The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(35)

She lay perfectly still, half hoping he would leave, but Matthew knew her almost as well as she knew him. “Philippa,” he said in his deep, grave voice, “please let me in.”

It was the “Philippa” that did it. She had ached to hear him call her by name again for so long. She rose and threw on a woolen robe over her shift and tied it. Then she drew a deep breath—meant to steady her, but in actuality simply making her light-headed—and opened the door.

She so rarely saw Matthew in anything other than impeccable order. Someone had once opined that he took such care in his appearance to compensate for his less than illustrious birth. Pippa knew better. It was simply who he was. Like his father, Matthew set his own standards, and lived up to them unfailingly.

Tonight he was not impeccable. He had removed his doublet, and the fine wool jerkin was unlaced over his shirt. For an instant Pippa wondered if he knew what effect that had on her. But Matthew had never been one for devious manipulation.

“May I come in?” he asked.

Swallowing, she stepped back. It was not like him to even approach the borders of impropriety. But now he entered her bedroom and closed the door on the two of them. Then he leaned against the door and studied her.

With anyone else she would have had a ready comment or quip to defuse the moment. Not with Matthew. She simply waited for him to say whatever he had come to say.

It was nothing that she had expected.

“Did you think I had forgotten, Philippa? In all my lifetime, I have never forgotten a single word you’ve said to me. For years I have allowed you to pretend that that summer morning at Wynfield Mote never happened. But pretending is getting us nowhere quickly.”

If this was the conversation they were going to have, she needed to sit. Pippa lowered herself to the bed, trembling a little beneath her robe.

She did not bother to pretend she did not know what he was talking about. That would have been the final insult to both of them. “What has that to do with today?” she asked instead.

“It has everything to do with today, and tomorrow, and next year. Because in all the things you have said to me since then, I have finally begun to understand what it is you have not said.”

“Don’t.”

“I remember every moment of that day, Philippa—including your silences.”

I love you, Matthew had told her when she was fifteen. And she’d had only a moment to revel in the joy of it before the vision of disaster had swept her away and left her floundering in its wake. She had always been prepared to face her own life’s end. She would never be prepared to face Matthew’s.

He had allowed her to set the terms of their relationship since then, however much he disliked it. No more. Now Matthew leaned against her door, eyes alive with a passion that might have been desire or might have been anger. Or equally might have been both. And he was not waiting for her any longer.

“You saw something that day,” he said evenly. “Something that made you walk away. Something that has kept you at one remove from me ever since. I have allowed you to keep me there, because I was afraid if I pushed, you would retreat even further.”

He shoved himself away from the door. “No more, Philippa. What I said to you eight years ago is as true now as it was then—I love you. What can matter besides that?”

“Death matters. Love does not stop death.”

“No more it does,” he agreed. “But it makes the life before it worthwhile. You may be the seer, Philippa, able to decipher the heavens and its portents—but I can decipher you. You will die young. I have known that since you were fifteen.”

For all his size, Matthew could step as delicately as a cat. He came near enough to touch, but didn’t. Yet. She kept her head down, studying her own hands clasped tightly in her lap.

“I have been watching you.” He knelt down so they were closer to the same level. “You are ill. Anabel and Madalena both know it. They thought it simply a product of too much work and too much stress. I thought so, too, for a time.”

He lifted her chin with one hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I have spoken to the princess’s physician, Philippa. He prevaricated, clearly at your bidding, but he is not a very good liar. He finally told me you have been coughing up blood for some time.”

“Does anyone else know that?” she whispered.

“Madalena, I think. Everyone else is willing to believe what you are working so hard to show them.”

“If you know so much, then you know why I’ve done what I have.”

“No doubt you have told yourself it’s for my own good. Keep me away, never let me get closer than friendship—in hopes that losing you might be more bearable.

“Philippa, if you die before me, there is no preparation beforehand that would make it anything less than devastating. All you accomplish by your stubbornness is to guarantee I have fewer sweet memories to hold to afterward.”

He still didn’t know everything. And she was suddenly too tired to lie any longer, even if only by omission. “What if you die first? Because of me?”

Surprise lit in his eyes, and then a slow comprehension. “So that’s it—it’s not your own death you fear. It’s mine. Is that what you saw that day?”

“I will not lead you to an early death.”

“Who is to say you can stop it? Doesn’t Dr. Dee insist seers can only interpret fate, not control it?”