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Day Three
Simon
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Simon was trying very hard not to yell at his niece. “Tell me again how on earth you thought it was a good idea to meet a man by yourself anywhere?”
As Catrin had sought him out before the girl’s father, he was guessing he’d been something of a compromise. From Emma’s tear-streaked face and the somewhat stubborn set to Catrin’s chin when they’d arrived, hiding what she’d done had to have been Emma’s first choice, while going straight to Emma’s father was Catrin’s. Since then, Catrin’s description of Hugh’s death, and the arrangement of the scene, had gone a long way towards subduing the girl.
Emma appeared genuinely sorry she’d found the body. He wasn’t sure she understood that finding the body was of lesser importance than the fact she’d arranged for an illicit meeting in the barn, something for which she wasn’t sorry at all. “He loves me, Uncle Simon! He wants me to marry him!”
“Of course, he would say that,” Simon said repressively.
“I did try to convey the difficulties,” Catrin said in an undertone.
Emma wasn’t listening. To either of them. He was quite sure that nothing he (or apparently anyone else) could say would dissuade her of the young man’s affections. Simon tried again anyway. “Can you not see that meeting him in a derelict barn was a poor way to show your love for him—and completely the wrong way for him to show how he feels about you! He should never have asked it of you.”
“It was my idea!” Emma shot back.
“Now that, I believe,” Simon said dryly.
“Young love is not to be denied,” Catrin said, “until it is, of course, by people far more powerful and influential than we are.”
Emma kept talking, begging really. “You married Aunt Elizabeth, Uncle Simon, whom I know you have loved your whole life. Why is it so strange for me to want a love match too?”
Simon didn’t dare meet Catrin’s eyes. A moment ago, he had seen a flicker of amusement in them, but Emma wasn’t her niece. Girls were different from boys. Catrin and Rhys might be blessed with a daughter one day, but for now they had one son between them, Justin, the child of Catrin’s first marriage. Simon struggled to discipline his own daughters and had always been wrapped around Emma’s little finger.
That still didn’t mean he could give her what she wanted this time. “There is nothing strange about it. I could not be happier for you. But even were this a match made in heaven—” he put up a hand to stop her next protest, “—and I’m not saying it isn’t, meeting with Stephen FitzJohn, a nephew of the Earl of Warwick, in an abandoned barn was always a terrible idea. And that was before you found a dead man in it.”
In truth, he was underplaying what, from top to bottom, was a disaster.
Emma finally hung her head. “I know; Stephen didn’t want to, but I begged him to come.”
“Why?” The word came out a wail. He couldn’t help it.
“I wanted to talk to him without everyone around all the time. We are always being watched. It has been unbearable.”
“How is it you have been able to speak to him before now at all?” Simon was genuinely curious. If nothing else, he would store away her explanation for the future when he had his own almost-grown daughter to deal with.
“We have managed to sit next to each other at most meals, particularly breakfast, which is so much less formal.” Emma smiled beatifically at the memory.
If possible, Simon was even more concerned, not so much at the pair of them eating breakfast together, which was really kind of sweet, but at how much was going on behind her parents’ backs. “Your father has allowed that?”
“I rise earlier than he does. I’m not sure he knows.”
“And your mother?”
“She is so busy with the little ones, she has sent a servant with me to the pavilion in the mornings. I have to eat, after all! Besides, how could anyone object to the nephew of the Earl of Warwick as a suitor for me? I thought the entire point of this venture was to find someone of a higher station for me to marry?”
She had a point, but Simon didn’t want to concede it.
“Just yesterday the earl was happy to speak to my father at length about his circumstances and his estate. Apparently, the queen has been exceptionally pleased with my father’s stewardship.” She laid out her noble connections as if Simon didn’t know them. He had the sense she was working up her arguments in preparation for speaking to Osborn.
“But Stephen never came.” Catrin cut through Emma’s certainty.
“He wasn’t late! I was early. He probably is there now and thinks that I don’t want to be with him.” She burst into tears. Again.
Catrin met Simon’s eyes. “She says she entered the barn, saw the body on the floor, and screamed. There wasn’t time for anything else before Rhys and I arrived.”
Emma was still sobbing. “And now he’s gone forever.”
Simon endeavored not to raise his eyes to the heavens in a plea for divine intervention. Instead, he took his niece into his arms. “I cannot say what will become of your love for Stephen and his for you. Your father is hoping for an advantageous match, and allying you with Stephen and his family would fulfill that goal. At the same time, I do not know how Stephen’s uncle will feel about it. We are minor nobles, by comparison.”
It wasn’t that Simon’s brother would object to being allied with such a high nobleman. It was just that it could be aiming a little too high. For starters, the Earl of Warwick might not want his nephew marrying so far beneath him. While Simon and his brother—and their cousin—knew they were as worthy as anyone, they had not achieved the wealth and land of the Beauchamps. In addition, some of the lesser lords might be jealous of the suddenly closer position to the king the Boydells would achieve with such an alliance. And that wasn’t even to mention all the other fathers with daughters who aspired to a similar match.
Emma would concede none of this. He doubted she even saw these matters as issues. “We are Boydells! And Stephen told me his father’s sisters married above their station. Yes, his grandfather was the Justiciar of Ireland, and Stephen himself will inherit lands in Ireland and England, but one aunt married the Earl of Warwick, as you know. Another married the Earl of Ulster!”
Emma had neatly summarized her sense of herself and her family, a sense Simon himself shared. Their ancestors had come with the Conqueror, same as Stephen’s, even if the latter’s were generally more noble. Every single Norman now living was jumped up above their station, beginning with William himself, the bastard son of the Duke of Normandy. William had made himself King of England by sheer force of will. Emma was cut from the same cloth. Her weapons were just different.
Still, Simon looked at Catrin with something of a pleading expression. She bent her head to him. “Come, Emma. I’ll take you home. If you are so determined to love Stephen, and he you, then your father should know of it.”
“He will be so angry.”
“Maybe so.” And then Catrin’s tone softened even further. They were walking away, but Simon could still hear her words. “I am fortunate enough to have married the love of my life, but only after a twenty-year first marriage. Robert was a good man—”
“—but Reese is different.” Emma interrupted. “That’s what I want for me.”
“I want it for you too—”
Then they were out of earshot.
