Betrayal in the Tudor Court (13 page)

D
ay yielded to night. Cecily crept into Mirabella’s apartments and the two girls held each other, sobbing themselves to sleep. Father Alec sat up with Hal in his apartments while Hal begged for absolution. Father Alec, who knew the man was sincere if nothing else, gave it. He had known the story since Lady Grace’s infamous display at her last entertainment so many years ago. He could not say he was shocked. Such things happened with more frequency than one supposed.

“The damndest thing, Father, is that I do love Grace,” he said. “Yet I failed. I failed her. I failed everyone. God knows how I’ve tried to make it up to her. …”

“It seems to me you are both to blame,” Father Alec observed. “You have been at odds, her with her drink, you with your guilt … it has separated you far more than Mirabella or the initial betrayal ever could. And now with Brey’s passing … it will take a long time to heal from this. But if you want to, if you both have the desire, you can. All of you. I would very much like to help you.”

“I accept the offer, Father,” Hal told him. “God knows how much we need it.”

Father Alec reached out, taking his friend’s hand. “Jeremiah chapter twenty-nine, verse eleven, tells us: ‘For I know the plans I have made for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for hope and a future.’ ”

Hal bowed his head over their joined hands and sobbed.

Grace could not sleep. Memories swirled in her mind, relentless, comforting, painful. She recalled when she first learned she was with child. She had two miscarriages before Brey and when she felt him stir within her she knew he would live. With each stretch and kick, she revelled in her estate. She would be a mother, a real mother to a child who was hers. Hers and Hal’s and no one else’s. A child born in the light and the truth, not surrounded by darkness and lies. He was born, golden and beautiful, happy and serene. All his life Brey was happy, growing from a happy baby to a happy boy. His laugh was like no other; it was like the tinkling of icicles on the pines. It was heartfelt with sincere joy.

He was to marry Cecily. Together they would bring her grandchildren and a legacy that she was partially responsible for. Now he was gone. Cecily would marry someone else; she would no longer be a part of them. Mirabella would go; she would join her precious convent. Even if she did not, she would leave. Grace’s actions had chased her away. There would be no redeeming their already-fractured relationship. And Hal … How could Hal ever forgive this? This was to be Their Secret.

Grace had lost everything.

She climbed out of bed, throwing her wrap about her shoulders.

Carefully, noiselessly, Grace slipped out of doors.

“I have nothing,” she said to the great manor that loomed in the darkness.

“We cannot leave without her!” Hal cried the next morning as the family prepared for the long, unhappy journey home for Brey’s interment. “Where in hell would she have gone to? Has anyone seen her?”

Cecily and Mirabella shook their heads. They clung to each other, both fragile and frightened, battered by the whirlwind of events that had left its brutal mark on the last few days.

At once Hal’s steward rushed in from out of doors, leading in a young, startled boatman.

“What’s this?” Hal demanded.

“News, my lord,” said the steward with an apologetic bow.

“M-milord,” the boatman stammered. “I was in front of your house when it happened. … I had trouble bringing up my oar. Something seemed to be grabbing at it. I jerked it up and … that’s when I saw it. I thought it was riverweeds tangling it up, but it was not. It was a lady’s wrap.” He choked back a sob.

“No …” Hal whispered to the servant, who offered a reluctant nod.

Cecily’s shoulders began to convulse with silent sobs. Mirabella held her close, her body rigid as she absorbed this new onslaught of tragedy.

The two men led Hal to the scene. In the bottom of the boat was a bloodied wrap and a tangle of blond hair. Gingerly, Hal fingered the sopping wrap. His hand trembled when he encountered the hair entwined about the boatman’s oar.

“Is it hers, my lord—the wrap?” the man asked in anxious tones.

Hal offered a slow nod, his blue eyes stormy with bewilderment.

“She must have been caught on a branch before the current carried her off,” hazarded the boatman.

Hal clutched the wrap to his chest. He began to shiver uncontrollably as he sobbed. “Oh, Grace … oh, Grace …” At once he regarded the stunned assemblage, his face lit with an epiphany. “She may have survived,” he ventured at last. “We will alert the proper authorities. Any females of Grace’s description pulled from the Thames shall be examined.”

“Of course, my lord,” Hal’s steward answered in gentle tones.

Hal would be appeased. There would be a thorough search. But all knew no one survived the Thames. Brey was gone. Grace was gone. And all in three days. The amount of time it took for the Lord to die and rise from the dead.

How would Hal ever survive this? Could
he
ever rise above it?

After two weeks of Hal dashing off to examine the bloated corpses pulled from the Thames on a daily basis, Father Alec accompanied him to his apartments. He laid a hand on Hal’s shoulder.

Father Alec’s lips quivered. He did not want to say it. “Hal, we must return to Sumerton. Brey needs to be interred properly. It does not mean we have to stop searching for my lady, but we must at least begin to face the prospect—”

Hal jerked his shoulder from his friend’s grip, drawing a hand up over his eyes as though by doing so he could blot the latest tragedies from his vision. “I know! By God, I know!” He removed his hand, fixing Father Alec with an angry stare. “And after? After I have faced that I drove my wife to her death? After I have returned her son to his final resting place? Then what?”

Father Alec bit his lip. Once again, he took Hal’s shoulders beneath his firm grasp. “Then, my dear friend, you keep living. As we all must. There still remain those in your care who depend on you.”

The priest had to summon all of his willpower to meet the naked pain lighting Hal’s eyes. He held the blue gaze, allowing his own eyes to fill with tears. He reached up, cupping his friend’s cheek in his hand. There were no words for such grief.

Hal nodded, then bowed his head. “Then it is time to return?”

Father Alec nodded. “Yes. It is time.”

A requiem mass was celebrated for Grace, and Hal made arrangements for a tomb bearing her effigy to be erected in her honour beside Brey’s. Brey’s interment immediately followed. Father Alec officiated at Lord Hal’s request, though he felt inadequate for the role. He had not presided over any kind of ceremony in several years and he felt too close to the family to offer any real comfort. He stood over Brey’s casket as stupefied as everyone else. His exterior was calm and collected; his voice rang out with false confidence as he recited the requiem mass, and to those in attendance he was the model priest, strong and self-contained. In truth he was wrought with discomfort. He stared at the helpless, bewildered faces of those who remained, each lost in their own separate spheres of misery, and could not imagine how they would survive. One loss was enough, but two, and in such quick succession, were staggering, more than most minds could wrangle with.

Hal kept to himself once the mourners made their departure. There was no one to comfort him; he had no immediate family. His friends were tactfully turned away. Grace’s family, who abounded in Yorkshire, refused to attend. She had disgraced them and they would not forgive her even in death. Father Alec wished to visit each and every one of them, that he might box all of their ears.

Mirabella allowed him to visit her in her apartments, where she knelt before her prie-dieu, murmuring fervent prayers he hoped would bring her some kind of peace. If her anxiety-ridden face was any indication, however, they had not.

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Mistress.”

Mirabella turned her face toward him and he could not help but be struck by her dark beauty, beauty she would never acknowledge as an asset. It saddened him.

“I will not pretend to imagine what you are going through,” he told her. “But if I can be of any help …”

Mirabella rose, throwing herself into his arms. He held her a long moment before pulling away and guiding her to her small breakfast table, where they sat. She took his hand, squeezing tightly.

“So many feelings, Father,” she told him, her voice thick with agony. “All conflicting, all pulling me in different directions. Do I stay to comfort my father, even as I can hardly abide his presence now that I know the truth? Or do I leave at last, take my vows, even as I fear entering the cloister knowing that
she
is there, knowing what she is to me?”

Father Alec shook his head. “I do not know,” he said, his voice huskier than usual, made thick with unshed tears. “I will tell you this. Despite everything, your father is not a bad man. He is a good man who did a bad thing, a terrible thing. But you must forgive him, you must see that he has tried to amend himself to the best of his abilities, and that is all God can ask of any of us. You have lost the only mother you have ever known, and though your relationship was strained I know that you grieve for her, for what you never had with her if nothing else. You grieve for your brother, the innocent whose life was taken from him before his time, and it is his loss to which there is no easy comfort. But if you examine your circumstances as compared to your father’s and Lady Cecily’s I would say that you make out better than either of them.”

Mirabella screwed up her face in confusion.

“Your father has no one. No wife, no heir. Lady Cecily finds herself in a similar position now; not only are her parents gone but her betrothed as well. And while you share in their loss, you still have a mother and a father. And from what you told me of Sister Julia, she loves you very much,” Father Alec said, his heart pounding as he dared make the suggestion. “I do not think you would lose by lovingly confronting her with the truth. You must realise that she is not a contributor to what you may perceive as a betrayal any more than your father was. Like him, she was trying to protect you. You have to see that. Now you have the opportunity to know her as a mother in an environment both of you cherish. Perhaps now more than ever is the time for you to take the step you have been longing to take for the better part of your life. What drew you toward this calling may be the same force that drew you toward her, something in the blood.”

Mirabella bowed her head. “There is no doubt of my calling,” she told him. “But to see her again knowing what I know. How has she abided looking at me all these years, knowing how I came to be? I must have been such a painful reminder to her, just as I was to my moth—to Lady Grace.” Her voice broke. “That is all I have ever meant to anyone. Pain. Heartache.” She heaved a deep sigh. “How could I put her through that every day?”

Father Alec’s heart clenched with compassion as he reached out, stroking her tearstained cheek. She leaned into his hand.

“Yet she saw you before you knew of your connection,” Father Alec told her. “Did she seem pained then?”

Mirabella’s face softened in thought. She shook her head. “No. She seemed … happy.” She regarded him in awe, as though shocked at the possibility.

“Because, no matter what, you are her daughter and she loves you,” Father Alec told her. “Go to her, Mirabella. Take comfort in one another.”

Mirabella rose, Father Alec rising in turn.

“Oh, Father, you have been so good to me, to our family,” Mirabella told him, wrapping her arms about his waist again and burying her head in his chest.

“You have all been as family to me,” he said. “The only family I have known for many years. You all have brought me as much comfort as I hope to have brought you.”

Mirabella drew back, her arms still about him. She reached up, stroking his cheek. “You have. So much.” She swallowed several times, overcome with emotion. “Oh, Father …”

To Father Alec’s utter astonishment she leaned up and pressed her lips to his. They were full, moist, and not unpleasant, but his body went rigid. Mirabella may be a beauty, but never at any moment had he been attracted to her. He had never suffered a lapse in chastity before, though he had been visited by temptation many a time. Despite this, he tried not to lose sight of the fact that he was a priest and, unless there were drastic reforms made, he was constrained to celibacy.

He pulled away. “My girl …” He cleared his throat. “If I have in some way led you to believe—”

Mirabella had backed away from him, covering her mouth as though her lips had been set aflame. “Forgive me, Father! I do not know what possessed me! Oh, Father, I am out of my head! Please forgive me!” She fell to her knees. “Please, grant me absolution. I had no right. … I am no better than the Boleyn creature. Oh, Father!”

Father Alec knelt beside her. “Lady Mirabella, collect yourself,” he said gently. “Your emotions are running high right now given your remarkable circumstances. It is both expected and acceptable for you to be a little out of sorts. You are forgiven. But,” he added, bowing his head as his cheeks flushed in embarrassment, “you must realise that this cannot happen again. I am a priest.”

“Of course, Father,” Mirabella said. “I also wish to take vows. As I said, I do not know what … I just … I suppose I just wanted to feel the nearness of someone, the comfort. … Is that strange?”

“Not at all,” Father Alec said. “We are human beings. And God said it is not good for man to be alone. We need each other. Now and then there is a special nearness that a man and woman cherish. But for those of us called to serve God alone, we sacrifice that nearness for a different kind of fellowship and take comfort in something a little more abstract. It is a hard life and not one to be entered into lightly. That being said, we still cannot deny our humanity. Now and then we need to be embraced, to feel a sense of closeness to another human being just as anyone else. There is nothing wrong in it, Mistress Mirabella, as long as it is done in chastity.”

Mirabella nodded, averting her head. “Yes, Father.”