“And what does it mean?”
Mari peered to her boots. “Of the sea.” She wrinkled her nose, shuffled her feet and looked up. “I… But the truth is, Lady Gwen, I do not know how to stop my worrying.”
“Speak to him. Tell him how you feel.”
Mari puffed a breath of white. “He’ll think I’m silly.”
“Not at all.” Gwen recalled him saying that his daughter no longer needed him when in fact it was the exact opposite. “He will want to allay your fears and talk about the things you can do together.”
Mari swished her skirts. “I… I should speak to him before his valet wonders where his razor has gone.”
“Quite. And also…” She turned and placed her hands to the young girl’s shoulders. “Remember that your father is strong, Mari. I know you see a man who limps, one who appears older than he was and occasionally struggles but remember what he has survived. A wild storm. A shipwreck. Lost in the sea for hours if not days. Ask to see under that scarf he always wears, and you will see how very strong your father is. To bear those wounds and survive.”
Mari threw her arms around Gwen’s waist. “Thank you, Lady Gwen. I’ll speak to him.”
They hastened back through the crisp woods yet couldn’t help but pause to touch the wrinkled bark of the aged oaks and marvel at the silken seed heads of Old Man’s Beard whose stems twined around a fallen tree like rope.
Would snow soon smother the forest in a blanket of white?
Through the thick trunks, the clearing could be glimpsed, Tristan’s broad back to them, and after another swift hug, Mari ran ahead, pink skirts fluttering.
A finch hopped from branch to branch, and Gwen recalled how herself and Tristan had wandered out here in that June before the accident, how he’d foraged a branch of ash in order to carve their two intertwined dragon pendants.
He’d embraced her in the light that had seeped through the canopy and lit her world a pale green, replete with life and love.
“Solving everyone’s problems again, my dear Gwen?”
She startled, twisted to find Hugh leaned against a trunk, a bushel of holly at his boots. Had he been cutting it? Or keeping a protective eye upon them.
“I try to, if I can be of use.” She smiled. “Of course, not everyone listens.”
“Everyone listens but not everyone hears.” He winked before gathering his bundle and disappearing in the opposite direction, his steps silent as snow.
She lingered, turned back to watch Tristan and Mari, in case she was needed.
They spoke for a moment. She saw him shake his head and then…
He lifted his eyes to the sky but unravelled his scarf and dropped it to the bench. Leaned forward, dragged at his scruffy hair.
Mari bent to look upon that tortured scar at his nape.
Saw his strength to survive.
His daughter cried out, arms embracing her father.
Gwen watched and smiled and wept.
Then turned.
For she was not needed.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTERTWELVE
“Though summer is come too late for profit, the pleasure it brings is perhaps enhanced by delay: like a life.”
Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey…
