Katy Cooper - Lord Sebastian's Wife

In a quiet voice she asked, “If I can never be the wife you desire, Sebastian, will you not tell me what I can do to make the best of this bad bargain?”

“Anything you do will be well enough.” Anything she did would have to be enough. They were knotted, not to be parted in this life.

She sighed and lowered her eyes. “I do not believe you.”

“We cannot undo the past, Beatrice. You cannot undo your dalliance with Conyers and I cannot undo what I have said about it. From now, all I need is your obedience, and I do not doubt I shall have it.” That much, at least, was true. He would make certain of it.

“If we cannot undo the past, I at least am willing to let it rest.” She looked up at him, her clear eyes catching the candlelight. “Can you say the same?”

He eased his gaze away from hers, unable to withstand her scrutiny. “I do not care about the past.”

“Do you not? You cannot leave it behind. I have done penance for my sins and promised never to commit them again. For my immortal soul, I will not so dishonor myself. You can neither forget nor forgive. How shall we ever live together, Sebastian?”

“We will because we must,” he said.

She walked away from him, toward the altar. He followed.

“What do you want of me, Beatrice?” he asked.

She crossed herself and knelt, folding her hands. He knelt beside her.

“Tell me what you want.”

Looking at the rood screen, she said, “I want to be at peace.”

“I cannot give that to you.”

“I know. No man can.”

No man? Memories danced before his mind’s eye: Conyers with his hands on her, Conyers with his mouth on her. And Beatrice allowing it all.

“Did Conyers?” he asked, his voice harsh and flat in the silence.

She closed her eyes, her mouth flattening, and then said in a weary voice, “Sir George Conyers wanted nothing more than an hour or two of pleasure.”

“And you gave it to him.” He did not want to talk about Conyers, but he could not stop prodding her. What ailed him?

She shook her head and opened her eyes, staring up at the rood screen once more. “I do not think so.”

“Are you saying I was mistaken in what I saw?”

“What did you see?”

“I saw him touch you where no man but your husband should.” The muscles in his arms and shoulders tightened, and behind his anger was pain, so fierce it did not seem a memory but agony renewed.

She murmured something, her voice too low to be heard, then said, “You are not mistaken in what you saw.”

“You speak in riddles, Beatrice. You deny you gave him pleasure yet you admit you lay with him.”

“I admit nothing.”

“Did you lie with him? Was I mistaken?” The echoes of his cry clanged against the walls of the chapel, his fury escaping into the open at last.

She turned to face him, her eyes wary. He had a brief, bitter memory of her as a girl, as easy to read as a primer. Now he could no more decipher her expressions than he could translate Greek.

“It does not matter whether I lay with him or not. I will be faithful to you. I would promise it if you asked it of me, but a promise does not matter. I will never betray you because I refuse to risk my immortal soul to give any man living a moment’s ease.”

She looked away and stood. “Let us talk no more, Sebastian. I am weary and say what I ought not. If you will excuse me, I shall retire now.” She walked toward the door.

His anger died as if it could not survive her absence. He scrambled to his feet and followed her. “Do not go, Beatrice.”

She turned to face him. “Why not? We only brangle whenever we meet. Perhaps, given time, we shall be able to live together without quarrel. But that time has not come.”

He held out his hand, no longer clenched in a fist. “I do not want us to part like this.”

She sighed. “Nor I, but I do not see how else we may part.”

He moved closer to her, his hand still outstretched. “If I say I believe you…”

“Do not lie for so small a reason, Sebastian. It does not matter enough.”

His hand dropped; the two feet that separated them might have been twenty. “You are changed.”

Her chin went up. “Perhaps I was never who you thought I was. Perhaps what you see now is the truth.”

“Is it?”

Her mouth curled in a bitter smile. “You cannot leave anything alone. I cannot answer that question, I cannot allay your fears. I can offer you no comfort. This is what we suffer for our sins.” She turned away from him and crossed the distance to the door. Opening it, she turned to face him. “Good night and God be with you.” She disappeared, shutting the door behind her.

Without her, the chapel walls crowded around him, the air chilly and damp. The light on the altar flickered and danced, spilling shadows and golden light against the dark stone walls. Sebastian returned to the altar and knelt, casting about in his empty mind for a prayer, any prayer.

If he could, he would release Beatrice from this marriage. Not because he wished to marry any woman but her, but because she was right when she said they did nothing but brangle when they met. He did not want a turbulent marriage. Like Beatrice, he wanted peace, but when he was with her he could not find it for himself nor would he leave her be to discover it for herself.

Yet however much he wished otherwise, he could not be free, nor could Beatrice. They were bound to one another, tied before God. Some men might, for expedience, discard their wives like outworn shoes, discovering a convenient precontract or fortuitously remembered consanguinity. Unlike them, Sebastian would not dishonor himself, even to undo this marriage. Whether he wished for it or not, in a way he would never have chosen or imagined, he must marry the woman he had loved since childhood.

God help them both.

B eatrice closed the chapel door and leaned against its panels, waiting for her heart to still its riotous hammering. The encounter with Sebastian ought to have alarmed her, proving as it had that she would not find the peace she sought as Sebastian’s wife, but instead of dismay, there was exhilaration. Against all sense and wisdom, the same rushing excitement that had surged through her when she had faced down Sebastian’s stare drove her heart now. Why was that so? What ailed her that she did not fear to meet or to defy him?

She straightened. She could not linger here, outside the chapel, while she puzzled it out. She hurried through the dark house to her bedchamber. After the waiting maidservant had helped her out of her clothes and into her night rail, she dismissed the girl, unwilling to have company while her thoughts churned and bubbled as if her head were a cauldron. Alone, she paced the room, too restless to be still.

Something had changed this night. Before Sebastian disturbed her she had been praying, mere hours after telling Ceci she no longer could. How had that happened? What had opened the stops in her soul?

Growing up at Wednesfield, she had often imagined that in early spring she could feel the earth quicken to life long before the green shoots thrust into sight, as if the sap moving once more in the trees moved through her, as well. That tingling awareness flooded her now, the sensation of sleeping things stirring awake. Somehow that feeling had to do with Sebastian and this garboil she found herself in.

She shook her head. Fear stirred, murmuring, If you trust this feeling it will be the worse for you. Fear? Or plain sense? She had thought she could trust Thomas and he had proven her wrong. So, for that matter, had Sebastian and George Conyers. No, better she should keep her counsel and bend herself to being a perfectly submissive, perfectly obedient wife. Tonight was the last time she would come so close to quarreling with Sebastian.

The door creaked open. Beatrice turned her head in time to see Ceci, holding her lute, slip into the room and check on the threshold as she saw that Beatrice was alone.

“Where is Mary? Edith?” Ceci asked.

“Mary was not here. I dismissed Edith.”

Ceci’s eyes narrowed briefly, but all she said was, “Will you attend me then?”

“Gladly.”

They did not speak while Beatrice helped Ceci as the maid had helped her, but she was aware of her sister watching her, those dark eyes no doubt seeing more than Ceci let show. Beatrice knew she was no fool, but when she compared her wit to her sister’s cleverness, she felt like one.

While Ceci braided her hair and put on her nightcap, Beatrice sat down. She ought to plait her own hair, but she did not want to. Not yet.

Ceci tied the strings of her cap. “Are you going to go to bed like that? Your hair will be a tangle in the morning.”

“I cannot seem to find the will,” Beatrice confessed. “Today is a day I should want to leave behind, but I fear tomorrow will be worse.”

“Let me.”

Beatrice nodded and drew the stool away from the wall. Ceci picked up the comb from atop the bed where she had put it and went to stand behind Beatrice. Her fingers threaded through Beatrice’s hair, their touch light. Pleasure, or the anticipation of pleasure, washed over Beatrice. She had always loved it when Ceci or Mistress Emma combed her hair; both had the kind of touch that soothed.

A waving strand of hair drifted over her shoulder, glittering gold in the candlelight as it moved into her line of sight. Ceci’s hand, lute-string calluses on the pads of the fingertips, reached forward and drew the strand back.

“I always wished I had hair like yours,” Ceci said, and drew the comb through Beatrice’s hair from hairline to the ends brushing the small of Beatrice’s back.

The touch of the comb loosened every remaining knot of tension in Beatrice’s body. It took her a moment to form the words to reply.

“Because it is fair?”

“And curly.”

“But you have hair like satin!” True, Ceci was dark, but her hair was heavy and glossy, cool and silky to the touch. “I always wanted hair like yours.”

Ceci chuckled. “You cannot have wanted to be a sparrow like me.”

“Papa has dark hair.”

“Ah.”

As Ceci had always been closer to their mother, so had Beatrice been the light of their father’s eyes. Beatrice sighed, closing her eyes. Those days seemed now to have been lived by another woman.

The comb passed through her hair and passed again in a slow, drowsy rhythm. Into the silence Beatrice said, “I spoke to Sebastian.”

The comb stroking her scalp paused. “When?”

Beatrice opened her eyes. “An hour ago, perhaps. After I left the solar.”

The comb resumed its long caress. “What did you say to him?”

No words came back to her, only the memory of Sebastian’s eyes, blue as flame as they stared into her own. He had been angry at one point, angry enough to make her flinch to see it, but she had not feared him. However wise fearing him might be, she could not seem to do it.

“Beatrice, what did you say to him?”

“I cannot remember.” Her mind emptied of everything but brilliant blue eyes.

“What did he say to you?”

“He talked about Sir George.” Talked? He had shouted at her. And still she had not feared him.

“And how did you reply?” Ceci’s steady combing never faltered, her voice as calm as if they discussed the weather.

“I told him I will not sin for any man’s pleasure.” Or displeasure. Within days of Thomas’s death, Sir George Conyers had sent her a note, entreating her to meet him. She had sent that note, and the others that followed, back to him, unanswered. She was done with him and everything he had meant in her life.