𝑂𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙....
In a world of bloody war and misgivings that lead to treason, there is only one thing Catherine Percy can be sure of and that is danger.
Her life had not always been thus, f...
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~A Wedding of Two Roses~
Westminster Palace, two weeks later, June 1464....
Catherine was silent as she stepped into the extravagant halls of Westminster Palace, Dickon at her side as was the custom as her betrothed.
They had spoken very little during the two week journey taking them to London, not simply for lack of topic but they were hardly ever together! Dickon rode with his brothers, deemed old enough now that he was to have a wife, while Catherine was with his Mother and Princess Margaret. The two Yorks were merry enough company, talking to the little girl no differently than they would have spoken to any other of the Yorkist nobility and Catherine felt able to reply to them.
Cecily especially was a comfort to her, seemingly taking a form of joy from looking after a small child; taking it as a distraction. When they rode at night, their carriage trundling along the rode, Cecily would invite Catherine to share her furs with her, holding her close until the rays of dawn came.
She cradled her just as the young girl's Mother used to do, now also a widow, and it brought sleep easily to her, letting her imagine that she was at Alnwick, falling asleep in her Mother's arms.
Perhaps once she was a Duchess she would be allowed to see her again?
Allowed.
Catherine had hated that word for a long time. To be told what to do and what not to do was a normal line of life that all, high and low had to obey, but to her it meant restriction and torture. She was allowed the gentle freedoms of the nobility, to hunt, to ride, to dance to read, but she knew she would sacrifice all that for the freedoms taken from her five long years ago.
To go home. To see her family.
She could at least ask? Surely Dickon would not say no to her. For all his seriousness she knew he was a kind boy at heart who knew the pain of losing a Father. He would not deny her a visit to the late Earl's grave but, she had to admit that Dickon was still a boy, a boy who idolised his oldest brother and would follow his lead.
A lead, she knew, would fly directly away from her family. The York King would expect her not to turn back.
But that expectation was too high and as she stepped into the halls of Westminster she felt as if she might faint. Looking around, the walls had been stripped of their fine Lancastrian tapestries, were now whitewashed and the marble pillars polished. When she looked up ahead, the Lancastrian standards had been torn from their places, replaced by the ones of York that were a bundle of unfamiliar colours to her.
