And some of the tension had already left his shoulders.
“I’ll talk to her,” Bellamy finally said quietly.
But Magnus already knew he’d won.
A few days after that, Bellamy told him, “I spoke to her. You may approach her privately at any time now.”
So Magnus had taken Alexandra for a walk in the garden to propose.
He had known by her uncharacteristic, nervous silence that she’d been expecting it.
He regretted that his words were stilted and formal. He could not quite bring himself to articulate the intensity and specificity of any of the things he felt about her. If they unnerved even him, they would likely frighten her.
He would rather die than see pity or confusion in her eyes.
He tried to say with his eyes, with the warmth of his voice:You may not want me yet, but I will live to make you happy, Alexandra.
And though the conclusion was foregone, he exulted when she accepted him gravely, and with the graciousness that characterized everything she did.
“I should be honored to be your wife, Magnus,” is what she said.
It marked the first time she’d used his Christian name.
Her hand was trembling when he raised it to his lips.
“I do think we’ll suit, Alexandra.”
He made it sound like a vow.
By virtue of a special license he’d been able to obtain from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who did indeed consider him a hero, they were wed one day before he was due to leave for Spain. Only her immediate family was in attendance.
And that night he’d felt like the most blessed man on earth.
Tonight they would share a bed for the first time.
His wife. The word “wife” seemed to him so very soft. Soft as a featherbed, soft as her eyes, as soft as the way he would draw his fingers over her skin.
He was accustomed to packing swiftly and lightly; anything he needed that he didn’t already own he could acquire in Spain. But a half dozen servants had been packing for Alexandra all day, and she’d been supervising. A caravan of trunks would join them on their journey.
He leaned out the window of his bedroom.
The sky was filled with a gray-purple light, soft as a dove’s wing. The moon, waxing toward fullness, silvered the edges of the leaves on the trees and the hedgerow. Everything was still, the air like a feather on his skin. He remembered this part well. The beauty and peace of it. He was too seasoned to ascribe portent to weather. Battlefields could run with blood on sweet, balmy spring days, too. Birds still sang in the trees whenbodies were rotting below. But knowing this only made him mark beauty wherever he found it.
He went still when he heard voices.
The cadences were urgent. Their words a tumbling rush, in a volume just above a whisper.
One of them was Alexandra’s.
And the other...
The other was a man’s.
The little hairs on the back of his neck prickled to attention.
It wasn’t a voice he’d ever heard before.
His heartbeats fell like hammer blows in his chest.
