Linda Barlow (78 page)

"Who-dat?" Frances demanded, pointing a chubby finger at Merwynna.

"That, my girl, is a witch."

"Roger, you'll frighten her!"

But Frances must have shared her mother's mettle, for she tilted her head to one side and examined Merwynna with her round green eyes, not seeming intimidated at the idea of coming face to face with a witch. Merwynna crooked a finger at her, and Frances laughed.

Inside the cottage, Roger played with his daughter on the floor while Alexandra sat at the herb table with Merwynna and caught up on the local gossip. "And the birth?" Merwynna asked, casting a knowledgeable glance at Alexandra's once-again slender figure. "I had hoped to be with ye for that. Did all go as it should?"

"It was horrible," Roger said. "She insisted on coming on a short voyage with me and gave birth at sea, three weeks early, with no woman to attend her. There was only my physician, Tom Comstock, to assist in the birthing. I was terrified she would die."

Alexandra laughed. "In sooth, he suffered more than I. 'Twas easy, Merwynna. And Tom proved very skillful, for a man."

The wisewoman muttered her disapproval. Men were useful for getting a babe into a woman's belly, she declared, but good-for-nothing when it came to getting it out.

"The Voice was right about so many things, Merwynna," Alexandra mused. "There's only one thing I still don't understand."

"And what might that be?"

"What saves us? Do you remember? You said I would have to learn that for myself."

"Ye have. Ye know the answer now."

"No, I don't. It’s not reason. It’s not even not self-knowledge. What then? Faith? Hope? Courage? Fortitude? Or perhaps the ability to forgive?"

"All those things," said Roger, listening to the conversation from the floor. "And children, too. Watching the joy my daughter takes in life has given me a new outlook on things." He smiled as Frances toddled to the doorway, pointing excitedly at a bird that was pecking seeds from the ground in front of the cottage. The child clucked in imitation of the bird, then laughed at the sound of her own voice.

"Look at her—so eager to discover all that life has to offer. We were all like that once—proud, determined, unafraid. We have the capacity to be like that still." He paused, then added, "One thing I've learned is that nothing is ever lost. We grow and change, but we need not be alienated from our former bright and carefree selves." He reached for Alexandra's hand. "With you, pretty lady, I am able to recapture that early confidence and joy."

"And I with you," she told him, leaning down to steal a kiss.

"The babe is fleeing out the door," Merwynna noted. "Never mind," she said, as both parents reluctantly started to their feet. "I will play with her for a time. Try my mattress. 'Tis fully as soft as it was the first time the two of ye made carnal use of it."

"Merwynna—" Alexandra was blushing.

"Go to it," the wisewoman advised, chuckling. "The time is ripe for ye to conceive again, and I would deliver yer next babe myself. 'Twill keep me alive for another nine months."

Then she chased out after Frances, closing the cottage door securely behind her.

"Well," said Alexandra, grinning at her husband, "how can we refuse?"

Roger wasted no time in dragging her over to the mattress in question. He loosened her thick red hair, which had grown down below her shoulders again, and caressed it in his sweet, hot way. "I wouldn't dream of refusing," he said as he pressed her lovingly down beneath him.

On the way back to the castle, they stopped briefly at the old Norman church where they had wed. They were surprised to discover the changes there. Although Alan and Pris were Reformers who did not worship here, this had not prevented them from restoring the interior to its former grace and beauty. Alexandra was deeply moved to see that the tapestries, altar cloths, and sacred hangings had been replaced. Some of these had been embroidered, she would swear to it, by Pris's skillful needle. There were fresh flowers on the altar, and no dust at all in the cracks surrounding the stone that led below, to the burial crypt.

"Look, Roger." She laid the napping Frances gently on one of the front pews. "Alan has found his calling indeed. This place is immaculate."

"He's certainly dusting off the Trevor family name. 'Tis a pity he's not the lord of the manor. He obviously cares a good deal more about all this than I do. Maybe I ought to have let them hang me, after all."

She elbowed him sharply in the ribs. "No, my dear baron. The arrogant title suits you. But while you are lording it about in London and—knowing you—on the high seas, Alan can live here at Whitcombe performing all the mundane tasks that you despise."

"And you, I suppose, are going to remain here in the country like a dutiful wife, breeding yearly and raising my children to be proper little lords and ladies?"

When she laughed the stone walls echoed the merry sound. "Do you truly expect to turn me into a dutiful wife at this late date?"

His brown eyes were twinkling as he feigned despair. "I seem to have made a tactical error somewhere along the way, beloved. You have lost sight of the fact that a woman's husband is her lord and master. Even Mary Tudor bowed in submission before Philip, her husband."

"Perhaps. But Mary Tudor never rescued her husband from prison, and I doubt very much that she ever had occasion to hold a knife to his throat and order him to pleasure her. 'Tis difficult," she teased him, "to bow down in submission to a man you have ravished!"

He gripped her wrist and jerked her none too gently against him. He pressed a rough kiss upon her lips, then let her feel his teeth on the side of her throat. "Now that our travels are over for a time, I intend to devote myself to taming the shrew I have married."

"Indeed, sir? How?" She rubbed against him and raised her eyebrows wickedly at his response. "Ready again, are you? And I thought I'd had the best of you not an hour ago in Merwynna's cottage."

"You'd best stop that before I commit a highly disrespectful act right here in the church."

More soberly she said, "The church could use more acts of love, I think. And fewer acts of pride, cruelty, and intolerance."

"You are right in that, Alix." He slipped her hand into his as they walked up the chancel steps to the altar. "Do you remember meeting me here three summers ago? You were praying for Will."

"And you had just returned after ten years' exile. I thought you were a ghost."

"And I thought you were an angel. A lovely flame-haired angel with a beautiful, sensual body. I desired you immediately. You, an innocent Amazon virgin. For months you tormented me."

"I wanted to be your wife, while you thought of nothing but bedding me."

He grinned. "That, my lady, is the way of the world."

She squinted at the tablet honoring the dead. Alan had seen to that, too. Two names had been added since that day of Roger's homecoming. Below the name of Catherine Trevor were those of her son William and her husband, Richard. "Your parents, Roger. I wonder if they have made peace with each other in heaven? And Will and Francis? Are their spirits reconciled now, do you suppose?"

"Who can tell? I think it wiser to reconcile while we are here on earth, since none of us knows what may or may not await us beyond the grave."

She knelt and bowed her head to pray for those whose bodies lay beneath them, and for others, like Francis, who lay they knew not where. Roger knelt beside her and added his prayers to hers.

"'Tis strange," he observed after several minutes of silence. "I feel a lightness of the heart. Perhaps I have finally forgiven them—my father and mother for tearing me apart between them, Will for being first and most precious to my father, Francis for putting me first with such a vengeance, Celestine for dying, even Geoffrey for his own tragic obsession with her."

"So many deaths. What, I wonder, has preserved us, who are no less sinful than they were?"

"What saves us?" he said wryly. "You do know the answer, Alix. 'Tis all the things you mentioned to Merwynna, and something else." He looked into her green eyes.
"So faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love."

"Love saves us?"

"Does it not? Not simply sexual love, but also love of one's fellow man, love of God, love of family and friends, and, of course,"—he glanced toward their sleeping daughter—"the love of a father and mother for their child. All these taken together, with all the joy and pain that they confer—that can save us, surely. Love of life, Alix. You have it. And since I've found you, so do I."

He was right, she thought. The simple pleasures of drawing a breath, crunching leaves underfoot, smelling the tangy scent of wildflowers, and watching the gray-green heaving of an angry sea—these were the little things that gave her strength and filled her spirit with joy. And Roger. Being close to him, touching his warm, living flesh, hearing his well-beloved voice, meeting his mind and soul in a union that transcended earthly time and space. "We are blessed. My heart is full. I feel as if I'm going to cry."

He slid his arms around her. "No, love. Laugh, as you always do, my sweetling. Your laughter and your light have saved me, and will save others, I expect, in the years ahead. Now, come. We've tarried in this dark place long enough."

Carrying their daughter, they left the church, walking hand in hand together into the sunlight.

The End

Author's Note

Fires of Destiny
is the first of several novels that I will be re-issuing over the next few months. There will also be new, previously unpublished books available soon. For more information about the next release in the
Trevor Family Chronicles
, and my contemporary romance series,
Night Games
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Fires of Destiny
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