory of the sun blotted out by the towering darkness of a storm cloud, seething and roiling while the sun tried to meekly peek her face through the holes.
“Valeriya love”, he had slid one brawny arm beneath her shoulders and was now shaking her body, “Valeriya… it’s Radomir. Can you hear me?”.
He loomed above her, his massive form dwarfing the pale, wasted figure that lay below him in the bed.
Now he was shaking her harder, Varda could see her head lolling back and forth on the pillow.
She realised she had been unconsciously clenching her fists into tight balls beside the soft flowing of her skirts.
She unclenched them and drew her hands into her sides, picking at the fabric by way of distraction.
Valeriya had begun to whimper softly, Radomir’s desperate clawing obviously causing her pain.
Varda struggled to soften her features which had involuntarily curled into a scowl before she spoke.
“Radomir, you are hurting her, perhaps you should be a bit more gentle”, she said with as little feeling as possible.
Suddenly Radomir leapt to his feet and was stumbling towards her. She recoiled back in horror from his grasping hands.
“We must get Hepsie!”, he shouted, “She is sick… look at her, she is in pain! Go and get her… go… NOW!!!”.
She tried to be as calm as possible, for all their sakes, “Radomir, you know that Goodwife Cade is busy helping the the Baroness give birth right now. She cannot come”.
“Besides, your wife is no worse than before, the only thing to be done now is wait. I will call Goodwife Cade if she deteriorates at all. But right now, she cannot help”.
“NO!!”, he roared at her, the little patience he possessed dissipating, “You listen to me Varda! I outrank you and I demand that you go and fetch me Hepsie right now. My wife is sick! That is more important than some squalling brat!”.
Varda felt every part of her stubbornness rising to the occasion. She would not let this booming man defeat her.
“Your Lordship”, she said pleasantly, with an exagerrated benign expression on her face, “of course you outrank me, there’s no doubt of that. But perhaps I should remind you that the lady in question is in fact the cousin of the King himself. And I do not doubt that he would not be overly pleased if something were to happen to her… or that “squalling brat”, was that how you put it?”
His face began to go red with rage, twisted into an ugly grimace and she could see his strong fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Listen wench, don’t you play innocent with me! Go and get that woman for me… you know I cannot go into that room. Don’t play these women’s games with me, I have no patience for them.”
She felt her blood boiling in her veins from the moment the word “wench” left his mouth. Her right hand began to twitch with a desperate urge to slap it across his cruel mouth.
“I will not go!”, she snarled, “And you will not either! Your wife cannot be helped and the Baroness is in the middle of the most difficult process a woman will ever face. You will stay well away from them do you hear me?!”.
His demeanour abruptly changed, all the tightness of his coiled muscles drizzling out of his body, as a knowing smirk crossed his face.
He leant towards her one eyebrow raised, “Ah, so that’s how it is Varda. I can’t help but notice the lack of swelling at your belly”.
She turned her face away from him as though she had been slapped.
“Jealous are we?”.
He gazed boldly at her body, his eyes slowly moving over every angular feature of her abdomen and her small breasts, as though they were his hands roughly caressing her naked body. She felt a desperate urge to cover herself, to cower in the corner from him even though she was fully clothed.
He leaned in so his face was almost touching hers, close enough to feel the heat rising from his body, to smell the metallic tang of his sweat.
She felt his hot mouth at her ear, the heat of his breath was scorching as he whispered, “Couldn’t your man do the job darling… too limp to rise to the occasion eh? Poor little Varda, what you need is a real man inside you to finish it don’t you?”.
She shuddered in disgust, her cheeks flaring crimson red and turned her head away but he followed with his.
“There now… not so defiant after all are we”, he purred, his breath on her face, the touch of it sending a new wave of heat expanding the blush down her throat.
“Will you get Hepsie for me now?”, he asked.
She looked up at him, gazing boldly into his eyes and murmured, “No… no I won’t”.
Then she turned on her heel and strode over to her seat. She would not be pushed, she would not be threatened. He might stand in the room gazing at her body with his smouldering eyes all he wanted. She would not interrupt Hepsie and she would not leave Valeriya alone with that man unless he forced her to.
Bastard!! I’am happy that Vadra didn’t let Radomir intimidate her.
Okay, Varda’s awesomeness has increased TEN FOLD! It is about time someone stood up to that … ugh. I have no words! Yay for Varda.
What they need to do is keep him away from poor Valeriya. Honestly… who the heck shakes a sick, weakened little woman? Idiot. I knew his whole ‘caring’ facade was a load of crap.
Nooooooooo! He loves her! I swear it! He’s just trapped in this big, shambling body, and trapped in this life of his where the only thing he knows about family is fists. No one ever taught him to be gentle. No one was ever gentle with him.
And it’s easier to be a jerk and have people hate you for it than to attempt to be kind and find that they don’t like you anyway. Ask Hilda. And it hurts most of all when the “people” is your wife.
Anyway, I’m not too thrilled with Varda overall. Great, she can stand up to a jerk like Radomir (I keep saying jerk when I mean various synonyms for parts of the male anatomy located below the belt), but although that takes some courage given the size difference and his known brutality, she is also something of a mini-jerk with her own husband. She rather despises him.
Whereas Radomir looooooves his wife!! He’s being a jerk because he’s so scared!
Hehe… I feel the need to stand up for both of my characters (wow I never felt like standing up for Radomir before… what’s going on… although I have to admit some part of me is starting to understand why you find him good-looking or is it interesting looking, Lothere
So… Radomir wasn’t exactly putting on a caring facade… he does care for Valeriya. In fact he loves her. He just doesn’t know how to show her without crushing her into tiny pieces. Lothere is right… noone has ever been gentle with him. He wasn’t meaning to shake her like he did… he was just desperate she wasn’t waking up and he wasn’t thinking.
But then also in Varda’s defense, she doesn’t despise her husband. In fact she does care about him, but it is not in a romantic way, more in a child-parent sort of way. I mentioned her feelings towards him in their introduction post, but I really need to get more into it… I feel like we don’t know those two at all yet. I guess we haven’t seen a lot of their relationship yet and the bits we have, haven’t been that happy. Varda is a strong woman who respects strong wilful men. Thus Sigurd is the worst husband for her because she just can’t respect him. And she has lost two babies now, each time Sigurd hasn’t thought about comforting her. The first time she ended up comforting him but we didn’t see that. The second time she just couldn’t bring herself to do it again. He doesn’t even really realise he needs to because she would never say. I think there is badness coming from both sides here.
So there you go… that is my opinion on those characters at present… it will probably change… they tend to develop along their own path anyway, writing the stories for themselves. And everyone’s comments help develop the characters too because sometimes I hadn’t thought about an aspect that seems very clear to someone else.
Hilda… I have to say she was probably the main character I least liked throughout the whole history of Lothere… or at least out of those I can think of right now. But I still felt sorry for her on the odd occasion, especially that time when she was upset about the baby she was carrying and she actually let Sigefrith comfort her.
Bleh I hate Radomir. And Varda is still hardcore for standing up to him like that. But I agree should she at least treat her husband better, or at least communicate with him.
Awww, Radomir is trying to look after his little bird and is ending up crushing her. OK, so he lost some respect points when he cast lewd looks over Varda and called rank over her, but I do sympathise for him, even if I don’t actually like him that much. I do quite like Varda – she reminds me of Matilda over in Lothere. She and Sigurd are totally wrong for each other – Sigurd would do would do well with a softer wife, like Hepsie.
You’re right Tiana… they really need some sort of marriage counseller to teach them how to communicate properly.
And Speystar… I’m not sure Hepsie would be to impressed with him either… she would be nicer to him but she likes her men manly and dynamic too. I think actually he would do better with someone like Gena who he would be forced to protect and who is so sweet and soft and willing to love. Or Mella if she hadn’t been a nun and all crazy, both those women could have brought out the protective instinct in him and Gena would have protected him right back (not sure about Mella due to the crazy).
Hi. ooh although you’re right in that no one has ever been loving towards Radomir I still don’t like the guy. I was hoping he had changed his attitude towards women a least a bit but he hasn’t. No wonder Valeriya was starting to fall for father Handrell!.
Keep Simming.
See ya.
Interesting-looking = good-looking to my mind. I’ve never been attracted to pretty boys. I may have a niggling attraction to the bad ones, too, which might help explain my growing appreciation for Radomir.
As for Varda… maybe “despise” is too strong a word, but I get more than a “doesn’t respect him” vibe out of Varda. She really does seem to hold him in contempt because he’s not man enough for her. You may be evoking more than you realize, though, Verity. I resemble Varda quite a lot. (See first paragraph of this comment.)
If her husband didn’t even realize that he needed to comfort her, though, then I agree he’s a bit of a dimwit. I still think he’s too scared of her to approach her with that sort of gentleness. Or perhaps she’s put up such a cold front of strength and independence that he can’t imagine she can feel any weakness like sorrow. Varda needs to realize that it’s a lonely life when one is an island.
Good job for writing such controversial characters, Verity.
I pity Radomir. It can’t be easy to overcome that violent a history. But I find it hard to like him, especially after the low blow comment about Varda not being pregnant. I’m very interested to see what happens with Valeriya and Harndall.