Chapter Twenty
~ The Tender Heart ~
“I have come to see Lady Rosamund,” Elreda said. “Is she available?”
After a soft knock on Rosamund’s chamber door, Rosamund’s maid had opened the panel to find Lady de Lohr standing on the landing outside.
The maid remembered Lady de Lohr from visits to Hyssington in the past but she wasn’t sure she should admit her until Rosamund, on her bed, heard the woman’s heavily accented voice.
“Elreda?” she said. “Is that you?”
At the sound of Rosamund’s voice, Elreda pushed into the chamber, nearly shoving the maid out of the way. Clouds of the heavy clove smell greeted her and she rubbed at her nose, avoiding sneezing as Jasper so often did.
“Aye, it ’tis,” Elreda said, her attention eagerly focused in the direction of Rosamund’s voice, towards her great bed. “Is it you, Rosamund? It has been so long since we last spoke, my dear friend!”
Rosamund hadn’t physically seen Elreda in fifteen years, ever since the symptoms of her disease started becoming apparent.
Elreda and Henry had invited her and Jasper to Lioncross, many times, and Elreda and Henry had even come to Hyssington and Trelystan a few times, but in all that time, Rosamund had never made an appearance, pleading illness or some other manner of excuse.
But now, Elreda was here, on Rosamund’s doorstep, and there was nothing Rosamund could do but try to stay away from her.
She didn’t want the woman to see the truth.
“It is me, my dearest,” she said, making sure to keep herself covered up and remaining behind her sheers. “Please do not come any closer. I am ill and it is contagious.”
Elreda came to within a foot or so of the bed, seeing her friend, swaddled up like a baby, through the sheer fabric of the curtains.
She studied the woman through the wispy material, reacquainting herself with her friend from long ago.
From the vivacious dark-haired lass to this bound creature, times had changed, indeed.
“I am sorry to hear it,” she said after a moment. “It is unfortunate that you have been so ill, so often, that you have not come to see me in so many years. I have missed you.”
Rosamund could see her friend through the fabric, as well. Elreda was older in feature, but still as lovely as she remembered from their younger years. In truth, it did her heart good to see the woman.
“I have missed you, as well,” she said. “But my health is very poor. You are looking well, my dearest. How are your children? I hear that we are to be related now. I cannot tell you how happy I am at such joyous news.”
Elreda smiled faintly. She was increasingly curious at Rosamund’s head-to-toe covered appearance, with only her eyes visible through a slit in the fabric covering her face.
She wondered what terrible affliction her friend should have that would keep her so tightly wrapped and so utterly secluded.
She thought to ask but then she assumed that if Rosamund wanted her to know, she would have told her.
Still, she was very curious and concerned.
“I am happy, also,” she said. “At least, I am happy at the prospect of becoming related to you. But that is why I have come, Rosamund. There is much turmoil surrounding this wedding and I am not sure if you know this. Have you been told?”
Rosamund knew immediately what Elreda was referring to. There was little doubt in her mind. “Do you speak of my daughter’s love for another man?” she asked. “If so, I am aware. My daughter came to tell me herself.”
She didn’t sound particularly sympathetic as she spoke and Elreda was surprised.
There was something in Rosamund’s statement that suggested coldness.
It was strange, considering she had always known Rosamund to be kind and compassionate.
Still, perhaps the years had changed her.
Having not seen or spoken to Rosamund in many years, it was possible that the woman had changed a great deal. That was a disheartening thought.
“What did your daughter tell you?” Elreda asked.
Rosamond paused before replying, as if contemplating what, exactly, to say.
When she spoke, there was a disconnect to her words, as if she didn’t much care for her daughter’s problems. “She told me that she is in love with Gates de Wolfe,” she said.
“You know Gates, of course. He has led my husband’s armies for many years.
He and Alexander are close friends. My daughter also believes that Gates is in love with her but we know that to be false.
Gates de Wolfe is incapable of loving just one woman.
It is not in his nature. I am sorry that my daughter believes herself to be in love with the man, but she will get over it.
You needn’t worry. She will not shame your son or the House of de Lohr. ”
Frankly, Elreda couldn’t believe the coldness she was hearing from her long-time friend.
“But…,” she began, stopped, and then started again.
“Rosamund, you know what it is like to be young and in love. Sometimes you do not overcome such things so easily. Alex seems to believe that Gates is, indeed, in love with Lady Kathalin He was in the hall pleading his case not an hour ago. He does not want to marry your daughter because he firmly believes she is in love with Gates and he with her.”
Rosamund looked at her friend, the bright blue eyes piercing through the sheer fabric. “That is of no consequence,” she said. “Alexander is a much better match for my daughter than Gates de Wolfe.”
“Why should you say that?”
“Because she will not be shamed by Alexander’s past,” Rosamund pointed out as if Elreda was a fool.
She was beginning to grow annoyed. “Why is my daughter’s misdirected love of such concern to you, Elreda?
I told you that she will forget it. Gates will forget whatever he feels for her, too.
I am sure he has felt what he thought to be love many times in the past. Knowing him, too many times.
Jasper is arranging for the wedding to take place as soon as possible so this foolishness will come to an end.
You put too much concern in the feelings of the young.
They will forget soon enough and realize, in the end, that we knew what was best for them. ”
Elreda was speaking with someone she didn’t know.
The Rosamund from years ago would never have spoken in such a way about love or emotion.
The woman before her was as hard as stone and just as cold.
Elreda began to move, to come around the side of the bed, to where Rosamund was sitting.
She didn’t like the curtains up between them, shielding Rosamund from her.
Shielding the woman she used to know. There was something odd and unfeeling going on here and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.
“You have changed,” Elreda said. “The Rosamund I knew those years ago would not have discounted love so easily. I remember the days when you were very much in love with Jasper and he with you. Has so much changed, Rosamund, that you would forget young love?”
Rosamund could see that Elreda was moving closer and she tried to shrink away. “I have not forgotten it,” she said. “It is wonderful while it lasts but when it ends, there is nothing more brutal. Mayhap, in a way, I am saving Kathalin from knowing such pain.”
“Surely she knows it now.”
Rosamund looked away. “It is for the best,” she said. “Soon it will be but a memory as she comes to know Alexander. He is a likeable young man; mayhap she will even fall in love with him, too.”
Elreda came to a halt, seeing her old friend very close and contemplating her next move.
“No one wants Alexander to be married more than I do,” she said.
“But to marry a woman we know is in love with someone else… I am not sure that is right, not even in my eagerness for my son to wed. Can you not see this, too, Rosamund? Or have you changed so much that you are hardened to any matters of the heart?”
Rosamund sighed faintly. “I have grown up,” she said.
“I have come to realize that love is a fool’s dream, Elreda.
If you and Henry still share love at your age, then I commend you.
But it is not always so with most people.
It is not true with Jasper and me. Marriage can be a prison more than the four walls of this chamber when the love that used to be there is gone. ”
Elreda’s features narrowed in concern. “And you would commit your own daughter to such a prison?”
“I am doing it for her own good.”
Elreda shook her head. “Nay, you are not,” she said, yanking back the sheers so she could see Rosamund without any material between them.
“What is your motivation for this, Rosamund? Are you somehow punishing her for knowing love when you no longer do? Are you punishing her because she is young and passionate, and you can no longer feel the same way? There is something very wrong here for you to be so cold towards your own child. She loves a man who evidently loves her in return. Are you so bitter and jealous of that love that you would separate them simply because you have the power to do so? That is not the Rosamund I used to know and love. The woman I used to know was generous and compassionate, not petty and cruel. Is that what you have become?”