The Deserted Bride
Paula Marshall
Bess was a girl when she first saw her husband on their wedding day. Andrew, Earl of Exford, left after the ceremony, and as Bess blossomed into a lovely woman, she reveled in the freedom afforded by her absent spouse. Yet she knew the day would come when she would come face-to-face with her long-estranged husband.…On the day of his return, Drew found himself speechless at his wife's heart-stopping beauty and charm. Could it be that this once awkward girl was the bride he had deserted so long ago? Furthermore, could she ever forgive his cruel neglect and return his love?
“I am Drew Exford, and I would know who you are.”
Bess looked down into his perfect face, and, giving him a smile so sweet that it wrenched his heart, she said softly, “But I have little mind to tell you, sir. You must discover it for yourself. Now, let me go, Master Drew Exford, for I have no desire to be behindhand with the day.” She rode off, leaving Drew to gaze after her.
“Was she real?” he demanded of Charles. “Have you ever seen such a divine face and form? Dress her in fine clothing and she would have half of London at her feet.”
“Now, Drew, you do surprise me,” drawled Charles as the pair of them remounted. “I had thought that your wish would be for her to have no clothes on at all!”
The Deserted Bride
Paula Marshall
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PAULA MARSHALL,
married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic. She has traveled widely, has been a swimming coach and has appeared on University Challenge and Mastermind. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor.
Contents
Chapter One (#u98a45c16-a0e5-5ae3-970c-6f96ce370274)
Chapter Two (#ud3b8afd6-86a7-5b6b-af0d-b64b8178a5dc)
Chapter Three (#ucb20063c-88d1-55df-8a91-6a756ea64c24)
Chapter Four (#ua3310fd1-ef1f-58f8-9289-b7aa4fb6ed04)
Chapter Five (#u90d85957-b6ce-5d7d-849e-e839cbd8c1b1)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
He was her husband. He had been her husband for ten years, and all she had ever had of him was the miniature which had arrived that morning.
And the letter with it, of course.
The letter which simply, and coldly, said, “My Lady Exford, I am sending you this portrait of myself in small as a token of my respect for you. I am in hopes of paying you a visit before the summer is out. At the moment, alas, I am exceeding busy in the Queen’s interest. Accept my felicitations for your twentieth birthday now, lest I am unable to make them in person. This from your husband, Drew Exford.”
Elizabeth, Lady Exford, known to all those around her as Lady Bess, crumpled the perfunctory letter in her hand. All that it was fit for was to be thrown into the fire which burned in the hearth of the Great Hall of Atherington House. At the very last moment, though, something stayed her hand. She smoothed the crumpled paper and read it again, the colour in her cheeks rising as her anger at the writer mounted in her.
About the Queen’s business, forsooth! Had he been about the Queen’s business for the last ten years? Was that why he had never visited her, never come to claim her as his wife, had left her here with her father, a wife and no wife? She very much doubted it. No, indeed. Andrew, Earl of Exford since his father’s death, had stayed away from Leicestershire in order to enjoy his bachelor life in London, unhampered by the presence of a wife and the children she might give him.
The whole world knew that the Queen liked the handsome young men about her to be unmarried, or, if she grudgingly gave them permission to marry, preferred them not to bring their wives to court. And from what news of him came her way, the Queen had no more faithful subject than her absent husband.
How should she answer this? Should she write the truth, plain and simple, as, “Sir, I care not if I never see you again?” Or should she, instead, simply reply as an obedient wife ought to, “My lord, I have received your letter. I am yours to command whenever you should visit me.”
The latter, of course. The former would never do.
Bess walked to the table where ink, paper and the sand to dry the letter awaited her, and wrote as an obedient wife should, although she had never felt less obedient in her life.
And as she wrote she thought of the day ten years ago when she had first seen her husband…
“Come, my darling,” her nurse had said, on that long-gone morning, “your father wishes you to be wearing your finest, your very finest, attire today. The damask robe in grey and pink and silver, your pearls, and the little heart which your sainted mother left you.”
“No.” Ten-year-old Bess struggled out of her nurse’s embrace. “No, Kirsty. Father promised that I should go riding with him on the first fine morning, and it is fine today. Besides, I look a fright in grey and pink, you know I do.”
Her nurse, whom Bess was normally able to wheedle into submission to her demands, shook her head. “Not today, my love. I cannot allow you to have your way today. Your father has guests. Important guests. They arrived late last night after you had gone to bed, and he wishes you to look your very best when you meet them.”
Kirsty had an air of excitement about her. It was plain that she knew something which she was not telling Bess. Bess always knew when people were hiding things from her but, even though she might be only ten years old, she was wise enough to know when not to continue to ask questions.
So she allowed Kirsty to turn her about and about until Bess felt dismally sure that she looked more like a painted puppet dressed up to entertain the commonalty than the beautiful daughter of Robert Turville, Earl of Atherington, the most powerful magnate in this quarter of Leicestershire. She disregarded as best as she could Kirsty’s oohings and aahings, her standing back and exclaiming, “Oh, my dear little lady, how fine you look. The prettiest little lady outside London, no less.”
“My clothes are pretty,” said Bess crossly, “but I am not. I am but a little brown-haired thing, and all the world believes that fair is beautiful, and I am not fair at all—as well you know. And my eyes are black, not blue, so no one will ever write sonnets to them.”
Useless, quite useless, for Kirsty continued to sing her praises of Bess’s non-existent beauty until aunt Hamilton, her father’s sister, came into the room.
“Let me look at you, child. Dear Lord, what a poor little brown thing you are, the image of your sainted grandam no less.”
Far from depressing Bess, this sad truth had her casting triumphant smiles at the mortified Kirsty, who was cursing Lady Hamilton under her breath. Fancy telling the poor child the truth about herself so harshly. It couldn’t have hurt to have praised the beautiful dress m’lord had brought from London for her, instead of reminding her of the grandam whom she so resembled.
For Bess’s grandam had been the late Lady Atherington, who had always been known as the “The Spanish Lady”. She had accompanied Catherine of Aragon when she had arrived in England to marry the brother of the late and blessed King Henry VIII, the present Queen’s father. The then Lord Atherington had fallen in love with, and married her, despite her dark Spanish looks, and ever since all the Turville daughters had resembled her, including the brisk Lady Hamilton. Brown-haired herself, and black-eyed, she had still made a grand marriage, and the sonnets which Bess was sure would never come her way, had been showered upon her.
“Golds,” she was exclaiming, “and vermilions, or rich green and bold siennas, are the colours which your father should have bought you. Trust a man to have no sense where women’s tire is concerned! Never mind, child, later, later, when I have the dressing of you, we may see you in looks. This will have to do for now. Come!”
She held out a commanding hand, which Bess took, wondering what the fuss and commotion was all about. She had been living quietly at Atherington House as she had done for as long as she could remember—which admittedly at ten was not very long—until yesterday, when her father had arrived suddenly, with a trunkful of new clothes for her, and a train of visitors who had stared at her when she was brought into the Great Hall after they had dined.
Bess had never seen so many people all at once, but she had smiled at them bravely, relieved when, after being seated on her father’s knee for a little space and been fed comfits by him, she had been allowed to retire to her room.
And now, if Kirsty was to be believed, another bevy of guests had arrived. Oh, she had heard the noise just as she was going to sleep, and could not help wondering what all the excitement was about. It seemed that she was soon to find out.
For, as she descended the staircase into the Great Hall, she saw that all the servants were assembled at one end of it, and a large body of finely dressed men and women were at the other. Her father was standing a little in front of them, her uncle, Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, by his side, with a pair of attendant pages hovering in their rear.
“Come, my lady,” her father said, smiling at her as her aunt Hamilton let go of her hand and pushed her towards him, “we are to go to a wedding. In the chapel.”
At this, for some reason unknown to Bess, the company all laughed uproariously, led by uncle Hamilton. All, that was, except aunt Hamilton, who primmed her lips and shook her elegant head. Like all the guests she was richly dressed and Bess could only imagine that it was her father’s wedding to which they were going with such ceremony.
Gilbert, the Steward, importantly carrying his white wand of office, marched solemnly before them. Tib, the smallest page, with whom Bess daily played at shuttlecock, was his attendant, looking as solemn as Giles, not at all like the rowdy boy who was her shadow.
The processional walk to the chapel did not take long. Not all the guests would enter it with them, for it was small. Above the altar was a painting brought from Italy, beneath a stained glass window showing Christ in his glory. Master Judson, the priest, stood before it.
But where was the bride?
Bess looked about her. Where the bride should stand were several richly dressed men—and a tall boy who appeared to be about sixteen years old.
The boy was as beautiful as Bess was plain, and he was as fair as the god Apollo on the tapestry in the Great Hall. His hair was silver gilt, and curled gently about his comely face. His eyes were as blue as the sky on a summer morning, and the pink and silver colours of his doublet, breeches and hose not only suited him better than they suited Bess, but also showed off a long and shapely body. He resembled nothing so much as one of St Michael’s angels come down to earth to adorn it.
As she entered on her father’s arm the boy was looking away from her. The man at his side, no taller than he was, whispered something in his ear, and he turned to look at her.
His eyes widened. The handsome face twisted a little. He swung round to the man who had whispered to him and muttered, “Dear God, uncle Henry, you are marrying me to a monkey!”
No one else but Bess, and the man, heard what he said. Bess’s father was a little hard of hearing and aunt Hamilton and the train behind her were too far away to catch his words.
But Bess heard. She heard every bitter syllable. And from them she learned two things. That it was not her father who was to be married, but herself…
And the beautiful boy to whom she was to be tied for life thought that she was ugly and had not hesitated to say so to his attendant.
No! She would not be married to him. She hated him. She hated his beauty, and his unkindness. He had not meant her to hear what he had said, and he was not to know that her hearing was abnormally acute. Even so, he should not have spoken so of her, and she would not marry him, no, never! Never!
Bess wrenched her hand from her father’s grasp, swung round on him, and said, as loudly as she could, her voice breaking between shame and despair, “If you have brought me here to be married, sir, then know this. I have no mind to be married. Indeed, I will not be married. Least of all to him!”
And she sat down on the stone floor of the chapel.
Such a hubbub followed, such an uproar as had never before been heard in Atherington’s chapel. Master Judson looked down at her, astounded, nearly dropping his prayerbook at the sight of such unmannerly behaviour. The boy—and who could he be?—looked haughtily down at her as she sat there, now weeping bitter tears. He said, his voice like ice, “And I have no mind to marry you, either, but I obey my elders and betters at all times—which plainly you have never been taught to do.”
Oh, the monster! She hated him. Yes, she did. A monkey! He had called her a monkey. Well, she would dub him monster.
“Handsome is as handsome does—and says,” she flung at her as her father put his strong hands under her arms and lifted her up.
“Shame on you, daughter, for behaving so intemperately. You shall be beaten for this, I promise you. But only after you have married Andrew, Lord Exford, whom you have so vilely insulted. And since you are so free with maxims, let me remind you of one which you have forgotten, ‘Little children should be seen and not heard.”’
Sobbing now, and trying to hide her face, for she felt so humiliated that she could look no one in the eye, Bess found herself being gently lifted away from her father. It was her aunt Hamilton who set her upon her feet again, and bent down to speak softly to her so that none other should hear what she had to say.
“Come, niece. I told your father that he should have prepared you for this day, but he believed that it would be better for you not to be forewarned. See, it is a handsome boy you are marrying, and a great family. Your father has done well for you. Now do you do well for him. Dry your tears and behave as a great lady should.”
A great lady. She wasn’t a great lady. She was simply poor Bess Turville who was to be married against her will to someone who despised her.
What of that? Could she not despise him? After all, it was likely that, after today, she would not see him again until she was old enough to be truly his wife and able to bear his children.
Slowly Bess nodded her head—to her aunt’s great relief—to say nothing of her father’s. The only person not relieved was Andrew Exford himself, who had been hoping that this unseemly child’s equally unseemly behaviour might rescue him from this marriage which had been forced upon him by his uncle and guardian, the man who stood at his elbow.
It was all very well to talk of money and lands and the right to give the title of Earl of Atherington to his eldest son when the father of the heiress whom he was marrying died, but his uncle wasn’t having to marry a midget who resembled a monkey. Useless for his uncle to murmur in his ear that the child would grow and might, when older, come to resemble her handsome aunt.
As Bess already knew, blonde was beautiful in Andrew Exford’s world, and Bess was far from blonde.
But Andrew—as he had told Bess—knew his duty, and since his duty was to increase the lands and wealth of the Exfords, he would do it. But the good God knew that he would not enjoy the doing.
Her eyes dried, a cup of water brought to her to drink, her aunt’s comforting hand in hers, and Bess was ready to be married. Her father snorted at Master Judson, “Begin, man. Forget Lady Elizabeth’s childish megrims—she will soon grow out of them—and do your duty.”
Thus was the Lady Elizabeth Turville married to the most noble the Earl of Exford. Later that day, after a banquet of which she tasted nothing, for all the beautiful food put before her might as well have been straw, she was ritually and publicly placed in her husband’s bed, a bolster between them. For this short public occasion they had been granted the Great Bed of Honour in which Robert, Lord Atherington, usually slept.
Neither Drew Exford nor his bride had spoken a word to the other since the wedding ceremony. It was quite plain to Bess that he had tried to avoid looking at her at all. Bess, on the other hand, when she did allow her eyes to stray to his face, glared her hatred at him.
That he should be so beautiful—and she so plain! His beauty, which she should have joyed in, hurt her. She lay stiff in the bed, her back to him, and when, a little time later, the ritual having been performed, her aunt returned to take her away, she gave him no farewell.
Nor did he say farewell to her.
Two days later Bess had watched his train leave the House, making for the distant south which she had never visited. Before he left he had taken her small hand and placed a kiss on it. His perfect mouth had felt as cold as ice, so cold that she wanted to snatch it away, but dare not.
“I shall see you again when you are grown, wife,” were his last words to her.
Bess had nodded at him, and curtsied her farewell. She could not speak, and sensed her father’s exasperation at her silence, but for once she would not obey him. All that she could think of was that she would soon be rid of her unwanted husband, whom she would only see again when, as he had said, she would be grown, ready to be his true wife and bear his child.
Once he had disappeared down the drive, Bess knew that she must face her father’s anger at her misbehaviour. Before Andrew Exford’s arrival it would have saddened her to be at odds with him, but, all unknowingly, he had lost the power to distress her. It was, Bess thought, back in the present again, as though in one short moment in the chapel she had grown up, had learned the arbitrary nature of her life, and that her father’s love for her had its limits.
What her aunt had said was true. He should have warned her, prepared her for such a major change in her life, but he had, as he told his sister when the Exfords had left, “No time to trouble with a child’s whimwhams. She should be grateful for the splendid match I have made for her—and for Atherington.”
“And so I told her,” Mary Hamilton said, her voice sad, “but she is only a child after all, and for some reason which I cannot fathom, and which she will not confess to me, she has taken against him. Which surprises me not a little, for he is a beautiful youth, well-mannered and courteous. I would have thought she would have received him as happily as though he were a prince who had wandered out of a fairy tale, not met him with hate.”
“Hate!” exclaimed Robert Atherington. He was a choleric man, who loved his daughter but would never understand her. Since neither he nor his sister had heard Andrew Exford’s harsh words about her, Bess’s dislike of him seemed wilful and beggared belief. They were both united in that.
“Hate,” he repeated. “Well, Lady Elizabeth must learn to tolerate her groom. It will not be many years before he returns for her, and she must be ready for him.”
But Andrew Exford did not return. The years went by. Bess’s father died of an ague, leaving Bess mistress of the House and all the Atherington lands, with her uncle Hamilton as her guardian. Soon afterwards he had a fall in the hunting field, and became a cripple, helpless and confined to his room. Aunt Hamilton became her niece’s constant companion, and if Bess was a queen in Leicestershire, much as her namesake, Queen Elizabeth, was Queen of England, aunt Hamilton was in some sort her Queen Mother.
With the help of the vast staff, numbering over three hundred souls, which Robert Atherington had trained, Bess reigned over her small kingdom. Accounts and details of the estate which he owned, but never saw, were sent to her husband, and occasional monies which he needed to keep up his position at court. They were all acknowledged by his secretary, never by him. So far as Bess was concerned, he did not exist, and she had no wish to see him.
Looking back over the years to her wedding day, Bess stifled a sigh. How different her life would have been if she had not overheard Drew Exford’s sneering comment. Not that she had any quarrel with her life. There was always so much to do, so little time to do it. She had become expert in the running of her estate, and enjoyed herself mightily in performing all those duties which her husband would normally have carried out. Never having known him, she did not miss him, and hoped that he would stay away forever, as her distant cousin Lucy Sheldon’s absent husband had done.
One thing which she never did was look in a mirror. And if, occasionally, aunt Hamilton said, “Bess, my dear, you grow more handsome every day,” Bess put such an unlikely statement down to her aunt’s kindness. Her aunt had mellowed with age, and she and Kirsty were a good pair of flatterers, as Bess frequently told them.
And now Drew Exford was proposing to visit her—if she could believe him. Useless to worry about how she was to greet him. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” she said aloud. “I’ll think about that when he arrives.”
“Damn it, Philip. Why can’t I be like you, unencumbered?”
Drew Exford was towelling himself off after a hard game of tennis against Philip Sidney, who had been his friend since they had spent part of the Grand Tour of Europe together shortly after Drew had been married.
Philip smiled wryly. “Unencumbered is it, dear friend? I think not. I am most encumbered since the Queen took Oxford’s part against me after our recent fracas on the tennis court. I am encumbered by her disfavour and her dislike, particularly since she knows that I am much against her flirtation with the notion of a marriage to the French Duc d’Alençon. I am thinking of retiring to Wilton. Why not come with me? The air is sweet there, and most poetical. But what is it that troubles you? After all, you retain the Queen’s favour, you are your own master and may do as you please.”
Drew buried his face in his towel. Philip was a good fellow, and although his pride was that of the devil he had a sweet nature, and a kind heart.
“If you must know, I am envying you your single state.”
“Eh, what’s that?” Drew’s voice had been muffled by the towel and Philip was not sure that he had heard aright. “I thought that you were single, too. And I am beginning to lament my single state.”
Drew emerged from the towel. “Oh, I was married in a hugger-mugger fashion ten years agone, before we posted to Europe together and spent our wild oats in Paris.” He paused, and made his confession. “I have not seen the lady since.”
His friend stared at him. “Ten years—and not seen her since? That beggars belief. Why so?”
He might have known that Philip’s reaction would be a critical one. Philip Sidney liked—and respected—women. If he had affairs, he was so discreet that no one knew of them. His kindness and gentleness in his relations with the fair sex were a byword.
“She was but ten,” Drew said, almost as though confessing something, he was not sure what. He could not tell Philip that for some little time his adventurous life had begun to pall on him, and the game of illicit love, too. He had begun to dream of the child he had married. Strange dreams, for she was still a child in them, who must now be a woman. A woman who could be the mother of his children. His uncle had railed at him recently for not providing the line with an heir.
“She didn’t like me,” he said, somewhat defiant in the face of Philip’s raised brows, “and she…” He stopped. He could not be ungallant and repeat exactly what he had said ten years ago to his uncle— “You are marrying me to a monkey”—but he thought it.
“And all these years, whilst you jaunted round Europe and sailed the Atlantic, and ran dangerous diplomatic errands in France for that old fox Walsingham, I thought you single! Was she dark or fair, your child bride who didn’t like you? I thought all the world, and the Queen, liked Drew Exford!”
“Well, she did not. And she was dark. I remember at the banquet after the wedding ceremony, she ate little—and rewarded me with the most basilisk stare. I thought that the Gorgon herself had brought forth a child, and that child was trying to stare me stone dead!”
“And did you bed the Gorgon?”
“After the usual fashion. They put a bolster between us for some little time. She turned her back on me, and never looked at me again. For which I was thankful. She was not pretty.”
“Poor child!” Philip’s sympathy for Drew’s neglected child bride was sincere. “And where is she now? I suppose you know.” This last came out in Philip Sidney’s most arrogant manner, revealing that he thought his friend’s role in this sad story was not a kind one.
“At Atherington House, in Leicestershire. Her father died; her uncle acts as a kind of guardian to her in my absence.”
He strolled restlessly away from Philip to stare across the tennis court and towards the lawns and flowerbeds beyond. He remembered his anger at the whole wretched business. His uncle had sprung the marriage upon him without warning, and had expected him to be overjoyed. He had not felt really angry until that fatal morning in Atherington House’s chapel when he had first seen his bride.
An anger which had finally found its full vent when he had been left in the Great Bed with his wife. I have been given a child, he had thought savagely, not yet to be touched, and what’s more, a child who will never attract me. I do not like her and I fear that she does not like me because, somehow, she overheard what I said of her.
Lying there, he had made a vow. In two days’ time he would journey to London to take up his life again, leaving his monkey wife in the care of her father until she was of an age to be truly bedded. Once he had reached London and the court he would make sure that he never visited the Midland Shires again, except on the one occasion in the distant future when he needed to make himself an heir.
Now, in his middle twenties, that time had come, compelling him to remember what he had for so long preferred to forget. For to recall that unhappy day always filled him with a mixture of regret, anger, and self-dislike. His friendship with Philip Sidney had made the boy he had once been seem a selfish barbarian, not only in the manner that he had treated his neglected wife, but in other ways as well.
“Preux chevalier”, or, the stainless knight, he had once mockingly dubbed Philip—who was not yet a knight—but at the same time he had been envious of him and his courtly manners.
Drew flung the towel down, aware that Philip had been silently gazing at him as he mused.
“What to do?” he asked, his voice mournful. “The past is gone. I cannot alter it.”
“No,” returned Philip, smiling at last. “But there is always the future—which may change things again. A thought with which I try to reassure myself these days. We grow old, Drew. We are no longer careless boys. I must marry, and I must advise you to seek out your wife and come to terms with her—and with yourself. The man who writes sonnets to imaginary beauties, must at the last write one to his wife.”
“Come,” riposted Drew, laughing. “Sonnets are written to mistresses, never to wives, you know that, chevalier Philip. But I take your point.”
“Well said, friend.” Philip flung an arm around Drew’s shoulders as they walked from the tennis court together. “Remember what I said about visiting me at Wilton some time. It is on the way to your place in Somerset. Tarry awhile there, I pray you.”
“Perhaps,” Drew answered him with a frown. For here came a page with a letter in his hand which, by his mien, was either for himself or for Philip. He stopped before them to hand the missive to Drew.
“From my master, Sir Francis Walsingham,” he piped, being yet a child. “You are to read it and give me an answer straightway.”
Drew opened the sealed paper and read the few lines on it.
“Simple enough to answer at once,” he said cheerfully. “You will tell Sir Francis that Andrew Exford thanks him for his invitation and will sup with him this evening.”
Philip Sidney watched the boy trot off in order to deliver his message. “Well,” he said, smiling, “at least, if Walsingham knows that you are already married, he will not be inviting you to supper in order to offer you his daughter, who is still only a child!”
Drew made his friend no answer, for he suspected that Sir Francis Walsingham was about to offer him something quite different. Something which might require him to journey to the Midland Shires which he had foresworn, and to the wife whom he had deserted ten years ago.
Chapter Two
“I cannot abide another moment indoors, Aunt. I have ordered Tib to saddle Titus for me. I intend to ride to the hunting lodge and break my fast in the open. The day is too fair for me to waste it indoors.”
Aunt Hamilton raised her brows. Bess’s teeming energy always made her feel faint. That her niece was wearing a roughspun brown riding habit which barely reached mid-calf, showing below it a heavy pair of boots more suited to a twenty-year-old groom than a young woman of gentle birth, only served to increase her faintness.
“Must you sally out garbed more like a yeoman’s daughter than the Lady of Atherington, dear child? It is not seemly. If you should chance to meet…”
She got no further. Bess, who was tapping her whip against the offending boots, retorted briskly, “Who in the world do you imagine I shall meet on a ride on my own land who will care whether I am accoutred like the Queen, or one of her servants? I am comfortable in this, and have no intention of pretending that I am one of the Queen’s ladies. Everyone for miles around Atherington knows who I am—and will treat me accordingly.”
Useless to say anything. Bess would always go her own way—as she had done since the day she was married. Mary Hamilton sighed and walked to the tall window which looked out on to the drive and beyond that towards Charnwood Forest. She watched Bess ride out; Tib and Roger Jacks, her chief groom in attendance.
If only her errant husband would come for her! He would soon put a stop to Bess’s wilfulness, see that she dressed properly and conducted herself as a young noblewoman ought. Her niece behaved in all ways like the son her late brother had never managed to father, and the dear God alone knew where that would all end.
Bess, riding at a steady trot towards the distant hill on which the lodge stood, was also thinking about her absent husband. It was now a month since his letter had arrived and there was still no sign of him. She had hung his miniature on a black ribbon and wore it around her neck when she changed into a more ladylike dress on the Sabbath in order to please her aunt.
Occasionally she looked at the miniature in order to inspect him “in small” as he had called it in his letter. She saw a slim, shapely man with a stronger face than the one which she remembered. If the painter had been accurate, his hair had darkened from silver gilt into a deep gold, and his mouth was no longer a Cupid’s bow but a stern-seeming, straight line. It would be as well to remember that he was twenty-six years old, was very much a man, no longer a child. Bess felt a sudden keen curiosity to know what that man was like: whether the spoiled boy—she was sure now that he had been spoiled—had turned into a spoiled man.
They were almost at the small tower, which was all that the lodge consisted of. It stood high on its hill above the scrub and the stands of trees, for Charnwood Forest was thin on Atherington land, merging into pasture where cattle grazed. The open fields of nearby villages had been enclosed these fifty years and charcoal burning had stripped the forest of many of its trees. Over the centuries, successive Atherington lords had run deer for the chase, and the deer had attacked and stripped most of the trees which the charcoal burners had left.
“Shall you eat inside the tower—or out, mistress?” Tib asked her.
He had called her “mistress” since they had been children together, and Bess had indulged him by allowing him to continue the custom when the rest of her servants had learned to call her Lady Bess. Another of her many offences, according to her aunt.
“After all,” Bess had said sensibly and practically, “my true title is m’lady Exford, but since I do not care to use it, then any name will do, for all but his are equally incorrect.”
Aunt Hamilton knew who his referred to and was silenced. A common occurrence when she argued with her niece.
“Outside,” Bess told Tib, “at the bottom of the hill. My uncle Hamilton once told me that the Queen picnicked in the open, and I am content to follow her example. All that will be missing will be her courtiers.”
Tib grinned at her. “Roger and I will be your courtiers, mistress.”
Roger grunted at that. “You grow pert, lad, and forget yourself.”
Really, to bring Roger along was like bringing her aunt with her! He was nearly as insistent on reminding her of her great station as she was. Nevertheless, Bess smiled at him as she shared her meal with them. Inside a wicker basket lined with a white cloth were a large meat pasty, several cold chicken legs, bread and cheese and the sweet biscuits always known as Bosworth Jumbles, and wine in a leather bottle. A feast, indeed, all provided by the kitchen for her and her two grooms. All her staff were agreed that the Lady Bess was a kind and generous mistress.
“Food in the open always tastes much better than food in the house,” she declared, her mouth full of bread and cheese, “and wine, too.” She threw the bread crusts and the remains of the pasty to the two hounds which had followed in their rear, before lying back and sighing, “Oh, the blessed peace.”
She could not have said anything more inapposite! The words were scarce out of her mouth when the noise of an approaching horse and rider broke the silence Bess had been praising. They were approaching at speed through the trees, and as they drew near it was apparent that the horse, a noble black, which was tossing its head and snorting, was almost out of his rider’s control.
Foam dripped from its mouth: something—or someone—had frightened it, that much was plain. But its rider, a tall young man, was gradually mastering it, until, just as he reached Bess’s small party, his steed suddenly caught its forefoot in a rabbit hole, causing it to stumble forward. His master, taken by surprise, was thrown over his horse’s head—to land semiconscious at Bess’s feet.
She and her two grooms had sprung to their feet to try to avoid a collision. Their horses, tethered to nearby trees, neighed and pranced, whilst Bess’s two hounds added to the confusion caused by this unexpected turn by running around, barking madly.
One of them, Pompey, bent over the stunned young man to lick his face. The other, Crassus, ran after the black horse which, hurt less than his rider, had recovered itself, and was galloping madly away. Roger un-tethered his mount and chased after it. Bess and Tib joined Pompey in inspecting the young man, who was starting to sit up.
Bess fell to her knees beside him, so that when, still a trifle dazed, he turned his head in her direction, she looked him full in the face.
Could it be? Oh, yes! Indeed, it could! There was no doubt at all that sitting beside her was the husband whom she had not seen for ten long years. He had stepped out of the miniature, to be present in large, not in small. If he had been beautiful as a boy, as a man he was stunningly handsome, with a body to match. So handsome, indeed, that Bess’s heart skipped a beat at the mere sight of him, just as it had done on the long-ago day when she had first seen him.
What would he say this time to disillusion her? To hurt her so much that the memory of his unkind words was still strong enough to distress her?
He gave a pained half-smile, and muttered hoarsely, “Fair nymph, from what grove have you strayed to rescue me?” before dropping his head into his hands for a moment, and thus missing Bess’s stunned reaction to the fulsome compliment which he had just paid her.
It was quite plain that though she had known at once who he was, he had not the slightest notion that she was his deserted monkey bride!
Drew Exford had left London for Atherington a few days earlier. His supper with Sir Francis Walsingham had, as he had suspected, brought him a new task.
After they had eaten, and the women had left them alone with their wine, Sir Francis had said in his usual bland and fatherly fashion, “You can doubtless guess why I have summoned you hither this night, friend Drew.”
Drew had laughed. “I believe that you wish to ask me to do you yet another favour. Even though I told you two years ago that I had done my duty by my Queen, and would not again become involved in the devious doings of the State’s underworld, as I did when I was with the Embassy in France.”
Sir Francis nodded. “Aye, I well remember you telling me that. Nor would I call on you for assistance again were it not that you are singularly well placed to assist me to preserve our lady the Queen and her blessed peace against those who would destroy it—and her.”
Drew raised his finely arched brows. “How so?”
Sir Francis did not speak for a moment; instead, he drank down the remains of his wine. “Your wife, I believe, lives at Atherington on the edge of Charnwood Forest. There are many Papists in the Midland counties who are sympathetic towards the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, and would wish to kill her cousin, the Queen, and place Mary on the throne instead. Each summer the Queen of Scots is allowed by her gaoler, the Earl of Shrewsbury, to visit Buxton, to take the waters there. Her sympathisers from the surrounding counties visit the spa, and plot together on her behalf.
“I have reason to believe that this plotting has become more than talk. It is not so long since another party of silly Catholic squires from roundabout were caught trying to rebel against the Crown—and were duly punished for their treason. Alas, this has not, we now know, deterred others from trying to do the same.”
Drew leaned forward. “A moment, sir. Are you telling me that my wife is one of these plotters?”
Sir Francis shook his head vigorously. “No, no. The Crown has no more loyal servant than the Turvilles of Atherington. Your wife’s father was a friend of the Queen and helped to seat her on the throne. What I wish you to do is to go first to Atherington and thence to Buxton to find out what you can of this latest piece of treason—and then inform me through one of my men who will arrive some time after you do. You will know that he is my man and that you may trust him because he will show you a button identical with those I am wearing on my doublet tonight.
“You may give it about that your real objective in the Midland counties is to take up your true position as the lady’s husband. Consequently, no one will suspect that you have an ulterior motive for journeying there. Thus you will kill two birds with one stone. You will do the state some service—and get yourself an heir at the same time.”
“Most kind of you,” riposted Drew somewhat sardonically, “to consider my welfare as well as that of the Crown.”
“Exactly so,” returned Sir Francis, taking Drew’s comment at face value. “It is always my aim to assist my friends, and despite the difference in our ages, you are my friend, are you not?”
Drew thought it politic to signify his agreement.
His host showed his pleasure by pouring his guest another drink, and saying, “You are a promising fellow, Drew. You have outgrown your youthful vanity—if you will allow me to say so—and you have a commendable shrewdness which has been honed by your journeyings to both the New and the Old World. I would wish to think of you as one of my inheritors. England needs such as yourself when Burghley and I are gone to our last rest.”
Drew laughed, his charm never more evident. “There is little need to flatter me, sir. I will do your errand without it. But this will be the last. I would prefer to perform upon a larger stage—and not be suspected of being a common spy!”
“And so you shall. I repeat, I would not ask you were it not that your presence near to the Queen of Scots will be thought to be the result of your family circumstances—and for no other reason. Drink your wine, man, and pledge with me confusion to that Queen. I fear that, as long as she lives, our own Queen’s life is not safe.”
That was Walsingham’s coda. Afterwards they joined Lady Walsingham and her daughter and talked of idle and pleasant things.
And so Drew had no other choice than to see again the wife whom he had avoided for ten long years. He was not sure whether he was glad or sorry that meeting her was part of the duty which Walsingham had laid upon him. Each mile that he covered once London was left behind found him still reluctant to commit himself to Atherington House and its lady.
So much so that, when he had come almost to its gates, he and his magnificent train had stopped at an inn instead of journeying on, and he had taken Cicero out into the forest to try to catch a glimpse of the House, as though by doing so he could gauge the nature of either his welcome, or that of the greeting he would give her.
Except that Cicero, usually the most well-behaved of horses, saw fit to take against the whole notion of riding through the forest, and whilst trying to control him, he had lost control himself. As a result he was now sitting, shaken, not far from the House, and looking into the great dark eyes of a beautiful nymph who seemed to have strayed from the Tuscan countryside which he had visited with Philip Sidney and whose glories he had never forgotten.
By her clothing she was the daughter of one of the yeoman farmers who frequented these parts, and he wondered if they knew what a treasure they had in their midst. Well, if boredom overtook him at the House, he would know where to look for entertainment!
Something of this showed on his face. Bess, agitated, turned away from him in order to rise to her feet, so that she might not be too near him. He was altogether so overwhelming that she was fearful that she might lose the perfect control which had characterised her life since the day she had married him. He was not so shaken that he was incapable of putting forward his perfect hand and attempting to stay her.
“Nay, do not leave me, fair nymph, your presence acts as a restorative. You live in these parts?”
Bess, allowing herself to be detained, said, “Indeed. All my life.” She had suddenly determined that she would not tell him her name, and prayed that neither Tib nor Roger, when he returned, would betray her.
“Send your brother away, my fair one, and I will give you a reward which will be sure to please you.” The smile Drew offered her was a dazzling one, full of promise, and he raised his hand to cup her sweet small breast, so delicately rounded.
Tib! He thought Tib her brother, not her servant! Aunt Hamilton had been right for once about the effect her clothing would have on a stranger. For was he not promising to seduce her? He was busy stroking her breast, and had blessed the hollow in her neck with a kiss which was causing her whole body to tremble in response. Oh, shameful! What would he do next? And would she like that, too?
She was about to be seduced by the husband who had once rejected her! Was not this strange encounter as good as a play? Or one of Messer Boccaccio’s naughty stories?
She must end it at once. Now, before she forgot herself. Bess escaped his impudent hands and rose to her feet, putting her finger on her lips to silence Tib who, full of indignation at this slur upon his mistress, was about to tell their unexpected guest exactly who she was.
“Not now,” she murmured, smiling coyly at Drew, her expression full of promise. “Another time—when we are alone.”
“Ah, I see you are a practised nymph, but then all nymphs are practised in Arcadia, are they not?” smiled Drew, enjoying the sight of her now that his senses had cleared. For not only was she a dark beauty of a kind which he had learned to appreciate in Italy, but she had a body to match, of which her rough riding habit hid little, since she was wearing no petticoats under it, nor any form of stiffening designed to conceal the body’s contours. He had not thought Leicestershire harboured such treasures as this.
Bess’s reply to him was a simper, and a toss of the head. She was astonished at herself: she had not believed that she could be capable of such deceptive frivolity.
But I am, after all, a daughter of Eve, she thought with no little amusement, and, faced with a flattering man, Eve’s descendants always know how to behave. Perhaps it might be the thing to flounce her skirt a little as she had seen her cousin Helen do when she visited her and wished to attract one of the gallants whose attentions Bess always avoided, she being a married woman.
Also present was the gleeful thought, How shocked he will be when he learns who I really am, and that he was offering to seduce his own wife!
She watched him stand up with Tib’s help, which he did not really need, although he courteously accepted the proffered arm. By his manner and expression he was about to continue his Arcadian wooing, but, alas for him, even as did so he heard in the distance a troop of horse arriving.
Drew stifled a sigh. It was almost certainly part of his household who had followed him at a discreet distance to ensure his safety, even though he had repeatedly told them not to.
“Yes, it must be another time, I fear, that we dally among the spring flowers,” he said regretfully.
His cousin Charles Breton, his mother’s sister’s son, arrived in the small clearing, at the head of his followers, exclaiming as he did so, “So, there you are, Drew. But where is your horse?”
“He unshipped me most scurvily,” Drew told him, no whit ashamed, Bess noted, at having to confess his failure to control his errant steed. “But I have been rescued by the shepherdess you see before you—and her brother,” and he waved a negligent hand at Tib. “They have not yet had time to offer me a share of their picnic, else my pastoral adventure would be complete. Ah, I see that they have even rescued Cicero for me.”
So they had, for Roger rode up, his face one scowl, with Cicero trotting meekly along beside him, apparently unharmed.
“Here is your horse, young sir,” he growled, “and another time show the forest a little more respect. It is not like the green lanes of the south where a man may gallop at his will!”
“How now, sirrah?” exclaimed Charles. “Do you know to whom you speak? Show a proper humility towards your betters!”
Roger opened his mouth, ready to inform him that he knew who his betters were, and furthermore, that they included Lady Exford who stood before them, and around whom Drew had now placed a familiar arm. In vain, before he could speak, his lady forestalled him.
“Oh, my groom has a free spirit, sir, as all we dwellers in these parts have. And now I must bid you adieu, for my duties await me. The cows must be fed, and the day wears on.”
Adroitly, she wriggled out of Drew’s half-embrace and, without either Tib or Roger’s assistance, swung athletically on to her horse. Seeing Roger about to speak again, she said smartly, “Silence, man. You must not offend these great ones. And you, too, brother.”
Tib’s answer to that was a grin. He possessed to the full the countryman’s desire to make fools of townies and, by God, these were townies indeed, with their fine clothing and their drawling speech. Particularly the one whose horse had thrown him, who had been so busy making sly suggestions to his mistress.
He and Roger mounted their horses, whilst Drew, seeing his nymph ready to abandon him—rather than simply turn herself into a tree, as Daphne had done when pursued by Apollo—seized the bridle of Bess’s horse, and exclaimed, “Not so fast. I am Drew Exford, and I would know who you are.”
Bess looked down into his perfect face, and, giving him a smile so sweet that it wrenched his heart, she said softly, “But I have little mind to tell you, sir. You must discover it for yourself. Now, let me go, Master Drew Exford, for I have no desire to be behindhand with the day.”
He could not be so ungallant as to insist, especially with Charles’s amused eyes on him, and the snickers of her two companions, who were enjoying his discomfiture plainly audible. There was nothing for it but to stand back and watch her tap her whip smartly on her horse’s flank and ride off, the two men behind her, leaving Drew to gaze after her.
“Was she real, or are we dreaming?” he said, turning to Charles, who had dismounted and was staring at him as he added energetically, “Come, let us follow them.”
Only for Charles to place an urgent hand on his sleeve. “Nay, Drew. You have had a fall, the day grows old and we must ready ourselves to be at Atherington on the morrow. You do intend to visit your wife, do you not? Hardly the perfect start to your visit, to seduce one of her tenant’s daughters before you even bid her good day.”
Drew nodded his head reluctantly. “I suppose that you have the right of it. But have you ever seen such a divine face and form? Dress her in fine clothing and she would have half London at her feet.”
“Now, Drew, you do surprise me,” drawled Charles as the pair of them remounted. “I had thought that your wish would be for her to have no clothes on at all!”
Chapter Three
“So, he is here, at last,” twittered aunt Hamilton, shaken out of her usual calm when a courier arrived with m’lord Exford’s letter for her husband, Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, informing him that he was lying at an inn nearby and proposed to arrive at Atherington House shortly after noon. He would be grateful if Sir Braithwaite would apprise his niece, Lady Exford, of the news, and also make Atherington House ready to entertain his train.
She continued excitedly, half-expecting her niece to refuse to do any such thing, “And when you meet him you must be dressed in something more appropriate to your station than that old grey kirtle you have seen fit to wear today.”
“Indeed, indeed,” agreed Bess equably and surprisingly. She had every intention of being as splendidly dressed as possible to receive her husband, if only to disconcert him the more when he realised who the nymph of Charnwood Forest really was.
“Does he not know that my poor husband has been unfit to arrange anything these past five years?” aunt Hamilton continued, still agitated, and quite unaware that Bess had kept this interesting fact from her husband lest he send a steward—or, worse still, arrive himself—to manage Atherington’s affairs. He was quite unaware that Bess had been in charge since Sir Braithwaite had lost his wits after his accident—another surprise for him, and perhaps not a welcome one, was Bess’s rueful thought.
He was sure to demand that some man should replace her, even though Bess had managed Atherington lands more efficiently than her uncle. In that she was similar to another Bess, she of Hardwick, who was also Countess of Shrewsbury, and who ruled her husband as well as their joint estates.
“He has probably forgotten,” prevaricated Bess, who had long developed a neat line in such half-truths. “He has such a busy life about the court—and elsewhere,” she ended firmly, although she had not the smallest notion what her husband had been doing during the long years of his absence.
“Nevertheless…” Her aunt frowned, prepared to say more had not a well-known glint in Bess’s eye silenced her. She decided to concentrate instead on arranging for her usually wild niece to look, for once, like the great lady which she was by birth and marriage.
“And you will receive him in the Great Hall as soon as he arrives, I suppose?”
“Nay.” Bess shook her head. “I am sure that he and his train will wish to change their clothing and order themselves properly after their long journey. Only after that shall I welcome him—and then in the Great Parlour. I have given Gilbert orders to lay out a meal in the Hall for a score of us. Lord Exford—” she would not say “my husband” “—writes that he is bringing six gentlemen of his household with him, as well as his Steward, and Treasurer, and Clerk Comptroller—to inspect our finances, no doubt. His servants, of whom there are a dozen, may eat in the kitchens. It is fortunate that since he wrote that he might visit us I have arranged for a greater supply of provisions than we usually carry. I suspected that he might arrive without warning.”
Aunt Hamilton said, almost as though regretting it, “You are always beforehand with your arrangements, my dear.”
“Oh, I have a good staff who only cross me when they are sure I am wrong,” returned Bess, who had spent the morning with her Council discussing how to ensure that m’lord Exford’s visit was a success. They were all men, so Bess’s lady-in-waiting, Kate Stowe, always sat just behind her to maintain the proprieties.
At first, when Sir Braithwaite had become incompetent, they had been wary of Bess taking his place, but she had soon shown how eager she was to learn and, despite her lack of years, had shown more commonsense than Sir Braithwaite had ever displayed—even before he had lost his wits. Three years ago she had insisted on reducing her household from nearly three hundred people to little more than a hundred and fifty, arguing correctly that Atherington was beginning to run into needless debt by providing for so many unnecessary mouths.
“But you have a station to keep up, my child,” aunt Hamilton had wailed. “We great ones are judged by the number of those we gather around us.”
“Nothing to that,” Bess had replied firmly, “if by doing so we run headlong into ruin. If we continue as we are, we shall eventually arrive at a day when we shall lose our lands, and scarcely be able to employ anyone. How should that profit Atherington?”
Nor did her household know that she had failed to inform her husband of Sir Braithwaite’s misfortune, for she had quietly destroyed the letters of her Clerk comptroller telling of it, and substituted others with the documents and accounts which were sent south.
And now, at last, the day of reckoning was here, and to the half-fearful excitement of meeting her husband in her proper person was added that of facing both him and her staff when they discovered her deceptions. Unless, of course, she managed to conceal them. How, she could not imagine.
No one could have guessed at the contrary emotions which were tearing Bess apart. She seemed, indeed, to be even more in command than usual when she spent her early morning with her Council. And this unnatural calm stayed with her during a late-morning session with aunt Hamilton and Kate Stowe—as well as sundry tiring maids—being dressed to receive the Exford retinue in proper style.
Usually Bess greeted being turned out “like a maypole in spring”, as she always put it, with great impatience. Today, however, aunt Hamilton was both surprised and gratified by her willingness to please, and her readiness to wear the magnificent Atherington necklace which her niece had always dismissed as too barbaric and heavy, even for formal use. Perhaps it was the prospect of meeting her husband which was causing her to behave with such uncharacteristic meekness.
If so, aunt Hamilton could only be pleased that Bess was at last going to behave like the kind of conventional young woman whom she had always wished her to be.
She was not to know that her niece was gleefully preparing, not to be counselled and corrected by her husband, but rather to wrongfoot him with the knowledge of exactly who it was that he had been so eager to seduce on the previous day!
Contrary emotions were also tearing at Drew Exford. The flippancy of his cousin Charles—which he usually encouraged to lighten the burden of his great station—grated badly on him the nearer he approached the time to meet his long-deserted wife.
Of what like was she now, m’lady Exford? Was she still as plain as the child he had abandoned? He prayed not, but he feared so. But this time he would be kind, however ugly she might prove to be.
He remembered Philip Sidney saying of a plain woman, “She does not deserve our mockery, but our pity. For we see her but occasionally, whilst she has to live with her looks forever. Always remember, Drew, that she has a heart and mind as tender as that of the most beautous she. Nay, more so, for she lives not to torment our sex by using her looks as a weapon, but practises instead those other female virtues which we prize not in youth, but value in age. Loving kindness, charity and mercy—and the ability to order a good household!”
Easy enough to say, perhaps, but hard to remember when a young man’s blood is young and hot. Perhaps here, Drew hoped, in leafy Leicestershire, away from the temptations of London and the court, he might find in his wife those virtues of which Philip had spoken.
“You’re quiet today, Drew,” Charles observed as he drew level with his cousin who had ridden ahead of his small procession. “Thinking of your bride, no doubt, who probably does not resemble the Arcadian shepherdess of yestermorn very much.”
This was too near to the bone for Drew to stomach. He put spurs to his horse and left Charles and the rest behind, and stayed ahead of them until Atherington House was reached.
And a noble pile it was. Square and built of red brick, a small tower had been added on each corner to remind the commonalty that although a castle no longer stood on high to menace them, power and might in this part of Leicestershire still belonged to the Turvilles.
There was a formal garden on one side of the house, and stables at the back. It had been built around a central quadrangle filled with a lawn which was bordered by beds of herbs and simples. An arcaded walk had been added to one wall. A small chapel stood at a little distance from the main building.
But all this was yet to be discovered by the visitors. Drew waited for his people to catch him up, whereupon he sent the most senior of his pages before him as a herald to inform Atherington that its master had arrived. But even before the page reached the main entrance with its double doors of the stoutest oak, they were flung open and a crowd of servants appeared, opening up an avenue for Drew and his gentlemen to walk through when they had dismounted. A burly Steward, carrying a white staff of office, came forward to meet them.
He bowed low to Drew and his company. “My mistress, your good lady, bids me greet you, my noble lord. Knowing that your journey from London has been both long and hard, she has arranged to meet you, m’lord, and your gentlemen, in the Great Parlour, after you have had the ordering of yourselves. I most humbly beg you to follow me to your quarters.” He bowed again.
Drew heard Charles give a stifled laugh. Himself, he wanted to fling the man on one side and demand to be taken immediately to his wife. His self-control and temper hung in the balance—and, what was more, Charles and the others knew it. Self-control won. After all, what matter it that he met his wife early or late, when as soon as they did meet he would make it his purpose to show her that he was the master at Atherington.
“I thought,” murmured Charles in his ear, “that you told me that your wife’s uncle was Regent here for you. But yon popinjay made no mention of him. Would you wish me to remind him of who rules at Atherington?”
Charles was merely saying aloud what Drew was thinking. Nevertheless he shook his head. “No, I do not wish my own rule to begin in dissension and unpleasantness. Later we will arrange things to my liking. For the present we go with the tide.”
Again, easy to say, but hard to do.
It was, therefore, some little time before Drew and his gentlemen were escorted by the same Steward from their quarters in one of the towers down the winding staircase towards the entrance hall and the double doors which led first to the Great Hall. From thence they processed to the Great Parlour—the room where the owners of Atherington took their private leisure. These days the Great Hall was reserved for more formal functions.
Drew had dressed himself magnificently in cloth of the deepest silver with a hint of cerulean blue in it. The colours emphasised—as they were intended to do—his blonde beauty. His doublet had the new peasecod belly. His breeches were padded with horsehair, and his long stockings of the palest cream were visible until just above his knee where they were supported by garters made of fine blue and silver brocade.
His ruff was also of the newest fashion, being oval in shape, rather than round, and was narrow, not deep. It was held up behind his head by an invisible fine wire frame. His leather shoes had long tongues and small cork heels. A sapphire ring decorated one shapely hand; a small gold locket hung around his neck, its case adorned by a large diamond.
Charles and his other gentlemen were similarly dressed, but not so richly. They formed the most exquisitely presented bevy of young male beauty such as Atherington had not seen for many a long year.
They marched in solemn procession through the Great Hall, already laid out for a formal banquet, and then through an oak door richly carved with the Tree of Life, and into the Great Parlour, a large splendidly furnished room, whose leaded windows looked out on to the central quadrangle.
Facing them was a group of people as richly dressed as themselves, although not quite in the latest fashion. All but two of them were men. In front of them, with another, and older woman, standing a little behind her, stood a young woman of middle height as richly and fashionably dressed as he was, in a gown whose deep colours of burnt sienna, rich gold and emerald green were in marked contrast to the pastel hues of Drew and his train.
As though she were the Queen she made no effort to walk towards him, but stood there, waiting for him to approach her, her head held high, her face concealed by a large fan, so that all that Drew could see of her was her rich dark hair, dressed high on her head, and a single pearl resting on her forehead above the fan’s fluted edge.
At last, reluctantly, he moved forward, bowing, as did his followers. Straightening up, he found that he had no wish to see the face which was hidden behind the fan. He had a form of words ready for her, which would contain no reference to what had passed between them ten years ago, or to her looks—for that might be tactless.
“Madam,” he began—and then paused for a brief moment before he spoke the words which flowed from him almost against his will. “We meet at last, m’lady Exford.”
On hearing this, his wife slowly lowered the fan to show him her face for the first time.
Drew stood there paralysed. For the face before him was that of the beautiful nymph whom he had lusted after—and had offered to seduce—in Charnwood Forest on the previous day.
But the nymph had worn rough clothing and had moved and spoken with the wild freedom of a creature of the woods. This woman was a lovely icon, standing stiff and proud in her formal clothing. But, oh, her face was the perfect oval he remembered, the lips as crimson, shapely and tender, the eyes as dark, and her complexion, yes, her complexion, was of the purest and smoothest ivory, with the faintest rose blush to enhance its loveliness. And beneath her stiff clothing her body was surely as luscious and inviting.
Drew, standing there, dumbstruck, all his usual rather cold command quite gone, heard his cousin Charles give a stifled groan—turning it into something between a cough and a laugh as he, too, recognised the woodland nymph. The sound brought him back to life again, even as he wondered what in the world had happened to the dark monkey-like child of ten years ago.
Had his wits been wandering then? Or were they wandering now?
Had it been a changeling he had seen? Or was this woman the changeling? Without conscious thought, courtier-like, as though greeting his Queen, Elizabeth herself, he went down on one knee before her and took into his own hand that of his wife’s which was not holding the fan.
Turning it over, he kissed, not the back but the palm of the hand—a long and lingering kiss—and thought that he detected a faint quiver in it. But as he looked up there was no sign of emotion in the cold, aloof face of the woman before him.
Why did she not speak? As though she had picked his thought out of the air, she said at last in the wood nymph’s honeyed tones, “As the old adage has it, better late than never, m’lord. Permit me to introduce you to my good counsellors—and yours—who have served you well these many years.”
She had looked him in the eye for one fleeting moment before she began to name the men around her. Her manner reminded him again of that of his Queen. But that Elizabeth was a ruler, and this woman ruled nothing. He waited, as she introduced them one by one, for her to name the Master of her Household, Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, but although she introduced his wife to him, his name did not pass her lips, and he was not one of the men around her, either.
He murmured his acknowledgments, as did those gentlemen of his train whose duties matched those of the men around his wife, before he questioned her.
“And Sir Braithwaite Hamilton who rules here, where is he?”
Drew was not prepared for the manner in which his question was received. The heads of Atherington’s male Council turned towards him in some surprise. His wife gave him a cool and non-committal smile.
She raised her fan and said to him over it, “You forget, m’lord. As I informed you at the time, Sir Braithwaite has been an invalid bereft of his wits these five long years, and my Council and I rule in his place.”
Bess had expected his question, and was prepared to offer him a brazen lie in answer to it. Oh, this pinked and perfumed gallant who plainly thought that every pretty woman he met was his rightful prey, who had recognised her immediately, and on whose face she had read the shock he had received on learning what his ugly child bride had turned into during his absence, did not deserve that she should be truthful with him.
Drew’s face changed again, as he received this second shock—the first having been the changed face of his wife. It was as though he were standing on one of the Atlantic beaches which he had visited during his merchant adventurer years, watching the surf come rolling in, each wave bigger than the last.
How he kept his composure he never knew. The hot temper which he had so carefully controlled these many years threatened to overwhelm him. He mastered himself with difficulty as he bade it depart, so that, like a dog retiring to its kennel, it slunk into a corner of his mind where it might rest until he was ready to indulge it.
He said, or rather muttered to her, “I see that we have a deal of matters to discuss in private, madam.”
If he had thought that visiting—and disposing of—his wife was going to be a simple matter beside the duty which Walsingham had laid on him, he was rapidly being disabused of any such notion.
The smile his wife gave him in reply was, he noted, as false as Hell, as false as the letters he had received from her over the years. “Indeed, and indeed,” she murmured sweetly, lowering her fan, and showing him the glory of her face, “there is much of which we have to speak.”
“Beginning with honesty.” He made his voice as grim as he dare without causing an open affront. He had no mind for a public altercation with the double-dealing bitch before him. But, oh, how he longed for them to be private together!
“Oh, honesty!” Bess carolled, displaying animation for the first time. “It is a virtue which I prize highly. Like chastity. Another virtue which I am sure, knowing you, that you prize also, my dear husband.”
He heard Charles’s stifled laughter behind him again.
Drew thought of yesterday’s unconfined behaviour of the demure woman before him. “You would give me lessons in it, wife?” he riposted, his voice now dangerous as well as grim.
“Aye, sir. If you think that you need them. My acquaintance with you is not sufficiently lengthy for me to be able to make a judgement on the matter.” She paused, leaned forward and tapped his chest provocatively with her fan. “They say that first impressions are frequently faulty, m’lord! What do you say?”
Drew wanted to say nothing. What he wanted to do was to place the impudent baggage across his knee and give her such a paddling as she would never forget.
But he was hamstrung by the formality of the occasion, and by the fact that so far she was wrongfooting him at every turn, so that he was finding it difficult to gain any verbal advantage over her. Much more of this and Charles would be openly laughing at him—and he could well imagine the smirks of his gentlemen.
Oh, what a fine play this whole wretched business would make with a title along the lines of, The Nymph and the Satyr, or, the Man Who Tried to Seduce His Own Wife. How much he would enjoy this situation if only some other poor fool was in the middle of it, and not himself.
He spoke at last, conscious that he had been silent for some time. He was surprised at how bored and indifferent he sounded. “Why, madam, that is one matter which I would prefer to discuss in private with you. I cannot say how much I look forward to doing so.”
He let his gaze rove around the room, taking in the men standing watching them, more than a little bemused by this byplay, and said, in a low voice which none other but she could hear, “And your youthful escort, madam, who follows you to play with you in the woods, where is he? I see him not here.”
What, was he jealous? This was delightful, was it not? Bess could see that every word she uttered was a dart striking home. He had come to lord it over her, to stress his superiority and by his own wilful and lustful behaviour, and her wicked conduct in not enlightening him as to who she was, she had him at a disadvantage—who should have been at a disadvantage herself.
“Oh, you shall see him soon—when you are introduced to the rest of my servants. In the meantime I have instructed my Council to have ready for you and your Comptrollers all the books and accounts relating to Atherington’s affairs. First, perhaps, we should eat. A feast has been prepared in your honour.”
“So I see, madam.” He was glacial now. “But permit me to correct you. First I should like to be taken to see Sir Braithwaite—to reassure myself as to his condition.”
Aunt Hamilton, who had been listening with increasing agitation to the hostilities being conducted in her presence, took it upon herself to say, “Oh, m’lord, I can assure you that his condition is as was described to you when he first fell ill after his accident. He has not improved.”
Drew’s blue gaze was stern. “I thank you for that reassurance, Lady Hamilton, but I would prefer to see him for myself. My cousin Charles, who is my Chief Comptroller, will accompany me. There is no need for either of you two ladies to do so. Only after I have paid him my respects shall I break bread. Pray order the Steward, Lady Exford, to conduct me to him.”
“Willingly, husband,” Bess said, dipping him a deep curtsey. “I am always yours to command.”
“See that you are, madam, see that you are. I do not care for wilful, forward women who think they know better than their husbands.”
Oh, yes, she had stung him, and seeing his grim face Bess knew that she was going to pay for it. But for the present she had enjoyed herself mightily—and in the end everything had to be paid for. Which was a maxim her father had taught her. What he had been unable to teach her was what form payment might take!
Charles began to speak to his cousin the moment that they were safely out of the Great Parlour and walking towards the main staircase. Drew stopped, took him by the arm and said roughly, “Not now, later. When we are alone. For the present we are to see Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, who, until a few minutes ago, I thought was in charge of my lands here. After that we may talk.”
Sir Braithwaite was, as his wife and niece had said, a helpless invalid. He was incapable of coherent speech, and physically little more active than a baby. He stared affably at Drew and Charles from a great chair placed before a window overlooking the kitchen gardens after his attendant had nudged him and pointed to his visitors. He spoke, but his speech was a babble. Drew thought that by his appearance he was not long for this world, but later the doctor attending him said that he had been of this countenance since his accident.
So, his lady wife had been deceiving him—and by the looks of it—her own Council, ever since Sir Braithwaite had become witless, by not informing him of her uncle’s condition! He was certain that she had never sent him any letter reporting the true facts of it, however much she said to the contrary.
He dismissed the Steward when he reached the bottom of the stairway which led into the entrance hall, and pushed Charles into a room which opened off it.
“Now, Charles, what the devil has been going on here? The man I thought was my Comptroller is a blinking idiot, and my lady wife is not only running the household and the estates, but is riding around the countryside dressed like a milkmaid inviting seduction.”
Charles said, choking with laughter, “Your face, Drew, your face when you saw that the nymph you tried to seduce was your own wife! A beauty, though, a very Helen of Troy. Whyever did you tell me that she was plain?” and he began to laugh helplessly.
Drew grasped his cousin by the shoulders and turned him so that they were face to face, eye to eye. Charles was still trying to control his amusement, whilst Drew was as grim as Hercules about to embark on another of his labours—as Charles told him later.
He hissed at his cousin, “If you laugh, Charles, I shall kill you! That is a promise, not a threat!”
Charles rearranged his face, and said, as solemnly as he could, “What, laugh? I laugh? No, no, I merely choked a little—from surprise, you understand. This is a grave matter, a very grave matter, m’lord.”
“And do not m’lord me, either. Damnation and Hell surround me and every devil with a pitchfork is sticking me with it. How in God’s name was I to know that that wanton nymph in the woods yesterday was my wife? And he I thought her brother—in Hell’s name, who was he? Was she wantoning with him in the greenwood? I can believe anything of her after the way in which she taunted me just now.”
“Most strange,” agreed Charles, his face solemn, but his eyes had an evil glint in them as he savoured Drew’s discomfiture. “As I said earlier, repute had it that she was plain, and you did not deny it, on the contrary.”
“Hell’s teeth,” roared Drew who had lost all his usual calm control and the measured speech which went with it. “She resembled naught so much as a monkey ten years agone. What alchemist has she visited to turn herself into such a…such…?” He ran out of words.
“A pearl?” Charles finished for him, still as grave as a parson.
Drew raved on. “I was prepared to be patient with her, and kind, because she was so plain, you understand. But what shall I do with her now that she has caught me trying to seduce a woodland maiden who turned out to be my own wife? She never said a word to enlighten me, into the bargain, but inwardly enjoyed the jest at my expense. And after that, she had the impudence to twit me with her chastity—and my lack of it.”
Charles could not help himself. He began to laugh until the tears ran down his face. “Confess, Drew, what a fine jest you would think this if it were happening to someone else!”
Drew stared at him, and then, as his cousin’s words struck home, he began to laugh himself at the sheer absurdity of it all. Laughter dissipated his rage—it slunk back again into its kennel. When he spoke, his voice showed that he had regained his usual cold command.
“Merriment purges all, Philip Sidney once said. You were right to laugh, Charles, at the spectacle of my High Mightiness brought low by a woman. Now I am myself again, and by my faith, the best way to treat my lady wife will be to behave as though yesterday was a dream—which I did not share. More, I shall sort out her deception over the ruling of Atherington in such a way as will offer her no satisfaction, no chance to enjoy any more secret jests at my expense.”
“Oh, bravo! That is more like yourself, Drew. Come, let us to the feast.”
“Aye, Charles, where I shall behave like a grave and reverend signor who would never attempt to tumble a chance-met wench in the greenwood!”
Chapter Four
“Bess, my dear, I cannot understand how it was that your husband did not know of Sir Braithwaitte’s illness! I distinctly remember that he was informed. You said that he might have forgotten—but how could he forget a matter of such importance? It would be most careless of him, and he does not appear to be a careless person. I was always surprised that he appointed no one in my husband’s place, but allowed you to take over the governance of Atherington!”
Aunt Hamilton had been twittering away to Bess on this undesirable subject ever since Drew and Charles had left them. Walter Hampden, her Chief Comptroller, had also approached her, frowning heavily, as they awaited her husband’s return to the Great Parlour. Bess had silenced him by immediately turning on her heel and ordering Gilbert to arrange for goblets of sack to be brought through to the company, ostensibly to help them while away the time until dinner, but actually to keep them from questioning her.
Even so, Walter, a neglected goblet of wine in his hand, had not taken this none-too-subtle hint, but began immediately to question her, saying, “Madam, I would have a word with you. I remember that we wrote several times to Lord Exford informing him of Sir Braithwaite’s sad mishap, so how was it that he knew nothing of it? Most strange, most strange.” He shook his old head in wonderment as he finished.
He had been Sir Braithwaite’s trusted right-hand man, and had continued as Bess’s after it was plain that Lord Exford, by his silence, seemed happy for matters to continue as they were, without sending his man to oversee Atherington’s affairs.
Atherington, under his and Bess’s guidance, with the help of the Council, had subsequently become so prosperous that after a time Walter had ceased to question this somewhat odd arrangement. As Bess had feared, however, Drew’s apparent ignorance of the truth about Sir Braithwaite’s condition was beginning to trouble him.
“Oh, I am sure that this is but a misunderstanding,” Bess proclaimed feverishly, wishing that Drew would return so that they could repair to the Great Hall and set about the banquet. Her husband could scarcely expect her to begin discussing matters of business whilst they were eating and drinking their way through Atherington’s bounty.
His grim face, however, when he returned from Sir Braithwaite’s tower room, gave her no reason to expect that she was going to receive much mercy from him, either at the banquet—or anywhere else. His cousin Charles, by contrast, had an expression on his face which showed that one person, at least, was deriving some amusement from the situation.
“I am at your service, madam,” Drew announced. “Bid your Steward to escort us to the Hall.”
He held his hand out to take hers as though nothing was amiss, but his mouth, set in a hard straight line, was an indication that their private life, like their public one, was to be as coldly formal as his voice.
Gilbert the Steward, however, was delighted. If he had a complaint about Lady Bess’s rule, it was that she was too easy in her conduct of it. All the heavily manned little ceremonies which Sir Braithwaite had insisted upon had been done away with. And, since they mostly centred around Gilbert’s affairs, he had felt that his station in the Atherington household had been demeaned.
Plainly his new master thought differently, and so they all processed majestically into the Hall, where pages, at Gilbert’s instructions, ran forward with napkins and bowls of water. The napkins were to protect the guests’ fine clothing, and the water was for them to rinse their hands in after they had eaten of the roast beef, the chickens, the pigs’ trotters and all the other delicacies carried in on great platters by another half-score of obedient pages. The napkins then found their further use in drying wet hands, although some still preferred the old custom of waving them in the air. Gilbert was beside himself with joy.
Not so Bess. She hated ceremony, considering it a waste of precious time. For her, informality was all. She wondered what Drew’s preference was. The fact that he was being so correct in his conduct today was not necessarily a guide to his character if she remembered how lustily—and improperly—he had set about her yesterday!
She stole a look at his noble profile as he sat beside her. It was still grim, and his mouth was set in stern lines. She wondered if she dare try to soften it. She would have to go carefully, for seated as they were in the place of honour in the middle of the long table, all eyes were upon them, save for those few of their senior officers who shared their side of it.
She was about to speak when Drew forestalled her.
“I desire an explanation from you, madam my wife, as to why you did not see fit to inform me of your uncle’s grave and disabling accident.”
So, war had been declared, had it? There was to be no peace over the dinner plates. The best form of defence, Bess had long ago concluded, was attack. She went on to it, keeping her voice low, but firm.
“Not so, m’lord husband. You were kept fully informed. Do try the chicken legs, I beg of you. They are tenderer than most because of the delicate foodstuffs Dame Margery insists on. Meat cannot be tender, she avows, if what is put in the animal to make it grow is tough.” The gaze she turned on Drew was a melting one.
Drew was not melted. “To the devil with Dame Margery—and her chicken legs, too,” he said roughly. “Do not seek to deceive me, wife. I am of the belief that you lied to your Council and to me.”
“Now why should you think that, husband? And it is unkind of you to curse Dame Margery. She is a very hard worker, and loyal to Atherington—as are all my servants.”
“And is she a liar, too? Does she also go running around…?” Drew stopped himself and cursed inwardly. He had not meant to refer to yesterday’s contretemps, and here he was reminding her of it! Not a very clever ploy. In life, as in chess, one did not give the enemy an advantage. He swallowed his words and started again.
“You may be sure that I, and my advisers, will examine your books and documents with the utmost care, and if I find any maladministration, I shall know full well who is to blame.”
Attack! Attack! Trumpets were blowing in Bess’s brain. “And you will not blame yourself, husband—if you do find anything amiss, which I doubt—that for ten long years you have ignored Atherington and left us to our fate? I have been a woman for six full summers, ready to do a wife’s duty, and bear your children. Address your reproaches to the one who deserves them, sir, which is not my good self, but one who is nearer home to you!”
Oh, sweet Lord! Now she had done it. She had lost her temper—as, by his expression, he was losing his. He leaned forward, food forgotten, and said between his teeth, “Do you not fear a day of reckoning, my lady wife? For you should.”
“No more than you should,” returned Bess hardily.
How dare he reproach her, how dare he? Her eyes flashed at him, as they locked with his, stare for stare. Not only their food, but the spectators were forgotten.
“Oh, indeed,” he sneered. “And that youth who was with you yesterday—is all seemly between you?” He had meant to save this for the privacy of their room, but the woman would tempt a saint to misbehave, for even as they wrangled he wanted to fall upon her and have his way with her; the way which he had been denied yestermorn.
For she was temptation itself. How could he be moved by one who was so unlike all the women whom he had favoured so far? She was black, not blonde, her eyes were dark, not blue, her complexion was pale, not rosy, she was not small, but was of a good height—and instead of being meek in speech she had a tongue like the Devil. Nor did she fail to use it at every turn.
By God, it would be a pleasure to master her, to ride her to the Devil who had blessed, nay, cursed her with that tongue. Aye, and beyond him to the lowest pit of Hell where only the demons lurked, forgotten even by their unsavoury Lord! The very thought of using her so was doing cruel and untoward things to his body.
Drew tried to calm himself. He must not let her catch him on the raw every time she spoke.
“I think you mistake a woman’s place, madam. It is to be quiet, to obey her lord, to be meek at all times…”
“I’d as lief be dead!” Bess could not help herself. The words flew out of her, interrupting him in his catalogue of what a good woman should be.
“I have no mind,” she exclaimed in ringing tones which the whole table could hear, “to be like patient Griselda in Master Chaucer’s poem, who pitifully thanks her husband for his mistreatment of her.”
“Nor am I minded to be the husband of a nagging wife, always determined to have the last word.” Drew roared this as though the demons he had conjured up were at his back, prodding him with their pitchforks.
Well, at least formality had flown out of the window and honesty had taken its place, thought Bess, stifling a smile at the sight of all the shocked faces around the table.
Worse, aunt Hamilton was quavering at her, “Oh, my niece, my dear niece, remember that your husband stands in the place of your God—to be obeyed at all times…This is no fashion in which to conduct yourself…and in a public place, too.”
Little though she cared to admit it, Bess knew that aunt Hamilton was right—at least as regards the place in which her differences with her husband ought to be aired.
She gave an abrupt laugh, and put her hand out towards Drew’s, saying, “How now, my lord, let us cry quits for this meal, at least—and shake hands on it. We are not players on a stage, paid to entertain an audience.”
His wife had spoken as frankly and freely as any boy, and her manner was smilingly confident as she did so. The moment—and the relationship between the pair of them—swung in the balance. Drew was aware that he could base his answer on his own masculinity and his consequent right to rule his wife, and thus reject her offer outright. All between them would then lie in ruins. Or, he could forget his husbandly rights, take her offered hand, cry truce—and let the game start again.
Even as he wavered Bess said, still frank and as though she had read his mind, “Come, m’lord, let us set the board out for a new game and forget the old one.”
As though of its own will, and not his, Drew’s hand thrust itself forward, and grasped her smaller one, enclosing it in his where it fitted so warm and sweetly, that he felt his anger leaching out of him.
“Quits,” he said. “But I cannot promise what will happen on another day.”
“No,” shot back Bess. “But then, no more can I!”
“A strange truce,” smiled Drew, determined not to lose his self-control again, “when the two principals who have agreed it are still at war!”
“I am not at war,” announced Bess, picking up one of Dame Margery’s chicken legs and throwing a sideways glance at Drew as she did so. “On the contrary, I am enjoying my dinner, and am consequently at peace.”
Her sideways glance nearly undid Drew, it was so full of fun and mischief. He gave a little groan, and then leaned forward to take the half-eaten chicken leg from her hand and to begin to eat it himself, his eyes on hers. “What does Dame Margery baste her meat with that it has one effect on you, madam, and quite another on me?”
Bess smiled crookedly at him. “Why, you must to the kitchens, sir, and ask her. Though whether she will have an answer to satisfy you, is quite another thing.” Her smile, unknowing to her, was provocation itself.
A witch! A very witch! Had there been a potion in the goblet which the eager page boy had handed to him as he sat down? Only that could explain why she was keeping his hot blood on the boil. Used to meek women, determined to please him, to meet one who met him with defiance—and smiled so sweetly at him in the doing—was having the strongest effect on Drew. He could not wait for the evening, to have her in the Great Bed which was sure to be in the master bedroom above him.
His wife was suffering from the same fever. The beautiful boy who had despised her had turned into a man who stared at her with eager eyes even as he reproved her. He waved his stolen chicken leg at her before eating it slowly, his blue eyes on her face exactly as though it were she whom he was devouring.
Well, Bess knew a game worth two of that! She leaned forward to take his wine glass, lifted it to her lips and drank it as slowly and sensuously as she could, her eyes on his, so slowly that Drew could have sworn he could see the crimson liquid staining her skin as it slid down her throat.
And then, glass in hand, she took his bread and its attendant cheese from the pewter platter which lay between them, and ate that, too. “Tit for tat, my lord,” she murmured. “Your bread, cheese and wine for my leg. A fair exchange? Say Yea—or Nay.”
Aware that his cousin Charles, eyes wide, was avidly watching this little scene, Drew hooded his own eyes, clasped the wrist of the hand which held the wine glass, now half empty, and putting his lips where hers had been, drank from it until all the wine was gone.
“Neither Yea nor Nay, madam, but half and half, and somehere in between. You shall not best me!”
“Nay, sir, but I must try. I am not Griselda.”
Oh, Bess knew that it was unwise to tease him so. But yet she must, and knowing little of the game of love, as yet untouched by a man’s hands or lips, for Tib and the others had worshipped her from afar, how was it that she knew how to drive a man to distraction?
For Bess had no doubt that that was what she was doing, and even as she led him on with one ploy her busy mind, obeying her body’s urgings, was driving her on to another. Some time in the future he would force a reckoning on her, she knew that, and her body throbbed at the very thought. But he was answering her and she must attend.
“Now, that I already know,” Drew murmured, “that you are not Griselda. But are you Mother Eve who has already tempted—and taken—a man to lie on your breast, so knowing are your arts?”
“I have no arts, husband, other than those which Mother Eve gave me when I was born. And no man has known me either. I am as untouched as Eve was when the Lord God took her from Adam’s side.”
Could he believe her, so frank and free was she? He was not to know that all of the Atherington household was watching their lady with the deepest astonishment. They had never seen her behave like this before. But then, she had never sat beside her husband before. Drew, trying to maintain his self-control, shrugged. He would pursue the matter of Tib, and his wife’s familiarity with him, in private.
“Leave that, wife,” he told her curtly. “We have other, more pressing matters, to discuss. After this meal is over we must have an accounting, you, your Council and myself. I shall be most interested to hear an explanation from you all as to why I was never informed of Sir Braithwaite’s incapacity.”
One thing was plain to Bess. For all his easy surface charm—and there was no denying it—her husband was like a determined terrier with a rat in his jaws who would never let go, however much he was distracted, when he had set his mind on obtaining an answer to something which puzzled him.
“Oh, I think that you are mistook over that, sir. These mistakes will happen, will they not?” And now it was Charles Breton, sitting on her left, who received her charming sidelong glance.
“Oh, aye, indeed,” returned Charles, with a humorous duck of his head. “Most like the letter was lost, either on its way to us, or perhaps, after it was received.”
“Very helpful of you, Charles,” commented Drew, his voice dry. “I scarcely think, though, that my wife needs your assistance in explaining away the odd circumstances which appear to surround Atherington’s affairs.”
Thus rebuked, Charles smiled and changed the subject. It would not do to provoke Drew so hard that he lost his temper. Drew scarcely ever did so, but he had been a rare sight on the few occasions when he had lost control of himself. He wondered what it could be that was disturbing his cousin so strongly. Knowing of Atherington’s stalwart Protestantism, he asked a question to which he thought Drew could make no objection.
“Are there are many gentry families around Charnwood, Lady Exford? I had heard in London that there were—and that a number of them held to the old Catholic faith.”
Even as Bess began to reply, Drew swung around sharply to watch her as she spoke. Charles, he was sure, had no knowledge of the real reason why he was visiting Leicestershire, and was therefore, unknowingly, doing him a favour by raising the matter. It would save him from needing to ask such a question himself. He listened with interest as Bess agreed that there were a large number of gentry families in the county, some of whom were Catholic.
“But not so many, I believe,” she ended, “as in Derbyshire, where the Babingtons, my distant relatives, who are settled at Dethick, still hold to the old Faith. Most living hereabouts, though, are Protestant.”
“And are those around Atherington mainly Protestant, and therefore loyal, madam?” asked Drew, apparently idly.
“Assuredly.” Bess answered him eagerly; she wanted him to know that there were no traitors in Leicestershire. “We are all, Catholic and Protestant alike, loyal subjects of our Queen.”
Drew knew this to be true in the main. There had been many plots against the Queen designed to assassinate her, and replace her by her imprisoned cousin, Mary, the Catholic Queen of Scots, but few English Catholics had been involved in them. They had mostly been hatched abroad. This lay behind Walsingham’s uneasiness over the reports he had received, for they seemed to hint at a purely English conspiracy—a most disturbing development.
Bess had, quite deliberately, spoken to be heard by all, not simply her husband, and as a result all heads had nodded in agreement when she had finished speaking. Her Comptroller, Walter Hampden, sitting not far from them, raised his goblet of wine and said, “With your permission, my Lord of Exford, I beg that on this auspicious day of your arrival we may all rise to toast, not only our good Queen Elizabeth, but the Protestant Faith.”
Drew rose and held his goblet high. “With all my heart, my good sir. I give you Good Queen Bess and the Protestant Faith. Drink up, I beg you.” He threw his handsome head back and drained his goblet to the lees.
The whole room echoed him, but Walter had not finished. He called on the servitor to refill his goblet, saying, “Again with your permission, my lord, I ask that the company may now be allowed to toast both you and your good lady, who has guarded Atherington’s interests so bravely on your behalf.”
Now, what could he say to that, but, “Most excellent and all good cheer to you, sir. I will allow your toast—but only if you will omit any salutation to me so that I may be allowed to drink to my lady wife also.”
A hum of delight ran round the table. Some of Atherington’s people, watching their new lord, had feared that he and his lady might be at odds, but such a statement cleared their minds of worry. As for Drew’s followers, including Charles, they were noting with some amusement that their master was using his notorious charm to win over his new subjects.
Bess, somewhat nonplussed by Drew’s apparent change of heart, smiled up at him as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek before he led the company in the toast to her. “Is this reconciliation, my lord? Or have you some other aim in mind?”
Oh, she was a clever minx, his wife! She did not trust him in the least—as he did not trust her. He whispered in her ear as he sat down again, “It is not to Atherington’s benefit for your people to think that we are out of humour with one another—even if we are. Smile, my lady wife, as I do—and thus we make our world happy. We may pursue our real ends when we are alone together.”
Alone together! The mere thought of it had Bess quailing inwardly. No doubt about it, he would be the terrier and she would be the rat. But if so, why, as well as fear, did she feel a strange exhilaration? It was as though she had never lived until she had met him. She was on fire—and knew not why. She only knew that her husband was looking at her strangely, his blue eyes growing larger and larger as they drew nearer and nearer to her.
Panic rose in Bess’s breast. She was sailing into unknown waters, a mariner lost in the steep Atlantic stream of which the poets wrote. To break his spell, deliberately woven, she was sure, to snare her, she turned away from him to see her great hound, Pompey, sitting up before one of the arras, his liquid eyes begging her to feed him.
“Oh, Pompey,” Bess exclaimed, “I have quite forgot you in this hubbub.” She snatched a gnawed beef bone from the great platter before her, turned and tossed it to him, anything to escape her husband’s compelling eyes. Pompey, snarling, leapt upon it, and laying it before her, began to worry at it.
“The hound which licked me yesterday, I suppose,” offered Drew smoothly, showing no sign that he had been thwarted in his desire to bend his wilful wife to his will. A line fit for a poet to use, he thought—so many meanings were there in it.
“Aye, husband, and a faithful one. He honoured you, for until yesterday he chose to like none but myself.”
The moment she had spoken she wished she had not made such an admission, for he pounced on it immediately. “An omen, think you, wife?”
Before Bess could answer him, Pompey picked up the bone, now meatless, and trotted over to lay it at Drew’s feet.
“Oh, traitor hound,” sighed Bess softly, “to transfer your affections with such speed.” As though he had understood what she said, Pompey rose, laid his head in her lap—and then promptly returned to worship at Drew’s feet again.
“They say,” remarked Bess, as platters of sweetmeats and sweet wine to drink with them were laid on the table before them, “that dogs can see into the true hearts of men and women. What does he see in yours, husband, I wonder? A pity he cannot tell me.” The eyes she turned on him were mirthful and artless.
Drew retaliated by plucking a small cake from the platter and popping it into her mouth, not his, so that she could not soon answer him.
“That for your silence, wife. He would say only that he approves of me—or that he knows his true master when he meets him. Nay, do not try to answer me with another witticism, for your well of wisdom will soon run dry if you draw on it too often!”
And now his eyes were mocking hers again, and the excitement which boiled inside Bess rose higher and higher. Did he know what he was doing to her? Of course, he did, and it was done with an end in view; to subdue her, to bend her to his mental as well as to his bodily will—for was not that seduction’s aim?
Unable to speak, Bess stared at him. He stared back. She swallowed, and the action set her long white throat working after a fashion, which, had she but known it, was seducing him.
Bess shivered. Suddenly she was frightened of the powerful attraction he had for her. Unused to the company of young men, let alone handsome and powerful young men, she had never learned those arts which women used, either to attract them, or dissuade them. So far Mother Eve had helped her, but she was approaching dangerous territory where that alone would not be sufficient to save her from him.
Save her! Almost hysterical laughter bubbled up inside Bess. Nothing could save her, for was he not her husband who might do as he pleased with her?
And would.
Any hope that he might be repelled by her as he had been ten years ago, and might not wish to touch her, let alone make love to her, had disappeared. It was difficult to know what he really thought of her—except, of course, that yesterday, not knowing who she was, he had addressed her in most flattering terms—and then tried to seduce her! But what did he think of her now that he knew that she was his wife?
And what did she truly want from him?
Bess swallowed again, and Drew looked away. Against everything which he might have expected as he had thought of this day on the way to Atherington, the wife he had delayed meeting for so long was rousing him simply by sitting beside him—and defying him! What had Philip Sidney once said to him? “There is more pleasure to be gained from a woman who can meet and match you, than in one who is meekly resigned to endure whatever you have to offer her.”
Drew grinned to himself. Philip should meet his wife. They would make a good pair. On second thoughts, perhaps not. He wanted this high-spirited termagant for himself to tame—and to test whether Philip was right in his assessment of the extra pleasure to be gained from mastering such a skittish filly. Except that Philip had not said mastering, he had said meeting.
“Silent, sir?” queried Bess who had just finished eating her extremely sticky sweetmeat. She was beginning to learn that in an untried maiden desire and fear went hand in hand. She had asked herself what she wanted from him, and the answer was, she did not yet know. But the desire to tease him, to see the blue eyes burn at her, was strong in her. For if she could provoke him, why, then she had power over him.
“I was thinking,” Drew announced, “of my friend Philip Sidney, who is a courtier, a scholar and a poet.”
“A paragon, then,” quipped Bess naughtily.
“Indeed,” returned Drew, who was beginning to realise how much he was enjoying this lengthy sparring match with her, carried out, as it was, in public. “He has a high regard for the capacities of women, which I assure you, is rare at the Court, or anywhere else in England for that matter.”
“No need to tell me that, sir. Although we here at Atherington are not so dismissive of women’s understanding.”
“So I see, wife, for it is plain that you have your Council eating out of your hand. I am curious to know how you have accomplished that.”
Bess was airy. This interminable meal was nearly at an end, and she was flown with good food and wine, and the exhilarating sensation of danger which surrounded her husband.
“Why, sir, that is easily done. One treats them as one treats Pompey, you understand. A little petting, good food, flattery—and the will to show them who is master here whenever it is necessary.”
Bess was immediately aware that this frivolous answer was an unwise one, but it had slipped out of her, and his answer, she was later to understand, was typical of him—for he took her meaning and embroidered upon it—as a good fencer may turn his opponent’s skill against him to secure a hit.
“Mistress,” he said softly, leaning forward to take her goblet of wine from her. “You mean mistress, not master—but I take your meaning, and I promise you I shall be very wary of you if you attempt to pet me, feed me, or flatter me—and then try to prove to me who is master here—or is it the other way round, lady, and you wish to be mistress?”
“Any way which you wish,” said Bess, full of good food, good wine and magnanimity, “for you have the right of it—seeing that Atherington now has a master, as well as a mistress. Be brief in your answer, sir, I see that the feast is over, and Gilbert is unsure which of us should rise to say so.”
Drew laughed, and the sound of it echoed in one of those strange silences which often fall in the company of men and women assembled together. He took her hand and urged her to her feet.
“My friends,” he announced. “We have eaten well. My wife and I bid you adjourn to the Great Parlour where I am told that musicians are assembled to play to us as we recover from the pleasures of the feast. Lead on, Gilbert, and let the company follow us.”
Chapter Five
Be damned to it! Drew had spent the whole afternoon with his wife and her Council, he and his Comptrollers examining books, papers and accounts, and at the end of it none of them could discover anything untoward with which she and they might be reproached. On the contrary, it appeared that Atherington was being more efficiently run than any of Drew’s other estates.
His lawyer and principal man of business, John Masters, had been particularly severe in his questioning, especially over the matter of Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, but he could not shake the men before him. They stoutly maintained that m’lord had been sent all proper and pertinent details of his illness and their response to it, and it was not their fault if matters had gone awry at the other end.
Bess had said little, Drew noted glumly, leaving her advisers to speak for her. She had intervened only on one occasion when Masters had complained that some vital accounts relating to the sinking of new coalpits near Bardon Hill had been lost.
Before Walter Hampden could answer she had said, “Oh, I ordered that a new book should be opened in another name, so that what was going into and out of the pit in terms of money should be clearly distinct from our other affairs. I believe it to be in the small pile before you. It is the new one in the blue cover.”
So it was, and John Masters was left to retreat as gracefully as he could, to his own and Drew’s annoyance. Was there no way in which he could turn the tables on the wench? He had hoped that all the food and drink which she had consumed at the banquet would have made her sleepy, but no such thing.
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