by D. L. Bogdan
He was to marry Cecily. Together they would bring her grandchildren and a legacy that she was partially responsible for. Now he was gone. Cecily would marry someone else; she would no longer be a part of them. Mirabella would go; she would join her precious convent. Even if she did not, she would leave. Grace’s actions had chased her away. There would be no redeeming their already-fractured relationship. And Hal ... How could Hal ever forgive this? This was to be Their Secret.
Grace had lost everything.
She climbed out of bed, throwing her wrap about her shoulders.
Carefully, noiselessly, Grace slipped out of doors.
“I have nothing,” she said to the great manor that loomed in the darkness.
“We cannot leave without her!” Hal cried the next morning as the family prepared for the long, unhappy journey home for Brey’s interment. “Where in hell would she have gone to? Has anyone seen her?”
Cecily and Mirabella shook their heads. They clung to each other, both fragile and frightened, battered by the whirlwind of events that had left its brutal mark on the last few days.
At once Hal’s steward rushed in from out of doors, leading in a young, startled boatman.
“What’s this?” Hal demanded.
“News, my lord,” said the steward with an apologetic bow.
“M-milord,” the boatman stammered. “I was in front of your house when it happened... . I had trouble bringing up my oar. Something seemed to be grabbing at it. I jerked it up and ... that’s when I saw it. I thought it was riverweeds tangling it up, but it was not. It was a lady’s wrap.” He choked back a sob.
“No ...” Hal whispered to the servant, who offered a reluctant nod.
Cecily’s shoulders began to convulse with silent sobs. Mirabella held her close, her body rigid as she absorbed this new onslaught of tragedy.
The two men led Hal to the scene. In the bottom of the boat was a bloodied wrap and a tangle of blond hair. Gingerly, Hal fingered the sopping wrap. His hand trembled when he encountered the hair entwined about the boatman’s oar.
“Is it hers, my lord—the wrap?” the man asked in anxious tones.
Hal offered a slow nod, his blue eyes stormy with bewilderment.
“She must have been caught on a branch before the current carried her off,” hazarded the boatman.
Hal clutched the wrap to his chest. He began to shiver uncontrollably as he sobbed. “Oh, Grace ... oh, Grace ...” At once he regarded the stunned assemblage, his face lit with an epiphany. “She may have survived,” he ventured at last. “We will alert the proper authorities. Any females of Grace’s description pulled from the Thames shall be examined.”
“Of course, my lord,” Hal’s steward answered in gentle tones.
Hal would be appeased. There would be a thorough search. But all knew no one survived the Thames. Brey was gone. Grace was gone. And all in three days. The amount of time it took for the Lord to die and rise from the dead.
How would Hal ever survive this? Could he ever rise above it?
After two weeks of Hal dashing off to examine the bloated corpses pulled from the Thames on a daily basis, Father Alec accompanied him to his apartments. He laid a hand on Hal’s shoulder.
Father Alec’s lips quivered. He did not want to say it. “Hal, we must return to Sumerton. Brey needs to be interred properly. It does not mean we have to stop searching for my lady, but we must at least begin to face the prospect—”
Hal jerked his shoulder from his friend’s grip, drawing a hand up over his eyes as though by doing so he could blot the latest tragedies from his vision. “I know! By God, I know!” He removed his hand, fixing Father Alec with an angry stare. “And after? After I have faced that I drove my wife to her death? After I have returned her son to his final resting place? Then what?”
Father Alec bit his lip. Once again, he took Hal’s shoulders beneath his firm grasp. “Then, my dear friend, you keep living. As we all must. There still remain those in your care who depend on you.”
The priest had to summon all of his willpower to meet the naked pain lighting Hal’s eyes. He held the blue gaze, allowing his own eyes to fill with tears. He reached up, cupping his friend’s cheek in his hand. There were no words for such grief.
Hal nodded, then bowed his head. “Then it is time to return?”
Father Alec nodded. “Yes. It is time.”
A requiem mass was celebrated for Grace, and Hal made arrangements for a tomb bearing her effigy to be erected in her honor beside Brey’s. Brey’s interment immediately followed. Father Alec officiated at Lord Hal’s request, though he felt inadequate for the role. He had not presided over any kind of ceremony in several years and he felt too close to the family to offer any real comfort. He stood over Brey’s casket as stupefied as everyone else. His exterior was calm and collected; his voice rang out with false confidence as he recited the requiem mass, and to those in attendance he was the model priest, strong and self-contained. In truth he was wrought with discomfort. He stared at the helpless, bewildered faces of those who remained, each lost in their own separate spheres of misery, and could not imagine how they would survive. One loss was enough, but two, and in such quick succession, were staggering, more than most minds could wrangle with.
Hal kept to himself once the mourners made their departure. There was no one to comfort him; he had no immediate family. His friends were tactfully turned away. Grace’s family, who abounded in Yorkshire, refused to attend. She had disgraced them and they would not forgive her even in death. Father Alec wished to visit each and every one of them, that he might box all of their ears.
Mirabella allowed him to visit her in her apartments, where she knelt before her prie-dieu, murmuring fervent prayers he hoped would bring her some kind of peace. If her anxiety-ridden face was any indication, however, they had not.
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Mistress.”
Mirabella turned her face toward him and he could not help but be struck by her dark beauty, beauty she would never acknowledge as an asset. It saddened him.
“I will not pretend to imagine what you are going through,” he told her. “But if I can be of any help ...”
Mirabella rose, throwing herself into his arms. He held her a long moment before pulling away and guiding her to her small breakfast table, where they sat. She took his hand, squeezing tightly.
“So many feelings, Father,” she told him, her voice thick with agony. “All conflicting, all pulling me in different directions. Do I stay to comfort my father, even as I can hardly abide his presence now that I know the truth? Or do I leave at last, take my vows, even as I fear entering the cloister knowing that she is there, knowing what she is to me?”
Father Alec shook his head. “I do not know,” he said, his voice huskier than usual, made thick with unshed tears. “I will tell you this. Despite everything, your father is not a bad man. He is a good man who did a bad thing, a terrible thing. But you must forgive him, you must see that he has tried to amend himself to the best of his abilities, and that is all God can ask of any of us. You have lost the only mother you have ever known, and though your relationship was strained I know that you grieve for her, for what you never had with her if nothing else. You grieve for your brother, the innocent whose life was taken from him before his time, and it is his loss to which there is no easy comfort. But if you examine your circumstances as compared to your father’s and Lady Cecily’s I would say that you make out better than either of them.”
Mirabella screwed up her face in confusion.
“Your father has no one. No wife, no heir. Lady Cecily finds herself in a similar position now; not only are her parents gone but her betrothed as well. And while you share in their loss, you still have a mother and a father. And from what you told me of Sister Julia, she loves you very much,” Father Alec said, his heart pounding as he dared make the suggestion. “I do not think you would lose by lovingly confronting her with the truth. You must realize that she is not a contributor
to what you may perceive as a betrayal any more than your father was. Like him, she was trying to protect you. You have to see that. Now you have the opportunity to know her as a mother in an environment both of you cherish. Perhaps now more than ever is the time for you to take the step you have been longing to take for the better part of your life. What drew you toward this calling may be the same force that drew you toward her, something in the blood.”
Mirabella bowed her head. “There is no doubt of my calling,” she told him. “But to see her again knowing what I know. How has she abided looking at me all these years, knowing how I came to be? I must have been such a painful reminder to her, just as I was to my moth—to Lady Grace.” Her voice broke. “That is all I have ever meant to anyone. Pain. Heartache.” She heaved a deep sigh. “How could I put her through that every day?”
Father Alec’s heart clenched with compassion as he reached out, stroking her tearstained cheek. She leaned into his hand.
“Yet she saw you before you knew of your connection,” Father Alec told her. “Did she seem pained then?”
Mirabella’s face softened in thought. She shook her head. “No. She seemed ... happy.” She regarded him in awe, as though shocked at the possibility.
“Because, no matter what, you are her daughter and she loves you,” Father Alec told her. “Go to her, Mirabella. Take comfort in one another.”
Mirabella rose, Father Alec rising in turn.
“Oh, Father, you have been so good to me, to our family,” Mirabella told him, wrapping her arms about his waist again and burying her head in his chest.
“You have all been as family to me,” he said. “The only family I have known for many years. You all have brought me as much comfort as I hope to have brought you.”
Mirabella drew back, her arms still about him. She reached up, stroking his cheek. “You have. So much.” She swallowed several times, overcome with emotion. “Oh, Father ...”
To Father Alec’s utter astonishment she leaned up and pressed her lips to his. They were full, moist, and not unpleasant, but his body went rigid. Mirabella may be a beauty, but never at any moment had he been attracted to her. He had never suffered a lapse in chastity before, though he had been visited by temptation many a time. Despite this, he tried not to lose sight of the fact that he was a priest and, unless there were drastic reforms made, he was constrained to celibacy.
He pulled away. “My girl ...” He cleared his throat. “If I have in some way led you to believe—”
Mirabella had backed away from him, covering her mouth as though her lips had been set aflame. “Forgive me, Father! I do not know what possessed me! Oh, Father, I am out of my head! Please forgive me!” She fell to her knees. “Please, grant me absolution. I had no right... . I am no better than the Boleyn creature. Oh, Father!”
Father Alec knelt beside her. “Lady Mirabella, collect yourself,” he said gently. “Your emotions are running high right now given your remarkable circumstances. It is both expected and acceptable for you to be a little out of sorts. You are forgiven. But,” he added, bowing his head as his cheeks flushed in embarrassment, “you must realize that this cannot happen again. I am a priest.”
“Of course, Father,” Mirabella said. “I also wish to take vows. As I said, I do not know what ... I just ... I suppose I just wanted to feel the nearness of someone, the comfort... . Is that strange?”
“Not at all,” Father Alec said. “We are human beings. And God said it is not good for man to be alone. We need each other. Now and then there is a special nearness that a man and woman cherish. But for those of us called to serve God alone, we sacrifice that nearness for a different kind of fellowship and take comfort in something a little more abstract. It is a hard life and not one to be entered into lightly. That being said, we still cannot deny our humanity. Now and then we need to be embraced, to feel a sense of closeness to another human being just as anyone else. There is nothing wrong in it, Mistress Mirabella, as long as it is done in chastity.”
Mirabella nodded, averting her head. “Yes, Father.”
Father Alec rose. The room had suddenly become stifling and he longed to leave it. “Bless you, my child. I pray peace will find you.”
Mirabella said nothing.
Once certain he had retreated she drew her knees to her chest and sobbed. How could she have betrayed herself like that? Was there not enough to grieve over?
No matter how he would try to pretend, it would be different now.
She had lost him as well.
Cecily had watched Brey’s casket be slipped into its dark crypt and shuddered. The image would not flee, stalking her even in dreams. It swirled relentless before her mind’s eye; the grating sound of the casket scraping against the stone of the tomb was chilling, causing goose pimples to rise on her flesh.
Brey was gone. Lady Grace was gone.
She almost expected the latter. For years she had prepared herself for it as she watched Lady Grace’s health decline. But for her to die like this ... it was a tragedy she could not grapple with.
And if she could not grapple with that she could not begin to make sense of Brey’s death. One moment there, the next gone. Something inexplicable, a stupid stomachache. And gone. She would never hear his infectious laugh. They would never again ride together through the lush forest of Sumerton, never hawk together. She could never tease him about his poor aim with the bow. He would no longer be there to conspire with, to dance with, to play games with, to talk to, to accompany her to entertainments in their silly matching ensembles.
He was her best friend.
And soon he would have been her husband.
They had kissed at the joust. Her first kiss. A little kiss it was but a kiss nonetheless, the first of what she had imagined would be many more. But Brey took his kisses with him.
They would never marry now. She would never be the mother of his children.
Brey, her Brey, was gone.
Cecily lay in her apartments sobbing until she could sob no more. And when the tears stopped, remarkably they would start again. She would remember something Brey had said, a jest, a story, a song he sang in his off-key voice. And the tears rolled down her cheeks in a hot torrent.
The house was empty without him. She, Mirabella, and Lord Hal lived in separate worlds. No one interacted. No one commingled. They ate separately. They prayed separately. The joy had been sapped from the house, and Cecily, who had once been so adept at spreading joy, could not summon forth the strength to bring it back.
Father Alec attempted to comfort her but at last gave up.
“There is nothing I can say or do,” he told her at last. “Simple answers will not suffice, not for one as astute as you. I hate being helpless. I hate watching all of you suffer like this. All I want is to be here if you need me.”
“Many thanks,” Cecily whispered. “Just stay beside me,” she told him. “You don’t have to say anything. Just be here.”
So Father Alec stayed beside her. Sometimes she fell into a dreamless slumber. When she awoke he was still there.
At least he did not fail her. At least he would always be there.
Not only had Hal lost his wife and treasured son but all hopes of a dynasty. He was the last of the Pierce line. The future had rested on Brey’s slim shoulders, it shone out of his bright blue eyes.
Hal wondered how it was his grief had not killed him. Grace ... how he had hurt her over the years. But he could not abandon his daughter, not for anyone. He had to do right by her. And in doing right he had done so much wrong... . Grace’s happiness was sacrificed, his family was compromised, and all for a night of uncontrolled lust.
He had never stopped punishing himself for a night he could not remember. Ever since he learned of his shame he wore the hair shirt, save for those few weeks before his ill-fated trip to London when he and Grace had embarked on their “new start.”
New start.
Hal’s throat constricted with tears. Imagine how many tears a body co
uld hold!
He had killed her the same as if he had thrown her into the river himself. A slow, agonizing death soaked in water and wine.
Grace was no more.
And Brey ... his triumph, his beautiful boy. His blessing, his redemption. . .
But he did not deserve blessings or redemption. God knew that. So He took Brey from him. He took him away. And he was not enough, so He returned for Grace.
Now Hal was alone.
He could not face Mirabella’s angry stare or Cecily’s bewildered one. He did not speak to Father Alec much. There was nothing to say.
He remained in his room. He shuffled his cards. He rattled his dice.
He cried.
Until at last one day Mirabella came to him.
They embraced. Hal held her fast, thrilled at the contact with another human being, thrilled that it was his daughter. Surely this was some sign that forgiveness was possible... .
“I cannot promise things will ever be the same for us,” she told him. “But I thought to seek your blessing. I would like to take my vows now. It was my hope you could arrange the dowry.”
“Of course,” said Hal, his heart sinking. Of course she would want that. It was all she had ever wanted. Now, despite or because of the knowledge that her mother resided at the cloister, she was more determined than ever to get there. “I will make the arrangements directly.”
Mirabella offered a low curtsy. He detected a trace of mockery in it.
“Thank you, Father,” she told him.
He inclined his head as she left him.
