Lady Ever After by Tamara Leigh

Author:Tamara Leigh [Leigh, Tamara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Time travel
Published: 2016-11-22T18:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“What do you know of my dreams?”

Tilly looked up from her needlework but showed no dismay.

“Dreams, Catherine?” Lavinia said where she sat beside the maid. “Of what do you speak?”

Catherine had wanted to confront Tilly in private, but the day had waned without an opportunity to do so. Thus, she had come to the lord’s solar. “I speak of the dreams my father warned I should reveal to no one—those that show me the morrow.”

The confusion on Lavinia’s face seemed genuine.

“Sit, child.” Tilly nodded at the chair opposite.

As Catherine lowered to it, the maid set her needlework in her lap. “You have the gift of your father’s mother. When I had fewer years about me, I served her.”

Tilly had never mentioned she knew Catherine’s grandmother. “And the gift?”

“Of sight, as you surely know.”

A curse, not a gift, Catherine silently amended.

“As in your grandmother’s dreams, into your dreams come the future, that which will be and cannot be changed.”

But Collier had changed it.

“What is this nonsense about foretelling the future?” Lavinia said. “It sounds most unholy.”

Tilly inclined her head. “Lord Algernon could not tell you, my lady. He feared he would lose you.”

Lavinia raised her chin. “Though my husband tried to hide that his mother had not all her wits about her, I have ears to hear the things people speak whilst one’s back is turned.”

“She was not mad, my lady. ’Twas the sight she had, not a sickness of the head.”

“I think we ought to leave the subject be.” Lavinia set her needlework aside. “We must needs begin preparations for the evening meal.”

“Nay,” Catherine said. “I wish to know of my grandmother. Tell me, Tilly.”

The maid glanced at Lavinia, then continued, “Though I knew her not until her middling years, she was a fine lady, giving and good. But she tried to change what she could not.”

As Catherine had learned she could not change those things revealed to her. “When did the dreams come to her?”

“Mostly during times of trouble so great she slept poorly—sometimes so poorly it might be days ere she found her rest. But when she did…”

“’Tis the same for me.”

“Aye, my lady. Unfortunately, your grandmother began speaking of her dreams in hopes of effecting change. It was then—”

Lavinia surged upright. “Cease!”

“I must know, Mother,” Catherine entreated.

“But it cannot be!”

“It is.”

Gripping the cross hung around her neck, Lavinia turned accusing eyes upon the maid. “Why did you never tell me of this, Tilly?”

“’Twas not for me to do, my lady.”

Lavinia closed her eyes, murmured, “God have mercy,” and crossed to the window.

Leaning toward the maid, Catherine said, “What happened to my grandmother?”

“Your grandfather loved her very much, but no matter how he pleaded for her to hold close her dreams, she would not. Lest she was accused of sorcery, he committed her to a convent where she took a vow of silence.”

“And my father?”

“Though approaching manhood, it broke his heart to lose his mother.”

This the reason he had made his daughter promise not to speak of

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