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“Why not today?” Garron asked, and thankfully the king agreed.
However, an hour before the wedding, the queen’s babe, Blanche, fell ill, and so the wedding was postponed until the morrow.
43
Garron walked beside Merry on the ramparts, London sprawling in front of them all the way to the Thames. They were thankfully too far away for the breeze to waft back foul smells to them.
It was a fine afternoon, Garron observed, even though they weren’t to be married, and the air was crisp, a soft breeze blowing. Merry leaned back against the stone rampart wall. Garron said, “You have not worn your hair loose before.”
She paused a moment, then smiled. “You do not like it thus?”
“Aye, I like it.” He reached out his hand and took a tress, rubbed it against his fingers and palm. “I also like the various little braids you wear hidden in amongst your braids.”
“You never rubbed my head, Garron.”
“I don’t think it such a good idea else I’d doubtless prove the king right, you’d be beneath me in a flash. I’m trying to be strong and honorable, Merry. I will rub your head tomorrow night.” He cupped her cheek in his palm. “I have always liked you, Merry, even when I wanted to clout you. I admired you when I realized what you could accomplish. I even told Burnell that you were smart, which, naturally, he didn’t believe for a moment. I know you will make me a fine wife, an excellent mistress for both Wareham and Valcourt.” He paused a moment, looked out over London. “I was so afraid when you were taken, I believed I would choke on it. I would have faced the Devil himself to get you back safely. But the truth is, when at last I rode from your mother’s tower, I didn’t believe I would ever see you again. I thought she’d taken you away forever.” He paused, watched the breeze lift a stray tress of hair from her forehead. “I have come to realize that I do not wish to be separated from you. I wish you by my side until I die. I wish us to build a dynasty together.”
She stared up at him. “Are you saying you love me, my lord?”
He paused, frowned a bit. “I have always believed love is a word the minstrels use to beguile the ladies who listen to their songs. Let caring be enough, Merry, and I care for you a great deal, more than just an hour ago, in fact. Is that enough for you?”
“I have no need of a word that has no meaning to you, my lord. I’ve always loved my mother, rather I’m sure that I would have loved her had she not left me, yet it isn’t at all what I feel for you. I suppose I care a great deal for you also.” She began to stroke her fingers over his cheek, lightly rubbing. He felt a bolt of alarm. He grabbed her wrist and drew her hand down. “She did that, she stroked my face.”
“Who?”
“Your mother. I believe now she was rubbing a drug into my flesh.”
“My lord, you must listen. If she did indeed drug you, it was only because she wished to protect me. She didn’t know you. I think she must have feared you. I hadn’t yet convinced her that you were my perfect mate, that we should be wedded.”
He shook his head. “She did not fear me, Merry. You said when you awoke from the drug one of the men gave you, you were in a room and she was there with you.”
“Aye, she was.”
“Tell me about the room.”
She cocked her head at him, sending her hair tumbling, but she didn’t give him the sloe-eyed look she’d given the king, a good thing since he would have laid her out on the ramparts walkway. “It was a workroom. I believe she spent much of her time there, reading, studying, conducting experiments, writing her results. I remember seeing stacks of bound parchments, many of them hers.”
“Was there a carpet on the floor?”
She looked down at the distant maze of dark streets and the huddled houses. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry, Garron. I suppose the drug was still acting on my brain.”
“Did she tell you where you were?”
She shook her head. “I believed I was in Meizerling Abbey, but since it only took three hours to return me to London, I could not have been there. They left me in front of the great gates just below us.” Garron looked down to see Whalen surrounded by at least three dozen men, all of them leaning in, listening to him closely. He rather hoped Whalen would remain as captain of the king’s guard, a possibility only because Merry had been returned, unharmed.
It sounded to Garron like she had been in her mother’s tower in the forest, and that scared him to his boots. He leaned back against the ramparts. “Merry, I do not understand you. Your mother tried to sell you to Jason of Brennan in return for him giving her Arthur’s silver coins.
r /> “Why are you defending her, both to the king and to me? Whatever her reason for sending you back here, trust me, it had nothing to do with making you happy. If she said otherwise, she was lying.”
“I will admit, at first, I was frightened of her, and very angry at what she’d done, but then she explained herself to me.”
“What did she possibly say to change your mind toward her?”
“I asked her about Wareham and the Black Demon. She denied knowing anything about it. She told me Jason had offered her a lot of silver to marry me. She needed the silver, she told me, and she believed Jason to be a fine man. Why should I not believe her? She is my mother, Garron, my mother.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“She said my father had kept me from her, that she missed me every moment of every day, that she’d heard my father was going to give me over to an old man and so she selected Jason of Brennan. She was very distraught when I told her what Jason had done to Wareham.”
