“I know, but I felt you deserved your privacy for the rest of your stay Do you really want the sisters looking archly at you when you depart the hall this evening?” he murmured low. “Banon, young Neville, and I will return but briefly in a few days, and then begin to make our way home.”
“I will miss you,” she told him. “Life is always more fun when you are around.”
He chuckled. “I will see you when you return to Friarsgate with your husband, and at Banon’s wedding to young Neville. Her match is not as spectacular as yours, of course, but I believe they care for each other, which is more important, is it not?”
“How would I know such a thing?” Philippa answered him.
“Did you note how he looked at you this morning in the chapel, darling girl? He is a man on the verge of falling in love. Accept his love, and return it whole-heartedly.”
“I don’t understand this love. God knows I have had a good example of love from my mother, but what does love feel like?” Philippa looked genuinely confused..
“You will know it when you feel it. Now I expect all the gossip, in minute detail, of this summer in France with the two kings when I see you again,” he told her, bending to kiss her brow. Then he addressed his guests once more. “Come, and bid Philippa and Crispin farewell. Our barge awaits us, my dears!”
Banon hugged her older sister. “I have enjoyed being with you again, Philippa. Now I have another reason to be eager for my wedding to Rob. I shall see you then.” The two sisters kissed. Then Banon moved to speak with her new brother-in-law. “Farewell, my lord. I will be pleased to welcome you to Otterly when you come. Godspeed in your journey in the coming months.”
The earl took Banon gently by the shoulders. “Farewell, sister. I, too, look forward to seeing your beloved north country.” He kissed her forehead.
Young Robert Neville bid the bride and groom good-bye. He was followed by Lady Marjorie and Lady Susanna, both of whom became teary, hugging Philippa and their brother in turn. Lord Cambridge brought up the rear, smiling.
“Lucy will be here for you, and will travel with you. Crispin and I have arranged the trip. Good-bye, my darling girl! Be happy! I shall see you in October!” And then he was gone, leading his guests from the hall.
They stood silent for several long moments, and then Philippa ran to the windows that overlooked the Thames. She watched as the guests were helped into Lord Cambridge’s large barge. And then just before he climbed down into the boat, Tom Bolton turned and waved. Philippa burst into tears, surprising her new husband.
“What is the matter, little one?” he asked, not certain if he should hold her, but then enfolding her in a gentle embrace.
“I have just realized that my childhood is over,” Philippa sniffled. “I thought it so when I came to court, but I still had my family. Now I am alone! When Uncle Thomas turned to wave at us I suddenly knew it to be so.” She pressed her face against his velvet-clad shoulder.
“You have not lost your family, you foolish creature,” he told her, laughing. “You will always have them, no matter you are my wife. And you and I will but add to that family as we begin our own. Stop weeping, Philippa. I believe you are having an attack of the nerves, finding yourself with only your bridegroom to sustain you. Have you not considered how I feel? I am shortly to reach my thirty-first year. I have spent much of my adult life in service to the king. Now I suddenly find I have a wife. It is all very strange to me too, Philippa.”
Philippa sniffed noisily. She looked up at him, and her dark lashes were clumped in sharp-looking little spikes. Her hazel eyes were wet, her cheeks stained with her tears. “I am not a foolish creature!” she said with as much dignity as she could manage. “You are a man, and it is different for men than it is for girls. You have traveled the world for the king. You are experienced.”
“And you are not,” he said quietly, “nor should you be. You are a young bride who has just seen her family go off leaving her with a man she hardly knows. But this is the way of the world in which we live, Philippa. You are going to have to learn to trust me, little one, for we are now shackled together for life.”
“It was Uncle Thomas turning to wave that unnerved me,” she told him. “After my father died he appeared to escort mama to court. He explained his relationship to us; his great-grandfather and mama’s great-grandfather had been brothers. He was like nothing any of us had ever seen before.”
The earl laughed. “I can but imagine,” he told her.
“But he was so kind,” Philippa continued. “He and mama came to adore each other as they were better acquainted. Maybel and Edmund loved him too. Suddenly we were a real family again.”
“His lands were here in the south, were they not?” the earl said.
“Aye, but he sold them and purchased our great-uncle Henry’s home. Of course he tore it down and rebuilt it, for Uncle Henry was a wicked man, and his wife and children were no better. It is a long story, and I will not bore you with it.”
“Nay,” he said. “I would hear it.”
“Then let us go out into the garden,” Philippa answered him, “and I will tell you all. And then you will tell me more about yourself, and your family.” She turned, and was startled when he took her hand in his. “ ’Tis a shame to waste a day so fair,” she said.
They went out into the garden and sat with the sun warm upon their backs as Philippa told her bridegroom the story of her family, and of how Henry Bolton had attempted to wrest the Friarsgate inheritance from Rosamund Bolton, its rightful heiress. She told Crispin St. Claire how her mother, with the help first of Hugh Cabot, Owein Meredith, her father, Thomas Bolton, and Logan Hepburn, the laird of Claven’s Cam, who had eventually become her stepfather, had foiled Henry Bolton and his family. How Henry the elder had died of a fit when her mother had refused to let his son, Henry the younger, have Philippa for his wife. How Henry the younger had been tricked into an ambush with English borderers, led by Lord Dacre, and killed, thus ending the threat his family had posed towards hers.
The earl of Witton shook his head. “Your mother is a brave and resourceful woman. I hope, Philippa, that you possess some of her virtues.”
“My mother’s greatest passion is Friarsgate. It always has been, but nay, that is not so. Once my mother loved so deeply, so passionately, that I believe she might have left Friarsgate behind. Sadly for her it was not to be. But then my great-uncle might have had his way, and I be shackled to Henry Bolton the younger, and not you.”
“Another story?” he asked, smiling at her.
“For another time,” Philippa said. “It would seem I have many stories to tell of my family.” She chuckled.
“I am afraid my family is dull by comparison, little one,” he told her.
