The White Lord of Wellesbourne (23 page)

“And you!” she screeched at Mark.
“You have been married to your lovely girl for two years. Where are the
children, Mark? I vow that if you do not produce a child within the next year,
I shall leave you out of my will completely. Do you hear me?”

Mark had less humor about his
aunt’s gripes that Matthew did. Caroline flushed furiously as Livia
gregariously embraced her. Alixandrea leaned in to Matthew.

“She is going to crush Caroline,”
she whispered urgently. “Save her!”

Matthew leaned down. “I am afraid
that no one can save her now. We shall just have to hope for the best.”

Alixandrea wiggled her eyebrows,
struggling not to laugh. Livia, as well meaning as she might have been, was
both appalling and hilarious. Mark did not fight to take Caroline back as
Matthew had, so Livia kept her arms around Caroline as she led her into the
lavish hall where all manner of food await. The furniture in the room was the
finest that money could buy; the seats of the sumptuous chairs were stuffed
with feathers and the tables were costly and matching. As soon as Alixandrea entered
the hall, she came to a sharp halt.

“What is wrong?” Matthew asked
her.

She had a queer expression on her
face.  Her hands splayed as if feeling for something in the air.  “No dogs,”
she hissed. “There are no dogs pawing at me. What shall I do?”

Matthew grinned broadly.
“Disoriented?”

“Horribly.”

He was enjoying a laugh with his
wife, removing her cloak and laying it upon the nearest chair. Their revelry
was interrupted, however, when he heard his brother’s voice beside him.

“Matt,” Mark said quietly. “Look
at father.”

Matthew’s gaze moved to the
massive carved buffet sideboard that lined the south side of the hall. Adam, so
quiet for the past two days, stood with a wine bottle in one hand and a goblet
in the other. While they watched, he poured and drank the entire contents,
twice.  Mark looked at Matthew, who looked disgusted and resigned. He took a
step in his father’s direction, but Alixandrea stopped him.

“No,” she said quietly. “Allow
me.”

Matthew shook his head. “Nay,
love. I shall deal with him.”

She put her hand on his arm.
“Please do not take offense to what I am about to say, but you have dealt with
this for many years with little result. Perhaps you can let me try. Perhaps a
woman will have a better touch with his grief.”

Her words were reasonable, softly
spoken. Matthew glanced at Mark, who simply shrugged his shoulders. Matthew did
not think it was such a good idea, either. However, against his better
judgment, he agreed.

“Very well,” he said quietly.
“Try if you must.”

She gave him a brief smile and
was gone, moving across the fine carpets and wood flooring with grace and
elegance. Matthew watched her cross the room, simply because she was so
entrancing. She moved like an angel in her blue surcoat and luscious bronze
hair.  Every minute of every day that passed and he came to know her better,
the more captivated he was by her.

While he and Mark watched,
Alixandrea approached Adam and said a few words to him. Adam seemed to look at
her with a blank expression, but she said a few more words, smiled, and gently
pried the bottle out of his hand. Then she took the cup, setting both down on
the table. 

A few more words were exchanged
between the two, though the brothers could not hear what was being said. 
Finally, Alixandrea put her hand in the crook of Adam’s elbow and, with a large
smile, led him away from the table. The last Matthew and Mark saw of Adam, he
was actually smiling as he allowed Alixandrea to lead him into the next room. 
They were talking; or, at least, Alixandrea was talking and Adam spoke up now
and again. And then they were gone.

“Where are they going?” Mark
asked.

Matthew shrugged; frankly, he was
still surprised that his father gave up the alcohol without a fight. “I do not
know.”

“Should we follow?”

“Nay.” Matthew shook his head,
but from expression it was apparent that he was unconvinced. “They will not go
far.”

Unconvinced, Mark nonetheless
lost himself in the food that Livia had presented. The Wellesbourne brothers
could eat more than the population of a small village, and Mark had been known
to put away ghastly amounts. Only Matthew wasn’t eating at the moment, standing
by with his ale in his hand, his gaze lingering on the door that his father and
wife had just left through. But that only lasted a few minutes before his curiosity
got the better of him and he was compelled to follow.

The room they had disappeared
into was another receiving room, as lavishly furnished as the one he had just
left.  There was a door off to his right, half-open, and he assumed it was the
path to follow. Matthew found himself wandering the halls of Rosehill until he
came across a door leading to the gardens outside. He almost walked past it
until he heard voices coming from the other side. Opening the door, he walked
straight into Alixandrea and Adam, seated on a wide covered porch, watching the
heavy rain fall.

Alixandrea smiled up at him.
“Greetings, husband,” she said. “Come and join us.”

Matthew’s gaze moved between his
wife and his father. Adam looked amazingly composed while Alixandrea just
looked cold. Their breath hung heavy in the air as the inclement weather
drizzled around them.

“What are you two doing out
here?” he asked. “Father, ‘tis cold out here for her. She needs her cloak.”

“Then go and get it,” Adam told
him.  “Be a good husband as I entertain your wife.”

It sounded suspiciously like a
command.  Matthew lifted a disapproving eyebrow but said nothing. He went back
to retrieve Alixandrea’s cloak and when he returned, it was to the sounds of
her sweet voice filling the misting air.  When Matthew heard the song, he
froze.

I dreamt that you loved me still

And loved me forever and a day.

From beyond the mellow sea

I felt your spirit calling to me

And I dreamt that you loved me
still.

It was a beautiful song, made
more beautiful by her sweet, lilting voice.  Matthew looked to his father for
his reaction, noting that he seemed rather distant. He had frankly expected an
explosion given the fact that the song Alixandrea had just sung contained yet
more personal memories. A glance at his wife showed her with a smile on her
face, looking straight at Adam.  She reached out and put her hand on the old
man’s arm.

“Is that how she sang it?” she
asked. “’Tis such a lovely song. Did she sing it often?”

Adam nodded. “I could hear her
singing it about the keep. She used to sing it to the boys when they were
babies.”

“Ah,” she said knowingly. “A
perfect song for babies, as it is soft and soothing. But it is a beautiful song
for lovers. The words have such meaning.”

Adam seemed to have difficulty
knowing what to feel, or how to react.  He started to get up. “I would like
something to drink,” he muttered.

But Alixandrea kept her hand on
him, keeping him in his chair. “You do not need drink, my lord,” she said
gently but firmly. “Stay with me. We shall remember your wife fondly so that
whenever you think of her, you will do it with joy. She
was
a joy, my
lord, as I said earlier. She was not something to be associated with endless
pain.”

Adam looked at her, unsure how to
respond. It had become such a habit for him to correlate his wife with agony
that he could hardly remember any other way.  Alixandrea’s concept of
remembering the joy and not the pain was almost incomprehensible.  It almost
made him angry.

“When she was alive, she was my
joy,” he said. “But her death did not bring me joy.  You may not deny me my
grief. ‘Tis my right.”

Matthew listened carefully to the
exchange. He had indulged in the very same discussion, too many times to count.
His answer was to become angry and try to verbally beat some sense into his
father. But that had never worked. Perhaps he was too frustrated to be
effective any more.

But Alixandrea was new to all of
this; she was of a new mind, new blood, something that Adam might respond to.
Matthew had told her that he thought she was of good character. The next few
moments might determine just how good of character she was.

Alixandrea could see Matthew from
the corner of her eye, suspecting that she knew his thoughts. It wasn’t that
she wanted to prove anything to him, for she did not; but she did want to help
Adam. He seemed very much in need of it.

“May I ask you a question, my
lord?” she asked.

Adam nodded, half-heartedly,
apparently not too interested in any question she might have. But she delved
on. “What was your wife like?”

“Can you not see that it pains me
to speak of her?”

“Please. Tell me.”

Adam scratched at the sides of
his chair; not having a cup in his hand gave him nothing to do, nothing to hold
on to.  “She was full of all of the goodness in Heaven,” he said, bordering on
agitation. “She was sweet and kind.”

“Did she have spirit?”

“Of course.”

“Did she give you her opinion or
tell you when you were wrong?”

“That she did.”

“Then she was a woman who knew
her mind.”

“Aye, very much.”

Alixandrea leaned towards him.
“Did you respect her for her thoughts?”

He looked at her, mildly
outraged. “Of course I did. Audrey was a brilliant woman with a great mind. Her
guidance was unparalleled.”

On his arm, Alixandrea’s hand
tightened. “Then tell me this, and you must be completely honest. What would
she say to you if she saw that you were grieving like this for her twelve years
after her death? Would it please her? Would she wish it of you?”

He looked at her as if she had
lost her mind. “What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean.
What do you think Lady Audrey would say if she knew you had made attempts on
your own life out of grief?” When Adam refused to answer, she did it for him.
“If she is the kind of woman you say she is, then she would be furious with
you. Absolutely furious. Don’t you think?”

Still, Adam refused to answer. He
was looking at his lap, the ground, anything but Alixandrea’s piercing bronze
eyes.  She shook him gently. “Look at the situation from another point of view.
What if it had been you who had perished? Would you want Audrey to spend the
past twelve years destroying her life over because of her grief? Would you want
her to commit suicide because of it? Of course you would not. Why would you
think that she would be pleased by the inordinate grief you have shown over her
passing? I have a feeling she would go fisticuffs over it.”

Adam did not know what to say. He
was speechless, confused. He stood up sharply, yanking his arm out from under
her hand.  He stood on the edge of the porch roof, watching the rain fall. 
Alixandrea stood up and went to him.

“Please do not think me harsh,”
she said quietly. “’Tis only that I know that if I were to die, I should not
want my husband to waste his life grieving. That would only hurt my memory,
clouding it with agony and pushing aside all of the happiness we had together.
I would want him to live and love again. To think that perhaps I could have
taught him that during my life would have made it all worthwhile.”

Adam did look at her, then.
“Taught him what?”

She smiled, a beautifully soft
and knowing gesture. “That life is a gift to share with others, for too quickly
it is gone.”

Adam continued to stare at her,
his dark eyes glittering with unchecked emotion.  After a moment, he turned and
disappeared into the house. Alixandrea watched him go, her gaze falling on
Matthew when Adam left her sight. Matthew was still holding her cloak; he held
it out to her when their eyes met.  She smiled weakly.

“I do not know if I did any good
at all, but I tried,” she turned so that he could put her cloak around her
shoulders. “Sometimes it takes a stranger to help where family cannot.”

He leaned down, putting his lips
against her ear. “You
are
family.”

His hot breath made chills race
down her spine. “Only in the marital sense. He does not truly know me yet.”

“He will.”

His arms went around her,
creating a safe, warm envelope against the rain and chill weather. So easily,
they were coming to respond to one another, his arms around her and her
contentment in his touch.  They stood a moment, watching the water fall across
the great green expanse of the garden. It looked like a sea of glittering
emeralds.  Alixandrea snuggled back against him, feeling his hard armor against
her but comforted just the same.

“So your aunt expects babies
right away, does she?”

Matthew laughed softly in her
ear. “I was hoping you had forgotten about that.”