by Diana Rubino
"So how fares Anne?" Valentine asked as Denys arrived back at Lilleshal and her lady-in-waiting Mary removed her cloak.
"She looks painfully gaunt, but her spirits are good. If you have a few moments of leisure, I would love to tell you all about my visit."
He looked surprised, but nodded.
They headed for the solar, where she rushed up to the blazing hearth, rubbing her hands, lifting her skirts slightly above her ankles to let the heat warm her legs.
She handed him the parchment she had been carrying. "She gave me her family table to trace."
"Impressive."
"She also told me to dig deep in my memory and mayhap some name or place will surface."
Valentine stared at the unrolled scroll for a moment. "That was very kind of her."
"Aye, it was." She slipped out of her shoes and sat on the tapestried rug, stretching her legs straight out to let the fire warm her feet.
"Did you see Richard?"
She shook her head. "He was not in residence."
"Where was the kingdom's greatest warrior? Engaged in a duel with God, perhaps?"
His remark took her by surprise, and she turned to look at him, but his back was to her.
He was staring out the window, leaning on the frame, drumming his fingers restlessly.
"Valentine, is something amiss between you and Richard?"
He shook his head. "Nay, nothing at all. I have been practicing my fencing skills, so much so that I can barely move my arm, and my hand is frozen into position around an imaginary sword."
He turned and approached her, standing between her and the fire. "I am going to duel with him again, and this time I shall beat him." His voice took on such a vehemence; her heart took a cautious leap.
"That is really not necessary, Valentine. He wouldn't have won you so easily hadn't you already been injured."
"But he bested me nonetheless."
"What of it? He could never win his subjects' hearts here the way you could. That is your forte, and military skills are his. You have nothing to prove to him."
"I'm not trying to prove aught to him. I must prove it to you!"
Her eyes flew wide. "Me?"
"Then mayhap you will give me a peek into that little rock of a heart of a heart of yours. Then perhaps I can convince you at last that it was not merely due to losing a bet that I pursued you, but that from the moment we met in the palace rose garden, we were fated to be together."
Her cheeks heated. "There is no need to prove aught to me either. Save your arm. You need it to wave to the ladies in the stands at tournaments."
He cocked a brow. "A smile is quite sufficient for them. But it takes more than diplomacy and statesmanship to be a man in the true sense. It takes the courage to put your life on the line."
"You are in every sense a man, Valentine," she said sincerely. "I never questioned that. And of what life are you speaking? Surely it is not a matter of life and death."
"It is for me!" he said angrily. "I want a good life for us, not this coldness that passes for civility."
"Aye, cold indeed, Valentine, for you are all man, as I have said, enough so to completely block my heat," she complained, shifting over to the side.
He rose and paced in front of her. "‘Tis not the fact that I lost a duel that bothers me. ‘Tis the fact that I lost over you. So I am going to take him on again, and I will beat him this time. I will take on the entire French army single-handedly if I have to."
She shook her head, wondering what demon had possessed her normally calm and confident spouse. "Valentine, really, there's no need—"
"I am going to do what it takes to prove myself to you, then you will beg me to love you!" He knelt before her and grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her onto her back.
"Conquering armies, brute force, and worldly power is not what it takes to get me to love you!" She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows before he laid her full length on the rug.
"Then what does it take? Am I ever to know that?" His eyes spat out chips of blue ice and his brows knitted into a rigid line.
She was wedged between him and an oak chair, its ornate carvings digging into her back.
She shook her head. "Love cannot be forced, Valentine! You cannot even force your own flesh and blood to love you! No one was able to make my mother love me enough to keep me! It must come naturally, not given out like a medal for decimating an army. Conquering a heart isn't like conquering an enemy. Sometimes it's harder."
She struggled to break free, but he bent over from the waist and seized her in hands so strong, she knew he could hurt her seriously.
"Let me go! I am not your poleaxe!"
He pulled her up to him and she cried out in pain as he wrenched her arms forward. He lifted her clear off the floor so that she was suspended in air, her feet dangling.
Their lips were nearly touching and he spoke as if telling a story, "When the Queen's orders came that I was to marry you, I danced and tumbled with joy. I thought, ‘A-ha! I shall win her now!' for that was the one thing I would have that no one else could."
"Nay sir, I am no thing, no possession," she protested as she kicked and struggled to be free of his grip.
"The King has his court, Richard has his north country, but I was to have silver-haired Denys Woodville, the only woman I'd ever wanted. Now you are my wife, and I still cannot have you!"
He paused for breath, relinquished his grip and turned away. She tumbled to the floor, rubbing her arms where he'd clutched them.
She felt no fear, but a strange urge to comfort him. His fists were clenched, about to strike the wall, the veins hard and blue against his neck.
"Valentine, I am not a trophy to parade around. Winning me isn't like winning a battle."
"‘Tis because of battle I've lost everything." He seemed calmer now, and he sank into the chair by the fire, and rested his cheek on the fist of one hand. "Maybe all I am fit for is war. Maybe I really don't know how to love."
He talked as if to himself, and she couldn't tell if he wanted to laugh or cry. He was enmeshed in such a tangle of emotions, voicing her own feelings would just make it worse.
Her heart went out to him in painful empathy. Behind his confident deportment, he was as lost as she in the maze of courtly intrigues they had found themselves in, and the day to day challenges of living as husband and wife.
Now she could see what Richard had been saying that day long ago when she had confided her fears to him about the man she was expected to marry. Valentine was hiding behind a curtain of his own anguished uncertainty. Ever the man of action, he wanted to fight, but the enemy was himself.
And her, she had to admit. His own wife, the one person he should have been able to count on.
"Stop thinking in terms of battles," she said gently after a time. "Not everything worth having has to be gained by force. I am here, and you won't win me that way."
"I already have you, but I certainly haven't won, have I?" he said with obvious bitterness.
She blinked and tried again to be reasonable. "You are a titled and landed nobleman. You have always had that, and family, parents. I have never had any of those things in my own right. I have nothing of my own, and no one. I am little better than a charity case. The only difference is that I was raised in the palace, instead of an orphanage or gutter.
"You do not feel worthy of me? Think you need to win me? It is I who don't feel worthy of you, no matter what I do."
He looked stunned at her admission. "You are more than worthy—"
She shook her head. "How can I be? I do not even know who I am. Think about that for a while. You are married to a bastard, raised by the most hated family in the realm. And how can you say I am worthy, when you will not even spend more than a moment or two in the same room with me, will not touch me, be tender with me, even when I've tried to make the first move to end the coldness between us."
Her last words were almost choked by a sob.
He rose and in
two long strides was standing before her, gazing down at her, suppressed tears glistening in his eyes, which had turned smoky with emotion.
"You know who you are. No matter who your parents were, it matters not, because you are Lady Starbury, the Duchess of Norwich, my wife! I want to be the very best there is, Dove. I want you to be proud of me, to look up to me, to respect me. I want a wife who loves me for me. I don't want an unwilling victim of a contract forced upon her by a vicious queen!"
"But the fact is we are married, and I am tired of waiting for some sort of kindness from you, Husband. So I am telling you, I will be obedient, in order to end this impasse between us."
"Obedient?" he echoed in confusion.
"Do as you will. Strip off my clothes and lie with me until you roll off me with exhaustion. Once you and I are truly married, we can have the family I long for. You might sire sons. Daughters, too."
He looked appalled at the very idea. "Nay, Dove, I will not have you sacrificing yourself in that way, nor easing your hollow ache with an even hollower act."
"Act?"
He shook his head sadly. "You do not love me, and I refuse to delude myself into believing you do until I am worthy of your love. I reject your wifely obedience, and there are other ways of finding children who need love and care than to produce one every nine months from your own body. I pity you that you were adopted, but it is clear that you have never learned what it is to truly love. I wish I could teach you, but it appears now that the lesson would be completely lost upon you. So get ye to your chamber now, and talk no more to me of wifely obedience."
"But Valentine—"
"Go! Jesu have mercy, just go!" he shouted.
She gathered her skirts, drawing herself up to her full height, not letting her bare feet detract from her august deportment.
The blaze in her eyes met his. She could sense the tension in the air binding their souls like a cord, defying either of them to sever it.
"Aye, I'll go now, because as I've said, I am trying to be obedient. But Valentine, if you expect me to fall in love with you before you are willing to perform any marital duties, then you shall die a childless old man, unless you go elsewhere to sire a houseful of bastards."
She turned on her heel, snatched up her scroll, and in a rustle of velvet and satin underskirts, left the room.
He stared after her, forcing himself to stay put. That rhythmic cadence in the walk, the swing of the hips, the little spring in each step, were becoming so attuned to his own bodily rhythms, he could almost feel her as she went.
Yet each passing day caused such increasing vexation, it now approached physical pain. Even days and weeks of separation had not eased his ache. And yet he had not thought he could be wounded more until now. Her last words had cut him to the quick.
She had so little faith in him as a man, them as a husband and wife, he felt as though his heart would break.
Denys was gone from the chamber, but her scent lingered, and he breathed deeply of it until it faded into the folds of the curtains.
Her prized marble chessboard with the delicate glass pieces was the nearest object within reach. Grasping it with both hands, he flung it across the solar, oblivious to the crashing noise as hunks of glass and marble shattered against the wall.
Slowly his vision blurred until the fragments became a converged mélange with no pattern or logic.
He knew in his heart what was keeping her from loving him. Not until she found out who she was, could she love anyone. He had to convince her that he'd never abandon her as her parents had.
"God Jesu!" he wailed, his cries dying beyond the beamed ceiling. "Give me the chance to save her life. Give me the chance to find her life. Then she'll be able to love me at last!"
CHAPTER TWELVE
In the seclusion of her bedchamber, Denys tried to subdue her roiling emotions. The repeated rejection of her by Valentine was almost more than she could bear. She had told herself she would never love him, but even as she uttered the words, she knew how hollow they sounded.
To take her mind off her tumult of emotions, she unrolled Anne's genealogical table and began to examine it more closely for any clues.
Anne was descended from John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III. Both Anne and Richard were descendants of Edward III, but so was nearly every nobleman in the kingdom.
Denys entertained a ripple of excitement in the possibility of finding her parentage somewhere in this family tree. Was there a place for her here? Did her name truly belong on this parchment? She might even be one of Gaunt's numerous descendants; after all, he'd had three mistresses. God only knew how many bastards he'd sired.
She rolled the parchment back up, repeating the names of the long-dead earls and dukes over and over in her mind. Beaufort, Beauchamp, Neville, Stafford. She'd heard all those names at one time or another during her childhood.
She went back to her diary and combed through it from beginning to end, pondering every mention of a visitor or lad being knighted. She'd made several entries about the feeble-minded King Henry VI, of his ill-fated battles, his triumphs and failures, and his overbearing wife, Marguerite of Anjou.
Then she had another idea. If she'd been in King Henry's charge as an infant, his living relatives might remember her.
Maybe King Henry had even sired her and, slipping in and out of mental incontinence, had neglected to recognize her!
She could be a princess in her own right, an illegitimate princess of the dead king, but that still meant her heritage was royal.
She began fantasizing about how she would have lived had King Henry recognized her as his heir. How different her upbringing would have been. He had been so gentle, saintly. There would have been no public belittlings, no angry outbursts—no Elizabeth Woodville.
But then she would have been a Lancastrian, the deadly enemy of Richard and his family, Yorkists to a man….
At that thought, she almost crumpled the parchment. It was almost too terrible to even contemplate being an enemy to Richard, Anne, Uncle Ned, Valentine…
Did she still want to go ahead with her search, even knowing that this might be the possible outcome?
She chewed her lower lip, tapping the scroll on the coverlet for a moment in indecision.
Yes, she did, more than ever now, she concluded with a sigh. Even were she a Lancastrian by birth, it posed no danger to anyone to find out the truth and put her mind to rest at last. That might be her blood line, but it was certainly not what was, or ever could be in her heart.
The babe had been given to the King as a ward. How then had she come to be in the possession of the Queen? To protect her when power had changed hands? In that case, she had to be someone of sufficient rank for not one, but two kings to have troubled over….
Too excited now to sleep, she dug out of her coffer the original family tree she'd obtained at court and traced the branch to which King Henry VI belonged.
He had come down from the Gaunt lineage, while Richard and Uncle Ned had been descended from both the second and fourth sons of Edward III, thus giving the Yorkists the better claim to the throne.
They had finally been victories after years of fighting, and the old king and his only son were no more. Ned had triumphed, and had an heir of his own. Surely there was nothing to fear….
She traced Henry VI's line carefully, noting that he had had two half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, Welshmen. She knew Edmund was long dead.
Jasper could possibly lead her to success, although he harbored one mark against him—he was married to Catherine Woodville, Elizabeth's cousin.
She didn't think she could trust any of Elizabeth's relatives any more than she could trust the Grey Mare herself. But this was a risk she was willing to take. Now where to locate Catherine Woodville, and attain a Welsh escort to guide her there?
She thought of Richard, but she dare not even ask. She knew he would be willing to help, but she did not wish to take him away from Anne when she was recovering and he was still mour
ning the loss of his stillborn child.
Valentine? Nay, he had so many duties…. And certainly would not want to escort her across the country on an errand he did not believe in, even were she willing to trust him.
No, she had no choice but to turn to the only person who would help her, whom she trusted with her life. Uncle Ned.
She wrote quickly, giving as little detail as possible but impressing him with her urgency in the matter. Her letter to him ended with her name smudged in tears at the closing.
These days, she couldn't think of Uncle Ned without crying. How she longed for him, the dimpled smile, the warm embrace, that wink of reassurance. She knew he would escort her to Wales personally had he the time.
