Tidelands Read online

  He took her hand without saying anything and drew her into the front room of the nearby inn. She hesitated at the door.

  “I can’t come in here,” she said, shocked. “What if someone saw me?”

  “It’s not a tavern,” he corrected her. “It’s an inn. Lady travelers can dine here and drink. It’s perfectly—”

  “Nobody would take me for an honest woman, seeing me in here with you.”

  “Not at all! Look . . .” A family party climbed down from their traveling coach and walked through the hall to their private dining room, without glancing at her. “My own mother dines at inns,” he told her. “It’s perfectly all right.”

  “I’ve never set foot in such a place,” she resisted him.

  He realized that a poor woman from the country would never have seen the inside of a coaching inn, would not understand the distinction between a grubby village alehouse and the respectable coaching inn of a small town like Chichester. He realized that he must learn to be patient with her—and introduce her slowly to his world. “Alinor, please, we have to go somewhere that we can talk. Come. I promise you that nobody will see you, and it is quite all right if they do. You have to trust me. I will judge for you now, and in the future.”

  He took her by the hand and led her to where he had reserved a table in the corner of the dining room, with a jug of mulled ale for both of them and a plate of bread and meats.

  She sat nervously on the edge of the chair that he drew out for her and peered around her. He repressed his irritation that this Alinor was not the fey stranger that he had met in the churchyard, nor the free countrywoman who had cooked fish on sticks. Here, she was a poor woman afraid of the judgment of others.

  “Has Robert started work? Were you happy with his place?” He realized he was speaking loudly as if to someone hard of hearing, or simple.

  She took the cup of warm ale and wrapped her cold hands around it. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I think he’ll do very well there. They’ve a good trade and the mistress brews her own . . .” She trailed away as she saw the darkness in his face and realized that he had no real interest in Rob’s work. “You don’t want to know about that.”

  “We have to decide what we are going to do.”

  She nodded, put down her cup, and folded her hands in her lap. She had not taken so much as a sip, and he thought his indifference about Rob had hurt her, and now she was putting on serenity as if she were drawing a cape around her shoulders.

  “You are determined not to be worried?”

  “Of course I’m worried.” She found a faint smile. “I’ve been thinking of you day and night. If I could’ve sent you a message, I would’ve done. I’ve been sleepless wondering what you’d think. I didn’t mean to spring this on you, but what else could I do? I’ve been waiting and hoping that you’d come back.”

  “My love, beloved . . .” Now that he was faced with her luminous beauty, shining against her poor clothes, as out of place here as in the tidelands, he lost the words that he had assembled overnight, in the sleepless hours when he had prayed for guidance, knowing that his own prayers were a sin. “I can imagine my future with you; but not with a child. It can’t be.”

  He saw her slowly inhale the meaning of his words. For a moment she made no answer. Her dark gray gaze went down to her worn shoes and back to his face. “No child? Then what would you have me do?”

  He felt strangely awkward. “Is it not possible for you to take something that would make it disappear?”

  “No,” she said simply. “There is nothing in the world that can make a baby disappear.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know I won’t pretend with words.”

  He took up his cup of ale and took a sip of the hot sweetness to hide his rising temper. “I don’t mean to pretend with words. It’s just—”

  “It’s a terrible thing to speak of. Worse to do,” she said, as if agreeing with him.

  “But it’s not too late to do something?”

  Gravely, she shook her head. “It’s never too late to do something.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Some women smother the baby as it’s born and say it was a stillbirth. Is that what you want me to do?”

  “No!” He had raised his voice, and he looked around, embarrassed. Nobody had noticed them. “But would you do something now? For us? For our life together?”

  “If I did it, we would have a life together?”

  He could not believe that he had won so quickly. “I swear it. I will go with you now into the cathedral and swear it.”

  “You want it dead.”

  He looked at her set face. “Only so that I can be with you.”

  She drew a shuddering breath, and then slowly she shook her head as if her pale lips could not speak. “That is a terrible bargain. No. No. I could not.”

  “Because you think it is a sin? I can explain—”

  “No,” she interrupted him. “Because I could not bear it. Whether it’s a sin against God or not. Whatever you could say. It would be . . .” she sought for the word “. . . it would be an offense to me.” She shot him a swift glance. “It would be a deep offense to me, against myself.”

  “It doesn’t matter—”

  “It matters to me. I matter: in this, I matter.”

  “We will have other children.”

  “We would not,” she contradicted him. “No child would come to my womb if I had poisoned his brother.”

  He tried to laugh. “This is superstition and nonsense! This is folly!”

  His barking laughter died away when she did not reply, and they sat in silence, waiting for the other to speak.

  Then, he used the worst threat against her that he could do: “You know what you’re saying? You will not come to me, and be my love and be my wife? You chose this—this nothing—over me? Over the life we would live, and what we could do for Rob and for Alys? You will let them be spoken of as children of a missing father, or worse. When they could be stepchildren to a baronet? You favor this nothing over them? As well as over me?”

  He thought she would faint, she had gone so white, but he thought he must be cruel to her, to save them both.

  He underestimated her. When she spoke, her voice was steady, she was far from fainting: “Yes, if I have to.”

  They were both silent at the enormity of what she had said. He thought that not even when the king had died had he felt this disbelieving misery. “Alinor, I cannot take a child that goes by your husband’s name into my honorable home. Even if I wanted to do so. I could not own you as my wife.”

  She nodded. He saw her reach for the cup of ale and realized that she was blinded with tears, but she kept her head down so he could not see. Her grief only made him harder.

  “I will regain my home, and go and live there without you, and I will never see you again. You condemn me to being alone, where I had thought we would be happy together. Where you should be my wife.”

  Her hand found the cup and she held it. Even her scarred fingers were white.

  “I have loved you more than anything in the world and I will spend the rest of my life without you,” he said.

  Speechlessly, she nodded.

  “And I will marry someone so that my name continues, so that I have a son. But I will never love her as I have loved you, and I will spend the rest of my life missing you.”

  Her hand was shaking so hard that the warm ale spilled onto the skirt of her gown.

  “Is this your wish?” he asked incredulously. “Is this what you want for me? This misery?”

  The maid of the inn came up to them. “Everything all right here?” she asked very loudly, breaking into the spell he was weaving around her. “Want another jug of ale?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” James said, waving her away.

  “Tell me that you will marry me,” he whispered. “Tell me that you love me as I love you—more than anything else in the world.”

  Finally, Alinor looked up