In The Shadow - стр. 10
What happiness! What sweetness awaits her!
After kissing her friend on the forehead, Brigid wished her good night, took one of the candleholders, left the chambers and, lighting the corridor with the dancing light of a single candle, headed for her father's chambers: she had had enough of hearing him say that he was marrying her to William. She needed to hear it before she went to bed.
As she approached the door of her father's bedchamber, Brigid knocked timidly and immediately heard a sharp, "Come in!" This gave the girl courage, and, gathering more air into her lungs, she opened the door and entered the chamber.
Sir Richard had no thought of going to bed: he was sitting at an oak table, on which a candlestick with two candles burned dimly, writing a letter. The creak of a sharpened quill being pressed with force against the yellow parchment could be heard.
– Are you still awake? – Brigid smiled affectionately, standing in the doorway, hesitating to approach her father.
– As you can see," he said briefly, not even looking at his daughter. – What do you want?
– Father, I… I heard that William Tury has asked for a girl's hand in marriage today…" Brigid's breath came in short gasps of excitement, and the words she had so carefully chosen on her way to her father stuck in her throat.
– Asked," was her answer.
– When will we be married? – The girl's soul was filled with a divine light: it had happened! Soon she would marry the man she loved, and he would take her to his father's castle!
– Yours? – Sir Richard asked with a sneer in his voice.
The quill in his fingers froze.
– He has asked for my hand! – Brigid reminded him in a trembling and solemn tone.
– He asked for one girl`s hand. But not yours.
– Not mine? But… Whose?
– William had not spoken to me, but to Sir Norton. He asked for his daughter's hand.
– Alienor?! – The girl gasped, and a pain shot through her chest as if she had been pierced by the sharp sword that William Tury sometimes wore on his belt, in its gold-embellished scabbard. – And what… What did her father reply?
– He was pleased. The wedding is to be.
Chapter 3
– My daughter, what have you been thinking? – Sir Richard frowned. – What nonsense lives in your empty head? Why would William Tury want you for a wife? I am poor! All the fault of that witch Anne Boleyn!
– But how? It cannot be, Father, you are mistaken! – burst from the poor girl's breast. Her lips trembled, and tears of disappointment and deceived hope came to her eyes.
How cruelly she had been mistaken!
– I have had enough of your foolishness! Go to your chambers! – Sir Richard threw irritably.
– 'Father, he could not ask for Alienor's hand…'
– I said out!
– Please…I love him! I love him with all my heart! – Brigid cried out in despair. – I think he was drunk… He got drunk and mistook Alienor for me!
– He asked her father for her hand in marriage," Sir Richard said, and resumed writing. – I am the unlucky one with a daughter. You are beautiful, but you are as good as this table, though the table is useful, and you are a waste. You're in your best shape, and still no one wants to marry you.
– It's all your fault, sir… You've brought our family into disgrace! – whispered Brigid, but so quietly that her stern, cruel father could not hear her and punish her with a wet rod.