Thy Name Is Love (The Yorkist Saga) by Diana Rubino Read Free Book Online Page B

or
     shut as needed to protect the tender shoots.

She hired live-in musicians, and accompanied them on their lutes,
     viols and pipes. She formed quartets and quintets, and arranged
     her favorite songs with different harmonic parts for voices of all
     ranges.

She had an organ delivered, set up in the great hall, and played
     it a least a couple of hours each day. The strains of music eased
     her loneliness, but only somewhat.

She insisted on music until the wee hours, rotating all the
     musicians in shifts so the house would never be silent. The
     trouble was, they seemed to do nothing but sing of love, until she
     grew more heartsick at being so alone in her married home.

When not engaged in all the activities around the castle, and the
     weather was too inclement to venture outside the castle gates, she
     spent endless hours poring over genealogical tables conveyed to
     her from the governors of the shires and the mayors of as many
     Wiltshire towns as she could discover that were near to where she
     had last sought her family, and which were large enough to have
     such a personage residing there with whom she could correspond.

She also contacted every abbot and abbess in the district, for all
     the churches kept records of births, marriages and deaths. She did
     not really know what she was looking for. She had no names or
     places to go by, only the vague date of around Martinmas 1457 to
     help her, which so far as she knew, was around the time she had
     been born.

Valentine's information had not been off the mark, but it might
     have been one way to lure her even further in to whatever web
     Elizabeth Woodville might have woven for her. And which was why in
     some senses she was glad to be alone to plot and prepare, for when
     the time came, he would not be able to stop her from seeking her
     destiny, which had lain waiting for her for so long.

She sent a copy of her sketch to each of her correspondents, and
     prayed someone would recognize her as a possible relative, or give
     her a crumb of information which would tell her where to look
     next.

Throughout it all, she ached to be able to confide in someone, but
     even had her husband been at home, her misgivings over his past
     conduct and future ambitious would have been enough to give her
     pause.

Still, it would be nice to start feeling more like she belonged
     here, she decided one day, rising from her desk, her back aching
     from the effort of having passed the rainy day penning still more
     letters to Wiltshire.

She gazed out at the lovely if rain-drenched landscape, and hoped
     Valentine was safe and warm somewhere. She hugged her arms around
     her waist, and finally admitted to herself just how much she was
     really looking forward to Valentine's homecoming.

Awaiting his return from York one afternoon with a restlessness
     that simply would not be contained, she mounted Chera and rode a
     few miles in the direction his last note to her had indicated him
     to be.

The freezing air filled her lungs with exhilarating crispness as
     she burrowed deeper into her ermine cloak. The remnants of the
     previous night's frost dusted the earth with a sparkling blanket
     of blue-white that turned her breath to crystals in the slanting
     sun.

Thin streams of smoke curled skyward from the villagers' cottages
     surrounding her. All was quiet; the only sound was the dull
     clopping of Chera's hooves on the hard earth.

She halted the palfrey and, from atop the hill, swept her eyes
     over Lilleshal and her grounds. The sandstone glowed and the
     stream twinkled in the sun's weakening rays. Smoke billowed from
     the chimneys, and lights flickered in the oiled paper windows and
     occasional glass windows as the surrounding shadows grew longer,
     casting a gleam over the earth.

She yanked on Chera's reins and galloped back, a rush of warmth
     welling through her. She could not wait to nestle before the fire
     in the parlor, her fingers wound round a tankard of