“I see. And I was not told.”
Ned slid a guilt-ridden glance at his sister, expecting a hint of temper. Could detect none. “What would have been the point?”
“None, I suppose.” But her voice was strained.
“Is it important?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not any longer.” It was just one more wound she had inflicted on him.
“Don’t blame yourself too much.” Ned made his way to the door. “But I think you should put it right with Stafford.”
“I know it.” She managed a semblance of a smile but it was a bleak affair. “I will not leave it like this. I think I have too much pride and the shame rides me hard—both my own and William’s dishonor. I must make amends, one way or another.”
What could she do to put things right?
Only one thought came to her mind. Once the decision was made, it seemed to be an easy matter to accomplish—but the outcome could not be determined. The pain in her heart was so intense as to be almost physical.
Beatrice opened the chest in her chamber, and took out a carved cedarwood box. There inside lay the ivory swan. She stroked its poor damaged foot, marveling at the strength of so fragile a jewel that it could come through the conflict with so little harm. Then wrapped the jewel securely in soft cloth, then leather, finally securing it with strong hempen twine. If the swan could survive a battle, it could survive a journey in the careful handling of a messenger. The roads seemed quiet enough. She would send it by one of her men to Elton’s Marsh, Lord Richard’s home in East Anglia.
Then she took a sheet of fine parchment. A goose quill pen that she sharpened. And sat at the little table in her chamber where the light from the window would fall on her efforts. But here was the problem. What could she say that he would even wish to read?
Tell him what is in your heart. Ask his forgiveness. Open yourself to his judgment. Honesty is the best path here, the only path.
So she would lay it all before him and leave the final choice to him. She rubbed her hand between her breasts as if it might ease the ache of loneliness and desolation, then dipped the pen and began. The words came slowly, were difficult and stilted, but it was all she could do.
My dearest Richard,
I now know the truth. Too late, as I am aware, but I need to put things right with you as far as I am able. My brother, Ned, has told me of Lord Grey’s perfidy, his treacherous betrayal of His Majesty in the battle which brought about the massacre of so many loyal men. And also of William’s wicked decision to stand by de Ruthin, to join him in his contemptible act. And how you were driven to challenge him and to take his life in a futile attempt to keep His Majesty from capture. As well as to protect the life of your cousin, the Duke of Buckingham. My dear Richard, can you ever forgive me—that I should accuse you of putting your own personal desires before your loyalty to the Crown? I know you to be a man of the highest honor and conscience. Which William was not.
Ned also told me that you came to Mears Ashby for me. I was in Lincoln. My father lied to you—and to me.
The guilt is all mine. I know there is no excuse for what I have said. Nor for my role in the attack against you, for which my ill-considered words were responsible. I allowed my mind to accuse you of murder even when my heart denied it. You could have died at the hands of my people, acting in my name. How can I ever forgive myself for that?
All I can do is ask your pardon and hope that you will believe that these poor apologies are not just empty words. By now I expect that you will have opened the package. It is my dearest wish to return the swan to you. I hope that you can find it in you to accept it as a token of my penitence.
William died for his terrible crime against the Crown. Of all the pain and heartbreak I have caused you, I can write no more. You have all my love. You always did. You always will. I will understand if you no longer feel able to return the sentiment.
Oh, my darling Richard, I wish with all my soul, with every breath I take, that it had not ended like this. Beatrice…
She hesitated. Then wrote firmly.
Hatton
The letter was finished, all that was in her heart. Beatrice dashed her hands across her cheeks to prevent tears from falling to blot on the page. Then she carefully folded the document, wrapped it in another layer of leather together with the brooch and went to find her messenger with instructions for the journey. Before she could change her mind. A hopeless cause perhaps. She had slighted his honor and his integrity, and he was a man who, as he had proved in his desire to shield her from pain, held fast to the highest aspirations of chivalry.
So the package was duly delivered to Lord Richard Stafford’s home at Elton’s Marsh. The messenger returned to Great Houghton but with no reply. Lord Richard was not there but still with the Lancastrian army. Beatrice knew that she had done all she could. It was a chilling thought that gave her no comfort.
The months flowed inexorably through the final days of summer into autumn and on into the bitter cold of winter. Snow fell and lay on the ground, covering the scarred fields where so many had fought and been slain, as if to erase the memory of such brutal happenings between families who had once claimed friendship. Beatrice and her people at Great Houghton closed themselves in.
There was no news.
Christmas arrived with the promise of celebrations to lighten the heart. Beatrice would have remained at Great Houghton—she found that she had no taste for the festivities—but Ned insisted that she join the family at Mears Ashby. So she did, with pale complexion and haunted eyes. She dutifully smiled and clapped at the antics of the jester, the tunes and singing of the musicians. She danced. She played her part in the traditional games. It was a brave attempt but fooled no one: the pretence was painfully obvious. She was inclined to pick at her food and more often than not sat in silent contemplation of some unwanted and unbidden image from the past. As soon as was courteous, she escaped back to her own home.
Ned’s wife, Alice Hatton, expressed some amazement to her lord that the lady could grieve so for Sir William Somerton.
“He treated her as though she was little more than a servant in her own home.”
“True.”
“You would never treat me so poorly, would you?”
“Certainly not!” Ned sought wildly for any excuse to remove himself from this conversation but failed.
“I never liked him. He had thin lips. Poor Beatrice.”
“Yes. Poor Beatrice indeed.”
“But now she is free of him. Why is she not happier? I thought she would find healing with the passing of time.”
“So did I.” Ned, with a surprising level of intuition, felt it wiser to keep his own council. It would be no help to Beatrice to hear Richard Stafford’s name on Alice’s inquisitive lips.
Back at Great Houghton, Beatrice found herself on numerous occasions standing on the battlement walk, swathed in a velvet cloak against the bitter air, watching the road leading to the house. Until she took herself to task and forced herself indoors.
He would not come. Time hung heavy on her heart and her hands.
Then rumors began to filter through of a great battle in the north, at Wakefield. A Lancastrian victory in which the Duke of York himself, newly returned from Ireland, was killed.
Had Richard fought in the battle? Beatrice shivered at the prospect as she sat before the fire in her chamber, knowing that he would have been in the thick of the fighting. But oh, she wished with all her heart that he had been safely at home at Elton’s Marsh. Did he still have the swan or had he consigned it to the bottom of a coffer and forgotten about it, as a trinket of little moment and even less sentimental value.
Meanwhile she visited the tomb of William Somerton in the village church of St Michael and All Angels. It was now complete, magnificent with its alabaster monument of William in full armor, his head resting on his helm, his feet propped against a winged gryphon as on his coat of arms. His hands were palm to palm on his chest in pious praye
r. Beatrice thought she had never seen him so much at peace. Or so complacently smug.
Because William, with all the petty spite of which he had been capable, had sought to bind her to him in death, as securely as she had been bound to him in life. His will, so generous in its terms, had included the ultimate sting of a scorpion. If she remarried, her inheritance and her home at Great Houghton would be lost to her, reverting to the ownership of Sir William’s eldest son. Beatrice would receive instead the less than princely sum of forty pounds and household goods to the tune of ten marks. A poor settlement indeed and not one to attract another husband. All in all, a nasty little device. Beatrice touched William Somerton’s cold face.
“How could you do that to me?”
William’s effigy remained smugly silent.
Take care what you wish for. The words crept into her mind. She had wished to be free of this marriage. But not like this. Not on these terms. She hugged her guilt close. It was not William’s death that had cracked her heart in two.
A hopeless anger appeared from nowhere, as a storm out of a summer sky, to torment her as she returned to the Hall.
“Why could you not reply to me, Richard?”
She spoke the words aloud to the unresponsive rooks roosting in a majestic stand of beech trees. Even if his rejection of her petition was so final as to trample all her hopes into the mire, it would be better than not knowing. Were all men so intransigent? How dare he put her through this wretched uncertainty. But then the anger drained away to leave a hollow void that filled her soul.
For Richard Stafford the weeks and months were no better but, of necessity, hung less heavily. He had fought in the battle at Wakefield, surviving it without harm other than the normal scrapes and bruises from violent conflict. It had been a bloody affair, the Duke of York surrounded and hacked to death on the battlefield. Richard turned from it with distaste, disillusioned with the blood and the deliberate slaughter of the Yorkist nobility with neither clemency nor pardon and returned home to Elton’s Marsh. With a need for healing and to collect a small item of jewellery that he would not again risk on a battlefield. An ivory swan that stood as a bright symbol of hope, a glimpse of light when blood and death crowded his dreams. Of a possibility for a future with the woman who, despite everything, still owned his heart. He ran his thumb over the ivory feathers with a little smile. Re-read Beatrice’s letter, imagining her sitting writing it against the carved linenfold in her chamber. Remembered the softness of her mouth against his, the lingering perfume of her hair when he had released it to drift in heavy silk through his hands.
He had not seen her for six months, since he had ridden out of her life, his mind full of bitterness and anger at the capricious whim of blind chance that had placed Beatrice within his reach, only to snatch her away again. Since his conscience had applied the sharp spur of guilt, forcing him to doubt and question his own motives that day at Northampton. But in the months since then he had faced imminent death again in battle. When the noise and blood and outrageous violence robbed a man of every thought, every decision but the necessity of parrying the next blow, cutting down the next opponent. And he knew that faced with the deadly point of sword or dagger, the swing of a mace or the lunge of a halberd, there were no choices to be made other than survival. In the same circumstances, to save himself or Buckingham or the king he would do the same again, whether the man he fought be William Somerton or another. And, in striking down Beatrice’s husband, he accepted at last that he carried no guilt.
Richard shrugged against the burden that he had finally cast off. Sometimes conscience and duty made uncomfortable bedfellows. But now Beatrice knew the truth of that dreadful day. The rift between them might be healed at last.
It was time for him to take the next step.
Chapter Six
It was spring. April had rushed in after a chilly, fretful March with days of warm winds and light showers. Blackthorn blossom bloomed in the hedgerows as did the primroses in secret corners of Beatrice’s garden. Their pale yellow petals, the fragile green of their leaves, brought comfort to the lady. She still wore black gowns in formal recognition of her widow’s status, but the new life around her teased her thoughts from their somber contemplation. William had been dead for more than six months.
She kept in touch with the outside world through Ned’s visits and letters from her mother who had traveled to stay with her sister in London. Beatrice read Lady Margery’s long diatribes about the ongoing battle for power, then folded the parchments and put them away. It worried at her conscience that the rise and fall of Lancaster and York seemed to matter so little to her. There was only one letter that she truly wished to receive.
The only piece of information to find its way to her door, through Ned’s kind offices, that was of supreme importance in her life, was that Richard Stafford was alive, having survived the carnage of both Wakefield and later an even bloodier affair at Towton. The knowledge brought some comfort. If he could only find time to write to her… But after so long a silence she had given up hope of ever hearing from him again.
“You have a visitor, my lady.”
Beatrice put down the iron shears beside the basket of sad dead-headings left over from the previous autumn.
“Who is it, Lawson?”
“He did not give a name, my lady.” There had been no need. Her brows arched in some surprise. Lawson was usually particular to a point. “Then how should I know if I am to receive him? Is he known to me?”
Lawson worked to keep his expression grave. “The gentleman said to give you this, my lady. Then you would know if you wished to receive him.” He held out a small package wrapped in black velvet.
Beatrice took it, as if she were watching herself in a dream, from some strange distance. With fingers that trembled in their haste, she unwrapped the soft material. Knowing perfectly well what she would find there. Her hand closed over the contents as she took a breath. And lifted her eyes to Lawson’s.
“Where is he?”
“I took the liberty of showing him into the parlor. I thought that you would wish it.” Now Lawson allowed himself to smile. “He is waiting for you.” Much had been made clear to Master Lawson. Lord Richard was welcome in this house, more than welcome if he could make the sad lady smile again.
Beatrice did not linger for one second. He was here. She lifted her dark skirts and ran, abandoning all dignity. At the parlor door she did not hesitate but flung it open, back against the wall. Then, at the last, stopped on the threshold.
And saw him.
He looked just the same. Perhaps a little thinner, with new creases delineating the lean planes of his face, around his mouth and radiating from the corners of his eyes. She could see, immediately, the lighter scar of the healed sword wound along his hairline. But, against all her fears, it was the same Richard Stafford.
He had come back to her. Her heart began to pound within her silk bodice. All the words she had wanted to say. All the regrets and explanations, all the words of love that she had practiced saying to him if she would ever meet him again. She could think of none of them.
“I have dreamed of this moment.” It was all she could manage.
“And what did you do in your dream?”
“I dreamed that…” She gave a little shake of her head, could not tell him yet. Nothing was settled between them. She did not even know why he had come to her. It was impossible to read it in his face, stern and uncompromising, a little wary. “Why are you here, Richard?” Would he return the brooch because he had no use for it and simply walk away?
“I came, Beatrice, because I could not stay away.” His voice was as grave as his expression but a bright flame of hope leaped into life deep within her.
“I once said we would not suit. I regret it.”
“I remember.” The occasion still shamed her. Her eyes fell before his. “I regret my intransigence.”
“Tell me one thing. Despite all that has happened, all that has separated us, does
your love for me still hold true?”
The hope now began to burn more fiercely. Beatrice felt her cheeks flush with the power of it. Looked up. “Yes.” She held her breath.
“Thank God.” Richard sighed as if a weight almost too great to bear had been lifted from his soul. “So tell me, lady, what did you do in your dream?” His mouth finally relaxed in a half smile, seeing her there in the doorway, her undeniable beauty, despite her deep mourning, framed by the dark paneling. All his doubts that she would close the door against him again lifted as mist in the heat of the sun. Amongst the emotions that tripped across her lovely face, rejection was not one of them. Rather hope and a tentative joy. “What did you do, Beatrice?” he persisted. He would have gone to her, made that move forward, but rather waited to allow her that freedom.
“Ah, Richard. In my dream I did this…”
At last Beatrice took the step. And then another. Until she was running the short distance across the room. His arms opened. And closed around her. And held her tightly against him with all the dust of travel enveloping them both. It was of no consequence. She was here in his arms and the Hatton swan, clasped tightly in her hand, was crushed against his heart.
“I hurt you. Your face is scarred and it was all my doing.” Her voice was muffled as she pressed her face against the curve of his neck.
“It is past. It is of no account now.”
“I thought you had abandoned me, forgotten me.” Her voice trembled a little as she remembered the stark desolation of the winter months. “As I deserved.”
“I had never forgotten you. How could that be?” His fingers stroked her hair where it curled from beneath her veil against her temple, inhaling its lavender fragrance, as he marveled that it had happened at last. His own dream, that she should willingly step into his embrace, also had come to fulfillment.
“Don’t leave me, Richard. Never again.” Now, eyes bright with unshed tears, she looked up, lifted a hand to touch his face as if she still could not believe that it was not all some terrible repetitive nightmare, that he would be snatched away from her at the moment that she opened her eyes to the morning sun, to a desolate solitary awakening.
Broken Vows, Mended Hearts: A Bouquet of ThistlesPaying the PiperBattle-Torn Bride Page 24