Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman Page A

talk, but Constance was so caught up in her own thoughts that she was no longer listening. It was only when she heard her mother’s name that she turned back to the other woman. “My mother?”
    Alys nodded. “Yes, the Lady Margaret was permitted to visit Aenor at Winchester.” Doing her best to ease Constance’s worries, she said earnestly, “Aenor is being well treated, Constance, truly she is. At Winchester, she often played with the Lady Richenza’s little brother, and the queen made sure that well-bred palfreys were provided for her escort. She was sent off to Rouen in fine style, as befitting a child of her high birth.”
    Constance had never doubted that Aenor would be comfortably housed or given solicitous servants, so she was not appeased to hear it confirmed. It was some comfort, though, that her mother had spent time with Aenor. Margaret had wed an English baron after the death of Constance’s father, and Constance had hoped she’d be able to keep an eye upon Aenor. Alys had a pleasant voice, but it was grating now on Constance’s nerves, for she needed time alone to marshal her thoughts and plan how best to approach Richard. She paid the other woman no heed until Alys said something so startling that she whipped her head around to stare at the French princess. “What did you say?”
    By now they were both on their feet, brushing off their skirts. “I said that I can be of little assistance to you now, Constance. But once I am queen, I promise that I will do all in my power to have Aenor returned to you.”
    Constance was dumbfounded. Did Alys truly believe that Richard was going to marry her? If so, she was more naïve than a novice nun and more forgiving than the Blessed Mother Mary. If she’d been treated as shabbily as Alys, Constance would have prayed every day for the demise of her tormentor. Where was Alys’s indignation, her spine?
    But as she gazed into the other woman’s face, Constance was struck by Alys’s wide-eyed, girlish mien. Alys was the elder of the two by six months, would be thirty come October. At that age, she ought to have been in charge of her own household, presiding over her highborn husband’s domains in his absence, a mother and wife, mayhap even a queen. Instead, she’d spent these formative years in pampered, secluded confinement, with no duties or responsibilities, denied the chance to mature, denied her womanhood. And Constance suddenly understood why Alys had been so eager to claim a friendship that had existed only in her own imagination, why—despite all evidence to the contrary—she still clung to the romantic belief that she would marry the man to whom she’d been betrothed since the age of nine. Looked upon in that light, it was not even surprising. Who would expect a tame bird to fend for itself if it were set free after a lifetime of gilded captivity?
    With this realization, Constance found herself faced with an uncomfortable dilemma. Should she be the one to shatter Alys’s illusions? Constance had little patience with fools, yet there was no cruelty in her nature. To tell Alys the truth was akin to pulling the wings off a butterfly. But someone had to tell her. Surely it would be less painful coming here and now. The alternative would be to hear it from Richard himself, and Constance did not trust him to be tactful as he trampled Alys’s dreams underfoot.
    “Alys . . . there is something you must know, and better you hear it from me than from Richard. He has no intention of marrying you.”
    Color flamed into Alys’s face and then ebbed, leaving her white and shaken. “That is not true! It was his father who kept delaying our marriage, not Richard.”
    “Alys, you need to face the truth. Richard has been king for over six months. If he’d wanted to marry you, it would have happened by now. He has never had any interest in making you his wife, at first because your marriage portion was so meager and then because he no longer trusts your brother,