Matilda is afraid of herself

Matilda was blinking back tears, but she strode down the hall with her head higher than ever. It was true, perhaps, that she had done wrong, but Alred didn’t know about it – so what right had he to look at her like that?

He had seemed so happy when she had opened the door to peek at the children. He was sitting on the floor entertaining the lot of them while Hilda and Edris looked on. “Entertaining,” in this case, seemed to involve allowing himself to be tickled unto tears by a horde of small children, but Margaret had spotted her and cried, “Mama! Come help tickle Papa!” and then he glanced up and gave her a look that the tears suited better.

She hadn’t stayed to help. Now she didn’t know where she was going… back down to Sigefrith and Eadgith, perhaps. Or to Cenwulf – he was gloomy enough to suit her mood.

She came around the corner at the edge of the gallery and froze. She knew that towering silhouette. She knew that imperious tread.

He did not flinch in his stride. He was coming towards her. She could not continue along the way she had meant to take, and she would not be seen turning back before him.

Therefore she lifted her chin still higher and walked boldly off across the gallery where soon the musicians would stand, as if she had always meant to go this way and hadn’t seen him at all – or hadn’t deigned to notice him. She only cursed herself for having stopped and stood a moment at all.

However, as soon as she had started this way, she remembered that from here she could only go into the nursery, and with all of the children in the sitting room in the tower, there could be no logical reason for her to be going there. There was another door, and she could always say she had only meant to pass through, but it was a shorter walk merely to take the corridor she had meant to follow… the corridor from which Leofric had emerged.

Of course, she could not turn her head to look at him, but she thought she could see that he had stopped and was, no doubt, watching her. No matter! She could always say she had not recognized him, had thought him a servant. The important thing was that he was not following her.

She stepped into the darkened nursery and closed the door softly behind her.

She would wait here a few moments… it would give him a chance to continue on to wherever he was going, and her an opportunity to find a reasonable explanation for coming here, in the event she would be asked for one. She could simply say…

The opposite door opened and the same silhouette towered in the candlelit arch.

“Oh!” she gasped, genuinely startled. He must have run.

He stepped inside and closed the door, shutting out the light.

“Who is it?” she quavered.

“Only another fool who gets lost in castles he knows intimately,” Leofric growled.

“Oh, Leofric!” she tittered. “Only you! I thought it was… was some sort of servant or something.”

“At your service,” the dark form bowed.

“Oh, won’t you… would you kindly light a candle?” she asked, trying to keep her voice cold and imperious, though she felt neither. Before him she felt again a child, and her child’s instinct told her that terrors of the dark could be kept at bay with a globe of light.

“Light a – Christ!” he swore softly, but he went out to light a rush and returned with a flame for the candles on the wall. “Is there aught else I can do for Your Grace?” he asked sarcastically after they were lit.

“No, thank you,” she said. “That will do.”

“Am I dismissed?” he snapped.

“No, I…”

“Very well,” he said, and his voice and eyes softened. “Did you think about it?” he murmured as he took her waist in his big hands.

Matilda gasped and stuttered, “Did I – no… I don’t know…”

“You’re afraid of it,” he growled with a mocking smile.

“I’m not afraid of you!”

“Then why have you been avoiding me?” he whispered and pulled her against him.

“I’m certain I haven’t been.”

“Where have you been these past two nights? I waited for you.”

“I – I’m sorry. I couldn’t come.”

“Couldn’t come, or were afraid to come?”

“I told you, I’m not afraid of you.”

“I am pleased to hear it. It means that if you are trembling now, it is for another reason that I like better.”

“Oh, no, no…”

“I believe I prefer you when you aren’t drunk,” he said as he ran the fingers of one hand lightly up and down her back. “You are both less brazen and less numb.”

“I don’t know…”

“Next time, don’t drink before you come to me. I want you as you are.”

“I can’t!” she said, mortified to hear herself sob.

“Hush, hush, you can, you can,” he whispered, stroking her hair down her back. “You’re not frightened of me, you’re frightened of yourself. That’s nonsense. We are what we are.”

“I don’t even know what I am,” she whimpered.

“Only close your eyes and I shall show you.”