A Lady Under Siege

39

A thousand glittering ripples danced across the lake in the afternoon sun. Thomas, at the water’s edge, turned and tramped across the lush grass of a meadow that bordered the shore, and climbed a small hill to higher ground, where a blanket had been spread. Sylvanne sat upon it, encircled by her gown, her knees drawn up and held tightly in her arms. She watched Thomas approach with a mixture of emotions. The despondency she had felt on the night he came to her bed had seen its jagged edges softened by his actions since. He’d been as good as his word—the man had bestowed nothing but kindness upon her.

The biggest change was that he had ceased to hold her hostage, and now allowed her to move freely around and about the castle. Thus liberated, she in turn had pleased him greatly by restoring her good relations with his daughter Daphne. The girl had led her on a wide-ranging tour of her favourite hidden corners of “my palace,” as she liked to call it, and they had passed the previous two afternoons out of doors, nestled in a secretive nook along the castle’s outer wall, where they could sit upon a grassy bank and watch swans skim across the glassy surface of the moat. Thomas had visited them there on the second day, and seeing how soothed Sylvanne looked by the tranquil movement of the water, he proposed an outing for the next day to another, more spectacular waterscape. “We’ll make the journey on horses, just we two,” he’d said, which had stoked the adolescent ire of Daphne. She had beseeched her father to allow her to come along, but he would not be moved. “After your last adventure on horseback, I think it best you continue to rest. Besides, I have no milder horse than Mathilde to give you,” he’d said.

“I think you have another motive,” Daphne had responded petulantly. “You want Lady Sylvanne to yourself.”

If so, then his wish had now come true, for here they sat, alone together under a vast blue canopy of sky, with a fine view of a pretty lake and the surrounding countryside of fields and groves. “I wanted you to see this place and be dazzled by its beauty,” he said. “I can hardly believe my good fortune at possessing such a lake, set like a jewel entirely within my own lands. I used to bring my beloved wife here on a summer’s day—we both believed that Daphne was conceived on a smooth stone along the far shore, a secluded yet sun-drenched secret spot, which we christened the Altar of our Love.” He stopped abruptly, worried that perhaps he’d overstepped propriety by sharing such an intimate detail. He glanced at Sylvanne to gauge her mood, and decided that she seemed unoffended, and contented enough.

“I’m grateful to know this place,” she said. He waited for her to say more, but she sat on the warm blanket and was silent.

“What is your opinion of me?” he said suddenly.

She brought a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun’s brightness and looked at him. “I’ve let myself be brought here without a chaperone,” she said. “So I must trust you, I suppose.”

“That’s a start,” he said. “A good one.”

“You haven’t mentioned that other woman for two full days,” Sylvanne said. “Is it because she directed you not to, or has she vacated your dreams?”

“You know as well as I that she desires to be kept out of it.”

“Yet I’m curious about her,” Sylvanne replied. “If you’re to be believed, then I feel myself inhabited by a phantom.”

“Leaving her aside has made me appreciate your own unique virtues.”

“What care you about my attributes? It seems you already love another,” Sylvanne said mockingly.

“But she’s inside you, that’s the otherworldly truth of it. If I love her, perhaps it means I love you too.” He fell silent for a moment. “I only speak of this because you brought it up.”

“A Lady acts rightly who seeks to understand the workings of a man’s mind, especially one who appears to woo her, yet speaks so lovingly of another.”

“Yes, yes. I suppose,” he said irritably. Something was eating at him—a feeling like a loss of status, or stature—as if yielding to Meghan’s wish that he be gentle and kindly had served to make him appear weak in Sylvanne’s eyes. He was not used to being mocked and teased. He rose from the blanket and stood over her. “Don’t spoil the moment. My intentions in bringing you here were pure, and it seems they sully. Let us untether our horses and depart this place.”

“No, please,” Sylvanne responded. She too rose, and stood beside him, unnaturally close. “It truly is magical here, perhaps the loveliest place I’ve seen in my life. I’m sorry if I offended you by speaking my mind. Under this open sky I felt we were equals, in a way men and women seldom are.”

“Equals? Is that what you aspire to be?”

“It’s what I felt, for a moment, that’s all.”

Her face was a mirror reflecting the beauty that surrounded them. He felt an urge to kiss her, and pulled her to him. She didn’t resist. Her lips were soft and yielding for a moment, then suddenly she pulled herself away, for what had come unbidden to her mind was the equine face of her late husband.

“Are you testing me?” Thomas asked her. “If so, you can see there is no compulsion. No coercion. Nothing will be done without your consent.”

“You urge me to trust you, and I do,” she replied. “But if I were you, I should still be on guard, and take care when it comes to trusting me. You don’t know what thoughts and ideas still invade my mind.”

“Then you must tell me.”

“I still feel loyalty to my husband, and yet I can’t bring myself to do you the harm he wished. I begin to think God has put me here for some other reason.”

“Were you happy with your husband?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“Do you think you could be that happy again?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps that’s what God wants for you.”