Roses in the Tempest Read Free

from the sun. No doubt, he had ridden all the way from Caverswall. “I…I only…” When he swiveled toward me, his face wore all the passion of a child being disciplined. “I thought I could marry for love. We are rich enough…Oh, Isabella! Be my friend in this. If it were not for you and our long friendship…”
    My face tightened. “How could I stand against your father’s decision? Who am I, after all?” I shook my head at the enormity of it. “Friends! This friendship of ours. It could be misinterpreted… by someone.”
    “Isabella,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “It is not as if we are lovers. You are, and have ever been, like a sister to me. Surely all know that! There are many other women in this shire for lovers. Friends are harder come by.”
    “Shame on you for those thoughts, Thomas!” I cried, too loudly. “Lovers! A betrothal is a promise made before God. Would you break a promise made to God?”
    He scowled. “You do not understand at all, do you, with your quaint ways and rustic traditions?”
    I did not much like his tone and opened my mouth to object when he interrupted. “The Giffards go back to William the Conqueror. We marry who is profitable. We do not have to love them…but we do have to love.”
    “And the idea of fidelity is rustic to your mind? I pity you, Thomas. Oh not because of some marriage contract which is suitable for your position and even your temperament—though you are unwilling to recognize it. But because you have all the advantages of a name and a heritage and they mean nothing to you.”
    “But I would share these things with you, Isabella,” he said with his Giffard’s petulance. “You have been more to me than any wife could be.”
    “You could never share them with me. I know my place. These things are for your betrothed. I would never take them.”
    “Then you would be a fool!”
    His face—so often cheerful and charming—took on an unpleasant demeanor.
    “Then I am a fool,” I admitted softly. “A practical fool.” Suddenly all our days together fell away. He was Thomas Giffard the nobleman, and I…and I…only Isabella Launder.
    I did not want his anger just now. Perhaps he used it as a shield. I knew not. But there was little left to say. Turning away from his indignant scowl I trudged back toward the house when I spied the broken rose bush nearest the wall. His horse stood on them still. The sight of it assailed me so sharply that I was unprepared for the onrush of emotion welling up. I fell to my knees, cradling the small round blooms in my hands. “My roses!” I sputtered. “You broke my roses!”
    Without hesitation he moved to the horse and mounted, thrusting his feet angrily into the stirrups. “You care more for those damn roses than for me.”
    “But you have trampled them! Your recklessness—”
    “Roses are hearty things,” he said gruffly. “It may yet survive.”
    “But not when so brutally trampled!” I lifted the snapped stems, caring little that the thorns pierced my flesh.
    “And our friendship, lady. Have you not trampled upon it?”
    Rising straight like a rod, I turned to him, fingers curled into tight fists. “Why did you come, Thomas? You leave as you came, it seems, with nothing. You offered nothing, you asked nothing, and you received nothing!”
    “So you have said it, lady. I leave with nothing.”
    He wheeled the horse, gave me one last scathing glare, and rode out of the yard, the stallion’s hooves casting up great clods of mud.

 
THOMAS GIFFARD
    SUMMER, 1515
    Caverswall Castle, north of Beech
    II
    “Live now, believe me, wait not till tomorrow:
    gather the roses of life today.”
    –Pierre de Ronsard, 1524-1584
     
    I was abominably angry. How could she ever completely understand my turmoil or my hurt? How could she deny me? Isabella was like a true sister, truer than my own siblings. A stone foundation to my clay monument. No. Not foundation. A statue of her own. Like a stone saint,