Hetty wore the taut smile of a man trying to hold a knife between his teeth without cutting into his cheeks. Could this be the smile she had forced onto her face these last days? Could he truly have been so blind?
Alred felt his own smile grow rigid and false in unwitting reply to hers, but his heart softened like wax.
He lifted his hand to caress her cheek, but it stopped just below her chin as he spotted the symmetrical rows of faint welts that arched over her cheekbones, as if some over-enthusiastic baby had latched onto her face with his grasping hands.
“What ho, my beauty?” he asked gently. “Was that young Dane sharpening his claws on my lady’s face?”
Her eyes widened in panicked confusion, and Alred saw how red they were around their rims. That was all, then: she was simply very tired.
“Stephan, I meant,” he murmured. “He seems to have scratched you here and here.”
He tried to touch her face with his fingertips, right and left, but she shied away from them, left and right.
“Why don’t you go to bed a little early, my dear?” he suggested. “I knew this would be too much for you.”
“I was—just about to say so,” she laughed weakly.
“There, now. We can’t both be wrong.”
“But—Alred!” She ducked her head meekly. “I shouldn’t… The Old Man’s birthday…”
“The Old Man has had his cake,” he said firmly, “and now he is having all he truly wants out of his birthday: namely, a chance to tear around this castle with Haakon and Heaf, and no one telling him to go to bed until he collapses on a rug. Therefore—lest you surrender to the temptation to tell him to go to bed early and spoil his fun—I suggest you go to bed yourself.”
“But, Alred,” she smiled, clenching her teeth over her invisible knife again, “I am certain I shall feel quite well in a moment.”
The fool he had been! Dunstan had seen. Even Leofric had seen and tried to tell him so, in his crude way. Alred did not much appreciate Leofric concerning himself with his wife’s peace of mind, but Leofric’s words combined with Dunstan’s had sufficed to open his eyes. It was one of Sigefrith’s axioms of diplomacy that when one’s worst enemy and one’s best ally both believed a thing, the thing was very likely true.
“My beauty…” He smiled indulgently and tried to stroke her cheek again, but it was like stroking a stem of grass: she always bent away from his hand.
“I shall stay here with you,” she chirped.
Dear Hetty! Brave Hetty! Gracious Hetty! Dunstan had tried to tell him that Hetty was not Matilda and that he was the stronger of the two in this marriage—and Dunstan was right, in a sense—but Hetty also had that far rarer, far finer strength that permitted her to drive herself on to the very limits of her ordinary strength, rather than turn back like ordinary men and women out of an instinct of self-preservation.
Alred had not even the strength of ordinary men—he failed out of an instinct of self-pity—but he would not let his gracious and brave and very dear wife make a martyr out of herself.
He laid a hand on her shoulder as he caressed her opposite cheek, as he might have flattened a stem of grass against his palm to stroke it.
“You shall go to bed,” he insisted with a smile. “And I shall join you in an hour or two, after I have done my duty by these ladies who long to dance.”
He turned his head to include Gwynn in his smile and found her weirdly white.
“Have no fear, my dear: I shall not oblige you to dance with your father, but only occupy the ladies who might otherwise dance with the partners of your choosing.”
“Alred…” Hetty whimpered.
“As for you,” he smiled, tapping Hetty on the tip of her white nose, “you shall simply say good night to Her Majesty here…”
He stepped away from Hetty and bowed to stroke his hand down the Queen’s arm as far as her hand, with which he then helped her rise and led her away. It was one of his favorite tricks, for it never failed to elicit a blush, even in the ladies who knew him and it best. He was still alive, still himself, still Alred—even if he had believed and wished otherwise for a time.
“Are you retiring, dear?” the Queen asked.
“I am not truly tired…” Hetty mumbled.
“Nonsense,” Alred said. “Doesn’t she look it?”
“You’ve done enough tonight, Hetty,” the Queen agreed.
“There, now,” he winked. “We can’t both be wrong.”
He bowed to kiss Hetty’s hand and found it cold and damp. He hoped it was not a sign of illness, though it did reassure him that he was right in sending her to bed.
“Now, I bid you goodnight for the present, for there is a young lady here who is apparently in desperate need of a worthy dancing partner…”
He danced off and swept Kraaia gracefully from Cedric’s side and away with him as he passed.
“My dear, my dear,” he sighed, “there is an art to stealing partners, which you scarcely seem to realize.”
Chapters
Hmm is Alred finally coming around? It looked like Hetty was looking for an excuse not to have to go to bed and cry or go to Leofric and cry. I wonder what she will do now.