style="font-size:15px;"> Nicholas coughed and the laughter disappeared, back into the courtyard and the night.
‘You don’t have to go,’ he said then. ‘You could...’
‘I could what?’ She glanced down at her leg, invisible beneath her skirt. Here was the choice her mother had faced. What could such a child do? What would become of her when her family was gone and there was no one to care for her? Her mother had made the choice she thought would protect Anne and, until now, it had.
She turned, lifting her face to his. ‘You must promise me something. You must do it for me. When you leave, when you go back to France and Italy and the rest of the world, look at it twice as hard. Look at it for yourself and then look at it for me. Look at every leaf and stone and bit of coloured glass and every wave. And know that I will think of you. That I am here, imagining all the wonders the world holds.’
And praying that God would forgive her ingratitude for the mercy he had shown her. Her ingratitude in wanting things she was never meant to have.
He reached for her hand. ‘Send a page when you are ready,’ he said. ‘I shall take the journey with you. I will see you safely there.’
Anne pulled away. ‘No. You are kind, but I do not want to hold you back.’ She waved a hand. ‘France, Italy, Spain await you.’
‘And a small, stone building on the windswept edge of the kingdom awaits you. Let me take you there. And on the way, we will see something...something you want to see before...’
Before she would see nothing more.
But Nicholas was not so blunt as to say it. ‘What would it be?’ His question was eager. ‘Where can I take you?’
She wanted to say nowhere. She wanted to say everywhere. She wanted to say the story had been a parting gift, even though she had lied to him.
She had lied all her life, the weight of it as heavy as the dead weight of the foot she dragged behind her. And even if she were foolish enough to tell the truth and he were foolish enough to forgive her, it would not lift the weight of all those years of lies.
And the more he did for her, the kinder he became, the heavier the weight of her lie.
She shook her head. ‘You have delayed already. I know you want to go.’
‘No one is waiting for me. A few weeks won’t matter.’
A few weeks. She had thought only tonight, but to have a few weeks... And so she succumbed to temptation. A few more weeks. A few more memories of Nicholas.
‘Pick something,’ he said, when she remained silent.
She closed her eyes, imagining the whole kingdom and not knowing which piece to pick. What even lay between here and Holystone? The joy would be the discovery.
‘A cathedral,’ she said, finally.
‘But you just saw a cathedral. In Canterbury.’
She smiled. Nicholas had not yet learned how to look at a cathedral. ‘Each one is different. Each is a miracle. Stone soaring to heaven. Coloured glass more beautiful than imaginings. Jewels. All created by man as a gift from the earth back to the God who created it.’
He studied her and for a moment, she feared he could see it all. ‘A cathedral, then. Any particular one?’
Oh, if she had the world and time, she would stop at each one. ‘Any one we find.’
A few weeks more and then...
She would not think beyond that.
Nor of how she would say goodbye.
* * *
Thinking about it the next morning, Nicholas didn’t know why he had insisted that he take Anne to Holystone. He had finished his work. She had even given him the answer to the final, troubling mystery of the witness to Lady Joan’s first marriage to Holland. All was answered. All was in order.
And if there had been kisses, they had been given freely. She had given him leave to go.
Yet, he didn’t. Something held him back in a way he did not recognise and did not particularly like.
Most of his life had been lived with his mind fully in control, guided by a clear purpose. Now, he found himself on a battlefield where body, heart and mind waged perpetual war.
She had crept beneath his armour and he was perilously close to acting the fool for a woman, just as his father and the Prince had. He had already been foolish enough to delay his departure for weeks, all because he didn’t trust anyone else to properly care for her on her journey.
His leavetaking of the Prince was brief and included Lady Joan. The two emerged from their chamber, finally, beaming, with barely a thought or a glance to spare for anyone besides each other.
‘You’ll be back to us before Yuletide, then?’ the Prince asked, when Nicholas had explained his journey.
Nicholas nodded. ‘Well before.’ A month to get there and back, perhaps more, though as autumn stretched toward winter, travel would grow treacherous.
‘Then you will celebrate with us,’ the Prince said, with the smile of a man ready to establish a home. ‘At Berkhamsted.’
Joan stepped forward, putting her fingers on Nicholas’s sleeve. An intimate little gesture, though it somehow seemed planned.
When had he become so doubtful of a woman everyone else called beautiful and good? At the same time he had allowed himself to become emotional about Anne?
‘Thank you,’ Joan began, her voice pitched low, ‘for offering to take good care of my Anne. I think...after all these years...she is just weary. She needs a rest.’
The words would have made sense, had he not known Anne as he did. She never rested. Her fingers worked, even when her legs did not. And when she did rest, her eyes were busy, drinking in every bit of what surrounded her, so that she could relive it later.
And he wondered whether he had underestimated Lady Joan. Originally, he had thought her slightly empty-headed. Lovely, but without the capacity to understand and manage complexities. Now, he was not certain.
He inclined his head, acknowledging her care. ‘I am certain you will miss her, my lady.’
‘Of course. We have been close for so many years.’
‘So I understand. When will she be coming back?’
‘Oh, not until she wants to. I will not pressure her.’
Nothing suspicious in that answer, nor in her smile. Yet there was one way to test the truth of her. The risk was that she would be even more angry at Anne. But if he were right... ‘Since Flanders, wasn’t it?’
Her eyes became like daggers. ‘Flanders?’
