Alred considers a ban

Alred opened his mouth to say—in ever so many elegant words—how delighted he was to be thus interrupted, but he let it fall closed into a frown of compassion.

Hetty’s translucent skin revealed the play of emotions beneath, and he had learned to read them all. There would be pink blotches across her cheekbones for her rare bouts of anger; a pink mist over her entire cheeks for embarrassment, spreading onto her forehead and down across her breast and shoulders for passion; a pink nose when she had sipped enough wine to become silly; and pink beneath her slanted eyes when she had cried.

This afternoon she had been crying, but there was a tinge of embarrassment as well, and a strange, sweet smile.

Alred’s quill arced into the inkwell like a dart. “Only name the boy who has been pulling your pigtails, dear girl, and I shall push him into the moat forthwith.”

“Nobody,” she smiled.

“That’s probably just as well, since the last boy who was pushed into my moat seems to think it was the best thing that ever happened to him.”

He wrapped his arms around her, pinning her own arms at her side. This paradox of a feeling of utter helplessness upon a feeling of utter security always seemed to overwhelm her sensitive nature, and she would collapse against him, her neck limp as a stem, her head warm and sweet as a sun-​drunk flower upon his shoulder. It worked every time.

She giggled at the thought of her friend Ethelwyn, but sighed immediately afterward. “I am not bothering you?”

“If this is ‘bothering’, we shall have to find a new word for flies and fleas.”

“‘Biting’?” Her giggles were silent, but he could feel them in her little puffs of breath on his neck. Nor could he see the flush of her cheek, but he knew she thought she was being wicked indeed.

“You may do that too, and we shall find something else for the fleas and flies to do.”

“Perhaps later.” She lifted her head and wriggled her arms free enough to be laid upon his shoulders. Her face was pink all over, but her mouth was as grave as such a delicious mouth could be. “I have just spent a very…” Her lip quivered until she found a word. “…important hour, and now you must comfort me and tell me I did the right thing.”

Alred could not imagine what she meant, but he knew when she was being earnest. He pulled her over to the couch and down onto his lap. Another of the great paradoxes of Hetty’s life was that she found it easier to tell him difficult things the closer she was to him.

“So.” She took a deep breath. “You must not say anything to her, because I do not know whether she will like her father to know. But I think I should tell you.”

Alred’s heart broke into a gallop at the mere words “her father” spoken in such a voice. He tried to calm his heart by reminding it that Margaret was only ten, and Gwynn scarcely over twelve. They were but little girls! He and his heart had years yet before they had anything to fear from any words that could follow those two. Margaret had merely spilt ink on her silk dress and sent Hetty to break the news to him! Surely!

She hid her face in his hair, putting herself as close to him as she could be. “Your Gwynn is a woman now.”

Alred’s heart leapt with a bitter laugh: “Ha! I told you so!”

“No, she isn’t!” he said at once to it and her both.

Hetty lifted her head, and her eyes went wide.

Alred’s eyes went wider. “But she’s still a little girl!”

“She is old enough…”

“I’m not!” he yelped. “But…” His heart began to thunder to prepare his body for a bout of skull-​bashing, limb-​ripping fury. “You don’t mean—you’re not saying some boy—”

“No!” she gasped.

His heart shuddered in relief.

“Ach, du lieber! No! She is only a little girl!”

“Ha! I told you so!”

“No! But, Alred! You do know what I mean?”

“Yes, Hetty, I see… But… oh, Hetty!” he groaned.

He tried to hide his face in her hair and await the imminent collapse of the sky upon his head, but Hetty’s tongue had been freed.

“It was the most affecting thing I ever saw,” she whimpered. “I hope I did say the right things. I never had a mother when my time came. And, Alred! We dressed all her dolls in their nicest dresses one last time and put them all away to be saved for her daughters, because she said she does not need them any longer!”

“Oh, Hetty!” he moaned.

“And how I cried! And she cried a little, too, but she was proud and happy also. I remember,” she sighed. “I was not happy at all. But she knows she will be a happy wife and mother some day, so she is not sad to be a woman. Only a little sad to be not a girl any longer.”

“Oh, Hetty! I thought she was only getting fat!”

“Fat!”

“But she is getting hippy! I knew it!”

“Hippy!”

“You know. Not straight up-​and-​down like a girl. Curvy.” He patted her hip to demonstrate.

“Hippy! What a dreadful thing to say!”

“Her mother always did. ‘Alred, does this dress make me look hippy?’”

“Well! I hope you never say so to her! Already Estrid did tell her she is turning into a dumpling.”

“I wish that were all she were turning into!”

“Alred!” she huffed.

“No wonder she has been begging me to let her go visit at your sister’s. She doesn’t want to play with the little girls any longer,” he pouted. “She wants to play with the big girls…”

“But it is always so. Cat and Girl-​Flann and Lili are good girls. And Mouse. They will not teach her to be wicked. Perhaps only feed her too much candy…” she mused.

“What shall I do now, Hetty? What shall I do?”

“What do you suppose you should do?” she sighed. “You are a man. It has nothing to do with you, in truth. I think you are being just a little bit silly.”

“But, Hetty, you will never guess what I was doing when you came in here. Precisely at the moment you came in here!” His beleaguered heart laughed within him at the irony. “You will never guess!”

“Then I shall not try. What were you doing?”

“Given that Eadwyn is now a knight and soon to be married and to go away, I am now short one squire. And just now—just now!—I was writing a letter to Theobald, asking him whether he had any likely boys he could send along, between the ages of twelve and fifteen, knowing how to ride and how to handle a sword and how to behave among ladies. Thank the gods I hadn’t sent it already! I would have had to have slain the poor boy upon his arrival.”

“Alred! You cannot ban all young men from your castle for the next ten years.”

“Can I not?”

“Do you know, Gwynn is not a little girl any longer, but I think her father is still something of a little boy.”

“It’s true! It’s true! What shall I do?”

“It is simple, silly boy, but you are lucky you have me to think of it. Merely add a postscript to your letter and tell Theobald that the young gentleman must not have violet eyes.”