Page 37 of By the Sword
Kate walked her sister to the front gate.
‘Your patient is looking much improved,’ Suzanne observed.
‘Irritable and bored,’ Kate said with a smile.
‘A true convalescing male,’ Suzanne replied. ‘I swear when William broke his leg, I considered administration of something more powerful than laudanum.’ Her eyes narrowed with the memory. ‘Anyway, dearest, bring him to dine with us on Saturday, if he is well enough of course.’
‘I have never met anyone more determined to be well,’ Kate said, keeping unvoiced her belief that Jonathan would be away to his king in Scotland as soon as he could sit on a horse.
She kissed her sister and returned to the garden, where Jonathan had the boys enthralled in another of his fund of stories of Arthur and his knights. While the puppy gambolled around her, she returned to her roses, with half an ear on the tale of magic and enchantment.
When the story was done and the boys, accompanied by the excited puppy, had left to see Robert off to Barton Hall, Kate returned to Jonathan. He sat back against the wall, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his right hand resting on the little volume of Donne. His eyes, still circled with dark smudges, were closed.
‘You’re tired,’ she observed.
He opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Leave your labours, Mistress Ashley, and come and sit down for a little.’
She wiped her hands on her apron and sat beside him. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
He turned his head to look at her. ‘Why do women always ask that?’ he asked. ‘Since you are so interested, I was thinking about young Robert.’
‘Ah.’ Kate looked down at her hands. ‘William calls him the “runt of the litter”. I fear his health is deteriorating.’
She looked up and met Jonathan’s gaze.
Kate looked away and picked up the volume of verse. ‘Which is your favourite?’ she asked.
‘True Plaine Heartes,’ he replied without hesitation.
She flicked through the well-thumbed pages and read:
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine heartes doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die…
She trailed off. ‘That’s beautiful,’ she said.
Jonathan looked out beyond the walls of the garden to the blue of the sky above the moors where a pair of hawks danced.
‘I taught someone else to love Donne,’ he said softly.
‘Mary?’ she asked, conscious of a harsh edge to her voice.
He looked back at her, his eyes hard and cold. ‘How do you..?’
‘Your fever,’ she said.
His eyes took on a shadowed, haunted cast. ‘Ahh…what did I say?’
