The Forgotten Rose {COMPLETED}

Part I: Chapter Twenty-five - The Darkest Sorrow

"Isabelle?" Anne asked herself as she held the letter to her chest. A sob crawled up her throat and escaped, despite her efforts to keep it down. She fell to her knees, her tears streaming from her eyes. "Isabelle." She cried taring the letter and casting the shreds of paper into the fire. "My sister."

"Anne? Anne what is wrong?" Richard ran to his wife and crouched at her side. "Are you well?"

"I am fine." Anne snapped shrugging Richards hands from her shoulders. She thought of it, she knew Isabel would die before her. Isabelle was the eldest and the first to do anything. The first to marry, the first to bare a child and the first to lose herself.

"Is it Edward? Your mother? Isabelle?" Richard asked Anne holding her wrists and forcing his to face him. "Anne, tell me please."

"Isabelle, Isabelle she is... She is..."

"Dead." Lady Anne de Beauchamp finished her daughters sentence from the doorway. "Isabelle is dead, I believe it was childbed fever. Though George, George thinks poison."

"Oh Anne." Richard took Anne in his arms and held her head close to his chest as she wept. "I am sorry, I should have known."

Lady Anne de Beauchamp walked to the couple who sat upon the floor and like a youth allowed for the skirts to flow around her and sat upon the ground.

"Anne, my dearest Anne come here." She beckoned to her daughter with her arms open to welcome her. She refrained from wiping the silent tears from her cheeks. What was the crime in letting them flow? Isabelle was her daughter. And she was dead.

"Lady mother." Anne sobbed falling from Richards arms and into her mothers. "She cannot be gone."

"She is, now we must pray for her my child. Keep her with god." Anne de Beauchamp told her daughter as she kissed the top of her head. She began to stroke down Anne's neck and the top of her back. That had soothed her as a child when she had grazed her knee or fallen from her pony. But in grief it was no use.

Richard rose from his wife's side. What of his brother? If George thought poison then his accusation would most certainly lie with the Queen. He would be raving. George would be madder than ever. 'That cursed Witch.' Richard imagined him shouting through the halls of his home.

"The child?" Richard remembered the infant that Isabelle had birthed just weeks earlier. "The child is well?"

"Yes, George writes that he is fighting fit." Anne smiled through her sorrow at her sisters death. "We shall go visit him, my sisters son and her other two children. They must be quite appalled by their loss."

"Yes, but we must have the celebrations over. We must continue to see that Edward knows we are still loyal. For now George shall not wait to wage war." Richard said in distress. "And I shall be torn between my brothers again. My king or the one I grew with. The man who gave me you, Anne, gave me hope. Or the one who was with me as I fled from the crown as a boy. Who went against our family."

"Richard, please." Anne begged. "Be civil, respect them and keep from their feud." Anne stood to her feet and dusted off her skirts. Her mother stood at her side and squeezed her hand. "I have lost a sister. I do not think I can bare to lose a husband also." She held back her sorrow, she had cried but now it was gone. Her mourning was to begin but her deepest sadness was gone. It had to be.

"We must stay close to Edward, we cannot let him think that we are disloyal like George shall be with this turn." Richard commanded Anne. "This eve we shall go and we shall eat with my brother, Edward so soon as the twelfth day has ended we shall ride for London to see my brother. You shall not fuss or cry. You will sit and stay humble. You do not have to speak, you do not have to do anything. Just sit there and behave."