A Love for All Time (76 page)

Beginning with the first morning he had attempted to resume their physical relationship as a means of proving to her his love and devotion. She had not denied him, and yet it was painfully obvious that she was not enjoying what had once been to her a joy. Finally he had found the courage to ask her to speak honestly to him on it for though he would not say it to her, making love to her had become very much like making love to a corpse.

“I love you,” she said. “I never stopped loving you even though I gave up hope of ever seeing you, of being with you again. Do you understand me, Conn? I gave up hope for there was no hope. My friend, Safiye, was brought to the Yeni Serai when she was twelve years old. She was the daughter of the Venetian governor on Crete, but for women brought to the sultan there is no hope. Though my heart was, is yours, I made my peace with my situation, my
fate
as the Turks would call it. I made my peace, and I sought to make another life for myself with Javid Khan.

“He, too, was alone, and in pain for his wicked brother had murdered his two wives and his children. Like me, everything he had was gone. I have told you that he was a good man, and when we found ourselves thrown together by fate, we made peace with that fate, and we comforted each other. Between us it was good as it was between you and me.

“Esther Kira has told you what happened when Javid Khan was murdered. I cannot say that Murad is a bad man, but he is a lustful one. I cannot speak of what happened between us yet. Perhaps I shall never speak of it to you. I do not know, but I do know that whatever spark there is within my soul that caused me to respond with pleasure and with joy to you and to Javid Khan, that spark is now dormant, if indeed it even still exists.

“We have suffered in this past year, Conn. I would not cause ye further suffering, but if ye continue to seek my bed that is exactly what I shall do. Perhaps once I am home again this will change. I need the green hills of Worcestershire, Conn. I need
Pearroc Royal
! These, I believe, will revive my soul. Can ye understand that? Can ye still love me?”

“Ye’ve not lost yer bluntness in our time apart,” he said quietly.

“I am what I am, my lord, and there was a time when ye loved me for it,” came her quick answer.

“I still love ye for it,” he said smiling into her eyes, and for a brief moment she felt his warmth. He drew her into his embrace. “I don’t just want half of ye back, Aidan. I want all of ye back, and so I shall wait until ye feel that ye can give me that part of yerself that is now lacking.”

She laid her copper-colored head against his velvet-clad chest, and sighed softly, deeply. “Once,” she said to him, “ye told me that ours was a love for all time. I believed then that I understood what that meant, but I think I am only just beginning to understand yer words, my lord husband. Understand them, and be grateful that even if I did not have full comprehension of those words, ye for all yer youth, did.”

His chin touched the top of her head, and he stroked her hair with one hand. “We are only just beginning, Aidan, my love,” he promised her. “Trust me as ye have always trusted me, and we will both come safely through this for the worst is over, sweetheart, and we have each other back again.”

T
hey had landed in London, and Aidan and Conn had transferred from
Bon Adventure
to the large, comfortable Greenwood barge which was to take them up the Thames to Oxford. It was not the fastest way to travel, but it was the most comfortable. Aidan remembered the last time they had come this way, a far more innocent time of life for them both. The day of their arrival in England was August 19, and it was Aidan’s twenty-fifth birthday, the first birthday she had ever spent with Conn.

There had been no time, of course, for him to purchase her a gift, but the barge was filled with flowers as was the room in the inn where they spent their first night home. At Oxford their large traveling coach was awaiting them, and Aidan faced the first of her retainers, but to her surprise Martin, the coachman, and his assistant, Tom, as well as the grooms merely welcomed her, she later noted to Conn, as if they had simply been on a visit to some mundane place.

“That is precisely what they do think,” he informed her. “They believe that upon my release from the Tower we were sent to Skye’s home in France, Belle Fleur, to cool our heels. It is the sort of thing that Bess would do.”

“Then no one knows where I have really been?” There was just the faintest note of hope in her voice.

“Mag and Cluny, of course. My sister Skye and her husband, Adam, too.”

Aidan nodded. She liked her sister-in-law, and she somehow thought that Skye would not condemn her for what had happened. Now if she could but make peace with herself, but that was a far harder task than any she had ever had before. She blamed herself for none of what had happened for Aidan was no fool, but what she could not erase from her memory was what she had gone through at the hands of Murad. It haunted her both waking and sleeping.

The countryside was lushly heavy with the late summer, and the fields were already being harvested of some of their crops. It had been a dry August, and the roads were dusty, but even so Aidan leaned from the coach windows as the landscape with each passing mile became more and more familiar. At last
Pearroc Royal
came into her view, and she wept unashamedly with joy for she had never thought to see her home again.

As they turned into the drive of the great estate Conn pulled his wife into the coach, and began wiping her cheeks with a damp handkerchief for her tears had mixed with the dust from the road, and her face was dirty. “Ye don’t want to look like an urchin, sweeting,” he said. “One of the grooms rode ahead this morning, and the whole staff will be awaiting us.”

And they were. Beal and his wife, Erwina, Leoma, Rankin, Haig, Young Beal the steward, and his brother Harry the gamekeeper, and all their helpers right down to the potboy and the knife sharpener. Lined up in the order of their importance, and all smiling broadly as their master and their mistress descended their coach, they greeted them for the first time in well over a year. Aidan’s eyes searched the crowd, and she found at last whom she sought. Mag, clinging to Cluny, and suddenly looking older than Aidan could ever remember her looking.

“Mag!” Aidan, smiling, and patting out at her retainers, moved through them to enfold her tiring woman into her arms. “Dearest Mag!”

“Thank God, my baby!” wept Mag. “Thank God yer safely home!”

“Now, Mag,” said Aidan patiently, and she hugged her tiring woman, “France was not that far, and I promise ye that I shall not go away again!”

Mag was not so old that she did not still have her sharp wits about her, and so she hugged Aidan back, and said no more while about them the rest of the household staff smiled benignly upon their lord and their lady, happy to have them back. An estate without its master and mistress was never a whole thing.

“Lord and Lady de Marisco are awaiting ye in the house,” Beal informed them when he was finally able to put in a word amid all the greetings.

Skye took one look at Aidan, and knew that there was something very wrong, but what it was would take time to ferret out. She had been in the Mid-East twice in her lifetime; the first experience being a wonderful one, the second a nightmare. She, however, had been more experienced than Aidan in matters of the flesh. She could see that Aidan was tired, and so after warmly greeting her sister-in-law, and welcoming her home, she and Adam departed.

As much as Aidan loved Skye she was relieved to see her go. She wanted to be alone, and she didn’t want to have to make idle chatter. Waving her in-laws off she walked round the house to the gardens behind it, and slowly made her way along dearly familiar paths among the roses, the asters, the dainty sweet william, the many-colored gillyflowers, the baby’s breath, and the Michaelmas daisies now in bloom. There were large fat yellow-and-black bumblebees drifting lazily with comfortable buzzings amidst the fragrant blossoms, and it was for a brief time as if she had never been away.

Returning to the house she walked through each room, reaching out to touch each piece of furniture, to finger the hangings, to rub her fingers over the well-remembered carvings on the chair backs. She breathed deeply the particular smell of the house; a mixture of old wood, and herbs, of Leoma’s cooking, and of the flowers that filled the rooms.
Home!
She was really home!

Conn let her wander unrestrained. He knew better than most how dear
Pearroc Royal
was to his wife.
His wife.
His whole life he had roamed restlessly, never knowing exactly what it was he sought until Elizabeth Tudor had married him to Aidan. He was not a man for power. Wealth he had more than enough of, and his handsome face and quick wit had won him social acceptance with the queen and the court. Still it had not been enough. Nothing had until he had married Aidan, and discovered to his surprise that he was basically a simple man, a faithful man. With some delightfully beautiful fluff of a kitten he might not ever have discovered this surprising side of his nature; but Aidan with her sharp mind seemed to bring out the best in him. He was so very relieved to have her back, and whatever problems she had to overcome he would be there to help her for he loved her, and it was really as uncomplicated as that.

Those first few weeks passed easily enough, and Aidan seemed to be regaining her equilibrium. As the reality of her situation began to finally sink in he could see her old confidence beginning to renew itself. Although she could still not bring herself to give him her body, she was becoming more and more affectionate both in public and in private with him, and he hoped that in time all would be well between them again. Then one day all his hopes shattered when he arrived home from overseeing the last of the harvest to discover that Aidan had locked herself in their bedchamber, and refused to come out.

“She won’t talk to me, my lord!” Mag sobbed.

“How long has she been in there?” he demanded of the near-hysterical tiring woman.

“She’s not come out at all today, my lord. When I came to bring her her breakfast the door was bolted, and she would not let me come in to her. Oh, what can be the matter?”

Ordering his servants to remain below Conn ascended the stairs and traversed the long hall to their bedchamber. Stopping outside the door he listened, but he could hear nothing. “Aidan?” he called to her. “Aidan, my love, what is it?” A deep silence greeted him. “Aidan, if ye do not answer me I shall have to break down the door to gain entry to the room. Ye have already frightened the servants half out of their wits for they cannot remember ever seeing ye this way. Do ye really want me to destroy a perfectly good door and lock as well as injure myself which I shall surely do?”

For a moment he thought she would not answer that plea either, but then her voice came through the door. “I want to talk to Skye.”

“Very well, I shall send for her, but in the meantime will ye open the door to me?”

“No. Only to Skye.”

“Very well, I shall ride to
Queen’s Malvern
myself, Aidan, and fetch my sister back.” Knowing she would say no more he turned, and hurried down the staircase to the Great Hall where the servants were clustered nervously. “There is naught to fear,” he assured them. “Go back to yer tasks. I am riding over to fetch my sister for yer lady has requested to speak with her. It is undoubtedly some female whim that has set my wife into a sulk,” and then chuckling false mirth he left the hall, leaving behind him a staff that was as much confused by his explanation as they were their lady’s actions for Aidan was far too practical a woman to succumb to a fit of the sulks. At least she never had before.

Conn rode across the fields to his sister’s house, and both Skye and Adam rode back with him. Adam came in reply to a look cast him by his wife for he had long since learned to read such looks. It was clear that Skye wanted him along if for no other reason than to keep Conn calm.

“She won’t tell ye what’s wrong?” Skye asked as they rode along. “There was no indication of anything amiss these past few days?”

“Nothing,” replied Conn. “She’s not felt well, but we both thought’twas nothing but an early autumn flux. Basically she’s a strong woman, but ’tis been a hard year for her.”

They arrived back at
Pearroc Royal,
and leaving her husband and her brother in the Great Hall, Skye hurried up the staircase to Conn and Aidan’s bedchamber. Knocking upon the door she called, “Aidan, ’tis Skye. Let me in.”

“Yer alone?”

“Aye.”

There was the sound of a key turning in the iron lock, and then Aidan swung the door wide. “Come in,” she said ushering her sister-in-law into the chamber, and then she closed and locked the door behind Skye before turning to face her.

Looking at Aidan Skye was somewhat taken aback. She was wearing the simple silk nightrail she had obviously slept in, and her lovely copper-colored hair was loose and lank. There were deep purple shadows beneath her eyes which held a haunted look. She didn’t even wait for Skye to question her, but rather looking directly at the beautiful woman she said in a dull, flat tone, “I am with child.”