by Daris Howard
Marie nodded. Louise searched for the right words. She wanted to see if Marie had any feelings for him, without coming right out and saying it. An idea came to her. "What if I had him, uh..., maybe be your escort to your Princess Ball?"
Marie smiled excitedly. "Oh, yes, Mother!"
Instantly Marie blushed at her outburst. Louise was taken aback by it as well, and stammered for a moment. "Uh,... right. So you find him handsome?"
Marie looked away. Louise thought her daughter was trying to hide her blushing face and act as if the thought had never occurred to her, though Louise could see it had. Marie spoke quietly and subdued, as she shrugged. "I suppose."
Louise could feel a little exasperation building in her heart. It seemed Marie built walls around herself that were so hard to penetrate. Louise desperately wanted to know what was going through her daughter's mind. She finally decided to just come out and say it. "Marie, help me out here. I'm trying to find out how it is going. What is he like?"
Marie stood and put her hands on her hips and looked directly at her mother. "He is an arrogant, self-centered know-it-all."
Louise could read in Marie's eyes the truth about the respect she had for him, but she would try to not to cut through Marie's charade; at least they were talking. Louise just smiled. "I see. And what has he taught you?"
"Just this last week he had me experiment being polite to servants."
"And how has that worked out?" Louise asked.
Louise saw a seriousness cross Marie's countenance - one that she wasn't used to - as if Marie was thinking deeply. Marie wrinkled her brow as she spoke. "Actually, it is the strangest thing. At first everyone acted like I had a disease or something. They would look at me strangely. But after a couple of days, they would smile. Many of them used to slide into the shadows when I passed, and now they will pause to say hello."
"Do you like that?"
Marie paused for a moment, as if looking deep into her heart. "Yes. Yes, I do."
"Anything else you can tell me about the captain's teaching?" Louise asked.
"He has no fear of disagreeing with me or striking me when we are practicing."
Louise was taken aback by this and found anger swelling in her heart. How dare a common soldier, or any man for that matter, strike her daughter! Her voice was terse as she spoke. "Is that so?"
"Yes."
Louise felt the anger continue to swell in her. "Would you have me remove him from being your tutor?"
Marie turned to Louise and, suddenly, everything about her changed. It was as if the facade was ripped from her and her voice was pleading. "Oh, please, Mother, no!"
Louise found her heart pitching within herself as it jumped from emotion to emotion - her anger at the young captain switching to a loss of understanding of her daughter's pleading. "But if he strikes you..."
Marie didn't even let her finish the sentence, speaking with concern emanating from her voice. "Mother, how could I learn to defend myself if he didn't?"
Louise sat back and spoke quietly. "I suppose that is so, but does he respect you as a princess?"
"He does more than that, Mother. He respects me as a person. I don't know how to explain it, but, for the first time I feel like a human being and not some bizarre creature. I have someone I can talk to, even if we argue. Every other tutor I had was afraid to offend me, afraid to touch me, or hurt me, or acted like I was not real and was some breakable doll that belonged on a shelf. He's not in the least afraid to disagree with me, or even tell me he thinks I am wrong."
"And this pleases you?" Louise asked.
Marie smiled and had a faraway look in her eye. "Yes, very much. I don't know why, but I like knowing that if I try to push him beyond a certain point, he will push back. It makes me feel, I don't know how to say it, safe or something."
Louise could feel a memory of another time filling her heart, and she felt she was going to lose control of her emotions. She decided that it might be good to end this conversation. She smiled and swallowed hard. "Thank you, Marie. That will be all. If there are ever any concerns about it, you feel free to let me know."
Marie nodded, rose, and bowed. "Thank you, Mother."
The door had no sooner shut behind Marie then Louise's emotions overwhelmed her. She thought of what she had asked moments earlier. "Does he respect you as a princess?" Then her mind reeled back to that day her own father nearly had Alexander whipped and sent away because of offense on the same question.
Since Alexander had died she had protected Marie from everything, even the discipline she should have had and had sought for. All of these years she was so concerned with being her daughter's friend that she forgot to be her mother. She realized, now, that when Marie was being belligerent and defiant, she was testing the fences, hoping to find a safe boundary. When she found none, she pushed farther.
It seemed ridiculous to her that with her people, she would pass laws to set boundaries and set punishments accordingly, but she was afraid to do the same thing with her own daughter. She had even been willing to withdraw the young captain as a tutor because of his stubbornness and sternness with her, and yet that was the very thing that Marie was responding to and appreciated in him. She didn't know if her daughter had any romantic feelings for the young captain, but she did know she had great respect for him.
As she thought of her own inadequacies, her heart ached for Alexander. She would give anything if she could just have him back for a moment. He was so calm and kind. He always knew what the right thing was, and then did it. As her heart felt like it would burst within her, Lord High Chamberlain entered. He could see her crying.
"Is something wrong, Your Majesty?"
She wiped away her tears. "Oh, Matthew, I have been such a fool. And I miss Alexander so much, and I make so many mistakes with Marie he never would have made."
He spoke kindly and comforting to her. "You can't totally blame yourself, Your Majesty. There is no harder job in the world than being a parent."
Louise nodded. She turned herself fully to look at Matthew. "I know you have felt it a strange thing that I would appoint the young captain to tutor my daughter. Yet I see in him a man so much like my Alexander. And sometimes I feel as if Alexander has told me to do this, and had a hand in all of it for his little Marie. Does that sound strange?"
"Actually, no, Your Majesty. I don't doubt things like that can happen. Especially with a good man like Alexander."
Louise could feel the tears coming again. "Matthew, I know you are a religious person, much more than I am. Do you believe I will ever see Alexander and my father again?"
Matthew paused for a moment, as if putting his deepest thoughts into words. When he finally spoke, he was very solemn.
"Your Majesty, though I am a religious man, I still often look at things very logically. I believe in God because all things denote to me there is a God - the colors of the sunrise and sunset, the order of the seasons, the beauty of the earth after a rain, and the perfectness of a newborn child. I then reason that, since there must be a God, there must be justice in the universe, for reason says a God could not be unjust. If God is just, then there must be some kind of judgement after this life, with its accompanying rewards and punishments. Anyone with any sense of integrity would admit that justice does not occur in this life. If, then, there are punishments and rewards, there must be a heaven and a hell and, in my mind, perhaps many stations in between. But if there is a heaven, then those we love must be there. For I cannot imagine it would be heaven to us without them."
Louise smiled at him. "That is very profound, Matthew; very profound and very comforting."
With her heart softened at this moment, there was a question she had for Matthew that she had always wanted to ask, but never found the right time. This seemed like the right time, if there ever was one, so she decided to ask. "Why have you never married, Matthew?"
He turned away from her. He seemed unable to speak. She spoke encouragingly. "Was there never anyone?"
> Matthew nodded, his voice full of emotions. "There was one, once. But we were of different stations in life. She was a lady, and I but a soldier."
For a brief moment, Matthew seemed to lose his mask, and Louise could see the pain that tore at his heart as he continued. "When we were both young, she always requested me to be her guard wherever she went. In this way, we spent picnics, chamber orchestras, horse riding, and many other things together, without really saying we were together. I knew she cared for me, too."
Louise looked at the grief written on Matthew's face, and she almost wished she hadn't asked. But she had, so she decided she should know the whole story. "What happened?"
Matthew tried to control his voice, but it still quivered as he spoke. "Eventually, it came time for her to marry, and a duke much older than herself came along. She became a duchess. I became Captain of the Guard. We knew it was not meant to be for us. We were like two stars from opposite sides of the heavens. I can still remember, as I stood guard at her wedding, she turned toward me as she walked down the aisle. I will never forget the look of longing and sadness in her eyes."
"Where is she now?" Louise asked.
"She is still alive. She had a son. But I think her life has been one of disappointment and grief. She has become old and somewhat bitter."
"Who is she?" Louise inquired.
Matthew lowered his eyes and looked away. "I wish you wouldn't ask me, Your Majesty."
"Matthew, I promise I will be careful of your trust, but I feel I need to know so I can understand in some small way."
Matthew looked up at her briefly, then lowered his eyes as he spoke quietly. "She is your Aunt Eldna."
In an instant, Louise found her heart going through a whole gamut of emotions. Her old, "boring" Aunt Eldna? Louise almost found herself laughing. Matthew looked up and smiled, then spoke as if he could read her thoughts and needed to counter them. "She wasn't so boring back then. She was actually an exciting, vibrant person. She reminded me, in many ways, of you and the young princess. But life can be hard when dreams are crushed and hopes are shattered."
Louise found herself suddenly understanding many things. She remembered how Eldna had come to her wedding ball when Louise hadn't expected her. Eldna was already a widow by then, losing her much older husband after very few years of marriage. She remembered how shocked she was when Eldna had spent the evening of the wedding ball visiting with the captain of the guard, Matthew Johnson. She remembered how her father said Matthew had gotten Tobias into the Royal Guard at Eldna's request. She began to see much more than she had.
She also remembered her own thoughts of possible marriage to Sir Phillip. What would her life have been like if she had married him? Would she always have felt as Eldna did now? The thought of marrying Sir Phillip, instead of Alexander, made her shudder.
Her heart also ached for both Matthew and Eldna as she turned again to him. "Matthew, is that why you were so against Captain Richins tutoring Marie?"
Matthew regained his old composure. "Your Highness, I was not against it. I just wanted to know your intentions, for if you were going to allow them to fall in love only to tear them away from each other, I felt it was a great injustice to both of them. But if you were to allow love to follow its course, as you appear willing to do, I feel the decision was not only good, but kind." He smiled, and then spoke with a longing in his voice. "Perhaps mine and Eldna's lives would have been different if others had thought as you do."
"You know, Matthew," Louise said, "Eldna is single. And besides, you are now a nobleman."
He smiled at her. "I know what you are implying, but you forget we older people have ingrained into us that there is a difference between nobility of birth and nobility of office. Besides, we have both changed so much, I don't think she could feel the same way about me that she did before."
Louise knew otherwise, but didn't say it. She had seen Eldna glance over at Matthew when she came to visit, and she saw her looking around when he was not in the room. She couldn't believe she had never guessed any of this before, but now it all fit together so well. She even wondered if some of Eldna's animosity at her and Alexander's wedding was out of jealousy. As she thought about it, she really believed it was.
She also remembered how she, herself, had thought Alexander wasn't good enough for her. She had come a long way, but she still carried many prejudices. As she thought more about her own deficiencies, she thought about her failures as a mother, and she prayed, more than ever, for the young captain's success to make up for them.
And perhaps, after all, there would also still be a time for Matthew and Eldna.
Chapter 21
Wanting To Know More
As Marie left the throne room, she thought about what had just happened. For the first time in a long time she and her mother had been able to talk. She wasn't sure why that had been the case. Usually the first thing her mother did was to try to correct something that Marie was doing wrong. But this time she had asked how things were going.
But there was something that she thought about a whole lot more - something that bothered her about the whole thing. When her mother asked her if she wanted the captain removed from being her tutor, her heart felt funny, and then she had begged her mother not to release him from that assignment. Her plea to do so had come so quickly she hadn't even been able to think about it. What had happened to her?
Only a few months earlier she would have driven off anyone that tried to tutor her, but now she was begging her mother to let him stay. She tried to tell herself that it was just because he was teaching her to sword fight and she was enjoying it. However, it was much more, and she knew it. She did feel different when she was with him. She had never thought about how she liked him to stand up to her until her mother's questions had made her think about it.
The funny thing was that he also made her so angry that, at times, she wanted to slap him. She had slapped many a person in the palace, and they would just flee from her. But he didn't. He blocked her aggression. He didn't feel he needed to take it. Those first times when he had done that, it had made her angry beyond anything she could remember. She had never pulled a sword and attacked someone before, but she did him.
Yet he didn't run like she thought he would, but quickly knocked the sword from her hand. She wanted to fly at him in rage and bite and scratch him, but she, for the first time, had been forced to control her temper, for she didn't think he would just stand there and take it. She found she had great admiration for him.
She also loved their walks in the gardens. She thought it was cute how he blushed when she looked at him eating. Was she having feelings for him? She didn't think that could be possible. She was a princess, and he was a soldier. But why was she begging her mother to let her keep him as a tutor? The instant her mother had suggested otherwise, and she had thought of not having him, it was, in a small way, what she had felt when she lost her father.
As she thought of her father she could feel her heart ache. She had tried to put his memory out of her mind for so long it was hard to think about him now. But, suddenly, she found herself wanting to. She wondered what her father would think of Jacob. She smiled to herself. She called him "Jacob" in her own thoughts. She didn't think he even knew she had learned his first name. She always addressed him as "Captain" or "Captain Richins", just as he called her "Princess" or "Your Highness", but she had learned his name while listening to his friends socialize with him. She meant to always keep it her secret, but she relished knowing it.
She thought about how she would try to get him to play out in the gardens. If she caught him off guard, eating some raspberries or something, she could sometimes get him to be playful before he seemed to remember and quickly became formal again.
She hated the formality. When he bowed to her it made her want to whack him. It just didn't feel right. When the servants did it, she didn't think twice about it, but when Jacob did it, it angered her. She wasn't quite sure why. It was just a natural feeling th
at came over her. She knew that was what he was supposed to do, so she could do nothing about it, but she hated it.
She schemed about how she could catch him off guard, because sometimes when she did, he might turn and give her a friendly spat or a whack on the shoulder. But then he would blush and apologize. She would try to get him to continue by doing something else, but he would be on guard and not respond that way again.
She questioned why she tried so hard. She realized his touch felt good to her. Even in a playful whack, it carried a feeling that made her heart tremble. It felt so much like how she had felt with her father, yet different. There she was again, thinking about her father. She tried to push his memory away, but again, she found herself wanting to dwell on it. She could remember how her father would pull her onto his lap and make everything seem right. Even when she did something wrong he would put her on his lap and he would make her stay there until she promised to behave.
In so many ways, her father, as much as she could remember him, was a lot like Jacob. Her father hadn't been afraid to let her know if something was wrong, but he also would let her know when she did something right. She had always felt as though she didn't want to displease him.
She could remember the first time Jacob had praised her. Her heart had jumped, and she felt so wonderful she had almost cried. She had told herself that it was stupid to feel like crying when you're happy. But in an instant, she had wanted to please him just like she had her father.
Her thoughts of her father led to thoughts of her mother. For so many years she thought that her mother was so different from herself that they could never understand one another. But her mother seemed to be so understanding today. Surely her mother could never have been like her. Her mother was always so proper. Out of the blue she remembered a glimpse of a memory of long ago, almost forgotten and erased. She remembered something her grandfather had said about the way her mother had treated her father. She knew that her grandparents had sent her mother up north to Denville Castle for a summer. When she was young she had heard the stories.