Yet however much he wished otherwise, he could not be free, nor could Beatrice. They were bound to one another, tied before God. Some men might, for expedience, discard their wives like outworn shoes, discovering a convenient precontract or fortuitously remembered consanguinity. Unlike them, Sebastian would not dishonor himself, even to undo this marriage. Whether he wished for it or not, in a way he would never have chosen or imagined, he must marry the woman he had loved since childhood.

God help them both.

B eatrice closed the chapel door and leaned against its panels, waiting for her heart to still its riotous hammering. The encounter with Sebastian ought to have alarmed her, proving as it had that she would not find the peace she sought as Sebastian’s wife, but instead of dismay, there was exhilaration. Against all sense and wisdom, the same rushing excitement that had surged through her when she had faced down Sebastian’s stare drove her heart now. Why was that so? What ailed her that she did not fear to meet or to defy him?

She straightened. She could not linger here, outside the chapel, while she puzzled it out. She hurried through the dark house to her bedchamber. After the waiting maidservant had helped her out of her clothes and into her night rail, she dismissed the girl, unwilling to have company while her thoughts churned and bubbled as if her head were a cauldron. Alone, she paced the room, too restless to be still.

Something had changed this night. Before Sebastian disturbed her she had been praying, mere hours after telling Ceci she no longer could. How had that happened? What had opened the stops in her soul?

Growing up at Wednesfield, she had often imagined that in early spring she could feel the earth quicken to life long before the green shoots thrust into sight, as if the sap moving once more in the trees moved through her, as well. That tingling awareness flooded her now, the sensation of sleeping things stirring awake. Somehow that feeling had to do with Sebastian and this garboil she found herself in.

She shook her head. Fear stirred, murmuring, If you trust this feeling it will be the worse for you. Fear? Or plain sense? She had thought she could trust Thomas and he had proven her wrong. So, for that matter, had Sebastian and George Conyers. No, better she should keep her counsel and bend herself to being a perfectly submissive, perfectly obedient wife. Tonight was the last time she would come so close to quarreling with Sebastian.

The door creaked open. Beatrice turned her head in time to see Ceci, holding her lute, slip into the room and check on the threshold as she saw that Beatrice was alone.

“Where is Mary? Edith?” Ceci asked.

“Mary was not here. I dismissed Edith.”

Ceci’s eyes narrowed briefly, but all she said was, “Will you attend me then?”

“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.