Ethelwyn tells someone

Ethelwyn had heard a muffled thumping as he crossed the hall, but as he turned the corner it changed into the sound of bare little feet slapping across a wooden floor: Brunhilde had just left the warmth of the rug at high speed to meet him halfway.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he smiled and bowed—stiffly, because Bruni was already clinging to his legs. “Pardon me, my dear,” he said to her, “but there are some ladies across the room whose hands require kissing.”

“Me first!” she commanded.

“Now, Bruni, you have a thing or two to learn about precedence,” he said, but he willingly picked her up off the floor.

The Duchess laughed, “Bruni believes that the only precedence that matters is the precedence of ladies who love you best.”

“In that case, Bruni comes before everyone.”

“Ach, I do not know about that,” Hetty said slyly, as Ethelwyn had feared she would.

“I am certain that no lady loves me more than Bruni, but that may be only because she is the only lady who has ever had the honor of riding around on my shoulders with her sticky fingers twisted up in my hair.”

But it had been a while since anyone’s fingers, sticky or otherwise, had been twisted up in his hair.

“And why are you giggling, Gwynn?” Hetty asked, giggling herself like an eleven-​year-​old girl. “Do you think you might like to take a ride?”

“No!” Gwynn gasped. “I think I’m a little old for that, by now.”

“First you’re young enough, then you’re too old, then you’re old enough,” Ethelwyn winked at her.

“Mark his words!” Hetty laughed. “And you will be small enough that you might find a man willing and able to do it.”

“I think there will be plenty of contenders on both counts,” Ethelwyn nodded. “But I shall not be among them, alas. I don’t think Bruni will want to share.”

“I hope she will change her mind,” Hetty smiled.

Ethelwyn sighed. He had hoped that it was not for this that the Duchess had asked him to stop to see her before he went home that afternoon.

Fortunately he had his most fervent admirer in his arms at that moment, and she provided a welcome distraction by kissing him noisily all over his cheek.

“Oh, Wyn,” Hetty sighed happily. “I do not know whether I made some other ladies jealous when I married Alred, but I know that Bruni will never forgive me—not because she wanted Alred for herself,” she giggled, “but because she wanted you, and I took her away.”

“She likes Sir Egelric, too,” Ethelwyn said modestly.

“Yes, but it is not the same,” Hetty said. “He is accustomed to boys, and he likes to tease, and sometimes he is a bit much for shy little Bruni.”

“Sometimes he is a bit much for me,” Gwynn laughed, “and I am not shy at all!”

“And me too, and I am a man,” Ethelwyn admitted.

“And for me, too,” Hetty giggled, “though he always does everything I ask.”

“And David always cries whenever he holds him,” Gwynn said.

“So, we are agreed!” Hetty clapped her hands. “That Egelric is a bit too much! Won’t you tell him so when you go home, Wyn?”

“If it is what you desire, my lady, but I fear that the information will immediately cause Sir Egelric to become ‘too much’ in sheer delight.”

“With you!” Gwynn laughed.

“Take Lili with you,” Hetty recommended. “She is one of the few people who can handle him.”

“My lady can be a bit too much for me, too,” Ethelwyn said.

“Ach, but you ought to get accustomed to being tousled and teased a bit, Wyn,” Hetty laughed gleefully. “If your wife will not do it, your children certainly will.”

This was what Ethelwyn had feared.

“I believe I shall wait for this Bruni to grow up,” he said. “She’s so sweet, she won’t tease me a bit.” He tried to make it seem a joke, but he had not learned how to laugh at his own sorrows, or had not the strength.

Either way, the Duchess did seem to detect that something was not right, and though it was what he had hoped to avoid with the joke, it was nevertheless something of a relief to him.

“Gwynn, I wish you would you take David up to his nurse,” she said. “He looks like he wants an early nap.”

Ethelwyn supposed that Gwynn knew she was the one Hetty truly wanted to send out, since she was at the age where she was often with adults but seldom included in their conversations. However, Gwynn was lady enough not to protest.

Bruni too seemed lady enough—or loved him enough—to know that she should not fuss when he sat her on the rug again. She only looked up at him with her mournful eyes that always seemed to understand.

Ethelwyn had always explained her eyes to himself as the result of having absorbed too much of her mother’s own sorrow while she was still in the womb.

Once, however, when Sir Sigefrith had described them as smiling eyes and Egelric had corrected him and called them devilish, Alred had put forth the theory that Bruni’s eyes were no more than mirrors for the eyes of others—for Alred himself called them seductive.

Ethelwyn hoped that none of them remembered that he had always called them sad.

“Won’t you come and sit with me?” the Duchess asked after Gwynn had gone out.

“I have not yet even kissed Your Grace’s hand,” he reminded her.

She smiled and lifted her hand to him. “I hope you will do both.”

Ethelwyn kissed it and held it until he was seated beside her. He had always loved her hands. Her sister’s hands were strong and busy, fit for tickling and tweaking and probably a few other things her husband would prefer he didn’t imagine; but Hetty’s hands were so soft, so white, and so exquisite that they seemed only ever to have been applied to the handiwork of angels.

He was beginning to wonder why he had ever believed a mortal woman could make him happy, after all.

“Now, Wyn,” she said, “I am afraid I have done it again. Perhaps I have been indiscreet again and caused you some pain. Is it not so?”

“Why do you say so?” he smiled weakly.

“I think I have seen you happier in the past weeks than you have been in the past days. Is it not so?”

“Happy?” He shrugged and sighed, as though the word had little meaning to him, or little weight.

“Has there been some trouble between you and my friend Mouse?”

“Trouble?” He shrugged again, and then laughed awkwardly at his own awkwardness.

She laid her angelic hand on his. “You need not tell me what the trouble is, if you do not wish to. I only want to know so that I might not put you in an uncomfortable position again. So that I shall not tease you about her—which I should not do, anyway—nor invite you to the same party if you prefer not to see one another, for example.”

Her words were chilling, though she was telling him nothing he did not already know. “You speak as if you thought it was all over,” he murmured dazedly.

“I hope it is not.”

“I suppose it is, however,” he said.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she said, and he knew she meant it. “I hope it is not merely a misunderstanding, Wyn. That would be such a tragic thing.”

“There is no misunderstanding.”

He could tell that his voice did not sound natural. He could not help that, but he wanted to tell someone who cared and who would not be rough with him.

He did not want to be teased and tousled. He did not want Sir Egelric’s joking commiseration, however well-​intentioned, and he certainly did not want Lady Lili to resume her plotting to use him to gain a new friend.

He had no friends of his own whom he could tell. There was only this angelic lady before him, who was the friend of everyone.

He had always adored her, but he was finding it impossible to resurrect his old love for her—if such it had been. It was not that an angel could not make him happy; it was simply that he realized he probably could not make any woman happy, whether angelic or mortal, and the realization was robbing him of his desire to try.

“I simply asked her to be my wife,” he explained, “and she said that she did not wish to be married, which I presume was a polite way to say she did not wish to be married to me.”

“Oh, Wyn!” Hetty breathed.

“I talked too much, if you can believe that,” he said, trying to laugh. “I suppose I told her too much about myself. Too much, or too soon. Or perhaps I simply bored her.”

He thought he would forever regret having told her as much as he had. He did not quite believe her capable of repeating it, but even if she did not, he had told her. He could no longer say of certain things that he had never told them to anyone. He had not even that comfort any more.

“I do not think it could be that…” she faltered.

“Now,” he smiled, “you know that people always found the idea of the two of us together to be quite surprising, if not hilarious.” He realized he was patting her own hand as if he were comforting her. “We must assume that it was because the idea was absurd.”

“Not at all! I think it was only because it was a little funny, after you were so angry at one another for a while. I think you were very sweet together.”

“Ah, but that is because you like me and you like Mouse, and so you think we should like one another.”

“But I was so certain you did,” she whimpered. “Are you certain there was no misunderstanding? Perhaps you understood what she said, but the reason was due to some misunderstanding?”

“She told me she was terribly sorry if she had made me believe she would like to get married. Simply sorry, no ‘but.’” He tried to laugh, but he had to suck in his breath instead to prevent a sob. Telling someone was harder than he had thought.

“But, dear…”

“Mouse isn’t the sort of person who won’t tell a man when he has done something to offend her, you know,” he winked.

He was feeling the same tingling ache in his arms and hands that he had at first when he was near to Mouse and scarcely dared touch her. He had since identified it as the ache of longing when it radiated out of one’s heart into one’s arms and hands in search of some beloved someone in particular.

Over a week had passed, and the ache showed no signs of abating. He wondered how long it would take before it would sink back down into his heart and he would only be lonely again. Perhaps never again.

“But you loved her, did not you?” Hetty whispered pleadingly, as if it were her own dreams that were not coming true. “A little, did you not?”

“Love?” He shrugged and sighed.