Lord Sebastian's Wife

“Gladly.”

They did not speak while Beatrice helped Ceci as the maid had helped her, but she was aware of her sister watching her, those dark eyes no doubt seeing more than Ceci let show. Beatrice knew she was no fool, but when she compared her wit to her sister’s cleverness, she felt like one.

While Ceci braided her hair and put on her nightcap, Beatrice sat down. She ought to plait her own hair, but she did not want to. Not yet.

Ceci tied the strings of her cap. “Are you going to go to bed like that? Your hair will be a tangle in the morning.”

“I cannot seem to find the will,” Beatrice confessed. “Today is a day I should want to leave behind, but I fear tomorrow will be worse.”

“Let me.”

Beatrice nodded and drew the stool away from the wall. Ceci picked up the comb from atop the bed where she had put it and went to stand behind Beatrice. Her fingers threaded through Beatrice’s hair, their touch light. Pleasure, or the anticipation of pleasure, washed over Beatrice. She had always loved it when Ceci or Mistress Emma combed her hair; both had the kind of touch that soothed.

A waving strand of hair drifted over her shoulder, glittering gold in the candlelight as it moved into her line of sight. Ceci’s hand, lute-string calluses on the pads of the fingertips, reached forward and drew the strand back.

“I always wished I had hair like yours,” Ceci said, and drew the comb through Beatrice’s hair from hairline to the ends brushing the small of Beatrice’s back.

The touch of the comb loosened every remaining knot of tension in Beatrice’s body. It took her a moment to form the words to reply.

“Because it is fair?”

“And curly.”

“But you have hair like satin!” True, Ceci was dark, but her hair was heavy and glossy, cool and silky to the touch. “I always wanted hair like yours.”

Ceci chuckled. “You cannot have wanted to be a sparrow like me.”

“Papa has dark hair.”

“Ah.”

As Ceci had always been closer to their mother, so had Beatrice been the light of their father’s eyes. Beatrice sighed, closing her eyes. Those days seemed now to have been lived by another woman.

The comb passed through her hair and passed again in a slow, drowsy rhythm. Into the silence Beatrice said, “I spoke to Sebastian.”

The comb stroking her scalp paused. “When?”

Beatrice opened her eyes. “An hour ago, perhaps. After I left the solar.”

The comb resumed its long caress. “What did you say to him?”

No words came back to her, only the memory of Sebastian’s eyes, blue as flame as they stared into her own. He had been angry at one point, angry enough to make her flinch to see it, but she had not feared him. However wise fearing him might be, she could not seem to do it.

“Beatrice, what did you say to him?”

“I cannot remember.” Her mind emptied of everything but brilliant blue eyes.

“What did he say to you?”

“He talked about Sir George.” Talked? He had shouted at her. And still she had not feared him.

“And how did you reply?” Ceci’s steady combing never faltered, her voice as calm as if they discussed the weather.

“I told him I will not sin for any man’s pleasure.” Or displeasure. Within days of Thomas’s death, Sir George Conyers had sent her a note, entreating her to meet him. She had sent that note, and the others that followed, back to him, unanswered. She was done with him and everything he had meant in her life.

“What did he say to that?” Ceci asked as calmly as before, her voice betraying nothing other than a passionless interest. How easy it was to answer someone who seemed unlikely to be upset by anything one said.

Was that the secret of Ceci’s skill as a listener? That nothing said disturbed or agitated her? Talking to her was like confession but without the burden of remorse or the price of penance. Everything Beatrice had kept to herself pressed against her, a heavy weight, so heavy she did not know how to begin unloading it. But Ceci would know, and Ceci would help her. She knew that as certainly as she knew the sun would rise in the morning, the first good thing she had trusted since her marriage.

“He said I was changed.” She leaned forward, putting her face in her uplifted hands. Through her fingers, she said, “We shall be wed in no more than a month. How shall we learn not to quarrel in that time?”

“I think the wedding will not happen until Michaelmas, Beatrice,” Ceci said.

Beatrice straightened. “The end of September? Why so long?” Despite knowing that she and Sebastian needed time to find a way to rub along comfortably, she did not want to have to wait at all, much less wait two months. She was not free, would never be free, and wanted no time to begin to imagine what it would like to be unmarried.

“You are newly widowed. Enough time must pass to show you are not with child.”

Beatrice whirled on the stool to face Ceci. “You know I am not with child,” she said, her heart fluttering. It was hard to speak of her childlessness.

“I do—”

“And Sebastian will know as soon he lies with me.” If he lies with me. She pushed the thought away, refusing it room in her mind.

“—but the world must know,” Ceci said. “You know as well as I that the show of truth is more valuable than the truth itself.” She gripped Beatrice’s shoulders and shook her gently. “If the truth alone mattered, you could join Sebastian at Benbury tomorrow.”

“I cannot wait so long,” Beatrice whispered.

“Are you so eager?” Ceci asked, her eyebrows lifting.

“Eager? No, I am no more eager to be Sebastian’s wife than a condemned man is for the hangman. But I would rather not wait, day in and day out, for the rope.”

“It will not be so ill, Beatrice, I swear it.”

“I cannot keep a still tongue in my head when I am with him! I carp and complain as no proper wife should ever do. He will lesson me, Ceci, if not with a switch, then with the flat of his hand, and I do not know that I can endure any more of it. What shall I do?”

“Be still, dearling, hush.” Ceci knelt and, setting the comb aside, took Beatrice’s hands in her own, squeezing them gently. “However angry Sebastian may be with you—and he is angry, though I think him a fool for it—he is also a good and kind man. He is not Thomas Manners and he will not use you as Manners did.”

“How can you know that? How?”

“How can you not? Sebastian does not beat his horses or his hounds. Why should he beat his wife?”

There was truth in what Ceci said. Sebastian was not given to harming those in his care, more than could ever have been said of Thomas Manners. Seeing that was one thing, trusting it another. She could not take that step. She whispered, “I am sore afraid.” As senseless as it seemed, she did not fear Sebastian himself. She only feared to marry him.

“I know, dearling, I know.” Ceci let go of Beatrice’s hands to wrap her arms around her. Beatrice rested her head on her sister’s shoulder, while Ceci rubbed her back as Mistress Emma used to when they were small girls. Ceci’s cleverness had not made her cold or uncaring, nor had she forgotten how to love. Beatrice felt strength flowing into her as if it came from her sister.

“I am so glad you will be with us at Wednesfield,” she said.

The hands on her back stilled, but Ceci did not speak. Beatrice lifted her head to face her sister. Her mouth was turned down, her eyes shadowed by her lashes. Beatrice’s heart chilled.