Lord Sebastian's Wife

Dead? Who was this stranger who assumed that if Beatrice was a widow, Sebastian must be the husband she had lost? Crossing himself against the ill chance raised by the stranger’s remark, Sebastian walked through the gap in the screens that led to the hall. “I am alive as anyone in this room. Who says I am dead?”

His glance flicked over Beatrice’s sister, Cecilia, and the strange man and woman at her side before going to Beatrice, cool and distant in her widow’s black. Beatrice, whom he had once loved.

“John does,” Cecilia said.

Sebastian brought his gaze back to the strange man. His heart began to pound as if his body recognized the nearly familiar stranger before his eyes did, and then his eyes knew. The stranger was Beatrice’s brother, John Coleville. He had left England five years ago, so long ago that he could not know of Beatrice’s marriage to Thomas Manners. That was why he had made the mistake about Beatrice’s late husband.

John is home. The impact of it struck him all at once and delighted laughter bubbled up, drowning everything but joy in its flood. John had been companion, friend, everything Sebastian had imagined a brother would be. Sebastian rushed forward to embrace him, to confirm the truth of this homecoming with the certainty of touch.

“Thank God! Thank God for it!” he cried, the words hardly serving to convey his pleasure.

His happiness was so intense that it took him a moment to realize that John was neither laughing nor returning his embrace. Sebastian’s laughter died. He loosened his grip.

“You do not seem happy to see me, my friend. What ails you?”

“I am glad, more glad than you can know, to see you,” John said grimly, reaching up to grasp Sebastian’s wrists.

“You look it,” Sebastian said, and pulled free of John’s hands. “It cannot be grief for poor Thomas Manners that makes you look so black. You never knew the man. Come, tell me, tell us all. Why the long face?”

“Because Bea says she is the widow of a man she cannot have married.”

Sebastian stared at him, the back of his neck prickling as if at the rumor of catastrophe. “I witnessed their marriage and Ceci attended her. Do you tell us we were not there, that it was all a dream?”

“No. I am sure there was a wedding. I am telling you that the marriage was invalid.”

“Invalid? On what grounds?”

“That she was promised to another man,” John said. “Promised in a binding betrothal.”

“Another man?” he asked, disbelieving. His heart pounded, loud in his ears, hard against his breastbone. He had thought he knew the worst Beatrice could do. His sense of approaching disaster deepened. “Are you saying she has known yet another man?”

“Another man? What are you babbling about?” John asked, frowning, and shook his head. “She is betrothed to you, Sebastian.”

“To me?” The pounding of his heart was swallowed by a vast silence, a numbed stillness.

Beatrice cried, “Are you mad? We are no more betrothed than…than… We are not betrothed. Do you think I could make such a mistake?”

“Or I?” Sebastian demanded. “This is not funny, John.”

“It is not jest, Sebastian, and I do not think it funny. Do you not remember that Twelfth Night when you and your family joined us at Wednesfield? I filched a ewer of mead and the three of us drank it in the old tower. You and Beatrice promised to marry when you were grown and then we all laughed and drank some more.”

“Oh, blessed Virgin,” Beatrice said, closing her eyes.

“I do not re—” But he did remember, no matter how he tried to forget. Details he had wanted to bury rose up from the depths of his mind. Words, the words of a vow… “Yes, now I do! What foolishness is this? We made no promises that bound.” Promises to break, yes, not promises to bind.

“That is not what I remember, Sebastian. Think. Think what you said, the words you used. The promises you made bind you.”

Beatrice clenched her hands into fists as if she might batter her way out of this. “You are no churchman. How can you know for certain?”

In a distant corner of his mind Sebastian wondered if perhaps he slept and John’s appalling announcement was a part of a nightmare from which he would soon awaken. Surely this madness was the stuff of dreams. Otherwise his life had been disordered beyond recognition in the space of five minutes.

“Do you not remember? You promised to have Sebastian as your husband and he promised to have you as his wife. Both of you promised without conditions. You made a binding marriage between you,” John said. “I have lived among churchmen for the last three years, Bea. Canon law fills the air in Rome. A man who has ears to hear cannot help learning a little.”

Sebastian knew a little canon law, as well. Enough, he had thought, to keep himself from doing just what John claimed they had done. “We did not lie together. It cannot be binding.”

“That does not matter in this case. If you never lie with her, she will still be your wife before God,” John said gently.

“I cannot believe this,” Beatrice said. She went to sit on one of the benches pushed against the wall and leaned her head back, her hands lying slack on her lap. For a moment Sebastian wanted to go sit beside her, companions in calamity. But he could not, not when she had betrayed him, not when she had abandoned honor as easily and thoughtlessly as she might discard a gown that no longer fit.

He had to do something, anything, to avert this disaster.

“I am betrothed to Cecilia,” he said.

“You cannot be,” John said.

At the same moment Cecilia said, “Do not lie, Sebastian. It will only confuse matters.”

“We can pretend it never happened. If no one knows…”

His voice slowed. Truth was sinking into him, the awareness that he would not awaken from this nightmare slowly breaking over him. No matter how he might wish it otherwise, his betrothal to Beatrice was real, as unbreakable and real as marriage. He could behave like a fool and a child, and fight it for a time, but to what end? Damage to his soul, damage to his honor, and marriage to Beatrice at the end of it anyway.

But, God help him, he wished it were not true.

“You will know, Sebastian. And God will know. Can you take another woman to wife, knowing you make a concubine of her? And if you do not marry, who will your heirs be?” John asked.

“How do I get out of this?” Beatrice asked, her voice flat, bled of expression.

Sebastian glanced at her. Against the black of her hood and bodice, her pallor was stark, the color leached even from her down-turned mouth. She looked weary and sad, a woman alone despite the company of her kinsmen. Pity moved in him, pity she did not deserve, pity he refused to feel. Balling his hands into fists, he turned away and walked to the opposite side of the room. He leaned against the wall and pressed his forehead against its cool stone. Behind him, the others continued as if he were still in their midst, while slowly he tried to absorb the shocks of the afternoon— John’s unexpected homecoming, his disastrous announcement.

“Ceci, why do they fight this? What has happened while I have been away?” John asked.

“I do not know, John. I do not now nor have I ever understood why they are at odds.”

“It avails you nothing to do this!” Beatrice cried. “You will do most good by telling me how I may escape!”

“There is no way. You are married to Sebastian,” John said.

“If I deny it? What then, O brother?”

“Sebastian can sue you to live with him.”

“And how many witnesses will he need? Is one enough? And will you oppose me in this, my brother?” The fraying edge of Beatrice’s temper rang clearly in the sharpness of her tone.

“It takes two witnesses to make a case, but if you marry another man, you will be committing bigamy and your children will be bastards,” John said.

“I do not intend to marry again. Once was enough to last me a lifetime.”

“Bea, you know you are married,” Cecilia said.