Lili thinks the worst

Lili found Alred in his study with his two sons.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said coldly.

“You’re no interruption,” Alred smiled. “Dunstan was just giving me his impressions of the reading for Mass, and the old man was just giving his excuses for not reading it.”

“It’s too hard!” Cynewulf whined.

Alred clucked at him. “I even said you might read it in English.”

“English is hard too!”

“Say ‘difficult,’ boy. Let us reserve the word ‘hard’ to describe the implement with which I shall spank your behind next week if you don’t do your readings.”

Alred turned back to Lili with a broad smile and a twinkle in his eye, but both were soon dulled by her glare, which was hard indeed.

“May I have a word with you?” she asked him.

“Certainly. Gentlemen?”

Cynewulf bowed to her and Dunstan kissed her hand, and then they were alone.

“What can I do for you this morning?” Alred asked gently.

“I am only come to offer you my excuses,” she scowled. A sudden inspiration had given her just the thing to say. “I did not do my reading either.”

“Oh, no? Don’t think I don’t spank ladies if they make a habit of it.”

“Don’t you care to hear my excuse?”

“Let us hear it.”

“I was too busy reading something else. I was reading this!” she cried and held the parchment up under his nose.

His soft smile had clung trembling to his face in spite of her frown and her harsh manner, but it fell away at last when he had read the first few lines of the poem. Indeed, he looked rather ill, and Lili was briefly sorry for him, until she realized that he probably only looked that way because he knew he had been found out, and he was in for an uncomfortable interview.

He folded up the parchment again before he had read the half of it and quavered, “Why are you showing this to me now? I have told you I am happy for you and Egelric, and I meant it.”

Lili snatched the poem back from him and tossed it into the fire. “Why now?” she cried. “Because I just found it!”

“Did you lose it?”

“Lose it?” she repeated. “You took it from me! But I wouldn’t have let you if I had known to what use you meant to put it!”

“I never took it from you.”

“You took it back from me on that very day!”

“I did not.”

Lili froze. She was certain he had. “I think you did.”

“I assure you, I did not. I would have remembered it if you had given it back to me. I believe I told you that one does not give birthday gifts with the expectation that they be returned.”

“Then how did it – ” Lili froze again.

“Where did you find it?”

“In Hetty’s Psalter!” Some of her fury returned to her at the thought.

“Holy Mother Juno,” he groaned and held a hand up over his face.

“Didn’t you give it to her?”

“I told you, I never touched it again after it left my hand! And why – what – what sort of beast do you think me?” he stuttered, his fury now surpassing her own. “To take a poem that one lady doesn’t want and try to pass it off on her sister? Jupiter!”

“But I don’t understand…”

“I understand! I understand you were careless enough to leave it lying around where your sister could find it! And I thought you had at least the sense God gave a hen, and must have burned it long since! Though I had been vain enough to think you might want to commit it to memory first! Jupiter! You didn’t care enough for it or for me even to remember what you did with it five minutes after I left! I wish I had taken it back!”

“But what has Hetty been doing with it all this time?” she cried, bristling with anger to hide her growing feeling of mortification. “Does she mean to keep it to show my husband some day when she’s angry at me? Or for blackmail?”

“Blackmail? Jupiter! Decidedly you are determined to think the worst of everybody today, my lady. Did it occur to you, in your lofty wisdom, that she might have found it and believed someone had left it for her? Or do you think that she and everyone else is aware that you are the only lady on earth fine enough to be worthy of poetry? Though I, for one, am beginning to believe you are the only one who is not!”

“Oh, poor Hetty…” she murmured.

“Poor Hetty indeed! Holy Juno mother of Mars!” he cried and stamped his foot in exasperation. “Look what you’ve done with it!” He pointed at the fire, wherein the parchment had already shrunk and crumbled into stinking ash.

“Poor Hetty…”

“What shall I do now?”

“She never said anything to you?” Lili asked weakly.

“Not a word, bless her timid little heart!”

“She must think you love her, if she kept it…”

“So I suppose! Poor girl! Poor girl!”

Lili was horrified to see him wipe his eyes with the back of his hand – horrified that she had thought him so cruel and heartless only a few moments before.

“I shall be forced to break her heart,” he said mournfully, “and all because of your carelessness, Lili. I must hope that my idiotic adoration of you has left her little fuel to feed any passion of her own.”

“I’m sorry…” Lili quavered.

“That doesn’t begin to make up for it.”

“I thought you had it…”

“Careless, I think I said? I suppose I must be thankful it was not your husband who found it!”

“We must tell her.”

He sighed and held his hands over his face for a moment. “Not now.”

“Why not?”

“Not right before Christmas. That would be too cruel.”

“But we can’t allow her to continue to think…”

“She has been ‘continuing to think’ for months already, I suppose. A few more days won’t make a difference. And I will not be responsible for spoiling her Christmas, even if I am now obliged to break her heart soon afterwards.”

“But she will find the poem missing…”

“Let us hope that my vanity has not failed me, and that she has already committed it to memory and no longer needs to refer to the parchment. For I suppose that, unlike her sister, she has some idea of where she has left it from moment to moment, and will notice its absence! Poor girl!”