Regardless of what others might have, all she had was one afternoon. One afternoon of her life! She balled her hands into fists and pounded the thin mat beneath her.
After her burst of frustration, the bleakness of her future settled over her like a heavy weight. Tears trickled down the sides of her face and into her hair. Perhaps tomorrow she could be hopeful about her life with de Roche, but not tonight. Not when the smell of Stephen was on her blanket and her skin still burned with the memory of his touch.
Would it have been better not to have gone with him? Better not to know what it was like? He could not have been kinder or more passionate. He gave her such pleasure she thought she might die from it. And happily so.
Nay, she could not wish she had not done it. She was a sinful woman. And an unrepentant one.
Stephen made her feel as if she were special to him. Perhaps that was his secret, the reason women were so drawn to him. He made each one believe it. For once, she felt sympathy for Marie de Lisieux. She understood why Marie could not let him go, even when it was plain to all he was done with her.
Isobel had too much pride for that. And she had her duty. Even if she had a choice—which she did not—she was bound by her promise to the king. She was not like her father. She would not abandon loyalty and honor with every change in the wind.
Soon she would make her pledge to de Roche. A sacred pledge.
Just for a moment, she let herself imagine joining hands with Stephen instead.
Unbidden, a childhood memory came to her. A memory of her father gazing at her mother, his expression one of pain and unbearable longing. Her mother never cared for him. Isobel had always known it, as a child knows without understanding. Her father loved his wife with a hopeless, helpless passion. She met it with cordial indifference. After their lands were lost, that indifference shifted to complete unawareness.
It must have killed him.
For the first time, Isobel saw her father with an adult’s insight. The great wrongs he committed were desperate acts. He sacrificed both his honor and his daughter in the vain hope that wealth and position might finally gain him his wife’s love.
How much more unhappy she would be, wed to Stephen! Unlike her mother, who devoted herself to God, Stephen would share his affections with woman after woman after woman. Surely that would be worse.
Stephen was a man who gave in to temptation readily. And temptation fell into Stephen’s lap at every turn. If he were her husband, how would she bear sharing him with other women? She could not. She could not do it.
How ridiculous she was! Lying here on this cot, furious with Stephen over imagined slights in an imagined future. He was not her husband; he made no pledge to her. Though he showed her warm affection, he spoke only of the moment.
He never even said he loved her. Not once.
In any case, her future was set. Locked in place and bolted shut. In the morning, Stephen would take her back to Caen. To de Roche.
She rolled onto her side and held herself in a tight ball. And wept for all that she wanted and could not have.
Isobel awoke to the sounds of voices and hurried footsteps outside her door. A moment later, her brother knocked and stepped in, fully dressed and sword in hand.
“A dozen armed men are riding hard this way,” Geoffrey said in a rush. “They are not English soldiers.”
She bolted upright, heart racing, and saw Jamie in the doorway behind her brother. She was on her feet and strapping on her sword by the time Jamie was in the room.
“I fear it could be the men who attacked you yesterday,” Jamie said, “and that they’ve come to take my father.”
Geoffrey got her cloak for her from the peg behind the door, and they raced out behind Jamie.
As they ran across the cloister, Isobel grabbed Geoffrey’s arm. “Surely they would not take FitzAlan by force from a holy place?”
The grim set of Geoffrey’s jaw told her that was just what he thought they would do. And worse.
“You cannot believe the abbot would give him up?”
Geoffrey nodded and charged ahead of her through the archway and along the path. When she reached the front of the church, she saw the abbot and several monks gathered below by the open canal that ran inside the perimeter wall. On the other side of a narrow bridge that crossed the canal, two lay brothers were lifting the heavy bar that held the gate.
“Do not open the gate to them!” Geoffrey shouted.
The abbot glared over his shoulder at them as he signaled for the men to continue.
“Get FitzAlan into the church,” Geoffrey called back to her as he raced down the hill after Jamie.
Isobel saw the sense in it at once. Even godless men would hesitate to take a man from the sanctuary. She hurried back toward the infirmary, wondering how she would get FitzAlan into the church. As she rounded the corner, she nearly collided with two monks carrying FitzAlan on a litter.
