Unending Love Read Online Free

Adalind returned. It was just a feeling he had.

 
     
    I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
     
    CHAPTER
TWO
     
    “Did he even say anything to you, Addie?
Anything at all?”
    Seated by the fish pond back near the buttery
where the castle was supplied with fresh fish, Adalind sat with her sister, the
Lady Willow, in the early morning sun.  A new day was dawning, the sky streaked
with the muted colors of sunrise.  The ladies glanced up when a flock of geese
noisily flapped across the sky, soaring off into the deep blue sky.  As the
kitchen yard around them bustled with servants preparing for the morning meal,
the question hung in the air between them.
    “Nay,” Adalind replied, trying to sound casual.
“I did not expect him to. Why would he?”
    The Lady Willow Lillibet de Lohr de Aston
shrugged her slender shoulders.  She was a beauty, like her sister, a tall and
lanky young woman of sixteen years who had only recently returned from
fostering herself.  Adalind and Willow had not seen each other in five years, a
long separation for sisters who had once been inordinately close. For the past
three days, they had been inseparable as they became reacquainted.
    “Because you have grown up,” she said simply.
“You have matured a great deal and you are no longer that silly, gangly child
that used to follow him about. Has he not even noticed you have grown up?”
    “It does not matter. I am still the
grand-daughter of his liege. He sees me as a member of the de Lohr family and
nothing more.”
    Willow shook her head in disbelief, her pale
hair licking at her cheeks. “I cannot believe the man to be so blind,” she
said, eyeing her sister after a moment. “When you saw him for the first time
yesterday… did you feel the same as you have all of these years?”
    Adalind was staring into the pond, watching the
fish mingle amongst the vegetation. “Of course I did,” she murmured. “I have
loved him since I was nine years old. That has not changed.  I thought I could
forget him as I went away to foster, but I did not. He was always lingering in
my mind, like a shadow over my heart that would allow no other man to have it. 
It is both a wondrous blessing and a horrible curse. Why should I love a man so
much who will never return my feelings?”
    Willow gazed at her sister, so lovely and sweet. 
Adalind was the oldest of the grandchildren, the leader of the troops, and when
she spoke, they all had listened.  She was intelligent and compassionate, but
somewhere in the years she had spent in Winchester, she had developed something
of a shell.  Willow could see it.  Adalind used to be so open, a bright spirit
that happily embraced the world.  That didn’t seem to be the case any longer.
She was guarded.
    “He is a fool,” Willow took her sister’s hand
reassuringly. “Maddoc du Bois is a stupid fool if he cannot see what a
wonderful wife you would be to him.”
    Adalind smiled weakly. “I cannot imagine such a
thing,” she said. “I have dreamt of it for so long that it does not seem attainable
to me. I think that it if were to ever happen, I would faint dead away from
surprise.”
    Willow giggled, squeezing her sister’s hand.  “Then
let us speak of men who are more attainable,” she said, eyeing her sister’s
lowered head. “Surely there was someone at Court who caught your eye?”
    Adalind cocked an eyebrow as she looked at her
sister. “You have been speaking with Mother.”
    “I have not. But I did hear her speaking
with Grandmother.”
    “What did you hear?”
    “That you had more suitors than you knew what to
do with and the women at Court were jealous.”
    Adalind returned her focus to the fish pond and
the schools of silver-scaled fish. “There was no one special,” she replied. “A
few tried to catch my attention; perhaps a few that even tried too hard.”
    “Like the ap Athoe brothers?”
    Adalind rolled