The Rose at Twilight Read Free Page B

Elizabeth. Instead he said, “And whom did you serve at Drufield Manor? I know little about your English nobility and do not recognize that seat.”
    “Lady Drufield,” she said quietly, bringing a vision of that stout and querulous dame into her mind’s eye. Looking at Merion, she encountered an expression of curiosity that was at once impertinent and yet compassionate.
    He said blandly, “Not a woman whom you would desire to recommend to the Holy Church for sainthood?”
    Alys choked. “Sir, you must not say such things!” She looked quickly around again, finding it well nigh impossible to stifle the laughter that threatened to overcome her. When she looked back at him from beneath lowered lashes, he was grinning again. “Truly, sir, you speak blasphemy.”
    “Not so. I believe I speak the truth. Will you deny that you heartily disliked Lady Drufield?”
    “I cannot. She is precisely the sort of woman your informant must have had in mind when he spoke to you of English ways, for she would gladly have made me her slave. Nothing I did could please her. If I sat reading, she would berate me for idleness or for neglecting my prayers. If I wished to walk, she would say I wanted only to shirk my other duties. Often she said I had been spoiled at Middleham and that she would mend my ways. Indeed, she was a dreadful woman, through and through.”
    “Harsh?”
    Alys nodded. “She spoke with a rod or the flat of her hand more often than not. There were other girls who suffered as much as I did, of course, though they had never fostered elsewhere and knew no other way. I had not been taught abject meekness from birth, you see, so my Lady Drufield thought it her duty to teach me. I … I wrote my father in March, begging him to let me come home. I was nearly eighteen then, after all.”
    “And he refused?”
    She nodded again. “All I got for my effort was punishment. Father wrote to his lordship, describing in grave terms my lack of gratitude, my arrogance, and my boldness in complaining of my lot. He said I had got above myself, and he apologized to Lord Drufield for my behavior. The resulting interview was both painful and humiliating, as were the months that followed.”
    “So you were glad to leave.”
    Alys could not disagree. She looked at him. “I would have preferred a better reason for my departure, sir. I did believe I was to leave soon, in any case.”
    “Then you do expect to be wed?”
    “Aye, to Sir Lionel Everingham. Do you know aught of him?”
    He shook his head. “A Yorkist?”
    “Of course he is a Yorkist! My marriage was arranged by King Richard nigh onto eight months ago, and I would have been wedded by now, were it not for the wretched Tudor. Now I do not even know if Sir Lionel still lives.”
    “Whether he does or not will not signify,” he replied, “since all such betrothals will certainly be set aside. You will be in ward, after all, and I doubt that his grace, the king, will wish to leave your hand in Yorkist keeping. There is Wolveston now,” he added with a gesture.
    The castle, atop its low hill, loomed darkly through the gray mist ahead, and Alys gazed silently upon her birthplace. She had not lived at Wolveston Hazard since the age of nine, half a lifetime ago, but it was still her home. In truth, she had more feeling for the stone walls and the turrets than she had ever had for the people within. Her parents had both been cold people, her father more interested in his books than in his children, her mother not interested in anything much at all. If Alys had felt anything for them as a child, it had been fear of displeasing them, for punishment had been swift and harsh.
    Life at Middleham had been far gentler, and she had experienced overwhelming sorrow at the news of Anne’s passing. But she felt nothing now for her mother, little for her father, although she hoped to see him before he died, and hoped, too, that her tongue would not cleave to the roof of her mouth when she