Chapter Eighteen
“Rosamund!”
Half-asleep and startled by the sound of someone hissing her name, Rosamund quickly covered her face as she rolled onto her back, struggling to see in the darkness.
It was dark in her room as the black clouds had returned, blotting out the sun and threatening an icy downpour.
Blinking her eyes, Rosamund could see Jasper standing over her bed, curtains in his hands where he had yanked them back.
“Rosamund!” he hissed again. “Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Rosamund said, muffled, through the veil over her face. “Why have you come? What has happened?”
Jasper turned away from the bed, still gripping the curtains and nearly tearing them down in his haste.
He ended up ripping one down and the maid rushed out of the shadows to pick it up from the floor, but Jasper was already across the room by that time.
It was clear that he was agitated, pacing around like a man with a good deal on his mind.
“This betrothal with Kathalin,” he said to his wife, wringing his hands in frustration.
“I have just come from Alexander and Gates where I was informed that Alexander will refuse the betrothal because Gates is in love with the girl. Can you imagine? Gates de Wolfe being in love with any woman? It is preposterous!”
Rosamund struggled to sit up on the bed with her maid’s help. Hearing such news from Jasper’s lips did not surprise her, considering she had just heard the same information from her daughter.
“Kathalin was just here and told me the same thing,” she said. “She says that she wants to marry Gates and swears that he wants to marry her as well.”
Jasper threw up his arms in an exasperated gesture.
“It is true!” he said. “Gates nearly wept as he told me, begging me to permit him to marry Kathalin. Can you imagine the outrageousness of such a request? I cannot believe he would be bold enough to even ask after the years I have spent paying off fathers and brothers of the women he has compromised. The man must have lost his mind!”
Rosamund affixed the veil across her face to the wimple that the maid was struggling to put on her head.
When she lay down to rest, she had pulled both of the items off of her head, items designed to cover her horrifically disfigured face.
Now she was quickly trying to put them back on again.
She wasn’t sure Jasper had even seen how ravaged her face had become in the darkness but she hoped not.
She liked for the man she once loved to remember her as she was and not how she had become, which is why she kept herself fully covered at all times.
It was for Jasper’s sake.
“Gates came to you, did he?” she asked her husband, pondering that revelation. “I thought Kathalin was fabricating her story, but it seems as if Gates has confirmed it.”
Jasper nodded, raking his fingers through his graying hair.
“He very much confirmed it,” he said. Then, his pacing slowed as he struggled to think clearly on what he had just witnessed in Gates’ small chamber.
“I will admit that he was quite convincing. He truly behaved as if he were in love with Kathalin and is devastated by the fact we have betrothed her to Alexander. And Alex – he was a martyr on his friend’s behalf.
He is willing to give up a good deal of money and a castle for Gates. Such madness!”
As Jasper ranted, Rosamund contemplated what he was telling her, coming to think that, perhaps, there might be something to all of this.
Kathalin had pleaded with her to be allowed to marry Gates and, at the same time, Gates had evidently pleaded with Jasper the very same thing, which led her to believe that there was some truth to this surprising love story.
Rosamund had been quite willing to discount it before but with this new information, she found herself wondering if it was all true.
She eyed Jasper as the man paced around.
“Mayhap it is not such madness, after all,” she said. “If Alex is willing to give up so much and both Kathalin and Gates have declared their desire to marry out of love, then mayhap there is truth to it.”
Jasper frowned at her. “It does not matter if there is truth to it,” he said. “Love or not, Kathalin will not marry Gates. We have had this discussion, Rosamund. His reputation as a scoundrel will not become our daughter’s shame.”
Rosamund simply lifted her shoulders and averted her gaze. “A grandson with de Lara and de Wolfe blood in him would be a powerful knight, indeed,” she said, reminding him of what she’d said once before. “Is that not who you would wish to leave your legacy to?”
Jasper was coming to look at her as if she’d lost her mind. “And what of a grandson with de Lara and de Lohr blood?” he said. “Will he be any less great?”
Rosamund shook her head. “He would not,” she admitted. “But Kathalin does not love Alex.”
Jasper stomped over to the bed where she was sitting.
“It does not matter who she loves,” he declared.
“She will marry Alex and that is the end of it. In fact, we must make haste with this wedding so that the deal will be sealed and there will be nothing Kathalin or Gates or even Alex can do about it. These foolish children do not know that we are doing what is best for them so it is time that we move ahead with it. I have no more time for nonsense; I will summon the priest from town and we shall have the ceremony by tomorrow.”
Rosamund wasn’t surprised by his directive; Jasper often made his decisions quickly and, at times, rashly. But there was something suspicious in her gaze as she looked at him.
“You do not trust that Gates will not take Kathalin and run away,” she said, reading his thoughts. “Or you do not trust that Alex will not simply vanish, leaving us with no groom.”
Jasper sighed heavily. “If you had seen the look on Gates’ face when he was pleading for Kathalin’s hand, you might think the same thing,” he said.
“And Alex is staunchly opposed to marrying the woman that Gates loves, so I would not put it past those two to conspire against us. Therefore, we must make this marriage quickly. You understand, of course.”
Rosamund nodded. “Of course,” she murmured.
“But remember what it was like to be in love, Jasper. The sun rises and sets upon the wings of love. If Gates and Kathalin are truly in love, then this will be very difficult for them. It will be difficult for Alex as well and, ultimately, that could disrupt your knight corps. You have strong and loyal men in your service who are also friends. If Kathalin marries Alex, and Gates is in love with her, you may be dooming your army.”
She had a point, and a very good one, but Jasper would not admit it.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered that himself, but he was convinced that his men would do as they were told regardless of any personal feelings on the matter.
He was convinced that whatever feelings Gates held for Kathalin would eventually fade away.
Such a man like de Wolfe, with a lover in every nearby town, would soon enough forget about a woman he once loved.
At least, Jasper hoped so.
“Pah,” he finally said, flicking a wrist at his wife as if to brush her off. “Love is easily forgotten. Are you taking their side, then?”
Rosamund shook her head but she was hurt that he’d brushed off the suggested memories of the love they’d once shared whilst trying to make her point.
“Not at all,” she said. “As I mentioned, I thought Kathalin was simply living in her own fantasy when she came to tell me that Gates wished to marry her, but hearing that Gates came to you as well… it simply confirms to me that Kathalin must have been telling the truth. Did you tell Elreda and Henry any of this?”
Jasper looked queerly at her. “How do you know that they are here?”
She nodded. “Kathalin told me.”
Jasper understood in that brief explanation. Rosamund always seemed to have the pulse of the fortress, seeing and knowing much from her confinement in her room.
“They do not know,” he said, answering her question. “But I must tell them. They will have to keep close watch of Alex and make sure he does not do anything foolish.”
“Agreed.”
“Then you support my decision to have the wedding immediately?”
“I do.”
That was all Jasper needed to hear. He fled her chamber to tell Henry and Elreda of the news, leaving the door open in his haste so that the maid had to rush to close it. Rosamund remained sitting on her bed, her mind lingering on the situation between her daughter and Gates de Wolfe.
Aye, she knew what it was to be in love.
She remembered that much of it and she had hoped that Jasper had, too, but if he did, he would not acknowledge such a thing.
Love is easily forgotten. Now, she was starting to have some doubt as to whether or not she and Jasper were doing the right thing.
Would it be so terrible to marry Gates de Wolfe, a man with a history of women?
Men could change. Rosamund knew that first-hand because her loving husband, Jasper, had changed drastically when disease began to ravage her body.
The man who had sworn to love her until death and be true to her, and only her, had broken that vow.
Rosamund eyed the maid as the woman tried to affix the curtain that Jasper had yanked off.
She’d stopped resenting the quiet, plain woman long ago, knowing that the maid had not been given the option of refusing Jasper’s advances.
Still, when she looked at the woman, at her breasts and hips, knowing that her husband had touched them, it still hurt her as it did the first time she’d become aware of it.
Men could change, indeed.
The sun was setting on the western horizon, but one couldn’t tell very much with the collection of tarnished silver clouds that crowded up the sky above.