The King's Champion

‘But why did you not write a year ago and tell me he was here? Tell me that he was well and healed from his injuries?’

‘Why?’ he asked, his gaze direct and his voice firm, yet soft. ‘Surely you harbour no feelings for him after all this time?’

Eleanor looked away, her fingers laced tightly together, suddenly feeling exhausted. She steeled herself and asked a question, the answer to which she dreaded, ‘And his wife? Is she here too?’

Abruptly Rupert took two steps towards her and gripped her arms with both hands, staring at her keenly. ‘Eleanor, do you not know?’

Alarmed at his reaction, she looked up at him with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘His wife—she died. Two years ago. I wrote and told Mother. She wrote back and said that I was never to mention it to you. But I assumed that you had at least been informed.’

Suddenly it all became clear to Eleanor. The need deep within her, the patient and yet inexplicable insistence from her heart that she wait. And now, surely, at last the waiting was over. She struggled to free herself from Rupert’s grasp and ran to the door, her skirts indeed billowing in her haste. She wrenched the door open, uncertain of where to go or what she would say, but her only purpose now was to find Troye and speak with him.

‘Eleanor!’ Rupert called out to her, running hard on her heels.

She took no heed, her feet drumming, her heart pounding as she ran down the corridor. But Rupert, taller and faster than his slender sister, caught up with her in a few moments and stopped her headlong flight with one arm about her waist. She cried out and struggled and fought against him, but firmly he dragged her back to her chamber and shut the door. Incoherently she shouted at him and tried to reach for the door handle and pull it open, but he blocked her path, grabbed hold of her by both shoulders and shook her until she was forced to yield.

‘Stop! It will do you no good, Ellie. He is just as far beyond your reach now as he ever was years ago.’

Eleanor sagged, her chin dropping upon her chest as warm, wet tears glowed in her eyes. ‘I would only speak with him. Comfort him.’

‘It would make no difference what you say or do.’ He held her as she leaned against his chest, patting her back as he would a child, and felt how slender she had become, how frail, ‘His wife’s death destroyed him. I am certain he will never love anyone again. Forget about him, Ellie, it will do you no good to yearn for him.’

Eleanor wept then, not for herself, not for a love that could never be, but for the wife that had been lost, and for Troye. She felt his pain and the moment it entered her heart she knew that she had never stopped loving him and she could never abandon that love again.

Rupert held her while she sobbed, and then gently wiped her face with his thumbs and murmured words of comfort and encouragement. She tried to absorb them, but the truth was they did not touch nor sway her, and when Rupert, with regret, departed to return to his duties, she sat in a chair beside the glowing hearth fire and stared blankly. She was still sitting thus when her parents returned, but she merely hid behind the excuses of headache and exhaustion. Her mother looked at her for a long moment, always able to detect the slightest falsehood, but whether she was aware or guessed at what ailed Eleanor, she made no comment and kissed her goodnight, withdrawing as Lord Henry impatiently called his wife to their bedchamber.