Chapter 32 #2
She came over and sat down beside him, slid her arms around his chest and held him, her head on his shoulder “Then sleep it off. I’m here.
I will stay with you. I will be with you.
” She moved down, nesting into the curve of his arm and she placed her hand over his heart, as she had done before.
“There is nowhere else I would want to be,” she said.
“When I close my eyes, here is where I am safe. I know you are no coward, because it is here,” she patted his chest, “where I can always hear how strong your heart is.”
He closed his eyes, the warm feeling of peace around him and sweet oblivion just an arm’s length away. “Do you regret us?” he asked her.
“Never,” she said so fiercely he almost believed her.
“How can you be so certain? How do you know?”
She was quiet, then asked seriously, “Do you think someday you will regret us?”
“Nay. Never.” His lips brushed her brow.
“How do you know?”
He had his answer, and he smiled.
A shaft of light woke Ramsey from the dregs of a deep and dreamless sleep, and he turned away from the open bed curtains and reached out for Beitris.
Her side of the bed was empty, and the linens were cool to the touch.
As he lay there, he could hear her moving around their chamber, poking the wood in the fire, the slight clunk of setting something down on a table, the shuffle of her slippers on the stone floor, then suddenly muted by the carpet.
He tried drifting back to sleep, but his head throbbed, and when he took a deep breath, his mouth tasted as dry and trampled as a tourney field.
Sour. Then he remembered the wine, goblets and goblets of undiluted wine.
He sat up and winced, hunching his shoulders, and emitting a quiet groan.
He felt as if someone dropped an anvil on his head.
But he rose and used the garderobe before he burst.
He heard a gasp and looked over his shoulder to find a maid with her hands over her face. “Where is milady?” he asked the horrified maid.
“I am here,” Beitris said, standing in the door, capped and veiled and gloved…
all imperfections covered, a ewer in her hand.
“You may leave,” she kindly told the maid and shut the door after her.
She crossed the room to a table near the bed and filled a goblet from the ewer.
“I’m afraid seeing you, my lord husband, in all your morning power and glory was too much for her. ”
He snorted and scowled at her, aware that his nose was numb. “I have a bone to pick with you, wife.”
“I can see you do.”
“Do not try to deflect the subject with sweet talk.” Ramsey shook his head and winced. “Inside my head there is a full battle going on.” He touched the tip of his nose and frowned again. “I cannot feel my nose. You got me drunk last night.”
She turned around to fidget with something but he caught her guilty look, at least half if it before she showed him her back.
Staring at her, waiting, he wondered how early she had risen. Time enough to hide half of herself from me, still, after all these years. The same ritual of hiding herself every morning and every night. “Beitris. I would know what you are up to.”
“Up to? Here drink this.” She held a goblet out to him. “You will feel better.”
He drank the potion down, handed her the empty goblet and swallowed a belch. “You have not answered my question.”
She stood with her back to him for a long time under the pretense of placing the goblet on the table, then turned finally around, her expression serious. “Glenna is with Lyall.”
His reaction to her news wasn’t immediate. But then everything about him had slowed down. “If I shout like I want to, my head will crack in half,” he said and sank down into a nearby chair, one hand holding his throbbing brow and the other resting on his bare knee. “I am too angry to speak.”
Naked, stripped to nothing but crapulence, he sat there exposed.
Yet his wife was swathed in cloth and veils and caps, covered like a sister of God, well-hidden with the scars she would never love or trust him enough to let him see.
They were like two chess pieces at opposite ends of the board, one white, one black.
And the king’s daughter, his responsibility, in his protection, defied him, was no longer chaste and loosely wed to a scoundrel, his fool stepson, and both were down in his own cellars doing God only knew what together.
With the morn barely begun, what else would happen?
Beitris, who had remained silent, walked around the bed and stopped. “Donnald,” she said in a soft, frightened gasp, and he looked up in time to see her swoon.
“Beitris!” By the time he was at her side she had fallen on the bed, her arms flung back and limp beside her head, her breathing so shallow he had lay his head on her breast to hear it.
He patted her face and kept repeating her name, then bellowed for her handmaiden, but his wife opened her eyes and said his name.
He held her hand and said, “Do not move. I want to send for the chirurgeon.”
“I am fine.” She started to sit up but he slipped an arm behind her back and helped her, noting her color was fine.
He poured her some of the potion she gave him and handed her the goblet. “Drink it.”
She wrinkled her nose and took a sip.
“You cannot be fine. You did swoon. I have never known you to faint. Have you done so before?”
“Apparently not often enough,” she murmured into the goblet, confusing him.
A guard outside the door called out for him and pounded. Donnald shrugged into his robe and opened the door.
“A rider has come with news, my lord. The earl of Sutherland is near. He and his party should be here before midday.
He dismissed the guard and began to dress.
“Are you going to the cellars?” Beitris asked anxiously. “If so, I want to go with you.”
“You just swooned. You should lie down and rest.
“I have not eaten,” she protested quickly, standing up. “My faint was from hunger.” She took an apple from a nearby fruit bowl and took a bite. “See? I shall be fine. I will not be left behind, Donnald,” she said fiercely, and he knew that tone in her.
He should just give in now. Or continue to merely feel as if he were beating his head against a stone wall. In the end, he would give in. So he did not deny her.
Was not long before they were together near the base of the cellar stairs, and she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Let me go first.”
“Why?”
“Because I ask it of you,” she said.
Wordlessly he stepped aside and watched her as she reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, then after a moment waved him down, her finger to lips.
Lyall and Glenna were asleep on a straw pallet in the corner, Lyall’s back against the wall, Glenna tucked under his arm, her head on his shoulder. Then he noticed her hand was on Lyall’s chest, resting above his heart.
Ramsey’s mind went back to another time and place, and he felt Beitris’ arm link through his. Did she remember?
Once, long ago, they lay in each other’s arms on a pile of warm hay, her head on his shoulder and asleep like Glenna.
That day was everything, the kind of day where a man could believe that life did have its pure and tender moments, that love could heal a man’s soul, a day of revelation.
In a moment of whimsy that day she had listened to his heartbeat, and made him listen to hers.
“They beat together as one,” she had said to him.
To this day he could remember the sound of every heartbeat.
When she had looked up at him. He found himself staring into the color of the sky, on that happiest day of his life.
But she did not have to tell him what he already knew.
He understood how much he loved her, and yet barely a fortnight later, he chose what was best for her and walked away.
He could feel her gaze on him now, and he looked away from her son and into her veiled face, her eye still the exact color of a cloudless sky. She placed her gloved hand over his heart and took his and placed it between her breasts. “They still beat as one.”
Her words stirred the dreams still in him, the memories of a love that was the single thing in his life he longed to relive, to relive the choice he’d made to let her go and then spent the rest of his life regretting that choice.
Brushing aside part of her veil, he lowered his mouth to hers and she didn’t stop him.
The kiss was theirs for a long time, and in that touch of their lips was a love that covered more than half a lifetime.
When he pulled back, she straightened the veil back into place, looking down. She was still hiding.
But her hand over his heart, and her words…they were enough for now.
He glanced back into the cellars to find Lyall staring at him, his look unreadable. Ramsey’s gaze went to the key in the gates’ lock and turned a questioning eye to Beitris.
She knew his question before he could speak and said bluntly, “I chose to give them last night.”
“What is happening? “ Glenna said in a voice raspy with sleep. She was awake and frowning.
Ramsey saw her arms tighten around his stepson, who pulled her even closer to him as if he had to protect her from them.
The chains that still bound him rattled, a telling moment, and Ramsey had the thought the two were as close as links on a chain, and trying to look as strong and unbreakable.
Something in Ramsey changed as he watched them, and some doubt ran through his mind, adding to his confusion.
His wife opened the gates and held out her hand to Glenna. “The earl of Sutherland is but a short distance away. I shall help you change before he arrives.”
Glenna didn’t argue, but paused to look at Lyall.
What Ramsey saw pass between them was too familiar to not cause him pain, and produced a moment that was uncomfortable enough to make him wonder what was best, rather than what was right.
She got up, giving Lyall, a wan smile before she left with Beitris, and he and Lyall were alone.
Ramsey knelt down and unlocked the manacles, then tossed them aside.
Lyall winced and rubbed his ankles, while Ramsey fought with himself over what to say and chose silence.
He rose and moved away, holding the cell gates open.
“You need to prepare for meeting with Sutherland.” He gave a quick nod. “You can go.”
Lyall walked out of the gates, but stopped when he was next to him.
They were of the same height and could look each other in the eye, which was a curse more than a blessing when it came to reading each other.
“I want you to understand something, Donnald. I know what I have done, and I know what I did after you strictly forbade me.” He paused after this honest admission, then placed a hand on Ramsey’s shoulder.
“I could say no to you, but I could not say no to her.”