Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
The morning sun streamed through the chapel windows, pale and golden, spilling across the stone floor like light through water.
Sister Agnes adjusted the white veil at Matilda’s shoulders and asked softly. “You are certain, my dear? You may wait another day, if your heart feels unsettled.”
Matilda’s lips curved in a faint, steady smile. “My heart has been unsettled all my life, Sister. I should not know what to do if it were calm.”
“That may yet come,” the nun said kindly. “Peace has a way of finding those who stop running.”
“I am not running,” Matilda murmured. “I am standing still for the first time.”
Sister Agnes studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “Very well. Today, you will take communion with us for the first time. You will eat of the bread and drink of the cup, and in doing so, you will offer your heart to God freely, and without burden.”
Matilda gave a small, composed bow of her head. “Then I am ready.”
“Come,” Sister Agnes said, gesturing toward the chapel doors. “It is time.”
The sisters moved in a slow procession down the aisle, the sound of their steps blending with the chant that filled the chapel. The low, rhythmic Latin, the smell of incense, the faint gleam of candlelight, it all felt heavy and sacred. It was to become her new absolute.
When Matilda reached the altar, the abbess turned to her. “You come to take the bread and the cup, and to lay down the burden of the world?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Do you come freely, without regret?”
Matilda’s throat tightened. “I come because I have nothing left to regret.”
A murmur passed through the sisters, but the abbess only inclined her head. “Then kneel, child.”
Matilda obeyed. The stone floor was cold beneath her knees, and she could feel he chill of it biting through the thin fabric. Sister Agnes stood behind her, with a steadying hand at her shoulder.
The abbess lifted the small silver chalice. “When you take this, you will promise before God to seek only His peace. To let go of every earthly tie, every longing of the heart.”
Matilda closed her eyes. The image came unbidden: the sharp line of his jaw in the moonlight, the warmth of his hand against her back, the taste of rain on his lips.
She swallowed hard. “I am ready,” she whispered.
The abbess placed the bread in her palm. “Then say the words.”
Matilda hesitated. The silence stretched between them, filled only by the soft crackle of candles.
“I vow…” she began, her voice shaking. “I vow to turn my heart from the world.”
Sister Agnes murmured behind her, “And to seek peace everlasting.”
Matilda’s lips trembled, but she repeated it. “And to seek peace everlasting.”
Her fingers tightened around the bread, and her pulse quickened as she brought it to her lips. The chant of the sisters swelled around her, solemn and low. It echoed through the vaulted ceiling like a heartbeat.
But as she swallowed, her chest ached, and she felt the truth strike deep: she was not seeking peace. She was hiding from pain.
Her vision blurred with unshed tears. She pressed her palms together, whispering under her breath. “Please, let me forget him.”
Outside, a door creaked open in the cloister. The faint sound barely reached her over the chanting.
Sister Agnes touched her shoulder gently. “Peace will come, my dear. It always does, for those who stop fighting.”
Matilda nodded numbly, with her eyes fixed on the crucifix above the altar. “Then it must come soon,” she whispered. “Before I lose the strength to want it.”
And beyond the chapel doors, unheard and unseen, heavy footsteps echoed in the hall, drawing closer with each passing moment.
Jasper’s horse had barely stopped before he leapt from the saddle. Mud splashed up his boots as he strode toward the wrought-iron gate of St. Brigid’s Abbey, with his heart hammering like thunder against his ribs.
The gatekeeper, a small, anxious-looking nun, stepped forward at once. “Your Grace, this is holy ground! You cannot—”
But he was already past her.
He pushed through the courtyard with long, unrelenting strides. His pulse roared in his ears. The abbey was quiet, save for the distant tolling of a bell. It sounded resolute and deliberate, as if beckoning to him.
Several sisters stopped what they were doing to stare as he passed. One dropped her basket of herbs, while another pressed her rosary to her lips. Whispers followed him like ripples.
“Is that—?”
“A gentleman inside the cloister?”
“Dear heavens, who is he?”
He ignored them all.
“Where is she?” he demanded of the first nun he passed, who happened to be a young woman who looked both scandalized and alarmed.
“Who, sir?” she stammered.
“Lady Matilda Sterlington.” His voice was sharp and commanding. “Where is she?”
The nun blinked, her mouth opening and closing like a frightened bird. “I cannot say, sir, we do not—”
But he was already gone.
His boots struck the flagstones hard as he turned corner after corner. Now, the quiet halls of the abbey stretched before him in all their stone and shadow glory. Unfortunately, every single path looked the same.
He knew he had to look half-mad: unshaven, windblown, with mud on his cuffs and his eyes too bright. The calm faces of the nuns only sharpened his sense of desperation.
He did not care. He had come too far to be turned away by silence.
Then, he heard the bell again. The sound seemed to vibrate through the floor itself, heavy with solemnity.
Something was happening. Something important.
He turned toward the sound and began to run. The corridors narrowed as he went, the stone archways pressing close. Voices drifted faintly from ahead. Many were chanting, but there was one, a woman’s voice among them, familiar even through the layers of echo and prayer.
Her.
He stopped for only a moment, listening. Yes… he could hear her. The timbre of her voice, quiet but clear, was like the echo of a memory he could never quite silence.
“Matilda,” he whispered.
And then he moved again through another archway, up a short flight of steps, toward the open doors at the end of the hall. The bell tolled once more, louder this time, vibrating through the air like the strike of fate itself.
He didn’t think. He didn’t care for the scandal of it, nor the impropriety, nor what the sisters would say when a duke burst through their sacred doors. He only knew that if he was even a moment too late, he might lose her forever.
So, he quickened his pace, as his boots echoed through the cloisters. And when he reached the chapel doors, he did not pause to knock. He threw them open and stepped inside. The great wooden doors burst open with a thunderous crack that shattered the quiet like lightning through glass.
Every head turned at once. The sisters gasped, the chant broke off mid-note, and the bell fell silent as if stunned.
Jasper stood in the doorway disheveled and breathless, with his hair damp from rain and his eyes blazing. He looked every bit a man unhinged, and for once, he did not care.
“Matilda!”
Her name tore from him like a plea. His rough voice rang through the vaulted space. Matilda, kneeling before the altar, froze. The silver chalice trembled faintly in the abbess’s hand. The sisters rose in alarm, their faces pale with shock.
“Do not do this!” Jasper shouted, striding forward, heedless of propriety, of sacred space, of the horrified murmurs around him. “Matilda, stop! Don’t make this vow!”
The abbess raised a hand sharply. “Your Grace, this is a house of God—”
“I know where I am,” he cut in, his tone shaking, “but God Himself would not ask her to bury herself alive!”
Gasps rippled through the nuns, scandalized whispers spreading like fire. Matilda rose abruptly from her place before the altar. Her expression was one of utter disbelief and fury.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice low but shaking with anger. “Have you lost your senses?”
“Entirely,” Jasper said without hesitation. “But I’ll not stand by and watch you throw away your life in some stone prison!”
Her eyes flashed. “How dare you!” The sisters murmured, scandal rippling through their ranks as she took a step toward him, every line of her posture blazing with indignation. “You barge into a holy place, shouting like a madman, interrupting vows that are none of your concern!”
“They are very much my concern!” he countered, with his voice echoing against the stone walls. “You are my concern, Matilda!”
Her chin lifted, proud and trembling. “You forfeited that right when you broke me. When you made me believe—” Her breath hitched, but she pressed on. “When you made me believe I mattered, only to speak of me as if I were nothing!”
Jasper’s voice softened, strained. “I was wrong. Every word I said to Aberon that day was a lie born of fear, not truth.”
“Fear?” she repeated bitterly. “Fear is no excuse for cruelty.”
He took another step forward. “Then let it not excuse cowardice either. I cannot let you do this. You think peace lies in silence and in solitude, but it doesn’t. It’s only another kind of prison.”
Matilda’s eyes flashed again, furious now, but there was a tremor in her voice when she spoke. “And what would you know of peace? You, who have never known restraint in your life!”
“I know what it is to live in fear of myself,” he said, his voice rising despite himself. “I know what it is to destroy the only good thing I’ve ever touched because I was too afraid to believe I could love without turning into my father!”
He pressed forward, his words tumbling out now. “I let you think I did not care! God help me, I let you think you were just another of my mistakes, but you never were. You are the only thing I’ve ever done right. And I will not let you disappear into silence because of me.”
“Your Grace!” the abbess’s voice cracked like a whip, cutting through the moment. “You will leave now, or I shall call the groundskeeper to escort you out.”
But Jasper didn’t move. He barely seemed to hear her. His gaze was fixed entirely on Matilda, who was now pale, trembling and caught between fury and disbelief.
“Please,” he said softly now, the fight leaving his voice. “If you take that vow today, it will not be for peace. It will be to punish yourself for my sins. Don’t do it. Don’t let me be the reason you give up the world.”
The sisters stood frozen in place, scandalized yet spellbound.
Matilda stared at him, her breath shallow, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. “You should not have come,” she said again, but this time her voice broke on the last word.
Jasper took one more step toward her. “And yet I did. Because I cannot live knowing I said nothing when I might have changed everything.”
The abbess moved forward as if to intervene, but neither of them noticed. For the first time since he entered, silence truly filled the chapel. It was thick, trembling and alive with the weight of all that had been said, and all that still hung between them.