*
“Some wine, Kevin?”
Thomas’ words were quiet. Kevin, who had been sitting in a window seat in a large oriel window overlooking the south section of the palace grounds, looked up from where he had been hunched over, lost in thought. He’d spent the past hour seated on the cold, stone bench, folded over and staring at the floor as he thought on the death of his father. Even though he knew his father had been in ill health, still, it was a shock. He wasn’t ready for it. His heart screamed for his papa.
“Thank you, no,” Kevin replied softly.
Thomas and Adonis had been hanging back in the shadows, watching Kevin as the man dealt with his grief. They knew he needed time to think and to reflect, and they’d give him a nominal amount of time for that. Now, it was their time to speak because they were hurting, too.
“We never did send a missive north to announce your return,” Thomas said. “We left Dover so quickly that there was not time and, to be truthful, I do not believe any of us thought about it again on our ride to London. Mayhap we should send amissive now to let your mother know you are safe and back in England. I should think she would want to know.”
Kevin nodded slowly. “She will,” he said. Then, he smiled faintly, with irony. “She will want me to come home right away, you know. If I remain in London any length of time then she will come looking for me. When she finds me, she will box my ears.”
Thomas grinned and Adonis, who had been standing back against the wall, stepped forward. “Aunt Jemma was never afraid to express herself,” Adonis said. “She would blister the buttocks of any child who veered out of line, me included. Your father was always there to protect us. I wonder who will protect us now?”
Kevin chuckled in spite of himself, thinking of his feisty mother whom he loved dearly. “It will have to be Uncle William or Uncle Paris, or even Uncle Michael,” he said, his smile fading. “God’s Bones, I wonder how Uncle Michael has dealt with my father’s death. He and my father were closer than brothers.”
The Kevin of old would have worried about others before himself, so the mention of his father’s best friend, Michael de Bocage, was not unusual. However, the Kevin since leaving for the Levant was much more selfish, so the mention of someone else’s feelings, these days, was something of anomaly. The Scorpion thought of himself first and foremost, so at the moment, it was clear that the persona of the Scorpion was becoming distorted with the sensitive Kevin Hage from the past. It was the Kevin who had freed his emotions much more easily. It was rare when those lines blurred.
“Uncle Michael has William and Paris to help him,” Adonis said, thinking of the great knights of Castle Questing and Northwood Castle who were now so old. “I remember as a child how much Uncle Michael would frighten me. The man is taller than any man I have ever seen. I remember some of the other children telling me that the stammer in his speech was really acurse. Every time he spoke and stammered, he was cursing me. I was terrified of him for years because of it.”
Kevin was back to grinning again, weakly. “He is a kind man,” he said, sighing softly. “I know my father thought the world of him. I… I suppose my father’s death should not have shaken me as it did because his health had not been good for years. His heart had been weakened. But when the king informed me of his passing, I realized I felt very much like an orphan. Even though my mother is living, my father was my rock. He was the man I most wanted to be like. With him gone, I feel lost and directionless. I feel as if I have failed him somehow.”
Adonis sat next to him on the stone bench. “You never failed him,” he said quietly. “You are a great knight, Kevin. Your father was very proud of you. Out of all of your brothers, you are the most like him in both looks and temperament. Your father shines through you.”
Kevin reflected on his father, his brothers, his family as a whole. There was much regret in that reflection. “I do not even know why I went to the Levant now,” he confessed. “My father begged me not to go but I insisted. It was so very foolish; I should not have gone. I should have stayed with him. I should have… stayed.”
Thomas sat down on the other side of Kevin. “Had you stayed in England, you would have been miserable and we all knew it,” he said. “You cannot blame yourself for doing what you felt you had to do. Your father did not fault you for it. Why do you think he asked us to go with you? He knew that you had to follow your heart, to seek your purpose in life. He knew that better than you did.”
You had to seek your purpose in life. Those words rang true. In fact, he recalled his father saying a very similar thing. Kevinsighed heavily, nodding as he thought on his departure to the Levant.
“I had to get away from thoughts of Penny,” he said. “I will be honest when I say I have still not forgotten about her. How could I? From the time I was very young, I always knew she would be the woman I would marry and that was cruelly taken away from me. She is part of me, no matter what I do. My father knew that. But she is more a memory now than anything else. That raw pain I felt for her is finally gone. I wish I could have told my father that.”
Thomas wasn’t sure what to say. Penelope was his sister, after all, so in some small way, he felt guilty for Kevin’s pain purely by association. Perhaps that was why he had gone to the Levant with the man– guilt. But his guilt was reconciled in his mind much as Kevin’s lost love was reconciled in his, so there was no point in discussing it. It was simply the way things were.
“Wherever he is, I am sure he knows,” Thomas finally said. “I am sure he knows of the greatness you have achieved also. You went to the Levant to seek your purpose and now you have found it. You are now to be a knight sworn to the Duke of Dorset, the king’s cousin. Not even your father or Uncle William can make such a claim. Wherever your father is, Kevin, I am sure he is very proud of you. You must believe that.”
Kevin’s thoughts lingered on a particular piece of Thomas’ statement–you are now to be a knight sworn to the Duke of Dorset. It was a highly honorable position but he still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. With the news of his father’s death, everything seemed a bit muddled to him right now.
“I am not entirely sure the honor is all mine,” he said. “The king was most insistent, as you saw, so I am quite positive I have no choice in the matter. But I do not do this alone. You two are coming with me.”
Thomas looked at Adonis, who shrugged. “If the duke will accept my oath, I shall give it,” Adonis said. “I have heard the man is quite generous with his men. He has a very fine fighting force.”
Kevin lifted his eyebrows. “It just became better because now it will have a Hage, de Wolfe, and de Norville in it,” he said. “Those three names are some of the biggest among England’s knights. The duke should be well-honored to have all three of us.”
The conversation seemed to be veering away from the sorrow over Kieran Hage’s death, for which Adonis and Thomas were grateful. Kevin, a highly emotional man at times, could brood with the best of them and now was not the time for brooding. The king was demanding something of him and Kevin would need to follow through or risk damaging his reputation. There would be time enough for grieving later. At the moment, they had a future to face.
“I am sure he will be,” Thomas said. Then, he stood up and peered down the corridor that led into the bowels of the palace. “Let us find a servant now so we can be taken to our rooms. I have a very strong desire to submerge myself in hot water up to my neck before we attend supper. I have not taken a long, hot bath in over six years.”
Adonis stood up as well, stretching out his big body. “And I have a very strong desire to lie upon a bed that isn’t dirty or isn’t spread upon the ground. A real and true bed stuffed with feathers is exactly what I want.”
Kevin didn’t want to think on baths or feather mattresses; his mind was still very much focused on thoughts of his father but he would no longer linger on it publicly. Whatever he felt, whatever sorrow he was experiencing, would not become public knowledge. He’d already said too much on the subject. Sorrow and emotion were weaknesses and the Scorpion had noweaknesses. It was time to bury his grief just like he buried everything else. No emotion must show. When he grieved for his father, it would be in private or not at all.
Squaring his big shoulders, he stood up from the bench.
“Then let us retreat to a comfortable chamber where Thomas can drown in a tub and Adonis can sleep on feathers,” he said. “As for me, I would like something sweet to drink. Mead, mayhap.”
Thomas snorted. “That is a woman’s drink.”
