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Tristram frowned in displeasure. The lady Edith was the worst gossip at Court. Perchance her niece had inherited the same penchant for gossip. He strove to shrug away the thought of Judith, because, after all, she was just a young woman he’d chanced upon.
“Why are you asking?” her mother asked with a shrewd glance.
“Never you mind,” he replied, and gave a careless wave of his hand.
Yet the thought of Judith lingered with him in a strange way, and he found himself seeking her company whenever he glimpsed her at Court. He didn’t chance often upon her though. And she was always shy, but Tristram began to see that, whenever she talked, the things she said were level-headed, and at times uncommonly astute. Her manner was withdrawn, but there was something utterly compelling in the way she held herself and talked, something which, in his eyes, made her apart from all the other women he’d met so far. And she seemed restrained and gracious, and nothing at all like her gossipy Aunt Edith, who told him with an arched eyebrow in the Great Hall one day when they happened to meet, “My lord, I can see you’ve met my niece, Judith, the one who’s promised to Raymond.”
“Raymond?” Tristram asked striving to recall a lord knight called Raymond and failing.
“My stepson, Raymond,” Lady Edith said, and Tristram now remembered who the lady was talking about.
“How old is the lad? Twelve?”
“Nearly thirteen,” Lady Edith said tersely.
“And Lady Judith is how old?” Tristram couldn’t help asking.
“Eighteen already since this winter,” the lady replied. “Our own king was but a mere boy when he married our queen, who’s more than ten years older, as you know,” she added pointedly.
“Still, this boy is far too green for marriage,” Tristram ventured, which earned him a dark look.
In the next days, he strove yet again to put the lady Judith away from his mind, because it was unseemly to think so ardently upon a woman who would one day pledge herself to another. He failed though.
It was with raised eyebrows that he listened, a week later, to what his mother had to say.
“Lord Edward of Redmore, Lady Judith’s father,” his mother told him upon their meal, “I have spoken to him.”
“Why?” Tristram asked in sheer surprise.
“You’re nearly four and twenty,” his mother told him, as if the answer cleared everything for everyone.
“So?” Tristram shrugged, trying to look unruffled.
“Most of your friends have wed,” his mother said pointedly. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t think upon it.”
“Well, I…”
“Sir Edward wishes to meet you. Our rank is higher than his at present, but he is of old blood, and some of his ancestors were Northumbrian princes. His lands are vast and he is wealthy.”
“I have no wish to wed,” Tristram countered hastily.
“Edward of Redmore’s daughter has obviously taken your fancy. Is there any harm I already looked into this match for you? You could do even better, certainly, because you’ve both the rank and looks any woman would want. Yet, I know you. You’re so like your late father!”
His mother trailed off with a wistful smile on her face.
“How so?” Tristram muttered already fearing the answer.
“Unlike most lords, your father thought marriage should be for love, and not for rank or wealth,” his mother answered, and Tristram could still see the pain over his father’s passing, fresh in her eyes, even after all these years.
“I do not lo–” he started, but his mother shushed him.
“Don’t say it! Because perchance you will one day. Or even sooner than you think. And wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?”
He shook his head with a half-smile, understanding that, just like his father, his mother did believe in married love, so he resembled both his parents.
“Lady Edith has told me Judith of Redmore is already promised to another, so I hardly think it’s proper of me to talk to her father,” he started, but his mother shushed him again.
“That’s not what Sir Edward told me,” she countered.
