Constant Heart by Siri Mitchell Page B

earl rolled his eyes and then knelt beside me. He took one of my hands between his own. “ ’Tis ice!”
    “As I have said.”
    He reached out a finger and touched my nose with it. “How can it not fall off your head? It is not a nose, ’tis an icicle. Get you to bed!”
    “I shall stay there until March.”
    “Do what you must.”

    I bring the girl to the finest estate in all of England and what does she do? Complain! She complains of the cold, she complains of the maids, she complains of the windows. Was she not, of late, but a knight’s daughter? Should she not be . . . grateful? Thankful?
    Pleased? Should she not at the very least be content?
    I was down the hall and on the way to the covered gallery before I thought to throw a cloak around myself.
    The cloak be hanged!
    I took several turns of the gallery before I could force my thoughts from the girl’s pallid face and blue-tinged lips. She looked like some wretched urchin!
    I stopped my pacing and leaned out over the rail to get a better view of the work being conducted below. The work yard had long ago been churned into a field of mud. But as I watched carts move back and forth across its length, I realized the mud had frozen; yesterday’s cart tracks and footprints had been pushed up from the morass by frost.
    I cupped my hands to my mouth and blew on them to persuade feeling back into my fingertips.
    By summer the construction would be finished. And then the decorating could commence. This year, the next, and then finally Brustleigh would be ready. Two years. If I were lucky. Two years of great effort, and even greater expense, but then years of great reward would follow.
    I took one last look at the work and then hastened back inside to my chambers. Nicholas met me with my cloak.
    As I hesitated in taking it from him, he moved forward to place it around my shoulders. I noticed, with surprise, that he wore one as well.
    “You feel the cold, then?”
    “As do we all, my lord.”
    “One expects such weather in February.”
    “Aye, my lord, though to feel such weather, and feel it so acutely inside, is not as commonly expected.”
    I frowned and shrugged the cloak from my shoulders as I took to the chair at my desk. Some minutes later, however, I asked Nicholas to retrieve it for me. “And Nicholas?”
    “Aye, my lord?”
    “Make certain the girl’s hearth is well supplied with wood.”

    Joan and I, and my maids when they rejoined us, kept our feet fixed to the warming boxes and our tongues loosed in conversation those long, chill weeks while around us rang the sounds of a building under renovation.
    Sitting in the countryside in Berkshire, I observed the rhythm of the year to have been altered. And with it my assurance of what I knew the world to be. For though I was no longer a knight’s daughter, I did not yet feel like an earl’s wife. I was living and moving in a world with unknown boundaries. A world operating according to rules of which I seemingly had no knowledge, despite my lengthy training.
    At Brustleigh we went to church, but it was not the same. I did not know the people. I did not know the rector. There was no one to talk to save those of my own household, so there was no reason to stay and linger. And so, we never did. Church became a function to attend rather than an event to take part in. I was a countess. And since I was in the country, outside of court, I had no real peers.
    But I had no sooner settled into the rhythms of life at Brustleigh when the earl announced we were to move back to Lytham House.
    That set my maids to chattering. And so loud were their voices that I was obliged to leave my chair and place myself closer to the earl so that I could understand him.
    “Am I to go as well?”
    “You would rather stay, then?”
    “Nay! I had been given to understand, however, that when you returned to court, my lord, I would be staying here.”
    “You may stay if you like. It makes no difference to me.”
    Looking into his