A Love For All Seasons Read Online Free

l’Espicer!"
    The arrogant, impatient shout brought an instant quiet in those unfortunates waiting in the abbey's market field, then rode the wind over the compound's stone perimeter wall. It blew across the courtyard's short expanse, passed the stables, and finally tumbled into the open window of that holy house's small hospitium. Standing at the window of this inner guest house, the one reserved for only the most august of the monastery's visitors, Robert of Blacklea, now Grossier of Lynn, caught his breath.
    To hear Johanna's name thus twined with Katel's was as if Katel reached across the years to once again attack him. The pain of what he'd forfeited welled up in him. Rob closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window's frame.
    The memory of Johanna and the time of their first loving immediately filled his inner vision. It had been summer, the moss on that stretch of river bank they called their own had been greener than emeralds. The day's soft mist had just turned to rain, heaven's tears streaming through the willow branches until her gowns clung to her like a second skin.
    As Johanna's image reappeared in his mind's eye, Rob drew a breath in appreciation. Mayhap only he might hail her a great beauty, still no man would deny that her face had a fine-boned elegance that would serve her long past the time when other women faded into crones. Her hair was a mix of gold and red. It curled enough that when it was loosened it flowed about her slender form in wanton waves. Each time she looked on him her eyes became all the bluer in her love for him. As if but an hour, not sixteen years, had passed since her last glance, his heart basked in the glory of her sweet affection.
    This time when Rob caught his breath, it was in despair. If his heart persisted in believing she loved him still, logic said any affection she'd ever held for him was gone, destroyed beyond redemption. He opened his eyes and stared blankly at the abbey's wall, toying idly with the massive knot of gold that was his mantle pin. Johanna, and the wrong he'd been forced to do her, haunted him. To be so stricken at the mere sound of her name did not bode well for his high-flung hope that protecting her from Katel's wrongdoing would somehow free him of this burden.
    The corners of his mouth lifted into a small and bitter smile. Free him, indeed. If he ever achieved the freedom he wasn't certain he wanted, his peers, nay, all of society, would see that it didn't last long.
    By the time an independent tradesman reached his third decade, as Rob had done three years ago, he was expected to take a wife. This was especially so when a man was as wealthy as Rob had become. Nigh on all the trading households of England had paraded their daughters before him, as had at least half of the lower nobility, with no success.
    Aye, but he wasn't foolish enough to think he could continue to refuse. Folk were already whispering about him, and rumors were bad for trade. His obsession with Johanna had to end as did his lingering belief that the two of them were well and truly wed.
    There was a touch on his elbow. Rob glanced down at William, his eleven-year-old apprentice. The lad's brows were raised in confusion as he studied his master through eyes as green as his sire's. Eye color was the only thing Will had from Arthur. All else, his slight frame, curling, tawny hair, and strong will came from the boy's far more forceful dam.
    "Aye, lad?" Rob asked, knowing the boy's confusion had its roots in his master's strange behavior since their arrival at Stanrudde.
    "It's the brother you wished to see. He's come at last."
    "Ah," Rob said, a spark of pleasure breaking through the odd heaviness of spirit that had plagued him since discovering Katel's theft. He turned his back on the window and his troubles, then ran supple fingers through his hair to straighten it. "By all means, admit him."
    As William crossed the room, descending the short stairway to ground level in order to