Chapter Eighteen #3
Kathalin sensed that something was bothering him, that something was very wrong indeed. His expression was full of distress and she peered at him as he set her down and turned away.
“What is the matter?” she asked. “What did I say to upset you?”
Gates wandered over to the wall and leaned against it, shaking his head. “It is madness, truly,” he said. “I… I am not entirely sure I can explain my thoughts but I will try. I pray you will understand my side of it.”
She was concerned. “Of course I will understand,” she said. “What is wrong?”
Again, he sighed heavily, collecting his thoughts. They were scattered and he grasped at them, trying to form a reply that would make sense to them both.
“My life has been a paradox,” he finally said.
“As a warrior, I am honorable and loyal. It is very important to me to have the trust of my liege and of my men. I have built my reputation on it. But as a man off the field of battle, when it comes to women, I’ve not cultivated that same honor.
I have not much cared. All I have cared about is satisfying the lust I spoke of and damn the consequences. ”
Kathalin nodded patiently. “I know,” she said. “We have discussed this. I understand who you were before you met me.”
He put up a hand as if to plead her patience for what he was about to say.
“With respect to women, I have never been an honorable man,” he said.
“I have made promises I never intended to keep and took, from many, that which did not belong to me. Right now, by the church and laws of the country, you do not belong to me. You belong to Alex. Alex is my very dear friend, a man who is willing to make great sacrifices on my behalf, and if I sample you, as you have given me permission to do, I feel as if I am violating what belongs rightfully to Alex.”
Kathalin wasn’t quite following him. In fact, she didn’t much like what she was hearing. “What do you mean?” she asked. “You love me and I love you. Alex knows this. Why would you be violating what belongs to him?”
He exhaled sharply. “Because I would,” he said.
“Kathi, think on it this way. Let’s say that I sample you, as you have called it.
Let us say I have my fill of you and take from you that which a woman values most highly – your innocence – and let us say that somehow, someway, we cannot convince your parents to allow us to wed.
You must wed Alex. Now, you are not pure for him because I have stolen that away.
I will have taken what rightfully belonged to him.
I simply could not dishonor my friend so, not when he is willing to risk everything for my happiness. ”
Kathalin frowned. “What does this matter?” she asked. “If my parents do not agree to let us wed, you said that you would simply take me anyway and we would be married.”
Gates looked at her with more pain in his expression than he had ever exhibited. He had been dreading this moment, knowing that, at some point, the question would arise. He didn’t want to tell her the truth, but he had to.
“If I do that, I will shame Alex more than you can imagine,” he said hoarsely, his voice full of emotion.
“He does not deserve that shame, Kathi. It is true that he is willing to give up his claim to you in order for us to be wed, and that is the most selfless thing anyone has ever done for me. Do I reward him by running away with you when your parents deny us permission to wed? Do I shame the entire House of de Lohr with my dishonorable behavior? At what point do we stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about others? As much as I do not want to see you wed to Alex, I cannot shame the man by running off with his bride, not when he has shown such selflessness towards us. Kathi, let me be an honorable man just this once by not doing something dishonorable such as running away with my friend’s bride.
Let me keep my honor, just this once. Will you let me do this? ”
By the time he was finished, tears were pouring down Kathalin’s face. The fact was that she understood what he was saying, very clearly, and it broke her heart.
“But…,” she wept softly, “but I do not want to marry him. I want to marry you.”
His instinct was to go to her and pull her into his arms but he fought it. “And I want to marry you,” he concurred. “But I will not do it at the risk of shaming a man who has done nothing to deserve it.”
She sobbed and hung her head. “Then you are choosing him over me.”
Gates’ guts were being twisted as he listened with pain, sorrow overwhelming him.
“I am choosing honor over everything,” he said.
“Kathi, for once in my life, please let me do the honorable thing. If we run away and marry and leave Alex facing such humiliation, at some point, I fear I will start to hate myself. I cannot love you with all that I am if I hate myself for what I have done. I have a few regrets in life but none would be as big, or as terrible, as this one. I could not live with myself and I would not doom you to be married to such a man.”
She shook her head, miserable. “Then you do not love me enough.”
He smiled uncomfortably, thinking that to be an entirely ludicrous statement. “I am doing this because I love you enough,” he whispered. “I will love you, and only you, until I die.”
The only reply from Kathalin was of her soft weeping.
There wasn’t anything to say because, truth be told, she understood what he was saying.
He had lived his entire life caring only for himself but in this instance, having been shown such generosity by Alexander, he was unwilling to show the man such terrible disrespect by stealing the man’s bride.
Aye, she understood it well.
And it was, at that moment, she knew that she would never be Gates de Wolfe’s wife.