Here he stood, pining after a woman he had pushed away with his own hands. Before today, at least, she had not hated him.
She had said it herself. She could not hate him. There had been pain in her voice, anger too, but not hatred. She had sworn he would never have her again. In her fury, she had threatened to give freely to every other man what she would deny him, and though he knew those words had come from pain, they had still torn through him.
He could not blame his mother for the terror in Livia's eyes when she looked at him. That belonged to him. "What am I to do?" Henry asked, though he did not know whether he spoke to Lionel or to himself. He could not make himself less king or perhaps he could.
The man she had once known. Maybe if he became Henry the merchant once more. Maybe then, she would remember who he used to be and he would remember too.
*****
