Epilogue #2
Tiberius was still laughing at Cassius, who knew that weeks and months and even years of protests were all in vain. Therefore, he simply shut his mouth. When he didn’t answer, his father poked him in the arm.
“Look around you,” Maximus said quietly.
He was pointing to the array of younger brothers and cousins standing around him.
“You are frightening your brothers with your fear of marriage. If you have imparted your feelings onto them, your mother will have your head. You had better watch what you say. Already, the younger ones are suspicious.”
Cassius looked at Augustus and Kellen, standing a few feet away from him. “Would you want to marry someone you have never met?” he demanded, pointing to Augustus. “Well?”
As Maximus rolled his eyes, Augustus responded. “I will choose my own wife,” he said in a tone that sounded very much like Maximus. “I will not let Papa choose her for me.”
Maximus cocked an eyebrow at his son who had much the same personality as his mother; frank, honest, and forceful at times. “Is that so?” he said. “We shall see about that, lad.”
Augustus looked to his younger brothers for their reaction, hoping he hadn’t said anything that would greatly provoke their father.
Maximus was a very loving father but a strict disciplinarian.
With five sons and a daughter, he had to be.
Uncle Tiberius was considered the peacemaker among all of the offspring.
He was the one his nieces and nephews ran to when Maximus or Gallus was enraged.
He’d been known to hide children from angry parents until the parents had the opportunity to cool down.
With five young children and his wife pregnant with their sixth, he was much adored by all of the de Shera progeny.
As Augustus backed off of a confrontation with his father and Cassius stood among the men and fumed, Gallus returned his attention to Bhrodi.
“You will not be reluctant to marry, will you?” he asked his son.
Bhrodi, like most boys his age, hadn’t truly thought on the idea of marriage.
He lifted his shoulders. “If she is beautiful and smart, I suppose not,” he said, rather arrogantly.
Then, he shifted the subject because, like Augustus, he really had nothing much to say about it.
“Papa, are Violet and Lily coming home for the wedding?”
Gallus shook his head. “Nay,” he replied.
“There is some great feast or festival going on in London right now and they begged to remain. Evidently, being part of Edward’s court is more important than coming home, but do not be insulted – the men I sent to London with your sisters to watch over them and guard them have told me that they both have their eye on young men there.
They are both of marriageable age now and I suppose that is what is most important to them. ”
Bhrodi shrugged. He didn’t know women’s minds and didn’t pretend to. As he made his way over to Cassius to perhaps offer some condolences for his coming wedding, there was a commotion in the entry. Everyone turned to see Jeniver and Courtly enter the hall.
Jeniver was carrying a layer of clothing across her arms as Courtly followed, carrying her year-old son, Pollux, on her hip. Courtly began waving the children over to her.
“Joey and Tommie!” she called to Tiberius’ twin daughters. “Aunt Jeni must put you in a clean tunic. Hurry, now. Lucius and Justus, come here. Elizabetha, help me, please.”
The children were beginning to scramble, rushing to their mother and aunt. “What’s amiss?” Maximus asked as he went to his wife and took his toddler son from her arms. “Why the rush to put clean clothing on the children?”
Courtly had her three-year-old son by the arms, pulling his dirty tunic over his head as the child whined.
“Because the de Morays are arriving,” she said.
“Douglass has gone to meet them with Charlotte by her side. Ty, you should as well. I promised her we would put the younger children in clean clothing for the introduction to her parents so it does not look as if we have all raised a pack of dirty, wild animals.”
Tiberius left the hall with his older sons Magnus and Bose in tow as Courtly tended his youngest child.
But she and Jeniver had their hands full tending all of the children, putting clean clothing on them and wiping off dirty faces.
Gallus, Maximus, Bhrodi, and the reluctant bridegroom stood by, watching, waiting for the de Moray family to make an appearance.
Cassius thought it was all a lot of fuss over nothing, fuming, as Gallus and Maximus watched the man for signs that he was going to try and bolt again.
“Hugh de Winter was married two months ago,” Gallus said to Maximus as they watched Cassius twitch. “I went to the wedding, if you recall.”
Maximus nodded. “I do,” he replied. “Hugh married Roger Mortimer’s daughter, didn’t he?”
Gallus nodded. “He did, indeed,” he said, speaking loudly with the sole purpose of Cassius overhearing his conversation. “He inherited a baronetcy from her. Baron Audley, you know. Quite prestigious, you know. And his wife is lovely. He was reluctant to marry, too, but it worked out in his favor.”
Maximus glanced at his son to see if he was listening to them. “Davyss is bringing his wife, Devereux, and their four children,” he said, returning his attention to Gallus. “He seems to have changed a good deal since marriage. Often, it settles a man. Fills a need in him. I know it did with me.”
They were trying to make marriage sound wonderful and happy but Cassius wasn’t buying what they were attempting to sell.
He simply rolled his eyes and looked away, wondering just how horrible his bride was going to be.
All he knew was that she had been fostering for the past several years in Lincolnshire, or so he thought, and that her name was Sable.
That was essentially all he’d ever been told, ever since his father had bartered the contract those years ago.
Grossly unhappy as Jeniver and Courtly finished cleaning up the children, he plopped down onto a bench next to the feasting table and brooded.
It was a move that didn’t go unnoticed by Gallus or Tiberius.
Cassius was looking at the entire situation as one that would ruin his entire life and there wasn’t anything more they could say about it.
As Cassius sat with his chin in his hand, Maximus handed his year-old son back over to Courtly and then turned his attention to Gallus.
“God help us all if that girl is homely,” he muttered. “At least I saw my wife before I married her. I had a choice.”
Gallus nodded. “As did I,” he whispered. “In any case, Cassius has no choice and neither does Lady Sable. I will admit that I am anxious to see her myself.”
Maximus grinned. He could hear commotion outside of the hall entry and he turned his attention in that direction, as did Gallus.
In fact, everyone turned their attention towards the entry, enabling Cassius to move away from his family and towards the small service entrance that the servants used.
He was fully prepared to run. As he casually made his way in that direction, slowly as not to attract attention, Gallus and Maximus remained focused on the great entry.
“Speaking of Davyss and Hugh has reminded me of something,” Maximus said. “You do not think that Davyss will bring up burying his father here again with Honey, do you?”
Gallus shook his head. “He stopped asking years ago,” he replied.
“I was particularly shocked when Lady Katherine de Winter sent a missive asking if I would consider burying her husband next to our mother. Lady Katherine is a woman with balls of steel to ask such a question. I have never met a more brazen and determined woman.”
Maximus chuckled. “How cozy,” he commented dryly. “Burying Uncle Grayson here would create a sweet little threesome with Grayson and Father on either side with Honey in between. What happens when Lady Katherine dies? Do we bury her on top of Honey?”
Gallus started to laugh but his chuckles were cut short as people began to enter the hall.
The first one through the door was Tiberius followed closely by a very pregnant Douglass, who looked positively radiant.
Following Douglass was Bose, his dark hair now almost completely white, and a small, lovely older woman in a delicate, white wimple and fine gown.
Gallus and Maximus immediately moved forward.
“Gallus,” Tiberius called out to him. “Greet Lord de Moray. He has come a very long way to beat you at a game of cards.”
Gallus laughed, extending a hand to Bose, who took it strongly. De Moray had aged a great deal over the past thirteen years but he was still as sharp and as powerful as ever. His black eyes were warm on Gallus and Maximus.
“You do not age, my lord,” he said to Gallus. His gaze then moved to Maximus. “But you look terrible, Baron Allesley. How fortunate you married such a beautiful woman that she can overlook such things.”
Everyone chuckled at Maximus’ expense. “I cannot insult you because you have your womenfolk about you,” he said to Bose. “But, rest assured, when we are alone I will have no such restraint. I will verbally beat you into the ground.”
Bose grinned. He was very glad to be with Gallus and Maximus and Tiberius again.
He reached out to the small woman standing beside him.
“I shall try to prepare myself,” he said wryly.
“But until that time, let us move on with pleasantries. I should like to introduce you to my wife, Lady Summer du Bonne de Moray, whom you have not yet met. Summer, this is Maximus, Baron Allesley, and Gallus, the Earl of Coventry.”