Remembrance Read online

  “Sometimes we can’t know all there is to know about a person,” Talis said, and even to himself he sounded pompous. He didn’t want to keep a secret from Callie. It was very hard not to tell her how, every day, he had been begging to be allowed to marry her. Keeping this vow was the most difficult of all the promises he’d made to Alida.

  Except for vowing to leave Callie a virgin. That was the worst. He wanted her so much that he could hardly bear to touch her hand. If she got too near him he had to get away from her as fast as possible.

  One day Hugh had seen Talis as he watched Callie walk across a courtyard, her hips swaying. Afterward, Talis had spent three hours in a blind frenzy of activity. As Talis was dripping sweat, drinking from a gourd, and trying to get the image of Callie out of his mind, Hugh stepped beside him and said, “Your honor is battling against the lips and thighs and breasts of Callie. Do you want to win?” It had been all Talis could do to keep from collapsing into tears at Hugh’s understanding—and at the provocative image of Callie’s lips and thighs and breasts.

  Now, here she was standing in the midst of all these men and complaining that he was not constant in his love for her. She was the one who was not constant. If she loved him, she should believe in him. He was with the other women because he had to be. Lady Alida—he could not call her his mother even in his mind; Meg was his mother—said he had to be trained as a knight before he could marry Callie, the daughter of a man who was related to the queen. Part of his training was learning to dance and sing and play the lute and all the other things that took so much time and involved so many obsequious women.

  That Callie did not understand these things without being told angered him. He had told her he loved her; what else could he do?

  “I must leave you now,” he said abruptly. She was breaking his heart and she did not even know it.

  Turning on his heel, he walked away from her, and did not look back even when she threw a clod of dirt and hit him in the back with it. Nor did he turn back when the laughter of the men standing near her rang out over his head.

  For a long time, Dorothy lay beside Callie, listening to her crying. Or rather, felt her crying, for Callie was utterly silent in her weeping, poor little Kipp sitting beside her, twitching its head as it looked at Callie, sometimes extending tiny pink fingers to touch her tears. In truth, Dorothy thought Callie’s crying was almost eerie, these nightly tears that came from somewhere inside her and found their way out her eyes. Once, in a failed attempt at humor, Callie had said, “It is my heart melting and pouring down my face. If I cry enough, I will have no heart left, and when my heart is gone my tears will cease.”

  Tonight they were staying in the little house with Father Keris. They’d learned to say that he was ill and they needed to nurse him back to health so they would be allowed to stay there instead of going back to the house. To both Callie and Dorothy it seemed that with every day, the atmosphere of Hadley Hall became more oppressive. It was as though a storm was building and would soon burst with such fury that they would all be destroyed.

  So, whenever they could, Dorothy and Callie stayed with Father Keris, who slept through whatever they did or said.

  “I cannot take any more,” Dorothy said, sitting upright in the bed she and Callie shared, her fists pressed over her ears. “I am sick of both of you. Sick of you, do you hear?”

  “Who?” Callie asked, sitting up, rubbing her eyes, Kipp clinging to her waist. “I have no idea who you could mean.”

  “The devil you don’t!” she said, shocking Callie into awareness. “Now you listen to me, Callasandra, you are going to do something about putting both you and Talis out of your misery.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Callie said loftily. “Talis Hadley means nothing to me. Just because—”

  She broke off at a vulgarity from Dorothy. “Talis wants you so much he is becoming flesh and bone. He cannot eat for wanting you so much; his studies are suffering. Yesterday he fell off his horse when you walked past him.”

  “Did he? I did not notice. If he did fall, I am sure it had nothing to do with me. I—”

  Dorothy grabbed Callie by the shoulders and gave her a shake, ignoring Kipp’s squeal of protest. She wanted to tell Callie the truth, that Lady Alida was behind whatever was going on and only heaven knew what her motives were, but Dorothy had a keen sense of self-preservation. It was better to leave her mother’s name out of all this.

  “It is Talis’s sense of honor that keeps him from you and that is all. You should be proud of him, not angry with him.”

  “But I do not believe that. I do not believe Talis wants me. Why should you? Have you seen how beautiful Lady Frances is?”

  “And have you seen how selfish she is? You do not think she is half as beautiful as she thinks herself.”

  Callie gave Dorothy a look of disgust. “Yes, and we all know how much weight a man gives to a woman’s mind. Look you at Edith: plain face and a good mind but no husband.”

  “And me,” Dorothy said softly, saying what Callie could not. “I know, do not say it. I am a very nice person, but I am not beautiful enough to have a man fight my father’s stingy ways to win me.” She would not allow Callie to comment on this very true statement. “But you have a chance! You have what my sisters and I want so much.”

  “You mean Talis? Do you mean that I have Talis? How could I have him when all the others—”

  Dorothy repressed the urge to smack Callie for not seeing what was so plain. All Dorothy knew was that she wanted to get these two people together before her mother could do whatever it was she was planning. If it killed her, Dorothy wanted to see some happiness in this rich house. Too much gold and not enough love was her opinion.

  “Now listen to me,” Dorothy said, “and help me to form a plan. Do not tell me more of how Talis does not want you. Think of this as one of your stories and help me plan.”

  When Callie looked skeptical, Dorothy smiled. “You are right, this is probably beyond your storytelling abilities.”

  Callie’s expression changed. “What story do you need? I will tax my poor brain and see what I can manage to create.”

  “All right, now listen to my plan.”

  It was hours before Dorothy got to sleep and Callie didn’t sleep at all that night. In the morning both young women were smiling in conspiracy.

  37

  I do not know why you would want me to ride with you,” Talis was saying as he rode beside Callie into the woods that were John Hadley’s private hunting preserve. “You have so many other young men to escort you wherever you go. I do not know how you tolerate someone as lowly as me, you with a father who is an earl, who is the relative of the queen.”

  Talis himself wanted to stop the words that poured out of his mouth, but he couldn’t. Yesterday Callie had sent him a message saying she wanted to ride with him, and after his initial elation, he had begun to worry about being able to keep his vows to Alida if he were alone with Callie for very long. In the year since he had declared that he loved her—in a spectacular drama before the entire village, as he remembered it—he’d done his best never to be truly alone with her.

  She was wearing a gorgeous cape of blue wool, with a big hood edged in white fur. It was almost as though she were trying to make herself too beautiful for Talis to be able to resist. Today he did not even seem to mind the furry face of the monkey peeping at him from inside the folds of her cloak at her waist.

  “I am thinking of getting married,” Callie said, looking at him over her shoulder.

  For a moment, Talis couldn’t breathe, but then his spine stiffened and he put his head up. “Yes, that is a good idea. You are getting old and you should be married.”

  “I agree. I would like to have children. Tell me, do you think I would be a good mother?”

  How could his back have become stiffer? It seemed that even the muscles in his throat were tightening. “Yes, of course,” he said.

  “Good,” she answered, smiling. “Today