The moment our lips parted, I felt as though I'd been torn in two: there was the innocent little girl who was relieved and excited and falling in love - and the practical bitch who was welling up with guilt and shame and regret, because she knew in a few months she'd be spending her life with a man it was a miracle she was with in the first place. Had I known what William was up to, I might have behaved differently, in retrospect. As it was, I got away from Rob as fast as I could, and fled to the relative safety of my bedchamber, where I slumped onto my bed, crying myself into the numbing abyss of sleep.
Crying was pretty weak, really. It didn't make Rob any less in trouble, it didn't take back that we had just kissed, or that kiss couldn't mean anything, it didn't even make me feel any better. When I woke, it was still dark outside, and the edges of the forest were creating eerie shadows against the outer walls - a clearer prophetic fallacy would be difficult, if not impossible, to find. And there was silence...proper silence, which you never really get anymore, 'cause there are always cars in the distance, or noisy student neighbours, or drunk chavs arguing out on the street. But back then, there was real, proper silence, not even punctured by the distant baying of wolves. And it was horrible. I felt, in that moment, with the ethereal beauty of raw nature against the back-drop of a black satin sky, lonelier than I'd ever felt before, like I was the only person left awake in the whole world. I wasn't, though. Across town, William would have been awake after a long evening of paperwork, screwing some bitch. Ironic, really, that I was getting so worked up about a single kiss whilst he was busy banging the hell out of half of Nottingham.
It's almost funny, looking back, at how absolutely naive I was: William would pop off for several weeks on end, casually forget to write, and return with expensive gifts and apologetic promises, expecting me to play the sweet little housewife-to-be. I'd say that's just the way men are, but (aside from the sweeping sexism of a statement like that) I don't think that having a widdler has ever been a justifiable excuse for objectifying another person.
But if I had known - or at least suspected - would anything really have played out any differently? Even if I'd known, I'd still have had wages to pay, and serfs to feed, and family honour to uphold. Even if I did manage to balance the books by selling off land or pawning my mother's jewelry, I'd never be able to face society again - ending a betrothal to the richest man in England would have been scandalous even if I was super-rich and gorgeous. As it was, people would think I was mad, and the rest of my life would be spent dodging the question of why I did it. So in the long run, it was probably best all-round that I was sweet and clueless. Hypocritical of me, really, to expect him to stay faithful at the same time as being nothing more than a private-bank that dispensed loans I'd never have to pay back.
A little after dawn the next morning, just after I'd wriggled myself into an overly tight - the result of too many late nights with the red wine - yellow gown, which was nice in a sort of overstuffed-canary way, William came to visit, as he promised. He was wearing black, as ever, and smelt, ever so slightly, of stale perfume. I think at the time I suspected he was experimenting with cross-dressing.
With every word he spoke, I expected the next to be, "You kissed him, didn't you?" and I imagined the fall-out in a thousand different ways: him killing me, him killing himself, him killing Rob, him killing nobody but storming out silently and never coming back from London...but none of that happened, and we had a reasonable, but strained, conversation, which ended in the words:
"Are you alright, you seem a little...distracted?"
That's it, I thought, he's going to work it out and I'm going to die in a convent surrounded by goat-shaggers. This thought was followed by the realisation I'm a flawless bullshitter, "I think I had too much wine last night, if I'm honest." Heart-felt sincere silly-me smile, "I'll be fine."
He bought this, probably because he didn't care much to begin with.
"I'll think of you every moment until I return."
Honestly? I thought he was being trendy - courtly love was big at the time, and everybody was exaggeratedly affectionate. So I smiled and said politely, "You're very sweet."
Had I known he was being genuine, I might have felt a twinge of guilt about seeing him as nothing more emotional or meaningful than a financial investment.
A couple of days into William's trip to London, life went back, more or less, to what it had been before Rob was shipped off on the third crusade and I was packed off to court. I mean, there were little differences, obviously, like my brother not being there, and Rob having grown out of pulling my hair. Even if it was just for a short time, it was nice for things to be simple, for me to go back to being myself, and for the sun to shine a little brighter than it ever had in London.
I won't lie and say things were immediately back-to-normal between Rob and I. Things were strained, and a little awkward, but eventually we came to the unspoken conclusion that if we didn't talk about it, it didn't happen, and that was fine.
Unfortunately, my blissful little cocoon was about to chrysalis into a grey moth of gloom and despair.