Snow in July (38 page)

KENDRA TORE her gaze from the rejected gift to see Del standing before her, in full armor, posed with hands pressed together against his chest in the same manner as his granite effigy. Uttering a joyful squeal, she jumped down from the sarcophagus lid to embrace him.

The roses slid from her lap and fell beside the packet.

Alain halted at the sound of Kendra’s outcry and turned to find her hugging another knight. Curious—and reasonably certain of this other man’s identity—he moved closer to them but kept a respectful distance. In spite of the fog, he overheard their conversation easily.

Del’s eyes opened and his stance relaxed, but he would not return her embrace. “Why have you failed to fulfill your promise?”

She drew back, puzzled and hurt. “I have honored your memory by refusing to marry a countryman of your murderer.”

“That is not what I asked of you.”

“I—I know. But I cannot”—fighting tears, she thrust out her chin—“I cannot and shall not marry a lie!”

Alain winced but could not fault her for feeling that way.

“But you would go to your grave defending another lie in the name of honor?” her brother asked.

She gave Del a hard stare. “What do you mean?”

“Are you so certain that a Norman ambushed me?”

“Of course! That’s what…” A stunned expression cascaded over her face. “What Ulfric told me.” Hands on hips, she regarded Del. “You have not come to escort me to heaven, have you?”

Sadness overshadowed his features. “I shall, if that is your choice.”

“Why are you so sad, Del? Father Æthelward says there is no sorrow in heaven, only joy.”

He cracked the lopsided grin she loved so well, though it was tinged with ruefulness. “True. But this place is not heaven. I sorrow for you because I have been shown what earthly happiness you will be denied if you accompany me now. And the misery your death will inflict on others.”

“On our father? Or on”—bitterness invaded her tone—“Sir Robert?” She made his name sound like a curse.

Del raised a hand. “I am forbidden to say more.”

“Can you at least tell me who caused your death?”

“Ask him.” Del pointed toward Alain. “He knows.”

Her gaze met Alain’s. The look he gave her seemed laden with remorse. “I—” Longing and anger grappled to control her heart. “Nay. I would rather die with king and kin than marry someone who has already betrayed me once. What’s to stop him from betraying me again? How can I ever trust him?”

“Do you indeed seek the answers to those questions?” Del asked.

Do I?

Kendra closed her eyes. Into the blackness rushed memory after memory of Alain’s kindness, generosity, tenderness. Courage. Strength. Valor.

Self-sacrifice. Not once but many times.

He didn’t deserve her rejection without an opportunity to explain his ruse. But neither could she entrust her future to him—king’s decree or not—without obtaining crucial assurances.

Do I want to give Alain this chance?

She gave Del a firm nod.

“Then, dearest Kendra, you must let me go.”

“I—” She knew he was right, but, “Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how!” Tears blurred her vision. Alain, standing a few paces beyond Del, seemed to waver and fade.

Her admission anguished the soul of the man who would have been proud, in life, to have called this Norman knight brother. “You have two choices.”

Del stooped to pick up the packet Alain had tried to give her and unfolded the fabric to reveal his precious strands of hair. He placed the packet into her cupped hands, and she cradled it against her heart.

“I have seen how you have treasured this token. And I do feel honored, Kendra, but…” Del wrapped his hands around hers and gently pried them away from her chest, encountering resistance, which grieved him. “What you do with it will signal your choice”—with his head, Del motioned a clear invitation for Alain to join them—“to both of us.”

Surprised yet more than willing, Alain surged across the gap to stand beside Kendra’s brother. The Saxon knight assumed the pose of his effigy.

“Del, wait! Please don’t leave me!”

Del opened his eyes. “I am permitted to remain until you have chosen. But you must understand the nature of your decision. Remember the promise I asked of you.”

Seek happiness; of course, she could never forget that. But happiness seemed impossibly elusive. She stepped close to Del and gripped his forearm. “What have you seen? Will I be happy with”—she dropped her voice to the barest whisper—“him?”

“I cannot tell you any more than your heart already knows.” Del closed his eyes again.

Standing mute before her, Alain felt utterly vulnerable until he espied the roses lying near her feet. He dropped to his knees, grasped them, and entwined their stems. He yearned to take her into his arms, beg her forgiveness, and kiss away her hurt and anger, but all he seemed permitted to do within the confines of this weird dream was raise the roses toward her.

“Red for Kendra…and white for Alain?” he managed to whisper, hopefully.

A memory flashed in her mind’s eye. The last two roses she had picked to decorate Del’s tomb had been a white and a red. The next day, she had picked the white blossom and Alain had given her the red. Both times, unable to choose between the blooms, she had entwined their stems and left them on the lid of Del’s sarcophagus.

Her heart had made its choice.

She pulled the silver case from beneath her dress, sprang the catch, and returned Del’s hair to the compartment.

As Alain watched in tortured silence, she approached Del and slipped the locket’s thong around her brother’s neck. Del relaxed his stance to embrace her. They clung to each other for what seemed like ages. Kendra’s eyes watered, and her chin quivered.

“I shall always love you, Del.” Unable to say more, she buried her face against his chest, tears bathing the locket.

“I know.” Del kissed the top of her head. “And that is just the smallest token of my eternal love for you, dearest Kendra.” He released her, his expression earnest. “But I do not have an eternity to spend here, and neither do you.”

She dabbed her eyes with her gown’s sleeve. “I will see you again, won’t I?”

“Of course.” He favored her with one final, lopsided grin. “
À Dieu, ma soeur chere.
” His grin broadened as he caught Alain’s astonished gaze. The look exchanged by the Saxon and Norman warriors thrummed with mutual understanding and respect.

Still grasping the roses that she wouldn’t take from him, Alain watched intense light flare around her brother. The silver case glistened against Del’s chest as he disappeared.

Kendra too began to fade.

Alain lunged for her hand but caught only vapors.

Chapter 23

“
S
IR ROBERT?”

Alain fought through the thinning mist, trying to place the voice. Female, but not Kendra’s: this one crackled like oak leaves in winter. At least it didn’t sound as if the speaker was using his name as a curse.

“Wake up, Sir Robert, I implore you!”

Wake up? How could he? Kendra was still lost to him.

“My lord, the king has summoned you.”

King William?
Here?

That had to be part of the dream.

Alain willed his eyes open. Kendra’s servant—he couldn’t recall her name—loomed over him as he sat on the floor beside the bed, one hand stretched up, clutching Kendra’s. The fingers of his other hand were wrapped around the thorny stems of a pair of roses so dry, the petals rattled as he moved.

As in the dream, one blossom was white and the other red. How he had acquired them, God alone knew.

His joints were aching like fury, though nothing compared with the pounding in his head. He disengaged his hand and pressed it to his temple, groaning. The pain abated.

He studied his palm, recalling the paste that the servant—Ethel, that’s what she’d called herself—had made. All that remained was a coating of white ash.

He unknotted his legs and attempted to stand. Dizziness obliged him to cling to one of the bedposts for support, still holding the roses. He waved them as Ethel offered him a steaming posset. “What do you know of these flowers, good woman?” He displayed his other hand, palm outward. “Or this?”

Ethel took the flowers in exchange for the mug. As Alain swigged a deep draught of the herbal concoction—chamomile, valerian, mint, honey, and God alone knew how many other ingredients he was too groggy to identify—he watched the servant study the roses.

“Many believe that the Glastonbury thorn harbors miraculous healing powers when used by someone pure of heart,” she began, “though how it works no one knows.”

Pure of heart.
Alain snorted. The phrase couldn’t apply to him, the worst deceiver to fall into this world since Satan.

After he drained the mug, Ethel took it and returned the flowers to him. “As for the roses, my lord, all I know is that when I woke, I saw them in your hand. I didn’t think you were holding them before, but”—she shrugged and gave him a gap-toothed grin—“I may not have noticed them.”

Alain knew he hadn’t brought the roses with him.

“But come, my lord. King William knows you were fighting yesterday, but he cannot be kept waiting forever.”

Alain swallowed hard. “The king—here, now? I didn’t dream it?”

“Most certainly not, my lord.”

Ethel bustled into the anteroom and returned with an armload of fresh clothing. She deposited her bundle on the table, guided him behind an ornate oaken screen, and began handing him garments. He felt his cheeks heat to imagine Kendra asleep in the bed just beyond. He knew he shouldn’t be intruding like this, but since he didn’t have quarters in this manor yet, and since anyone could burst into the anteroom without notice, the screened area would have to suffice.

When the servant gave him the tunic, dyed bright crimson and trimmed in fox fur much like Ulfric’s original gift, Alain surveyed it with resigned distaste before pulling it over his head and tugging it into place. Appearing before His Majesty in either a dressing gown or a charred, torn, bloody surcoat did not constitute valid options.

He emerged from behind the screen, and Ethel helped him gird the tunic with his sword belt. The sword itself she’d left in the anteroom, where Ruaud had removed it, along with Alain’s mail and ruined surcoat, last night.

Before following Ethel from the bedchamber, he stole a final glance at Kendra’s sweet face, gratified to observe that she seemed to have found a measure peace at last.

Whether she would ever deign to share that peace with him remained to be seen.

Honor constrained him to placing a chaste kiss on her forehead, though love urged him to express himself more fully. Such liberties, however, would have to wait until they’d been earned.

His lips brushed her soft, warm skin, but she did not wake.

He laid the roses beside her and slipped from the room.

KENDRA AND Alain had worked out all their difficulties, and he sealed his promise with a kiss that, while chastely planted on her forehead, conveyed the breadth of his vow and the vast depth of his love.

She knew she must be dreaming.

Although…she didn’t seem to be as angry as she’d been the day before. She recalled having spoken with him; how that was possible when she’d been unconscious, she had no idea.

The prospect of having everything set to rights between them, however, was not an unattractive one.

The squeal of the door’s hinges intruded on her reverie, and she opened her eyes to watch a familiar figure exit the bedchamber.

In trying to call his name, all she could manage was a throaty rasp. The door shut with a soft but no less final-sounding thump. Tears stung her eyes and nose.

In a rush, the events of the past day thundered into her mind: Alain’s arrival and shocking revelation, her flight to King Harold’s cottage, and her failure to either heal him or accompany him in death.

The latter puzzled her, because she’d stood upon eternity’s threshold, close enough to recognize her brother and mother. She tried to recall her experience—the light, the love, the joy—but earthly words could never suffice.

Nor could she describe the fathomless sense of loss she’d felt when the eternal radiance faded, ending her chance to accompany king and kin.