Castle of the Heart (38 page)

“That is true, my lady. She is expected to
enter a convent.”

“Where? Do you know?”

“I believe it is Fontevrault.” The secretary
looked at her, his eyes twinkling with humor, for he knew his
employer well after many years in her service. And everyone knew
about Fontevrault, where a gentle abbess held sway and noble women
often went for peaceful retirement from the world of men. Its rule
was not strict, its inhabitants were allowed to bring servants with
them when they entered, and a fair measure of freedom was accorded
to those who lived within its walls. “And which convent will you
chose for your retirement, my lady?”

“I will go to her, that poor widow,” Isabel
said suddenly. “King Henry is too preoccupied to prevent me, and in
any case, in Anjou his writ does not run. Alice of Anjou would
doubtless appreciate the sincere sympathy of one who has also lost
a close family member in that horrible tragedy. We can mourn our
losses together. If enter a convent I must, I’ll at least do it in
good company. You will come with me, of course, master secretary.
And all my personal servants. Write to Sir Valaire, tell him I am
content to retire from this wicked world, but will need funds, a
dowry of some kind to turn over to the Church to assure my good
treatment there. Sir Valaire is a religious man, he will not cavil
at giving money to the Church.”

“And before you are done,” the secretary
murmured softly, “before you leave this life, you will probably
become Mother Abbess yourself.”

“Turn punishment to my advantage once more?”
Isabel’s sharp ears had caught his words. She smiled at him. “Well,
I’ve done it before, have I not? Do you know, master secretary, I
had never thought of that kind of advancement until now? But I
might do it. Anything is possible.”

“So King Henry has married again.” Guy
frowned. “And she’s only eighteen years old to his
fifty-three?”

“So Sir Valaire’s letter says,” Meredith
replied, rereading it. “He says, the better to get a new heir to
the throne. It’s Henry’s most pressing need right now. Valaire says
Adelicia of Louvain is a gentle young woman who will do her part
with kindness toward Henry.”

“How sad to be forced to accept pity in one’s
own bed, from a wife young enough to be a granddaughter.” Guy put
his arms around his own wife, heedless of the amused glances of
squires and servants, not caring one bit that they stood in the
inner bailey in full view of everyone. “I’m glad I have you, my
love.”

Despite her husband’s close embrace, Meredith
pressed the parchment flat against his chest and continued reading
Sir Valaire’s letter, for Guy was eager to learn its contents and
Reynaud, busy with the new bell tower for the village church, would
not be back until nightfall to read it to him.

“Guy, listen to this. Valaire says Henry is
coming to Wales later this year. It is expected the Welsh leaders
will sign a treaty with him when they meet. It will mean peace, and
an end to the raids.”

“We may hope so.” At the clatter of horses’
hooves, Guy momentarily withdrew his attention from his wife to
watch two riders passing beneath the castle portcullis, heading
through the town and out toward the forest. “There go two more with
hope. Thomas is healing at last. I was not happy to see him retreat
to Llangwilym Abbey for more than two months. I wanted my son by my
side, but I see now he was right to leave us for a while, to finish
his mourning for Selene in that way. He told me last night that
Father Ambrose, his old teacher at Llangwilym, advised him once
more to return to the world. Though from the way he looks at
Arianna, I doubt he would have made a very good monk.”

Guy had reason to be well content. He
believed there would be peace, for a while at least, between
England and Wales, and he’d had more than enough of raids and
border skirmishes. And now nearly all of his family was living at
Afoncaer, where he could enjoy them. His three-year-old twins,
Oliver and Elise, were healthy youngsters and were growing up
rapidly in close company with Thomas’s Jocelyn and Deirdre. Thomas
himself had come back to Afoncaer from Llangwilym only the day
before, and Cristin, whom Guy had missed more than he would admit,
would return during the next week, her days of fostering at another
castle completed. It was time to find a husband for his older
daughter. Thomas had suggested Benet, who, although only the son of
a long-dead and impoverished squire, had proven himself as brave
and capable as any more nobly born lad. He would make a staunch
liege man to Guy, the more so were he bound by family ties. Guy was
considering the match, not a little tempted by the thought that
Cristin, wed to Benet, would not have to be sent far away from her
parents to live. Looking down at his still-beautiful wife and
thinking how fortunate they were, Guy chuckled.

“You have told me often enough how much you
love children,” he said to her. “I have a feeling that this castle
will be full of them in years to come.”

Arianna’s mood as she rode toward the forest
with Thomas was an odd mixture of apprehension and intense pleasure
at his presence. She had understood his need, just after Selene’s
death, to remain aloof from her. She had felt the same way. It had
taken her weeks to accept the strong emotions of love and guilt
that the loss of her kinswoman had evoked. Thomas’s decision to
retire to Llangwilym Abbey for a time had been perfectly
reasonable, but the man who had returned the day before appeared to
her much changed. Maturity sat upon Thomas now. He was quiet and
sober, self-contained, with occasional sadness in his blue eyes. He
had spent much of the previous afternoon and evening alone with
Guy, and beyond his first coolly polite greeting, he had not spoken
directly to her. Arianna was thrown into confusion and uncertainty
by this treatment, and wondered if the monks at Llangwilym had
advised him to forswear his guilty love for her as penance, or if
perhaps he simply did not love her any longer.

And then this morning, as they broke their
fast in the great hall, he asked her to ride with him. Arianna had
looked at his serious face and wondered what he planned to say to
her. She told herself that if he wanted her to leave Afoncaer she
must do so. Whatever the cost to herself, she could not stay and
cause him further pain. He’d had more than enough to bear in recent
years. And so she had come with him, falling into his silent humor,
riding beside him without a word.

They turned off the road and entered the
forest, moving more slowly through trees and underbrush. Arianna
temporarily gave up wondering what Thomas’s intentions were in her
delight at the landscape around them. She loved this forest in
every season. Today the first faint greening of spring showed all
about them. Leaf buds waited to unfurl in the sun’s warmth. But
they would not yet, for this day was cool, with pale sunlight
contending feebly against a thick mist. The tree trunks and
branches were black with moisture, and Arianna could hear the
constant drip-drop of water in the eerie silence. There were no
birds singing, no raucous calling of crows, only the muted sound of
their horses’ hooves on wet leaves. Arianna felt as though she were
in a dream, wandering through a magical forest. They went further
and further and the silence grew deeper, and still Thomas said
nothing to her.

After a while they came out into a clearing
that was bounded on one side by a tumble of heavy, moss-covered
boulders, and on the opposite side by one of those tiny streams
that in Wales so frequently rise up from springs deep in the rocky
hillsides to thread their way over moss and stones until they reach
some larger stream or river. Here the mist was thinner, filtering
the sun’s rays into a soft, pale gold light.

Thomas stopped and dismounted, then helped
Arianna to alight. While he looped the horses’ reins around a birch
sapling so they could not wander away, she walked to the stream,
knelt, and drank from it, fresh, clean water, cold with the chill
of mountain snow.

“Sit here,” Thomas said, taking off his cloak
and spreading it upon a flat rock.

Arianna sat, her hands clasped in her lap,
watching Thomas toss pebbles into the little stream. He was silent
again, frowning, as if he was deciding how to say whatever he
wanted to tell her. Arianna waited, forcing herself to be patient.
But it seemed to her she had been patient all her life, and she
wished he would say the words and be done with them – and with her.
She was afraid it was her sentence she was waiting for, the order
that would send her away from him forever.

At last he came to sit beside her. The rock
he had chosen was not very big, and he was crowded against her. The
deep blue wool of his sleeve lay against her arm. She looked at his
large, strong hands with the tapered fingers.

“Arianna.” One of those hands closed over her
wrist.

“Yes, my lord.” His smoothly shaven face
hovered near hers, his eyes darker than his blue cotte.

“My dear friend.” Now both of her hands were
swallowed up in one of his. She swayed toward him as he lifted her
hands and kissed the fingers one by one, but even in her blissful
confusion at his closeness and at this sign of tenderness, some
portion of her mind noted that he had called her his friend, not
his love. She resigned herself to accepting whatever he commanded
her to do.

“It’s time to tell you the truth,” Thomas
said. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

She listened in astonishment as he recounted
the circumstances of his birth, then went on to speak of the way
his marriage to Selene had been planned by Isabel. He left nothing
out except the most private details of his nights with Selene. When
he was finished, she sat with her hands still clasped in his,
staring blindly at the stream as it rushed madly toward its joining
with the river.

“So you see,” Thomas finished, “I am a
bastard, with no rights of inheritance save those my father chooses
to give me.”

“You said he would keep the secret of your
birth,” Arianna replied, “and I’ll tell no one. It can remain a
secret.”

“But you do know everything now,” Thomas
said, “and that knowledge may prejudice your answer. Still, I had
to tell you. You have a right to know.”

“My answer, my lord?” She was so amazed by
what she had just heard that she could not think clearly. She
looked at him blankly. “What answer do you want from me? I do not
think the less of you, or of Guy, for learning this. He was
tricked, and you – you are still Thomas.”

“I love you with all my heart, Arianna. Will
you marry me?”

“Marry?” She gaped at him. “I cannot marry. I
am a penniless orphan. I have no dowry. Guy would not allow
it.”

“I am an illegitimate son.” Thomas laughed,
his somber mood breaking, and suddenly there was the old Thomas,
smiling warmly at her, teasing her. “There’s small difference
between us, my love. My father sees no impediment to our marriage.
I know, for I have spoken to him. Now all I have to fear is that
you will refuse me. Say you’ll marry me, Arianna.”

“But the dowry,” Arianna objected. “It would
be unfair to you not to have a dowry.”

“You have one,” Thomas told her. “Your dowry
is love. It’s the only true dowry.”

This could not be happening. It was a dream,
some trick of the magical forest in which they sat. But he had said
Guy saw no impediment to their marriage. He had spoken to Guy.
Thomas wanted to marry her, and Guy had agreed. Somewhere deep
inside her joy began to rise and spread, wiping out all her earlier
fears, all doubts, until she could hardly contain her
happiness.

“You do still love me, don’t you?” Thomas
asked anxiously. “I was not mistaken, was I?”

“I love you.” She met his eyes and a smile
began, lighting up her face with love and happiness. “I’ll tell you
the truth, as you have just told me. I have loved you since the
first moment I saw you at St. Albans. On that day I recognized you
at once. You were the man I had seen in my dreams and never hoped
to meet, the other half of myself, the only one I could ever love.
You are still all of that and more, for I have come to know you,
and the reality is finer and more wonderful than any dream I ever
had.”

“And I was so blind to that love,” Thomas
said, his bright smile dimming. “And for so long.”

“At that time it would have made no
difference if you had loved me, too,” Arianna told him. “Your
course was set. You had no choice but to follow it, to do what had
been planned for you, to fulfill the promises made in your
name.”

“And that course brought me here at last, so
late. I’ll have no objections raised by you, my lady,” he added
sternly, though with laughter in his eyes. “There is no time to
waste in quibbling over dowries, or who loved whom first. You are
twenty-three and like to remain unwed from advanced age unless I do
something about your situation, and I am twenty-nine and growing
older by the hour. Shall we seize whatever time is left to us, and
make what we can of it?”

“What would you like to make, my lord?” she
asked demurely.

“Love,” he replied, grinning broadly. “Marry
me, Arianna.”

“At your command, my lord,” she
whispered.

Arianna had a dowry after all, though a small
one. Immediately after she and Thomas returned from their ride and
announced their happy news, Guy asked Reynaud to write to Sir
Valaire, who was still Arianna’s guardian, asking his permission
for his ward to marry. Sir Valaire did not respond for so long a
time that Arianna began to fear he would refuse to allow her to
marry his daughter’s widower. She waited with growing tension
through all of April and May, until, in the second week of June,
Sir Valaire’s messenger arrived at last. He came to Afoncaer
escorted by a goodly number of Valaire’s men-at-arms who were
protecting a train of pack horses loaded with furniture, silver
plates and cups and trays, a pair of magnificent silver candelabra,
and bolts of enough wool and linen fabrics to keep Arianna well
clothed for years to come.