Free No Will But His by Sarah A. Hoyt Page B

go with them to see the whipping of the blind bear. They were not, of course, coarse or abandoned and therefore couldn't go to watch bearbaiting or other blood sports. But the whipping of the blind bear was only a flogging given to a bear so old that he fought it not, even as the blood ran down his hoary sides. It was accounted suitable entertainment for delicate young ladies and children, and indeed, everyone around Kathryn seemed to enjoy it marvelous much, but she had found herself thinking of how the poor animal must feel, being whipped without having done anything to deserve it, except being a bear and old and blind.
    For days afterward, she had prayed that she would come by some money so she could pay the men who whipped the bear and they'd stop doing. Her horror at the show had struck Alice and Mary as quite funny for after all, the show amused even very young boys. But Kathryn didn't like to see anything suffer.
    And so, she now watched Manox suffer and didn't know how to stop it, and her voice came out small and afflicted. "I don't understand," she said. "I don't know what you want, or what ails you."
    "What ails me!" He gave a small cackle of laughter. "What ails me, Mistress Howard, is that I am quite immoderately in love with you."
    "I've done nothing to bring this about," she said, clasping her hands together, to avoid his seizing hold of them again.
    "I did not say you did," he said. "Save existing and having a face and a smile and a voice that the angels themselves would envy." He fell to his knees again, next to her, and she clasped her hands together tight, but that didn't prevent him from clasping his hands, in turn, on top of hers and holding them there, very tight. "But you see how I suffer, and you're too kind, too just, not to wish to alleviate my suffering."
    "How . . . how can I?"
    "Only give me some token of your love for me."
    "But I love you not," she pointed out, reasonably. It sounded cold said like that so she tried to explain, "I like you, of course, and you have taught me so much about the virginal, and I'm ever so thankful."
    "Oh, thankful be damned," he said. "Only let me hold you against me, let me feel your body against mine, let me kiss your lips, for otherwise I shall perish, like a man in the desert, denied the water of life."
    She looked back at him, worried, hoping he was lying or perhaps having her on—but she could not see any signs that he was pretending what he didn't feel in order to get her to do what he wished, and he did indeed seem to be in great distress. "I would . . ." she said. "Relieve your distress if I knew how . . ."
    "Just kiss me. Hold me," he said.
    "Not here!" she said, in a hurry, looking toward the door, afraid one of her fellow maids or the duchess herself would come by.
    He prized her hands apart from each other and held them in his, looking into her eyes, "But you will do this for me," he said. "You'll let me hold you."
    She inclined her head. "If there was a way."
    "There is always a way," he said. "If you . . . if you'd be so kind as to come . . . to meet me . . ."
    "To meet you where?" she asked.
    It seemed to her he thought but for a minute, and then he rose, swift, in one motion. "Put your hands back on the keyboard," he said, and as she obeyed, he came up behind her, and held her, his hands over hers, as though he were correcting her position. "Go you to church," he said, "after our lesson."
    "To church!" she said, shocked. The church on the duchess's estate was a small chapel where mass was said each morning and evening. But it was still a consecrated place.
    "In the middle of the afternoon," he said. "There shall be no one there. There is no chance of anyone interrupting us."
    Kathryn squirmed uncomfortably, aware that her every movement brought her in closer contact with him. "But . . . It is the chapel. It is consecrated, and there is the sacrament there. No, I couldn't."
    "What a goose you are," he said lightly, and kissed just