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“My lord?”
“That is for taking me for a fool.”
Sebastian rubbed his ear. “I do not understand, my lord.”
The earl cuffed him again, the harder blow knocking Sebastian back a step. Anger shot him forward, but he caught himself before he raised a hand against Wednesfield. Not only did the earl outrank him, but he had acted as a father to Sebastian for many years. He had earned the right to chastise Sebastian, even if it was with his hands.
“My lord! I have not deserved this.”
“For lying to me, you deserve it. For telling me stupid lies, you deserve it more,” the earl said, his mouth hard. “Now, tell me the truth and have done with this foolishness.”
He should have known he would not escape without confessing the true story of the betrothal. “I beg of you, my lord, do not strike me again until you have heard the whole of it.”
The earl nodded, his mouth a white-edged line, his brows pulled down over the bridge of his nose in a frown. He was not angry, not yet. Sebastian said a quick prayer for forgiveness, and then explained what had happened on that long ago Twelfth Night.
“Why do I only learn of this now?” the earl asked softly.
“My lord, when we made the promise, I did not think it a binding one. John has shown me it does bind us both.” As it always had. But he could not say that to the earl. “When you betrothed Beatrice to Lord Manners, I knew it could not be.” When Beatrice had told him Manners had offered for her, he had known the Twelfth Night promise had meant nothing to her. She would never have let a man go so far as to offer for her if she had considered herself promised. And he had also known that he meant nothing to her. “We were foolish children.”
“Not children enough,” the earl said shortly. He sighed. “Are you certain of this?”
“My lord, I am not certain of anything. But I now believe we made a binding promise and because of that, Beatrice is my wife in the eyes of canon law.”
“What, then, do you need of me? She is your wife, with or without my blessing.” The earl’s voice was flat with displeasure.
“But not in the eyes of the world. I do not want to do anything that will shame either of us. For that, we must have a betrothal and a wedding, as if we are not married at all. And witnesses to our marriage will ease my mind.”
“And if I have no care for the easiness of your mind? What will you do then?”
“I shall take Beatrice to live with me at Benbury, as my wife, with you or without you, my lord. She will have no dower rights nor will she have a jointure. Should I die before her, she will be left penniless, but so be it. I cannot fight you.” He clamped his mouth shut, waiting for the storm to break over his head.
Sebastian met the earl’s cold, black stare steadily, his stomach churning.
Wednesfield nodded, the confrontation of his gaze easing into thoughtfulness. “I shall tell you something I have never told another man. If you speak of this, I will deny it.” He looked past Sebastian, his mouth turning down at the corners. “I did not want to give Beatrice to Manners, but I could think of no reason to refuse him. When she asked for the marriage, I permitted it. After it was done and—I learned more truly what kind of man Manners was, I swore that I would never again allow a daughter of mine to marry a man I did not trust.” His gaze sharpened and returned to Sebastian. “You think me a softhearted fool for that, I doubt me not. Marriage is about alliances, you will say.”
“My lord, I have confessed that I pledged myself to your daughter for no better reason than affection. How shall I call you softhearted?”
“A neat answer,” Wednesfield said, his grin flashing briefly. “But think on this. Why should I trust a man as an ally when I will not trust him as a son-in-law? But that is not my point.” He reached out and gripped the collar of Sebastian’s short gown. “I have known you from a pup, Benbury, but if you had not outfaced me as you did just now, I should not allow you to take Beatrice away. I should not think you man enough to marry her.” He let go of Sebastian’s gown.
And if Wednesfield had refused him, he would be free. No, the voice deep in his mind said with hard certainty. Regardless of what anyone said or did, he and Beatrice had yoked themselves together for life. In ignorance, he had abjured that promise once. He could not do it a second time.
The earl smiled, cold yielding to his customary warmth. “However, I do not oppose you, so there is no need to pursue this. I give you my blessing right gladly. But I will not discuss the legalities tonight.” His smile widened. “See me tomorrow, before noon, and we will hammer out a contract to please us both.”
At some sodden point Beatrice’s tears became sleep. Sleep led to dreams that made her jerk awake, sitting up in bed. Her hands were cold and shaking, but when she raised them to her face, she was sweating. The dream tried to return to her; she caught a glimpse of hands and thought she smelled cloves and decay. She crossed herself to ward off the nightmare and climbed down from the bed. Maybe the dream clung to the coverlet; maybe if she prayed, she would be safe.
She did not kneel. Even if prayer would wipe her mind clean of every memory of Thomas, she could not pray. Her heart turned to stone, her soul was as dry as the desert. She was lost, far beyond the reach of God’s love, if not his wrath.
Besides, it grew late. Soon the family would come together to sup in the solar. If she wanted to eat before dawn, she must join them. Her eyes were gritty and swollen from her weeping. She needed to bathe them to ease the swelling and soothe the soreness. Evidence of tears would make her mother curious; curiosity would lead to sharp questions, though the questions would be meant kindly. Her heart and soul were too raw to endure much probing.
There was a ewer of water and a bowl on the table against the wall. Had Cecilia done this? Perhaps. Beatrice filled the bowl half-full of water and bent to rinse her face and eyes. The water, smelling faintly of lavender and roses, was cool on her hot skin and the scent, evoking memories of happier days in the garden at Wednesfield, eased her wounded soul. She dipped her hands into the water over and over again, splashing her face until she could smell nothing else.
Please, sweet Mary, let me be happy again. Blessed Jes?, grant me the strength to survive my trials and let me know peace.
The prayer was over before she recognized she was praying. She straightened slowly, waiting for the renewal of desolation that always followed her attempts to pray. Water dripped on her bosom, startling her. She felt no better for having prayed, but she felt no worse. Could that be an answer? She did not know and had no time to ponder the mystery. If she did not hurry she would be the last to arrive.
When she entered the solar, it appeared at first glance that her family had gathered around Sebastian. He sat near her father, watching John as he talked, the corners of his mouth quivering as if he were about to smile. Her heart hurt to see him so nearly happy, knowing that she could no longer bring him what had once been a simple gift. He would no longer smile when he saw her, for he despised her—rightfully so.
Cecilia rose from her corner to one side of the men and came forward. “Come sit with me,” she said quietly. “I shall play for you.”
For so long she had been unable to feel much more than pain and shame; other emotions had to force themselves past the darkness in her soul. Now the anxiety Cecilia hid behind her quiet solicitude pressed against Beatrice, demanding a response, crying out for reassurance she could not give. “I should like that,” she said, taking her sister’s hand. Cecilia squeezed her hand gently, her fingers firm and warm.
Crossing the room drew Sebastian’s eyes to her. His shadow smile vanished as all the muscles in his face stiffened, his eyes as black in the candlelight as holes punched in a mask. John leaned close and said something in Sebastian’s ear; Sebastian looked away, a muscle jumping in the angle of his jaw. Her heart pattered against her ribs like a trapped thing, suffocating her. She was alive today because she had learned in a hard school how to read a husband’s tiniest flicker of expression, yet she could not interpret Sebastian’s with any certainty. If she could not read him, how was she to survive?
A little voice in the back of her head whispered, Sebastian has never harmed you.
Sebastian had never had power over her. Thomas had been all that was kind and courteous before she’d married him; afterward— She flinched. She never remembered afterward if she could help it.
She settled herself on the bench beside Cecilia, arranging her skirts until she remembered that no one here would care if they were not just so. How long before she stopped trying to please Thomas? She folded her hands in her lap to still them and then, unable to prevent herself, she glanced out of the corner of her eye at Sebastian. He grinned at John. One corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other when he smiled; the unevenness made his smile mischievous. The pattering of her heart was submerged in a wave of longing and pain that made her breath hitch.
Smile at me the way you used to. While he still loved her, he had tempted her into more than one act of harmless folly with the wayward charm of that grin. She would have done anything for him.
I loved you so.
She swallowed and dropped her gaze to her hands, clenched in an angry, white-knuckled knot. She had thrown him away because she was a coward. Worse, because she had been a coward choked with vanity and pride.
“What shall I play for you, sister mine?” Ceci asked quietly.
“Can you play the songs Mistress Emma sang to us when we were children?” Let me be a child again, if only in memory. Let me return to the time before I threw Sebastian away.
“If you wish it, dearling, I can.”
Out of the lute’s strings flowed a simple round Mistress Emma had used to sing when she was mending and teaching Beatrice and Cecilia to mind their needles. Beatrice had loved needlework from her first stitch, while her sister had fought the cloth, needles and thread as if they were her mortal enemies. Insubstantial memories came on a wave of peace, as if the mellowness of innumerable afternoons mingled with the song flowing into the room. The tumult churning in Beatrice’s breast slowed, smoothed and finally faded, ugly memory giving way to gentle recollection.
She remembered sitting beside Ceci on a bench in the old solar at Wednesfield, trying to smock a shirt for her father while Ceci, muttering curses and whining in frustration, wrestled with hemstitches that would not feather neatly. She could not recall a time when she and her sister had sewn together that did not feature an irritable, sweaty Ceci smudging her linen and knotting her thread.
The music shifted and changed to another of Mistress Emma’s sewing songs, and Beatrice’s recollections shifted with it. Now she was sewing alone, hiding in the old tower so no one might see the herons she stitched in elaborate blackwork on a linen shirt. Benbury herons…a shirt for Sebastian. How old had she been? Fourteen, perhaps? He had promised her he would always keep it.
“Play something else, Ceci,” John said.
Cecilia looked at her, eyebrows raised in a question. Shall I?
Warmth stole over Beatrice. Growing up, John’s word had been law to Ceci, never questioned. Now her sister held him at bay for Beatrice. “Play what you wish,” she said, the warmth overflowing in a smile.
The darkness inside her did not lift so much as it crumbled, like a wall collapsing after it had been undermined. Little things chipped away at it, from the thoughtfulness of lavender and roses in her washing water to the way her sister seemed determined to please her. Smiling seemed to damage the darkness still further. Could blessings, not blows, fall down on her?
Ceci grinned back at her. “I shall play to please myself then.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I had just learned this for the queen when I left Court, so have patience. I am not well practiced.”
She launched into a lively tune, playing with no missed note that Beatrice could hear. After playing the melody once, she began to sing in her silver-pure voice. The words of the song were a little bawdy, as Court songs usually were; the chorus was plain nonsense. “And a hey nonny, hey nonny nonny no!”
The third time Cecilia began to sing the chorus, John joined in, the darkness of his deeper voice shading the bright clarity of hers. Beatrice listened, wishing she did not croak like a rook and could join in, as well. The rollicking rhythm of the tune set her toes to tapping and when John began to clap his hands in time she joined in helplessly. Lucia, sitting on John’s other side, followed suit, laughing as she did so. John had said she barely knew any English, but she seemed to understand English music well enough.
Her father joined Cecilia in singing the fourth verse. Here was the source of Ceci’s music; her father’s voice was as smooth and golden as honey in the comb. Beside him, her mother clapped her hands, her face shining in the candlelight. Her voice had no more beauty in it than Beatrice’s but, like Beatrice, she loved music.
“And a hey nonny, hey nonny nonny no!”
Beatrice would have known Sebastian’s voice if he sang with the choir at Westminster. Not as dark as John’s nor as honeyed as her father’s, it had the golden-brown clarity of water slipping over stones. Certain he would not be looking at her, she stole a glance at him.
She was wrong.
Even at this distance, the cornflower-blue of his eyes glowed. Surely those were the bluest eyes in England. She waited for his mask to clamp down, for the shifting, unreadable expression on his face to disappear, frozen into frightening stillness. Instead his expression coalesced into a scowl as he stared at her through narrowed eyes. An hour ago that frown would have unnerved her. Now, after Ceci’s kindness and the joyous sound of “Hey nonny no!” she had a small store of courage to spend.
She lifted her chin and held his stare. It took every ounce of will not to look away; it had been far too long since she had tried to stare anyone down. A chill prickled her when she remembered that within weeks she would be entirely in his power, to use as he pleased, but a portion of Coleville obstinacy had come with the courage and she could not yield to him. She would have to have faith in the small voice that had said Sebastian would not harm her.
Sebastian looked away.
Beatrice sank back against the wall as if he had unhanded her. She had not outfaced anyone since marrying Thomas. How long had it been? Three years, four? She could not remember, not exactly, only that it seemed like a lifetime.
Her heart, which had lain quietly while she confronted Sebastian, took up a fierce battering against her breastbone, as if to register its protest, and she could not quite seem to catch her breath. How had she dared? Why had she been such a fool? He would be furious and rightly so. Worse, however much she hated and feared the knowledge, he was her husband, with the right to correct her with his hands. She ought to be terrified; surely the pounding of her heart was fear?
No, what she felt was not fear. Fear did not rush, sparkling, through her veins; fear did not make her sit straighter on the bench beside Ceci. The emotion driving her heart and catching her breath was excitement, excitement that was familiar and alien at once.
Why? Why was she excited when she should be afraid?
Through a supper of duck and goose, good English beef and capon, she puzzled over it. She knew her family spoke to her and she answered at random, absorbed in trying to penetrate the gray wall of empty knowledge. She could not remember why her act of daring felt familiar, nor understand why it did not leave her cold with terror. Could it be that Sebastian was not Thomas? She looked down the table at him, sitting just beyond John on her father’s side. Candlelight glinted gold and honey-brown in his waving hair, limned the lean line of his cheek and glittered in the faint stubble of his beard. He seemed almost to have been washed in gold himself, even to the tawny orange of his short gown and brocaded doublet. Like a saint in a manuscript.
No, he was nothing like Thomas, least of all to look at.
Servants came to remove the cloths from the table and to lay out the cheese and fruit. Beatrice selected an apple and began cutting the peel off with her eating knife. She had always loved apples, especially when they were new, their flesh firm and full of juice. This one was particularly juicy; her hands were damp and sticky with it. She carved a sliver of apple and slid it into her mouth, nibbling it between her teeth.
She glanced at Sebastian. He stared at her, his mouth a thin, hard line, and then turned his head away from her, one more move in their dance of looking and looking away. How he must hate the thought of marrying her.
She could not blame him for wishing for another wife than she. What man would want a woman with a soul as black as hers, even if she had tried to clean the stains with confession and penance? She sighed and set the apple down. What either of them wanted had become meaningless. Without list or leave, they were married, bound together in the sight of God if not yet in the sight of man.
If she could not undo this madness, she could try to be the wife he must want. Meek, obedient, scrupulously honorable. How meek would he expect her to be? Would she need to be obedient only to spoken desires, or would she once again have to obey commands unspoken, and suffer the punishments for unwitting disobedience?
She glanced at Sebastian’s end of the table again. Her father had claimed his attention. Sebastian frowned as he nodded while her father spoke, but he did not look angry, merely intent on her father. But anger did not matter, did it? A man might pretend to anger, so poorly she knew it for mummery, and still inflict bruises big and black as plums. A blow given with a cold heart hurt just as deeply as one given in heat.
She would drive herself mad if she stayed here, unable to keep from looking at Sebastian even when the sight of him sent her thoughts into places she did not want to go. He was a wound she could not help prodding. She would have time enough to prod it once she began to live with him as his wife, but not now.
She rose. All heads at the table swiveled to face her. Her mother looked irritated at this breach of manners, Ceci worried, John thoughtful. Sebastian’s fist curled on the table as her father turned toward her, but that was all he revealed. His composure let nothing else escape.
Her father rose to his feet, as well. “Well, mistress?” he asked quietly.
“I beg your leave to retire, sir,” she said softly.
He eyed her thoughtfully, the silence in the room stretching tightly. Her father could reprimand her, deny her permission to go, humiliate her before Sebastian and her family. She had acted without thinking.
He shoved his chair aside, creating space between his chair and her mother’s. “Come here.”
She went to him and knelt at his feet. Even if he shamed her, it would be nothing to her other humiliations. She had endured so much already; she could surely endure a little more. He surprised her by laying his hand on her forehead in a blessing, then, when she rose, saying, “Come closer, puss.” She stepped closer, her forehead still warm where his hand had been. He kissed her cheek, patting the other with a gentle hand at the same time. He had kissed her that way when she was a tiny girl. She pressed her cheek against his rough one.
I wish I were the woman you raised me to be.
“You have my leave to go.”
Her mother said in a very soft voice, “My lord.”
Her father put his hand on her mother’s shoulder. “No, Pippa.”
Her mother sat back. They never quarreled in public nor before their children. Whether they quarreled at all had been a favorite topic of speculation for their children while Beatrice was growing up.
“Go, child,” her father said.
She took a candle to light her way to her bedchamber, but it cast more shadows than light, and the dark quivered as if full of demons. No, not demons; she saw the shadows cast by her jumbled, unruly thoughts.
She stopped outside the door of the bedchamber, unable to lift the latch. Today had been the one of longest days of her life but she was not weary. A fretful energy twitched in her limbs, the kind of energy she had used to absorb with riding and walking at Wednesfield. She could not go walking or riding now, in the dangerous, deadly dark. Nor could she be still. Where to go? Where might she find a haven, a sanctuary against her fears and the demons within?
Sanctuary…
Blowing out her candle, unwilling to be accompanied by its unsettling shadows, she turned on her heel and began walking to the chapel at the other end of the house.
Chapter Three
S hortly after Beatrice left the solar, Sebastian rose and made his bows to the earl and countess. With Beatrice gone, all who remained in the solar—John and his wife, the earl and countess, even Cecilia—reminded him of what he would never have: a sweet, serene married life. The reminder was more than he could endure.
From the solar, he went down to the great hall. Night had fallen and it was past time to go to bed, but he was too edgy to sleep. If he returned to his chamber, he would lie awake, unable to stop thinking about wool prices, his rents, income that covered less and less of his expenses…and Beatrice.
Around him the house was silent, as if all its occupants, even those he had just left, slept without dreams. He envied them. He remembered how heedless he had once been, assuming that because no harm had ever come to him or his, no harm ever would. If it had not been for his uncle’s aid, he might well have lost everything. Since then, he had taken fear for Benbury’s future to bed with him.
At the far end of the hall a white blur moved into sight, gleaming faintly in the low light cast by the fire-place to one side. Sebastian stepped deeper into the shadows. Who was this creeping through the hall when most of the household had retired? And why did he only see the white oval of a face?
She came closer and firelight glittered on her jet ornaments, smoldered on the velvet of her skirts. Dressed in widow’s black, she had melted into the shadows, barely discernible even to his sharp eyes.
Beatrice.
She passed him without seeing him—or at least without betraying that she had seen him—and slipped through the arch that led to the chapel stairs. He crept after her, wondering why she went to the chapel at this hour, and hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. She had to have gone to the chapel; there was nowhere else. But why? Of all her family, she was the least pious, not the kind of woman to pray in the middle of the night.
Intrigued, and more than willing to let curiosity distract him from the weary round of worry, he followed her up the stairs.
The chapel was located at the top of the stairs. Faint light from within the room revealed that the door was half open. Resting a hand on its panel, he paused to reconsider entering. If Beatrice was praying, he could only be an unwelcome intrusion—and no matter what she did within, he would have to speak to her if he joined her. He had nothing to say, nothing that he dared say.
He imagined himself turning and going back down the stairs, crossing the hall and seeking his bed. Rest would only aid him in his meeting with the earl; staying here with Beatrice was folly. The days when he could follow every impulse were long past.
He pushed the door open.
The chapel was dim, illuminated only by the sanctuary light, a brave, weak show against the blackness of night. Beatrice knelt in the middle of the chapel floor, her head bent over folded hands. The gabled hood she wore concealed her face, but even if he had not seen her climb the stairs, he would have known her by the graceful bend of her long neck. In truth, he would know her anywhere, under any circumstance. When he had discovered her with Conyers, he had recognized her even though she had been enveloped in Conyers’s arms.
Tension tightened his shoulders, the too-vivid memory of Beatrice embracing George Conyers sparking fury as if he faced it anew. He fought both anger and memory, pushing them down, beyond reach, and swung the door shut. It slipped from his hand to bang softly against the frame, the latch rattling.
