September 18, 1502 Lancaut, England
Beatrix smooths the sapphire-blue skirts of the wedding dress that was Alice’s first, then Isabella’s, and now—to everyone’s great shock—hers.
William sits on the low stone wall surrounding the church, the cool breeze ruffling his sandy-brown hair.
She leans against him, lets his warmth take the chill out of the September air.
She gazes down at the River Wye, carving a slow, winding path through the cliffs below them. William only has eyes for her.
“Do you like it?” he asks, nodding to the ring sitting on her left hand.
She was so nervous during the ceremony she barely looked at it, but now she takes it all in. The narrow gold band is engraved with delicate acorns and drifting oak leaves. It reminds her of the clearing in the forest. “Yes, it’s beautiful.”
“There’s something else,” he says. He takes her hand in his, raises it to his lips, and kisses it before slipping the ring from her finger. He leans closer and angles the band in the sunlight. A fine inscription runs around the inside.
“What does it say?” she asks.
“Amor vincit omnia,” he reads.
Beatrix knows it is Latin, but she doesn’t know what it means.
He slides the ring onto her finger again. “Love conquers all.”
She reaches for William’s face and caresses his cheek where a blush has risen. His eyes search hers.
She wants to believe him. Love kept her from dying that night in the forest, kept her from the abbey, didn’t it?
But sometimes she wakes in the dark in a cold sweat, her chest throbbing with a phantom pain she can’t claw away.
Sometimes she is afraid to open her eyes in the morning, afraid that she will find herself not in her own bed in Lancaut but in some bare stone room, alone.
Sometimes the villagers whisper their cruel words at William’s back, too. “Do you promise?”
“I swear it,” he says.
She kisses him gently on the lips. “I’ll never take it off.”