by Ruth Kaufman
But that’s what came of letting thoughts of Adrian invade her working hours. Of loving him.
She was furious with him for refusing to trust her, but she couldn’t stop caring. Not talking to him except when necessary, not succumbing to tempting desire probably caused her more grief than it did him. Love did make people into fools.
Gasping for breath, she opened the door.
“No, no!” Adrian shouted.
Joanna froze against the wall. He sounded scared. Panicked. She’d never heard fear in his voice before.
If he was in danger, could she help or would she make matters worse? She flew up the stairs and peeked into Adrian’s room.
What she saw stopped her breath.
Adrian was alone, writhing on the floor. His face screwed up in agony, his hands opened and closed on nothing. She ached to help him, but feared if she moved closer that he’d strike her in the midst of his thrashing.
Was he having a nightmare? Some sort of fit?
“No!”
She clung to the door, unable to move. Should she run for the physician, or wait to see if she could help?
Of a sudden he lay still, quiet as death. His skin turned pale, a strange bluish hue. Only by staring could she see the slight rise and fall of his chest.
Sagging against the door in relief, she thanked God. The seizure, or whatever it was, hadn’t killed him. She straightened, ready to go to him, but he climbed to his feet, his back to her. He stumbled away as though drunk, then righted himself. She watched as he punched the wall, sending plaster chips crackling to the floor. With his fist still in the dent he’d made, he turned to look at her.
She recoiled automatically, for he looked more like Andrew than himself. His eyes were icily vacant, yet glowed strangely. Mystically. In the blink of an eye he returned to normal. She shook her head. What had she witnessed?
“Adrian, are you all right?”
He flexed his fingers, then rubbed his hand. “Yes,” he rasped.
He walked to a chair and grabbed the back as if he needed its support to keep from falling.
Joanna poured him a cup of watered ale, watching him all the while out of the corner of her eye. He took the cup. Plaster dust whitened his knuckles. Silently he drank.
Never had there been such tension between them. The strain made the air heavy and thick.
Suddenly she understood. His seizure was part of his secret. He had epilepsy.
No wonder he was leery of discussing his sickness, his affliction, even with her. Most people believed epileptics were mentally ill, perhaps possessed by demons. Was he worried she’d pity him, or worse, fear him?
She had to ask. They couldn’t go on as if nothing had happened. If he abandoned their marriage because she violated their agreement by broaching a personal subject, so be it. She had done her best to live by the tenets of their contract. But something snapped inside her, as though she were a piece of glass that could only sustain so much pressure before it cracked. As much as she needed Adrian for herself and for her work, she couldn’t live under these constraints any longer.
Sudden panic gripped her. Are you sure you want to know? What if he is mad, or possessed? Could you live with that? Yes, she answered herself. Because she loved Adrian, she had to know. Because she loved him, she would accept him no matter his secret.
Now she knew. Acceptance was love’s greatest power.
If he didn’t tell her this minute, their marriage was over. No matter how much she loved him, no matter what cost she might pay, she’d reached the point where trust was paramount. She couldn’t go back.
“Do you have epilepsy?”
“Epilepsy?” He gave a short bark of laughter. “No, not that.”
Then what, she burned to ask. But she wouldn’t tell him what was at stake if he refused to explain. She wouldn’t demand it. The truth had to come of his free will.
Each beat of her heart marked the time he remained silent.
He drained the cup, then set it down. He walked to her, and took her hands. His were surprisingly cold.
Joanna held her breath. She prayed he would trust her at last. If he lied, would she be able to tell? The suspenseful silence tormented her. She wanted to say something, anything, to break the spell. But she gritted her teeth and waited.
Adrian swallowed. He cleared his throat.
“I wish I’d been brave enough to tell you on my own, instead of you having to find out this way. You may not believe me, but I’d finally decided I had to tell you. I just couldn’t seem to choose a good time. Or, as painful as this is to admit, maybe I was afraid to.
“Only one person in the world knows what I am about to say. My brother Andrew.” He looked at her, his eyes dark and unreadable. “I see the future.”
Such a quiet, short admission after such a long wait.
“You see the future.” She took a moment to absorb the words, almost understanding why he hadn’t told her sooner. No one would freely admit to such a capability, because it was considered heresy, against the tenets of the Christian faith. “After all this time, after what Andrew had said, I’d feared something so much worse that this is almost a relief.”
She reached out to embrace him. He pulled away.
“When we first married, you couldn’t know you could trust me. I might think you a sorcerer as most people would,” she said. “But what kept you from telling me after you got out of prison?”
“Plenty. What happened to my grandmother. What my father did to her and what has happened to others. What almost everyone else believes about those who claim to have the Sight. If I told you and you were like them, it would be too late for both of us. Either you’d want to accuse me to save yourself, or you’d be in danger if anything happened to me. As you are now. The authorities would torture you until you divulged what you knew. They’d make you talk against your will. I couldn’t bear to have that happen to you.” Adrian took her hands, his thumbs drawing gentle circles. Perhaps the soothing gesture helped ease the pain of his tale. “I believe having to confess that her mother had the Sight is part of what killed my mother. They forced her to betray her own mother’s confidences. Then she had to watch her mother burn at the stake.”
He let go of her hands and sank into the chair, as if releasing so much personal information had sapped his energy. Or as if doing so was an incredible relief.
“You’re not appalled?” he asked. “Not going to flee in disgust?”
“No.” Joanna sat on his lap to prove his secret wouldn’t scare her away. She wanted to show him that the truth could make them stronger. He looked up at her with a tender smile as he put his arms around her waist.
“You are the way you are,” Joanna said. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to have such horrors haunting you. I do know that to live in fear is not to live at all. I’d rather enjoy whatever time we have, even if happens to be only a short while, trusting each other, than live a thousand years with secrets between us.
“Surely there aren’t many cases of people being accused of witchcraft. You can’t know that what happened to your grandmother will happen to you.” She froze. “Or can you? Have you seen your future?”
Adrian relished Joanna’s nearness and the calm that flowed over him when she sat on his lap, as if cleansing his soul. Her familiar scent comforted him. Her support amazed him. “No. I’ve never had a vision about myself.”
And only one about you.
“I want to know everything. What do you see? When? How? How often? Tell me,” she said. “I want to understand.”
He had no words to describe the relief he felt. His wife accepted him, flawed as he was.
“I can’t control the visions, nor do I know when they’ll come. I see a wide variety of things, but they all portend danger. Often what I see comes to pass, but not always exactly the same way. The hardest part is not being able to help those who’ll soon face peril or death, because they’d wonder how I knew. I tried several times to pass on information but fac
ed many questions and skepticism when I could offer no proof. On some occasions I managed to tweak the truth and so was able to help.”
Joanna held him tight. “Most people are afraid of what they don’t know and have no way to understand. They always will be. Andrew is loathsome for holding this over your head all of these years, for trying to control you. His ‘secret’ is worse than yours. Our brothers have betrayed us.”
“Andrew felt it was his duty to tell the authorities,” he said. “You’re right, I lived in fear of what he might do. He could still be a threat. He’s very convincing, and as he said it’d be his word against mine. Who can say what the authorities would believe? But I just can’t turn him in.”
“How did you know you could see the future?”
“Joanna….”
“Please. Tell me.”
What difference would it make? Joanna might as well know everything. The secret was out. Revealing details couldn’t make matters worse. She’d already seen him in the throes of a vision and hadn’t fled in fear. She’d stood by him.
“When I was six, I started having detailed dreams. The first I remember was of a cat having six kittens, three mostly white and three mostly black. Shortly thereafter, the blacksmith’s cat had six kittens, just like those in the dream. I had more dreams, or visions, that would come to pass.”
“It must have been awful to know things but not be able to tell anyone.”
Relief washed over him. How good he felt surprised him. Not only was he finally sharing his darkest secrets with Joanna, her feelings for him didn’t seem to have changed for the worse. He saw no fear, no apprehension in her eyes. In fact, she seemed happier, more comfortable now that she knew.
“And after your grandmother’s…death, there was no one else you could trust.”
“Being different terrified me. But I refused to be weak and feeble like my grandmother. She had no money, no power with which to protect herself. I trained harder than the others to make myself strong. I kept myself apart from other boys as much as possible, so they wouldn’t learn my secret.”
“Were you lonely?”
“Yes,” he answered. With each confession he felt as if another brick was taken from the pile of his troubles. “But better to have no friends than to have them suspect me or think I was a lunatic. Or cursed.”
“I don’t believe in curses. If anything, you have a gift. Some people believe using herbs and medicines to cure the sick is witchcraft. But physicians want to help people, just as you would. I know you’d never use your visions to do harm.”
“Not intentionally. One of the worst problems with some of my visions is not knowing whom to help. How do I know whether what I see is supposed to be changed or if that’s what’s supposed to happen?
“You need to know that if I’m accused now that I’m noble again, the punishment will be worse. Witchcraft is implied treason.” He kissed her fingers, which made her smile. “That’s another reason I wanted to spare you. I didn’t want you to be accused along with me, and hoped your innocence would prevail. I still believe I’m putting you at risk.”
He felt as though he could breathe freely for the first time in years. At last he had someone with whom to share all of his burdens. Even had he known how wonderful telling her would make him feel, he still would’ve kept quiet for her protection. Yet how could they have continued if she hadn’t come upon him in the midst of a vision?
“You’re right that at first I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if I could trust you or if you would accept me as I am,” he said. “But as we grew close, I realized you wouldn’t fear something out of the ordinary. I know you’d never betray me. Yet telling you wasn’t an option because of my concerns for your safety should the worst happen.”
Would that risk, that fear ever go away?
“Will our children have visions?”
“I don’t know. It seems to skip a generation. My mother was normal. And as you know, Andrew isn’t afflicted. I’d hoped he’d be my heir so I could avoid dealing with this. But you see how he is. I’ve worked for years to undo my father’s damage and couldn’t let my efforts be for naught. Yet I could be subjecting our child to a lifetime of misery.”
“Are you miserable?”
“No,” he said, and meant it. “Not anymore. I have you.”
She smiled again and ran her fingers through his hair. “We will love and care for our child however he or she is. We’ll do our best to prepare him or her.”
The determination in her voice soothed him. He’d worried about her safety before she knew the truth and he would worry now. But at least, and at last, there were no more secrets between them. He felt cleaner than he had after his post-prison bath.
“I love you, Adrian,” she said.
Chapter 25
Joanna couldn’t breathe. She’d been so caught up in the moment, her love for Adrian so strong, the confession had spilled out of her as though she were an overfilled pitcher. She’d wanted him to know her truth, as he had, however unwillingly, shared his. She wanted him to know that his seeing the future didn’t change her feelings for him.
They’d been having a very personal conversation. But telling him of her love directly violated their agreement. She’d vowed to tear the thing up when he returned home, and now had done it figuratively.
What would he do? Surely he wouldn’t have told her everything to abandon her now. Even if he did leave, she’d done the right thing. The agreement constrained her very existence, as though she were a window upon which the sun would never shine.
She felt naked. A chill coursed through her, making her skin prickle. As much as Adrian had revealed about himself, she’d gone farther. She’d opened her heart.
At what cost?
He hadn’t moved. He looked as if the touch of a single finger would topple him off his chair. Silence stretched endlessly. His expression hadn’t changed. No pity, no disgust flared in his eyes. But no welcoming warmth lingered there, either.
She jumped off of his lap and smoothed her skirts. She had to say something. “What I meant was, I love having you back at home. That’s what I meant.”
Later that night, Adrian stood in the small yard behind the house, haunted by Joanna’s confession. The air held a mixture of chill and warmth, spring trying to push aside the harshness of winter. No moon graced the sky. The stars hid behind drifting clouds gray against the blackness. The dark enveloped him, offering no distractions to sway him from his thoughts.
Joanna loved him. What a lout he was for not embracing her disclosure with grace at least, if not with matching warmth and enthusiasm. He’d been so stunned, so unresponsive, she’d tried to cover the astonishing news by saying how happy she was to have him back at home.
At home. That was how Adrian felt with Joanna. He’d never thought he could experience such comfort with another person.
Having Bedford Castle back thrilled him, but it no longer mattered if he lived there again. He just wanted to live with Joanna. To look forward to going home to her each day, to see her special smile, to hold her in his arms. That was what mattered.
His grandmother’s last words all those years ago rushed back with stunning clarity. His blood ran cold as he heard her voice as clearly as if she stood next to him in the yard.
“Follow your heart.”
His heart was Joanna. Wherever she was became his castle, even his drab little rooms.
How had his grandmother known? Had she seen so far into his future? Had she been trying to tell him, even then, that winning back Bedford Castle wasn’t the important thing? At last, after years of trying to ferret out the meaning, he understood her message. The only way she could, she’d tried to tell him love was the answer. That only by truly loving someone could he forgive his past and live his own life instead of trying to salvage the remnants of his father’s. Love was what made a person whole, not retribution.
Follow your heart. If he’d listened then, might he have saved himself years of heartache a
nd struggle? Probably not, for he hadn’t been ready to accept the truth. He would’ve scoffed, as certain he was too different to deserve love as he was convinced he was incapable of it. With her constant devotion even in the face of his strange behavior, Joanna had shown him another way. By trusting and accepting him as he was, though she knew he concealed so much from her.
By loving him.
Oh, God. Joanna loved him.
Understanding hit him like a punch to the gut. She wouldn’t have dared tell him, for such a personal declaration would flout their agreement. He realized how she showed him, every day, with every smile and every touch. How he could’ve read it in her eyes, if only he’d looked. His trusting her with his most intimate disclosure must have convinced her she could trust him with her own. Or perhaps she’d reached her breaking point.
Because of his past, he hadn’t wanted to think about what she felt for him, or what his constant thoughts of her meant. He’d never cared for or desired another woman as much as he did Joanna. He’d not known need could run so deep and true. His feelings for Joanna merged inside him just as her windows coalesced from colorful pieces into a unified composition.
He loved his wife.
Tears filled his eyes. He couldn’t contain them. The last time he’d cried was nineteen years ago, when his grandmother burned. Yet the realization that he loved and was loved breached his fortified defenses.
He sank to his knees in the damp dirt and cried.
“Lady Joanna, it is time to present the final tally of your earnings over the past year.”
John Petty sat across from her at a long table in a meeting room at the Guildhall, his expression revealing nothing. Finally, the day she had been waiting for, the day she’d know for certain whether she had achieved her goal.
If she’d failed, what would happen to her workshop? William was in jail. No one she knew was capable of following in her footsteps, not even Thomas. She’d have to close her doors, and other glaziers would absorb her clients.
