I AM THE DAUGHTER OF YORK, I BOW TO NO ONE.
Isabella of York is formidable in her own right. She is no piece on a board. Do not let her play you like a fool, as she has done to so many others.
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Lady Eleanor Butler was now a widow at twenty-three years old.
She had never felt so alone.
"Love is rare, for us. But, I thank God every day I have found it with you." Thomas had once said to her.
No one knew that behind her husband's abrasive nature lie a truly good man.
Of course, she had mourned her husband, Thomas. He was a good man, their marriage had been stable. Eleanor felt safe with him, and happiness grew from that contentment.
Perhaps it was that feeling of contentment that she should have ignored, and perhaps she would never feel this empty again.
She grieved Thomas. She wept when she was brought the body. She wept when they sealed his tomb.
She then leaned on his father, who continued to be a source of strength for her. But, when a year had passed and she was still wearing black, even Lord Butler could not see bare to see his son's widow.
"Eleanor, you cannot stay hidden forever." Lord Butler had said, his dark blue eyes meeting her light blue ones.
"What need does the world have for me?" She says flatly.
"Thomas used to say that your purpose was not to be his wife."
Eleanor snorts, "Always modest, was he not?"
Her father-in-law lets out a bark of laughter before he settled into his seriousness once more. "He was right when it came to those he loved, and he was mad about you from the first time he met you. He would swear you were not meant to the wife of some liege lord."
She turns from the window to face him, staunch blue eyes on dark blue eyes. "What's my purpose then, what did he claim was my purpose?"
"He used to say to say in his dreams, he saw you as golden."
"Golden? I am as dark as a crow!" She laughs fiddling with her dark hair.
"To Thomas, you were meant to be the mother to a Queen of England. A Queen that was to bring about an era of peace. A Queen as formidable, fascinating, and full of charm as her mother before her."
"He always was one for flattery." Eleanor sighs as she turns to look at her father-in-law, " But, I have no purpose, not anymore."
"I believe your purpose is just beginning." He says as he leaves.
And the next day she is in a carriage back to Shrewsbury, with his words still fresh on her mind.
"It is better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all." She says to her brother, John's headstone. He had been dead for years now, but she always sensed his presence about the castle.
