Red Rose, White Rose by Joanna Hickson Page A

ornithology. Leaning round to catch his eye, I shot him an encouraging smile and waited patiently for his response. When it came it took me completely by surprise.
    He gestured towards the birds, busily involved in their courtship and unaware of the human passions building beside the lake. ‘I have been told that grebes like these mate for life and rekindle their relationship every spring by performing this extraordinary dance. I have seen it many times and I believe it demonstrates God’s intention that all creatures should make faithful partnerships. Did He not tell Noah to take only pairs of animals into his Arc? The Church teaches us that birds do not have souls and cannot experience human emotions like love and happiness but such behaviour indicates to me that they can only build their nest and lay their eggs if they have established some sort of bond. This ritual allows them to trust each other.’ He turned to face me and his expression was one of extraordinary intensity, grey eyes boring into mine. ‘I feel like that about marriage. Of course as noble men and women we must go through all the formal procedures of betrothals and contracts but I will only make a match with someone I can love and with whom I find a mutual understanding. So far I have not found such a one and I do not feel obliged to set my feelings aside to enter into a loveless marriage just because protocol declares it to be the right thing to do.’ Once again he turned away. ‘There, does that satisfy you? Or perhaps you now think me weak and hopelessly romantic?’
    I was seventeen. Like most teenage girls I had cherished the notion of courtly love portrayed in the songs and lays of the minstrels who entertained us at feasts and celebrations, but ever since childhood I had been schooled to accept that such romances were fairytales; fairytales which were not for Nevilles. We were overlords, the rulers of the north; we had to make alliances with other noble families to perpetuate the power we had accumulated. Marriage was one way of achieving this. It secured treaties and preserved loyalties and I had to fulfil the role which God had given me by doing my duty and marrying the man my father and the king had chosen for me. Adolescent yearning for romantic love must be denied. I was, therefore, dumbstruck to encounter a man of power and position who not only cherished the concept of love and happiness but felt able to deny his obligation to God, king and family in order to do so.
    I stared at Sir John wide-eyed and he, in his turn, wrinkled his brow in challenge.
    I managed to hold his gaze but my heart lurched in a bewildering way. ‘I understand the desire to break the rules,’ I said faintly.
    ‘But you will not?’ His frown of disappointment forced me into a desperate attempt to make light of it.
    ‘It would take a braver woman that I to defy the Church, the king
and
my mother!’ I protested and when he did not react I stumbled on. ‘Perhaps my parents had that kind of marriage. My mother certainly loved and trusted my father. Perhaps he repaid that trust in the way that he fashioned his will.’
    It was not the response he wanted. With a sudden exclamation he stooped, picked up another stone and hurled it violently across the surface of the lake towards the grebes, causing them to break off their dance and dive underwater in panic.
    His voice cracked with emotion. ‘No! The old earl was much too shrewd ever to let his heart rule his head. When I was young my father served with him on the Northern March and we lived in his household for several years but when my father decided to follow the fifth King Henry into France they argued violently. The old earl thought Neville duty lay in the north, defending the border, but my father was lured by the prospect of wealth and honours to be won across the Narrow Sea. The rift between them never healed and by that time the sons your father had sired with your mother were growing to manhood. When your