Praise for the author

ANNE

O’BRIEN

‘An absolutely gripping tale that is both superbly written and meticulously researched’

—The Sun

‘The characters are larger than life…and the author a compulsive storyteller. A little fictional embroidery has been worked into history, but the bones of the book are true.’

—Sunday Express

‘This book has everything–royalty, scandal, fascinating historical politics and, ultimately, the shaping of the woman who founded the Tudors.’

—Cosmopolitan

‘O’Brien has excellent control over the historical material and a rich sense of characterisation, making for a fascinating and surprisingly female-focused look at one of the most turbulent periods of English history.’

—Publishers Weekly

‘Better than Philippa Gregory’

—The Bookseller

‘Another excellent read from the ever-reliable Anne O’Brien. Strong characters and a great setting make this highly recommended.’

—The Bookbag

‘Anne O’Brien is fast becoming one of Britain’s most popular and talented writers of medieval novels. ’

—Lancashire Evening Post

‘A must-read for any historical fiction fan’

—The Examiner

‘Brings the origins of the most famous royal dynasty to vibrant life’

—Candis

‘I was keen to see if this book…lived up to the hype— which it did.’

—Woman

Also by

ANNE O’BRIEN

THE SHADOW QUEEN

THE QUEEN’S CHOICE

THE KING’S SISTER

THE SCANDALOUS DUCHESS

THE FORBIDDEN QUEEN

THE KING’S CONCUBINE

DEVIL’S CONSORT

VIRGIN WIDOW

The Scandalous Duchess
Anne O’Brien

ISBN: 978-1-472-01039-1

THE SCANDALOUS DUCHESS

© 2014 Anne O’Brien

Published in Great Britain 2014

by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

Version: 2018-02-07

To George, who for a whole year tolerated having to play second fiddle to John of Lancaster, but knows that he always remains my hero.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All my thanks to my agent, Jane Judd, whose love of history is as strong as my own. Her support and encouragement for me and the courageous women of the Middle Ages continues to be invaluable.

To Sally Williamson at HQ whose empathy with what I wish to say about my characters is beyond price. To her and to all the staff at HQ, without whose advice and professional commitment the real Katherine Swynford would never have emerged from the mists of the past.

To Helen Bowden and all at Orphans Press, without whom my website would not exist and who create professional masterpieces out of the rough drafts of genealogy and maps I push in their direction.

‘…he [John, Duke of Lancaster] was blinded by desire, fearing neither God nor shame amongst men.’

Knighton’s Chronicle 1337-1396

‘…a she-devil and enchantress…’

The Anonimalle Chronicle 1333-1381

‘…an unspeakable concubine…’

Thomas Walsingham’s Chronicon Angliae

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise

Also by ANNE O’BRIEN

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Extract

AUTHOR NOTE

Read all about it…

MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

About the Publisher

Prologue

January 1372: The Manor of Kettlethorpe, Lincolnshire

The water that had swamped the courtyard overnight, thanks to a sudden storm, soaked into my shoes. And then my stockings. I hitched my skirts, scowling at the floating debris around me. Even the chickens, isolated on a pile of wood in the corner, looked morose.

‘Who left that harness out?’ I demanded, seeing the coils of leather black and dripping on the hook beside the stable door. My servants, few as they were, had gone to ground, and since nothing could be done until the rain actually stopped, I squelched under cover again.

Kettlethorpe. My young son’s inheritance, and a poor one at that. The burden of it, since my husband’s recent death and the administration of the estate not yet settled, fell on my shoulders. I flexed them, my sodden, mud-daubed cloak lying unpleasantly around my throat. The shadow of a lively rodent caught my eye as it vanished behind the buttery screen.

‘What do I do?’ I asked aloud, then winced at the crack of despair in my voice.

There was no one to give me advice.

I imagined what Queen Philippa might have said to me. Raised by her, educated by her at the English court, the wife of King Edward the Third had been my model of perfect womanhood: a woman without physical comeliness, but with a beauty of soul that outmatched any I knew.

‘Duty, Katherine!’ she would have said. ‘It is for you to carry the burdens. You are twenty-two years old and Lady of Kettlethorpe. When you wed Sir Hugh Swynford you took on the responsibility of your position. You will not abandon it when your feet are wet and rats scurry around your ankles. That is not how I raised you. You have the tenacity to make something of Kettlethorpe, and you will.’

I sighed, the tenacity at a low ebb, even though I admitted the truth of her knowledge of me. No, of course I would not abandon it. That was not my way, for the Queen’s principles had been lodged firmly in my heart. What I did not have was the financial resource to improve my lot.

Despondent, I stepped to the centre of my hall where a fire burned with smouldering reluctance, and turned slowly round, pushing my hood back to my shoulders. The walls were running wet in places. The haze of smoke that never cleared tainted everything with acrid stench, for which there was no remedy that I could afford. I could not even think of installing a wall chimney.

‘God will give you his grace, and the Virgin her compassion. Go to your prie-dieu, Katherine.’ Queen Philippa again, framing my face with her hands as she imparted to me her own rigorous strength.

Certainly I would go to my knees before this day was out—was not the Blessed Virgin my solace in all adversity? But on this occasion I needed coin as much as the Virgin’s blessings. I rubbed my hands together, regretting the abrasions, the ugly burn on my wrist where one of the torches, flaring, had caught me unawares. Once my hands had been soft, my nails perfectly pared. Once my gown pleased me with the soft rustle of silk damask rather than the roughness of this coarse wool, the only cloth fit for the tasks that fell to me. Silk skirts did not sit well with wringing the neck of a scrawny fowl for dinner.

I sighed a little.

Once I had been honoured, chosen as a damsel in Duchess Blanche of Lancaster’s household. I covered my face with my hands, shutting out the images of that pampered life of luxury at The Savoy Palace, for here, around me, was the reality of my present existence. At The Savoy I never had to sweep up the evidence left by a pair of doves roosting in the rafters overnight and now shuffling into wakefulness. Now I clapped my hands, frightening them into flight and further fouling of the floor.

There was one remedy, of course, to all this destitution. Duchess Blanche was dead these past three years, but the Duke had a new wife. Would there not be a place for me there, where I might earn enough to put all to rights? Where I might, in ducal employ once again, acquire sufficient money to ensure a better home for my son to inherit?

Why not? Why should I not return to the world I knew and loved? Surely, given my previous experience, there was some role that I could fulfil. Queen Philippa would have sanctioned it as an eminently practical decision for me to make in the circumstances.

I flapped my hands to disperse the smoke and a few downy feathers that still hung in the air and marched across to the stairs, to climb to my private chamber where I cast aside the heavy cloak. Lifting the lid of my coffer, I sifted through the layers of court dress, the fragile cloth sadly marked with moth and mildew however careful my attention with lavender and sage leaves, and lifted out a much treasured mirror. Opening the ivory case, dull with disuse, I wiped the moisture from the glass on my bodice and looked.

I pursed my lips.

‘Who are you, Katherine de Roet?’ I asked.

Katherine de Swynford now, of course, married and widowed. Suddenly distracted, I turned my head. Children’s voices, raised in sharp complaint, sliced through the silence, but then dissolved into laughter, and I returned to my critical survey. I considered my hair, tightly braided and pinned, dark gold with damp, and dishevelled where the pins had come adrift under my hood. Darker brows took my eye. Once I might have plucked them into perfection, but no more. A rounded face, with soft cheeks and soft lips, a little indented at the corners with my present excess of emotion. A generous mouth, quick to smile, yet any softness there was belied by a direct stare. I raised my brows a little. No one would accuse me of shyness nor, brought up as I was in the strictest canons of propriety, of frivolity, yet I enjoyed all the comfort that wealth and consequence could bring, and to which I no longer had access.

And I wished with all my heart that I enjoyed that consequence again.

It was not a plain face that looked back at me. True, such enhancements as I might have worn at court were entirely absent. Indeed, it could have been, I decided, the face of one of my kitchen maids with that suspicion of dust along the edge of my jaw where I had rubbed at it with my sleeve. The mirror was misted again, and I polished it on my hip. They said I was beautiful. That I had the look of my late mother whom I had never known. Perhaps I was, although I thought my sister had more claims to beauty than I.

What was I looking for? What had driven me to resort to my mirror? Not the symmetry of my features, but to discover the woman behind them. I tilted my chin, considering what I might see.

Honesty, I hoped. Courage, to seize the opportunity to make more of my life. Not least a determination to live as I had been raised, with integrity and good judgement. That was what I hoped to see.

And perhaps I did see it, as well as the duty to my family name and honour to the Blessed Virgin that had marked every step of my life.

So I would go to The Savoy. I would petition the Duke in the name of my previous service to Duchess Blanche, accepting that I must relinquish my pride for I had a goodly measure of it—but I would do it, for my own sake as well as that of my children. If honesty was strong in me, I must accept that life in a desolate fastness, stretching out changelessly to the end of my days, filled me with dismay, whereas life within the royal court and ducal household with friends from the past beckoned with seductive fingers.

I smiled at the prospect, yet felt my pleasure fade. Replacing the mirror in my coffer, sifting through the words that had slipped through my mind, my heart fell a little at the sheer weight of them. Integrity. Restraint. Respectability. That was to be my life. That was what I knew. I would conduct myself as a respectable widow, unless I was fortunate, one day, to wed again. Queen Philippa would be proud of my strength of will to accomplish it.

My hands, in the act of closing my coffer, paused on the open lid of it, as if reluctant to shut away that reflection of the woman behind the familiar features. How dull, how colourless my chosen life sounded, as even-textured and familiarly unexciting as a line of plainchant. And how prim and prudish the woman who would live it. Was this me? Was this really what I wanted? It was as if I had decided to exist in shades of black and grey and religious observance, when energy, with sly enthusiasm, was surging though my whole body, opening up pictures in my mind of how it would be to sing and dance again, to be courted, to flirt, to exchange kisses in the company of a handsome man who desired me.

Perhaps this was the real Katherine de Swynford, lively and frivolous, thoroughly pleasure-loving, rather than a staid widow who looked for nothing in life but allowing the beads of her rosary to slide through her fingers as she petitioned the Virgin’s grace for herself and her children. The sheer thrill of returning to The Savoy, to a position in the Lancaster household, glowed even brighter in my mind.

And then, as if summoned by my delight, there was the image of the Duke of Lancaster himself, standing in my chamber with the light behind him, as clear as if he were really there, as the sun creates a fantasy when shining through raindrops.

Impressively tall. Impressively proud. Impressively everything.

I considered him in my mind’s eye: Duke John of Lancaster, a man I had known all my life, a man whom I admired. Admired. Yes—that was it, for was it not admiration? A man of wealth and power and striking appearance, the Duke attracted high regard and vilification in equal measure from those who crossed his path. Would I wish to live once again within his forceful presence? Well, why should I not? I might be overawed, overwhelmed by the extent of his authority and the sheer magnetism of his charisma, but I knew him for a man of unfailing chivalry too. He would not cast me adrift. Returning to The Savoy held no fears for me.

Opening my eyes, finding the bright image dispelled, I closed the coffer and locked it, before walking to my open door with a light heart despite my wet stockings, and called down the stairs to my steward.

‘Master Ingoldsby! A moment of your time, if you will.’

And enjoyed a shiver of excitement, such as I had not experienced for too long. I had more important tasks for my steward to supervise than sweeping up after my doves. I was going to The Savoy.

I realised that I was smiling again.

Chapter One

January 1372: The Savoy Palace, London

It was like a proclamation of royal decree. A command complete with banners, heralds and fanfare. Every muscle in my body tightened, my breath whistled in my throat on a sharp inhalation, and I was no longer smiling. I was not smiling at all.

His voice was impeccably courteous, but the words he uttered sliced through all the bother that had occupied my mind for the past two months with the precision of a rapier. I could not believe what he had just said to me. This Plantagenet prince, so unconsciously dramatic on this winter’s morning, had just carelessly shaken the ground on which I stood.

Yet was he carelessly unthinking? I looked at his face, to find his gaze direct and deliberate, enough to cause an awareness to run along my spine. No, he was not thoughtless at all. He had uttered exactly the notion that had come into his mind.

For my part, I had not foreseen any outcome of this nature. How would I?

And no, it was not like a rapier thrust at all, which would be clean and sharp and precise. This was more like a blast of hellfire. All my previous worries, trivial and domestic as they were now presented to me, all my confidence in my ability to cloak my thoughts in careful restraint, paled into insignificance beside the inherent danger in those chosen words, cast at my feet like a handful of baleful gems.

Cast there by John Plantagenet, royal prince, Duke of Lancaster.

My audience with the Duke, until this verbal cataclysm, had been much as I expected, as I had hoped. He welcomed me with all his customary grace. Had we not been acquainted for many years, since I had been raised from my days as a very youthful Katherine de Roet in the household of Queen Philippa, his lady mother? Our paths had crossed; we had shared meals and festivities. I had been a member of the royal household, held in high regard and affection, both as a child and as damsel to the Duke’s wife, Duchess Blanche. I was assured that whatever the outcome of my plea, the Duke would put me at my ease.

I rose from that first deeply formal curtsy when he had entered his audience chamber. Eyes downcast, breath shallow with nerves—for however well regarded I might be, if he refused I did not know where I would apply for succour—I made my request. It was hard to ask for charity, however gracious and generous the reputation of the benefactor.

‘Lady Katherine.’

‘Yes, my lord. I am grateful.’

His soft boots, the edge, gold-embroidered and exquisitely dagged, of his thigh-length robe, appropriate for some court function in heavily figured damask, came within the range of my vision, and I glanced up, momentarily alerted by a rough timbre in his speaking my name. Nor was the Duke’s expression any more encouraging. His straight brows were level, hinting at a frown, his lips tight-pressed, causing my heart to flutter against my ribs. He was going to refuse me after all. There was no position for me here. By tomorrow I would be back on the road to the fasts of Lincolnshire with nothing to show for my long journey. He would tell me kindly, but he would refuse me.

But then, as he caught some anxiety in my expression, he was smiling.

‘Don’t look so anxious, Lady Katherine. You never used to. Did you think I would turn you from my door?’

The roughness was smoothed away as he touched my arm, a fleeting pressure. My heart’s flutter became a thud.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ I murmured.

‘I cannot express my sadness for your husband’s death.’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ I repeated.

There was nothing else for me to say that would not overwhelm me with one difficult emotion or another. My husband was dead a mere two months, somewhere in the battlefields of Aquitaine.

‘I valued Sir Hugh’s services greatly.’ The Duke paused. ‘And yours have been inestimable. For you, Katherine,’ he lapsed into the more familiar, abandoning the title that had come with my marriage, ‘there will always be a position here.’ And then, with gentleness: ‘Your place in the Duchess Blanche’s household earned you great merit. You must come to us again.’

Relief spread through me, sweet as honey. I sighed imperceptibly. All the fears that had pinioned my mind in recent weeks so that I could not think, could not plan, could not envisage the future, fell away. I would no longer be dependent on the limited revenues from the Swynford estates at Kettlethorpe and Coleby. I would have money to spend on critical refurbishments. My children would lack for nothing.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ I said for the third time in as many minutes. I seemed to have lost the capacity to form any other response, and for a moment I was touched with a pale amusement. I had not been known for lack of conversation. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I cannot tell you how much that will mean to me.’

‘Is Kettlethorpe very bad?’ he asked. He knew my situation.

‘You have no idea, my lord.’

And with the relief I raised my eyes to his, to discover that he was watching me closely, so that I felt the blood rise to heat my cheeks, and my relief became overlaid with a layer of uncertainty. Perhaps he was waiting for a more effusive sign of my gratitude. After all, I had no claim on him, no tie of duty or blood. Some would say he had done quite enough for me and my family.

Could it be that he thought me unfit for the position I sought? Damsels in royal households were chosen for their elegance and beauty as much as for their practical skills, women worthy in appearance and demeanour to serve the lady. I had done my best. My dark robes were as fine as I could make them, with no remnant of Lincolnshire mud. As for my hands and face, all that could be seen in the all-enveloping shrouding, I had applied the contents of my stillroom with fervour to remedy the effect of Kettlethorpe’s demands. I did not think the Duke would judge me too harshly, knowing my circumstances. And yet his eye had the fierce focus of a raptor.

To deflect the appraisal I launched into what I thought he wanted from me.

‘I cannot express my thanks enough, my lord. I feared for my children, living in hardship. I thought I should not come to you, because although I no longer have a claim on your generosity, Hugh was in your service, and you were good enough to stand godfather to my daughter Blanche. I knew that you would want Hugh’s son, Thomas, to do well in the world, and before God, there is little to give him anything but the most slender of incomes from the Swynford estates. Thomas is still so young and I have not the experience to manage the land well—or the money to do it, of course…’

My words dried. A minute ago I had been impossibly tongue-tied: now I was ridiculously garrulous. Had he not said that he would employ me? My problems were at an end and I could be at peace, but my heart continued to bound like a squirrel caught in a trap as the huntsman approached with a predatory gleam in his eye.

I thought that there might be such a gleam in the royal Duke’s eye, then chided myself. Most likely it was nothing but a shaft of light through the glazed windows, or simply amusement at my lapse into trivialities.

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ I found myself saying yet again. His reply was plain. ‘You have asked pardon enough, my lady. You did right to come to me. I will arrange that you take up a position as damsel in my wife’s household.’

He hesitated, the pause drawing out to fill the room. There was no doubt that he was frowning. Apprehension built again, a wad of sheep’s wool to dry my throat.

‘No,’ he said. The harshness of his tone unnerved me. ‘That is not what I want…’ And stretching out a hand towards me, he added: ‘I had forgotten how very beautiful you are. Your face has a grace, a translucent loveliness beyond my recall. And if you deigned to smile at me once in a while, it would illuminate every corner of the room.’

Which robbed me of the ability either to smile or to make any coherent response at all. Not understanding why the Duke should flatter me so highly—or was it flattery?—simply hearing the denial of what he had offered barely a minute ago, I took an uneasy step back, rejecting the thought that he might actually expect me to place my hand in his, and replied to the least shocking part of his speech.

‘Forgive me for being importunate, my lord.’ I forced my voice to remain uninflected. ‘I should leave. Until you have decided where I might be of service. Perhaps at some point in the future. I am sure that with the coming of drier weather in spring the problems of Kettlethorpe will not seem so overwhelming.’

I closed my lips, angry that I had been drawn into such a show of weakness. I would not beg. I would not make more excuses. It not being in my nature to ask again where I had been refused, I curtsied, a brisk farewell. ‘I am grateful that you received me, my lord.’ I turned to walk towards the door, pondering at this strange outcome. The Duke did not have the name for being a man who played fast and loose with the sensibilities of his dependents.

‘Don’t leave, Katherine.’

It was not a request. Suddenly it was very personal, and I halted.

‘Don’t go.’

I looked back over my shoulder but did not turn, my soul thought to depart from that room and the humiliating refusal he had just handed to me.

‘But you said that you did not wish to arrange a position for me, my lord.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Then what do you want, my lord?’

An inappropriately peremptory question perhaps, but by now I admitted to profound irritation. His dark hair might lay feathered against brow and cheek, curling immaculately against his neck; his elegant figure might express the epitome of earthly authority; he might be the proudest man I knew; yet he was still a man, prone to strange moments of inconsistency. And, as if to prove me right, he spoke the words that undermined every tenet I had been raised to honour.

‘I don’t want you as governess to my children. I don’t want you as damsel for my wife. I want you. I want you for my own.’

He did not attempt to moderate his voice to any degree, a voice used to issuing commands on a battlefield, in the cut and thrust of Parliament or in fiery debate with merchants over the extortionate level of taxes. The words reached me, with perfect clarity in their meaning.

‘I want you, Lady Katherine de Swynford.’

Now, slowly, every sense suspended in shock, I turned to face him, unable to lower my gaze from his.

‘I want you.’ He strode forward, and before I could thrust them behind my back he had clasped my hands in his. ‘Do you understand what I am saying? I want to kiss you, and I don’t mean a formal salute to your undoubtedly pretty fingertips.’ Which he instantly executed with neat precision. ‘I want to take you to my bed.’

Those fingertips lay nerveless in his clasp, my lips parted, but no words issued. Every sense, every feeling, seemed to be frozen in shock. In outrage when he raised one hand as if he would touch my cheek. I stiffened, anticipating what must surely be a caress. Then he simply ran his fingers along the edge of my veil, putting to rights its elegant fall. And I exhaled slowly, until he demanded:

‘I think you are not averse to me?’ He made of it a question. ‘Katherine…’ There was the exhalation, the familiar impatience that I recognised so well, but his voice and face were as smooth as the silk I had once worn, as I had hoped to wear again. ‘Will you come to me? You are a widow, owing loyalty to no man. You are without a protector. Will you give yourself into my keeping and allow me the honour of being your lover?’

Now I looked at him in sheer disbelief. John of Lancaster, the perfect knight, the most honourable and chivalrous of King Edward the Third’s sons, newly wed to Constanza of Castile a matter of months ago. And I, at twenty-two years widowed and of good repute, raised by his royal mother to uphold all the precepts of piety and virtuous dignity. And he was asking me if I would be his leman.

‘You stir my loins, Katherine de Swynford.’

Well, that pronouncement I could not mistake. The words slammed into my understanding. Was the Duke exerting some droit de seigneur, demanding my compliance? I did not wait the length of a breath to consider and select a reply; there was only one word I could say.

‘No.’ It was as flat a denial as I could summon.

‘Is that a considered refusal?’

‘Yes. My answer is no.’

‘Why not?’

I flushed. His brows indicated that he was surprised. ‘No,’ I repeated. ‘I don’t need to consider it.’ And bracing myself, for John of Lancaster had a chancy temper, I added, in case he had not taken my meaning: ‘My answer is without qualification. No, my lord, I will not. How could you ask it of me?’ I tugged my hands from his, thinking that perhaps I should escape before the torrent was released.

It was too late.

The Plantagenet prince lifted his chin as if he could not envisage a refusal, and then as I tensed against the verbal assault that would assuredly fall on my head, he gave a shout of laughter that reverberated from the walls.

Which was inexplicable. Was he mocking me? I bridled.

‘I see nothing to laugh at,’ I remarked coldly.

On which he stopped to draw in a breath, his eyes still gleaming with whatever it was that had moved him to a show of mirth.

‘You have a way with words, Lady Katherine.’

‘Because I said no?’

‘Exactly. I could not possibly mistake your sentiments, could I?’ He seized my hand again, and before I could stop him, saluted my fingers with a perfect propriety, at the same time as he executed a courtly bow.

‘I will have to make do with that after all,’ he observed, running his thumb across my fingertips.

‘And that is all I will offer you, my lord,’ I responded. That my hand tingled was not to be considered.

The Duke laughed again, but briefly. Whatever humour he had discovered in my predicament, or his own, had fled.

‘It seems that I have been too previous in my request. Now it is my turn to ask pardon. Forgive my insensitivity.’ He paused, his expression grave, the tendons of his jaw stark. And then a gleam appeared in his eye as he added: ‘But I should warn you, Lady Katherine. I will not be denied. It is not in my nature to accept so determined a rebuttal.’

And as he strode from the audience chamber, as his footsteps faded, as he crossed the antechamber beyond and took the stairs to the upper floor, I was left to wonder if I had imagined the whole unnerving incident. But when I heard his final parting shot, delivered to me and echoing from the well of the stairs, there could be no denying his meaning. There was no misinterpretation on my part of the whole of that inexplicable episode. His final words, which had floated back to me as clearly as if he had been standing in the room, had been quite as unambiguous as all the rest.

I sank down where he had left me, onto a stool that had been pushed with its companion against one of the walls. Hands clasped together, so tightly that my knuckles showed white against my dark skirts, I stared at the tapestry on the facing wall, a masterpiece in silk and wool.

Of all the tapestries in the superbly appointed Savoy palace, why did it have to be this one, with its frivolous portrayal of courtly love, a lady and her lover languishing in a field of blossoms beneath a flowering tree, while silky rabbits frolicked at their feet. He held a hawk on his fist; her arms were entwined around his neck, her hair mingling with his as he reclined in her arms. His stitched eyes were admiring; her red lips were full of longing. I imagined they were not wed, or in any way concerned about the sinfulness of their relationship. They looked untrammelled by any pious demands on their virtuous behaviour.

‘I wager you would share your lover’s bed without any holy water sprinkled over you,’ I informed the red-haired wanton, crossly.

I thought that she smirked as I imagined her reply. ‘And would you be prepared to languish in the arms of a lover, Katherine de Swynford?’

I most certainly would not. I was no Alice Perrers, infamous royal mistress, who shared the King’s bed with bold impunity, careless of the vilification. My behaviour must be beyond criticism. I must be able to kneel at my prie-dieu or before my priest with a clean heart. How could the Duke have so demeaned himself, and me, to offer me such an outrageous position? I was no wanton.

I want to kiss you.

He had had the temerity to make such a request of me, clad as I was in full widow’s weeds from chin to toe to indicate my deepest mourning. If my dark robes had not heralded my state to the whole world, the all-enclosing wimple and long veil should have been as obvious as a slap in the face to any man with ulterior motives. I was no loose harlot, willing to accept any position offered at court to secure my future comforts.

Flexing my fingers, I smoothed the black cloth over my knees. Hugh had been dead so short a time, struck down in the Duke’s own service in Aquitaine. Did the Duke think I would soil my husband’s memory by leaping into his bed—or that of any man—at the first opportunity? I could not comprehend any action of mine in the past to give him the opinion that I would care so little for my reputation, or for God’s judgement on what would be a blatant act of adultery.

Adultery.

The harsh judgement shivered over me and as my outrage built, I pondered all I knew of the Duke. A prince with a reputation for high-minded courtesy and chivalry, he had adored his first wife, Blanche, and was plunged into desolation by her untimely death three years before. He would never have strayed from her side. And now he had a new wife, a marriage of three months’ standing, and the prospect of a new child and a new kingdom to rule if he could enforce Constanza’s claim to Castile in his own right. A man of ambition, the Duke would do nothing to jeopardise the authority in that distant kingdom if he wore its crown. He would not take a mistress within three months of bedding a new wife.

It was all beyond sense. The Duke of Lancaster was not the mindlessly pretty, disreputable young man of the tapestry whose sole concern was dalliance.

And yet, at the same time I was forced to acknowledge that the puissant Duke of Lancaster, raised in royal indulgence from his cradle, was the possessor of a will as strong as cold steel. I will not be denied, he had said. It is not in my nature to accept so determined a rebuttal.

It was an uncomfortable thought.

And my next proved to be an even more disconcerting companion.

Was the fault mine? Had I, however inadvertently, however cleverly cautious I had considered myself to be, encouraged the Duke to think that I would welcome so impious a request? I could not imagine that I had dropped so careless a word, made so flirtatious a gesture, just as I was certain that I had never led him to believe that I would step so far beyond seemly behaviour. Inappropriate desires and longings, even if I had them, were to be held under restraint and confessed only before the priest.

I cast my mind back over the three years since I had left the household on Duchess Blanche’s death, when we had all been deluged in mourning black, overwrought with grief. The only occasion on which I had seen the Duke was two years ago at the interment of Queen Philippa in Westminster Abbey, when he had pinned a mourning brooch to my bodice. Hardly an occasion for unseemly flirtation.

So perhaps I had misconstrued the whole of the past hour, making my present tumbling concerns entirely irrelevant. But of course, I had not misconstrued it. I would have been witless to put a wrong interpretation on his parting shot

And I don’t like you in widow’s weeds, he had informed me from a distance. They don’t become you. If I were your lover I would clothe you in silk and cloth of gold.

No, I was under no delusion about that: so intimate, so personal a comment on how I looked, what I wore and how he would remedy it. What right had he, when custom demanded that I wear mourning for a year? Vanity—assuredly a sin—lit a little flame of anger, as I spread out my skirts, disliking the weight of them in the voluminous amount of material, fretting that my wimple and veils leached colour from my skin. I knew I did not look my best, and was woman enough to regret it.

But how dare he remark on it?

And why had he laughed at my refusal?

I was furiously unsettled, for my future was still dependent on the Duke. He had not yet made an answer to my request. Had he changed his mind entirely in the face of my flat rejection?

With a swish of my hated widow’s weeds I turned my back on the couple deliriously in love, wishing the smug lover buried under his blossoms, and strode off to return to normality and the company of those I knew, a household for whom I had a deep affection. A good bout of common sense and feminine gossip would do the trick. As for the lovers, the cunning rabbits would soon eat up the blossoms—and then where would they be?

I made my way to the royal nurseries.

Feeling an urge to knock on a door that I would once have walked through without a second thought, I resisted. Opening it, I walked through. How familiar the scene was: nurse and chambermaid, governess and damsel and sempstress, all intent on the burden of care of the three precious Lancaster children. Once as damsel to Duchess Blanche I had been one of this number, and would wish to be so again. There, at their lessons, were three little girls, two of them with royal blood, all much grown since I last set eyes on them: the ducal daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth at eleven and eight years, eyes trained seriously on their psalters—although it had to be said that Philippa showed more concentration than her sister who cradled a tabby kitten on her lap—while Henry—how he had grown!—all of four years old now, stood at the side of a lady who was engaged in explaining to him the illustrations in a book. And then there was the third little girl, whose age I knew precisely…

For a moment I simply stood and watched the scene in all its busyness, my heart so overburdened with love that tears welled. It had been an emotional day, one way or another. I swallowed and took another step.

‘Good day, my lady.’

I curtsied.

The lady with the book looked up, expression arrested between irritation and then gradual recognition. The book was slowly closed and placed out of Henry’s reach. The lady exhaled slowly.

‘Katherine, as I live and breathe…’

Which caused me to smile, it being a well-recognised expression on Lady Alice’s lips, whilst Alyne, wife of Edward Gerberge, one of the Duke’s squires, surged across the room towards me. It brought all eyes to my face in a mix of pleasure and curiosity. Philippa smiled. Elizabeth barely remembered me, Henry certainly did not. As for the other child…

My eyes on the little girl’s bright face, I curtsied again to Lady Alice. ‘My lady, forgive my intrusion.’

‘Nonsense!’

Lady Alice was on her feet, and then I was enclosed in female arms, patted and fussed over, Alyne relieving me of my cloak and gloves, before both found the words to commiserate.

‘I recall the day you were wed,’ Lady Alice said and sighed. ‘Hugh was a good man—and I expect a good husband to you. But for the wife of a professional soldier, life can be very difficult.’

And I found that, prompted by such solicitous expressions, I was weeping at last, for Hugh and for myself.

‘Forgive me, Lady Alice…’ I could not seem to stop the tears falling endlessly, all the tears I had been unable to shed.

Alice FitzAlan, Lady Wake, merely poured a cup of ale and, as Alyne wiped away my tears, pushed me to sit in her own chair, handed me the ale and dissuaded Henry, gently but deliberately, from climbing into my lap.

At last I laughed and sniffed, but my eyes were for the third little girl who had come to stand at my knee, her hand now grasping my skirts. She was seven years old, almost eight now. I knew exactly, for this was Blanche, my eldest daughter, honoured with the position of damsel to the Duke’s daughters. My lovely Blanche, named for the Duchess in whose service I had been when she was born.

Abandoning the cup of ale, I swept her up in my arms and kissed her.

‘My daughter,’ I said, touching her face. ‘My little Blanche—not so little now. Have you forgotten me?’

For a moment she hesitated, as if reflecting on the matter in her solemn way, then Blanche buried her face against my neck. My tears threatened to begin all over again.

‘She is a credit to you,’ Lady Alice remarked in her cool manner.

‘One day she will marry well,’ Alyne added. ‘She is very pretty, like her mother.’

I took Blanche’s face between my hands, kissing her cheeks, tucking away her curls beneath her linen cap. It was true she looked like me. Her hair was the same rich burnished gold as mine, the colour of autumn wheat ripened under a hot sun, but her features still had the soft unformed edges of childhood.

‘And can you read and write yet?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, madam,’ she replied with quaint confidence. Then reached up to whisper in my ear: ‘Better than the Lady Elizabeth. She does not try. She likes the kitten more.’

For a moment it surprised me, that Hugh’s death seemed not to have touched her to any degree, but then she has seen so little of him in her short life. She would barely recall him, and on this day of our happy reunion I would not burden her with his death.

‘Damsels should not tell tales about their mistresses,’ I whispered back.

‘I know that!’ she replied, her clear voice ringing out. ‘But it is true. It is not a secret.’

I hid my smile

‘Is that true, Elizabeth?’ I asked. ‘That you do not work hard at your lessons?’

Elizabeth considered me. ‘Sometimes I do. I have learned to dance and sing.’ There was a roguish twinkle in her eye—when had she acquired that? And she promptly demonstrated by tucking the kitten under her arm and executing a succession of childishly uncoordinated steps across the room to my side. But one day she would be elegant.

‘And you, Philippa?’ I asked.

‘I always do my best,’ she assured me, smiling so that her face lit as if with a candle within. She would be beautiful one day. ‘You are right welcome, Lady Katherine. We have missed you here. If you returned to us, Elizabeth would mind her books again.’

I laughed, all my tears and previous anger forgotten. I had come home. It was good to laugh again

‘Will you return to us?’ Alyne asked. ‘Now that you are alone?’

‘I had hoped so,’ I replied uncertainly.

‘Have you spoken with Lord John?’ Lady Alice asked.

‘Yes.’ I could feel my cheeks heat, and attempted to hide it by kissing Blanche’s still-escaping curls.

‘The income from Kettlethorpe was never great,’ Lady Alice mused.

‘No, and it’s no better now,’ I admitted with a sigh. ‘And without Hugh’s soldiering…’

‘Lord John will be generous.’ Lady Alice patted my hand as if I were one of her charges.

I was not so sure. I had refused what he had offered me, out of hand, generous or no. And if my present companions knew what that offer had been, they would not now be welcoming me back like a long-lost sister. Lady Alice, governess to the ducal children, was cousin to the Duke and a lady of high principle, strong on morality, firm on good manners. I suspected that she would banish me from the room, if not from The Savoy.

It behoved me to keep my own council.

Chapter Two

There was a commotion at the door, an exchange of words in male accents, and then the Duke entered the chamber where, on the morning following my arrival at The Savoy, the children learned their catechism, Lady Alice cast her eagle eye over all and I stitched at a length of linen in the window embrasure. His immediate awareness of me, conspicuous in his glance alighting on my face, made my belly clench and my heart thump beneath the mourning black that he did not like. It was in my cowardly mind to keep my eye on my work, as if stitching the border of an altar cloth would save me from humiliation.

Would he offer me the position I needed? Or would he continue to pursue the startling proposal of the previous day?

Not in public, he won’t, I castigated myself. You are a fool, Katherine!

And indeed there was no need for my fears for it became self-evident, as his regard moved rapidly on from me to the other occupants of the room, that my worries were not his priority.

This morning there were matters of higher business to attend to. The Duke was uncharacteristically brusque, with a line between his brows, even though he found time to smile at the children, kiss the cheek of Philippa and Elizabeth and brush his hand over Henry’s already tousled hair. The smile was, it had to be said, a bleak affair. I rose to my feet, putting aside the sewing, and, with Lady Alice and Alyne, made the requisite curtsy.

‘I will be away.’ His attention was for Lady Alice. ‘I leave the children in your care, Alice, as ever.’

He was dressed for travel in wool and leather, the metal plates of his brigandine masked in fine velvet. In such a garment he was not travelling far.

‘Is it bad news, John?’ Lady Alice asked.

‘It could be better.’ It was impossible to mistake the grimace. ‘My brother Edward’s health does not improve and the King is…’ The Duke shrugged.

We all knew of this terrible cause for concern. The Prince, heir to the throne and with a reputation second to none on the battlefield, was come home from affairs in Aquitaine, gravely ill, and his son, Richard, no older than Henry. Lionel, the King’s second son, was dead in Antwerp these last three years. King Edward’s own powers had waned in the months since Queen Philippa’s death. Suddenly the smooth security of the royal inheritance was under attack: it was not a good prospect for England to have both King and heir ailing and the future king so small a child. Which left the Duke in a delicate situation.

Some said he had his own ambitions for the English crown, for no man of sense would place a wager on the longevity of either the King or the Prince. If the worse came to the worst, better an able man at thirty-two years and in his prime to wear the crown than a child of fewer years than fingers of one hand.

Looking at him now, at the authority inherent in his stance from his ordered hair to the fine leather of his boots, I wondered where his ambitions did lie. I did not know.

‘The situation in Aquitaine and Gascony rests on a knife-edge,’ he continued, as if picking up my thoughts. ‘The progress of the English troops, without direct leadership—it’s not good. I’m going to Kennington to talk with the Prince. I’ll need to stay if it’s decided that I lead an expedition. We badly need a victory against France, and it may be that Parliament must be summoned to finance such a lengthy campaign. It will not be popular, even though a victory’s in everyone’s mind…’

He was already moving towards the door, as if the burden of these decisions was driving him into action.

‘I’ll send word when I know my future movements.’

So, after shaking my world into disorder, he would leave without making any decision about me. My mind leaped crossly with indecision.

I really need to know where I stand.

It is not appropriate for you to trouble him with your inconsequential needs when the government of England rests on his shoulders.

I followed him to the door.

‘My lord?’

He turned his head, his hand on the latch.

‘Lady Katherine.’ Impatient to be gone, yet as he took in my appearance not without a glint in his eye. ‘Still garbed like a winter raven, I see.’

‘And, as a widow, will continue to be until the year of my mourning is ended,’ I replied tartly.

‘As you will, lady.’

Oh, he was preoccupied, and I bristled beneath my widow’s black. If the royal duke had been suffering yesterday from a blast of inappropriate lust for my person, it had been a remarkably short-lived one. Which was hardly flattering to me.

‘Lady Katherine…?’ His brows flattened. ‘My time is precious.’

So I asked him one question. The one question that had troubled me, to which I needed to have the answer. Not why he had impugned my honour. Not if he would consider a position for me—a respectable position—in the household of his new duchess, or even an inferior position in one of his other establishments. But the question that had teased my female interest.

‘My lord, why did you laugh at me yesterday? Was it all a piece of mockery?’

For if he had been amused, perhaps his intent had been to disconcert me, simply to see what a respectable widow, given the chance to become an unrespectable whore, would say. I could not believe him guilty of such dishonour, yet there had to be a reason that I could not see.

‘Did my discomfiture amuse you?’ I repeated.

He seemed to consider this for an inordinate length of time. Then, when his stare had disconcerted me so that my cheeks were flushed the pink of summer eglantine: ‘Amuse me?’ He shook his head, his mouth settling in a wry twist. ‘I was not amused at all.’ There was no laughter in him today, rather a lick of temper.

‘You laughed at me, my lord.’

‘Then I must ask your pardon, Lady Katherine.’ It did not sound like an apology. ‘If it was laughter, it was because it seemed to me impossible that it should happen twice in a lifetime.’

‘What should? What should not happen twice?’ I asked, as confused as ever, refusing to be intimidated by that penetrating regard.

His hand fell from the latch and he turned to face me fully as he lowered his voice. At least he had the consideration to do that.

‘That the woman at whose feet I would kneel in knightly adoration should refuse me outright.’

‘My lord…!’

I simply did not know how to respond as, cursed with fair skin, my face flamed even brighter. I was saved from further embarrassment only when William Parr pushed open the door to appear behind the Duke’s shoulder.

‘Your escort is ready, my lord,’ the squire advised.

‘One moment, if you will.’

But Will Parr, well used to the Duke’s manner, persisted. ‘Forgive me, my lord. A message has just been delivered, that the King too will travel to Kennington. He requests that you accompany him.’

‘Of course. I’ll come now.’

He held out his hand to me, the jewels stitched on the cuff of his glove glinting, leaving me with no response but to put my hand there on the costly leather. With a curt little bow, he touched his lips to my fingers.

‘It would be unforgivable of me to make you an object of mockery, Madame de Swynford. What it would please me to do is to put the light back into your eyes.’

And then I was left staring at his back.

He had made no decision on my future at all, and I had not asked him. How could I when he had clearly pushed me to the back of his busy mind? It might be a superbly romantic conception to serve me unto death, but only when the Duke considered that he had the time to encompass it.

We took the children to watch the departure from the steps that led down from the Great Hall into the inner courtyard. Since the Duke would travel by road to Westminster and then on from there to the Prince’s palace at Kennington south of the Thames, rather than travelling by river the whole way, the great portcullis had been raised. The gates were opened and the courtyard thronged with horses and liveried servants in the Lancaster colours of blue and white. I lifted Henry in my arms so that he could see the Duke swing into the saddle of his favourite bay stallion. The escort fell into formation.

Without doubt, even his critics must acknowledge that he was superb, that he wore the power that had been his from birth with smooth ownership, as elegantly as he wore the livery chain on his breast, and just as arrogantly, as now, when he raised his chin, lifting his hand in a peremptory gesture to summon one of his henchmen who moved smartly to obey. Too arrogant for many. The Duke made as many enemies as friends.

‘Did Duchess Blanche refuse to wed Lord John?’ I asked Lady Alice. It was time that I sought enlightenment from the best source. She would know, as a cousin to both the Duke and Blanche of Lancaster. I thought my query innocuous enough.

‘So they say.’ Lady Alice glanced in my direction but without suspicion.

‘I did not know. I was too young, I suppose.’

I had been sent, by Queen Philippa, to take up a position in Duchess Blanche’s household in the months following her marriage to the Duke, when I was barely ten years old. If there had been gossip, I had not understood the implications.

A blast of the horn from John Tyas, the herald suitably puffed-up in Lancaster livery, a nod from the Duke and they rode out, stillness finally settling round us. So Blanche had initially repulsed him. But the Duke had obviously refused to take no for an answer from the woman he had loved. He had persisted, wooed her and won her.

But why had he placed me beside Duchess Blanche? He clearly did not love me in the same overwhelming manner. Lust, perhaps. Were not all men subject to bouts of uncontrolled desire?

‘Why would any woman refuse to wed him?’ Lady Alice mused, picking up the conversation as if there had been no hiatus—something she often did. ‘It seems to me that he has every prerequisite for a husband. Exceptional features, grace, nobility, courtesy…as well as wealth and royal blood and all that implies.’ There appeared the faintest sneer on her lips. ‘Constanza of Castile was quick to take up the offer.’

‘So why did she?’

‘Because Constanza wants the Duke to win back Castile for her and—’

‘Not Constanza. Why did Lady Blanche refuse?’

‘Who’s to say?’ Lady Alice grasped Elizabeth’s hand, to prevent an attempt at escape. ‘It’s said the Duke fell in love with her when they were both children, and he remained true until the day she died.’

I knew that. I remembered her death, with the Duke at her bedside, stricken with grief. I remembered him at her lying-in-state in St Albans Abbey when he could do nothing but stare blindly at the seated wooden effigy of the Duchess, clad in robes of state, the painted face uncannily lifelike.

‘It was a day of heartbreak for everyone,’ I murmured. I had adored Duchess Blanche. Did not everyone who knew her?

‘I think perhaps Blanche did not believe him, when he first declared his love,’ Lady Alice continued. ‘She thought it was no more than a comfortable childhood friendship on his part, and she wanted more. She made him wait, and woo her in style. And then, when she was certain of his affections, she said yes, for she loved him, without any doubt…’

‘Is it useful to make a man wait?’ Alyne asked.

‘Why not? If his love is true…’ Lady Alice said.

‘I have no experience of it.’ Alyne sighed dolefully.

‘Nor I.’ Like Alyne’s, my own marriage had been arranged. I had not had the choice to refuse or keep Hugh dangling on a bodice-lace as Blanche had done with the Duke. How empowering it must be to be so certain of the love of the man held close in your own heart. So certain that not even a self-imposed absence could destroy it.

If I had loved Duchess Blanche, I had envied her too.

Lady Alice sighed, nostalgia making lines across her brow. ‘They were the perfect couple. How tragic that she should die so young.’ The lines deepened. ‘We’ll see what Constanza of Castile is made of. Will she be able to win his affection, do you suppose?’

‘Perhaps she already has,’ I suggested. ‘She carries his child.’

‘We’ll see…’

I looked round, counting the number of nursemaids who hovered in the background, ready for any demand on their services should Lady Alice or Alyne call on them. The children were well served, well educated under Lady Alice’s hand. The new Duchess would bring her own women from Castile. How could I possibly think there would be a place for me here? And as things stood it would be better for me if I were not…

I made my decision. I would return to Kettlethorpe, a most sensible course of action that would shield me from any future enticement. The Duke would build a new marriage with his foreign bride, he would forget me—had he not already done so?—and I would be free to oversee the construction of the best memorial I could accomplish for Hugh. I would administer his estates to the best of my ability so that my son might inherit a property of some value.

I nodded, my mind made up. It was a good end to my visit. An entirely suitable end.

I wished I felt more enthusiastic about it. I wished I could tear those words from my thoughts but they clung there, like stubborn autumn leaves resisting all the efforts of a winter gale to scatter them.

…the woman at whose feet I would kneel…

Such sentiments might be those the Duke recalled from the initial days of his wooing of lovely Blanche to be his wife. He had loved Blanche. He did not love me. Such sentiments had nothing to do with me, who would be no better than a court whore if I complied.

I took the first opportunity offered to travel north—running away, if I were honest. With my maid, my groom and a manservant from Kettlethorpe who served as protection, I joined up with a group of hardy pilgrims intent on journeying to pray at the tomb of St John of Beverley. It was not the season for pilgrimages, the winter days being short and the weather chancy, but the air was clear and crisp, the ground hard with frost and the road surfaces better than the soft mire of spring.

I was pleased to be on the move. Lady Alice begged me to stay, not understanding my determination, but to what end? I thought it best to be absent when the Duke returned and his new lady was ensconced at The Savoy.

We travelled slowly and steadily, putting up at inns as we followed the straight line of Ermine Street, the old Roman road, before turning east at Newark along Fosse Way. Now the scenery, the flat open expanses, became familiar to me, and when we crossed the Trent—looking innocent between its icy banks but the cause of many of my problems at Kettlethorpe—I knew that I was almost home. And there was the vast bulk of the cathedral at Lincoln, the two magnificent towers emerging out of the distance like a ship looming out of mist at sea.

Not far now. I ought to be making a stop at Coleby but the depredations of winter made me keep to my track. Kettlethorpe would not be much better, but the state of Coleby would utterly depress my spirits. Suddenly I could not reach home quickly enough.

On that final morning, before I turned north from Lincoln, I fell in with one of the pilgrims who urged her horse alongside mine. I had taken note of her, although she preferred to converse with the menfolk. Loud and lively, her good humour was infectious on the long days and she was quick to sing and laugh. Broad of hip and shoulder, broad of feature too, her colourful garments proclaimed her perennial optimism, as did her hat, round and large as a serving platter to shelter her from sun and rain. I envied her confidence, her high spirits.

Mistress Saxby, a cheerful flirt and incorrigible gossip.

She settled beside me, the pilgrim’s badges, mementoes of her many travels, jangling where they had been pinned to her cloak. I smiled warily. Her talk could be bawdy and she was not quick to take the hint to go away, but surprising me, her voice was low and respectful of my mood. She bent her head to look at me, her sharp eyes, grey as quartz, darting over my face. She made me uncommonly nervous.

‘You look sad, mistress.’

It interested me that she had noticed. ‘Not inordinately,’ I replied. I did not want to converse about my worries with this worldly woman.

‘In fact, you have looked in poor humour since we left London,’ she remarked, in no manner put off. ‘Why is that?’

And so, since I must: ‘I have just left my daughter—in London. It was hard to say farewell. She’s seven years old.’

It had been hard indeed, but I had kept a smile in place, pinning memories of her farewell kisses in my mind.

‘It’s young to leave a child. A girl child…’

I detected a hint of criticism, and was quick to respond. ‘She’s in the Lancaster household. A damsel to the two daughters. I was there too until the death of Duchess Blanche.’

Mistress Saxby nodded comfortably. ‘Then she’ll not lack for aught. You should give thanks, mistress.’

She made me feel ungrateful of the blessings that had fallen on me.

‘Are you a widow?’ she asked, gesturing to my black skirts.

‘Yes. Almost three months ago. He was fighting in Aquitaine for the Duke.’

‘Ah. A soldier.’

‘I don’t know whether he was killed in battle or brought low by disease.’ My companion did not need to know that he was a knight and a landowner.

‘Disease is a terrible thing,’ she mused solemnly. ‘Last year my own husband took sick and died within the week. Look at the Prince, God save him. He’s not long for this world, you mark my words. We’ll say a rosary for him at Lincoln.’ Her squirrel-gaze held mine. ‘You’re young to be a widow, mistress. How old did you say you were?’

I hadn’t, but I recognised a practised talent for acquiring information. ‘Twenty-two years,’ I said, smiling at the success of the technique.

‘You’ll wed again. Or perhaps you have a sweetheart already? Unless it was a love match between the pair of you and you’re still in mourning.’ I flushed at the implication that my emotions were so flighty. Mistress Saxby chuckled. ‘I see you have!’

‘No. I have no time for such things. Nor will I.’ My reply was as sharp as her stare. ‘I have two children at home who need my care. And my husband’s estates…’

Mistress Saxby tossed her head, the veil attached to her hat dislodged from its neat folds. ‘Your children will grow and move away. Your land will bring cold comfort. You need a man in your bed.’

I took a breath. ‘That’s the last thing I need,’ I remarked.

It was as if I had not spoken. ‘Your youth will be gone and forgotten before you know it. Without your pretty face, how will you attract a husband? You’ll be a lonely old woman.’

‘Do you speak from experience?’ I retorted, but she took no ill-humour from my sharpness.

‘Not so. I have had three husbands. And more than one…admirer, shall we say. I am a widow at present, but I have my eye on a likely man.’ Mistress Saxby pursed her lips at the prospect of the man in question. ‘Are you courted?’

Was I?

I would like to put the light back into your eyes…

‘Yes,’ I said, lured into indiscretion before I could stop myself.

‘Is he a worthy man?’

‘Too good for me.’

‘Nonsense. No man is too good for a good woman.’ She slid a glance over me, her smile widening. ‘Do I suppose it is not marriage he offers?’

And I found myself replying to her catechism. ‘No.’

‘Is he wed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do they live together?’

‘They spent Christmas together in Dorset at Kingston Lacy.’ That much I knew. ‘She travels to London to join him. She carries their first child.’

Mistress Saxby’s ample lips became a thin line as she contemplated. ‘It doesn’t sound too hopeful. I’d be wary of him, if I were you. Conflicting loyalties make for difficulties. But the question is: do you like him?’

I shook my head, turned my face away.

‘If you wish to keep your own counsel, it’s your choice.’

This made me feel churlish. ‘How do I know if I can trust him?’ I asked this worldly woman.

‘Has he given you a gift?’ I shook my head. ‘If he does it shows he has designs on your respectability.’

‘Oh.’ I thought about this. Not that any gift had been offered. ‘So I should refuse any such gift?’

Her eye gleamed. ‘I’d not say that. I’d say accept any gift he makes you.’ The gleam brightened to a twinkle as if she had been the recipient of many gifts in her past life. ‘It may well be that it is the sign of a true regard, if he is willing to spend money on you and he matches the gift well to your inclination. And before you argue that it is too particular, the great Capellanus says—have you read Capellanus?—well, he says that a woman who is loved may freely accept from her lover a mirror or a girdle or a pair of gloves.’

‘So if he gives me a gift of a mirror he loves me true?’ I found myself smiling.

‘Of course.’ But her answering smile was sly. ‘Unless he merely wishes to lure you into his bed. Only you can tell. You need to balance the good against the bad in any relationship, mistress. But I’d say take him, if you would. I have taken a lover, and enjoyed the experience.’

I thought about this too. I could well imagine, as I took in the expanse of her comfortable figure, assessing the quality of her enveloping cloak and her stocky grey palfrey. She was not without means.

‘And sin?’ I asked bluntly, startling even myself. ‘What about sin? What about adultery, if I take this man to my bed?’

‘Sin!’ She brushed the word away as if it were a troublesome gnat. ‘Will God punish us for snatching at happiness in a world that brings a woman precious little of it? I say not. I live a good life, I give charity to the starving, I confess my sins and find absolution. Would God begrudge me a kiss or the warm arms of a man on a cold night? I’m too old to look for marriage, I think. Now you’ll be an object of admiration and desire. You’re comely, and doubtless fertile, mistress.’

And Mistress Saxby raised her harsh voice—much like the raucous jays that hopped along the hedgerows—in song.

‘Love is soft and love is sweet, and speaks in accents fair;

Love is mighty agony, and love is mighty care:

Love is utmost ecstasy and love is keen to dare,

Love is wretched misery: to live with, it’s despair…’

She leaned to nudge me with a knowing elbow.

‘But to live without it is even worse,’ she added in an aside accompanied by an arch look.

I was sorry to see her go at Lincoln.

‘I need to offer a prayer for inflammation of the knees,’ she said with a roguish wink. ‘And other bits of me. I’ll not be able to go on pilgrimages for ever.’ The badges on her cloak glinted in the cold light. ‘Make the most of your youth, my girl. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’ With broad fingers, surprisingly agile, she unpinned one of her badges showing the Virgin seated in Majesty under a canopy, with the Christ child in her arms. ‘Take this. One of my better ones—pewter rather than lead—can’t afford the silver. From Our Lady’s Shrine at Walsingham. She’ll keep you safe.’

Mistress Saxby patted my hand as her face grew sombre. ‘If you do take this man, what I would say is: beware of the wife. It’s easy to be carried away by the glamour of stolen kisses, but a wife can make your life a misery. Take my word for it.’

‘I have no intention of crossing the path of his wife.’

Mistress Saxby’s sharply cynical smile returned.

‘As you wish, mistress, as you wish. Depends how fervent his kisses are, I’d say. Or how bottomless his purse!’

A hitch of her broad shoulders and she was gone, but her advice occupied my mind, all the way to Kettlethorpe. And then I abandoned it, because what Mistress Saxby might choose to do with her life was not for the Lady of Kettlethorpe. Besides, there was no choice for me to make. The Duke, in typical Plantagenet manner, had swept me aside as if I were no more than a young hound under his feet. Something much desired in one instance could become a matter for boredom in the blink of an eye.

Chapter Three

The rank poverty of Kettlethorpe settled over me in a desolation, as thick and dark as one of the boiled blood puddings that my cook was too keen on stirring up. Three thousand acres my son held here, and all of it either sand or stone or thick forest. Of good soil there was none; the land was incapable of producing anything other than a poor yield of hay, flax or hemp, and the meadows flooded regularly. Ruinous was the only word to come to mind as the mean houses came into view. The village looked run down, grim with deprivation, and so did my manor.

No surprise then that Hugh had sold his soldiering skills. Not that life as a soldier was anything but his first preference. If it was a choice of riding off to war or tilling the land, farming came a long way second, even if it meant being absent from me for most of our short married life. I considered, not for the first time, how I had managed to conceive three children. But I had, and they were my blessing.

For a moment the hall was silent except from the drip of water into a wooden bucket and the distant irritable bark of a dog. Then a rush of feet, followed by an authoritarian voice. I opened my arms, and into them fell Margaret, growing awkwardly at six years, and Thomas who at four had more noisy energy than he could control. I kissed Margaret, as self-contained as Blanche, and hugged Thomas until he squirmed for release. Hugh’s heir. Hugh’s pride and joy and hope for the future.

And there was Agnes Bonsergeant, my own nurse, who had come with me to Kettlethorpe, and did not mince her words as she clasped her hands on my shoulders and kissed my cheeks.

‘I thought we might not see you for a little while yet. You were not offered a position with the new Duchess then?’

‘No.’ Stripping off my gloves enabled me to hide my expression.

‘Why not?’

I sighed silently, hoping she did not notice. ‘The Duke was busy. The Prince is ill, the King fading.’

‘Nothing new in that. I thought that he might have valued your service—his wife carrying a child and all. Nothing like a mother with healthy children to give good advice. I’d have snapped you up.’

‘So I hoped. Her own childhood nurse attends her. And her sister travels with her. Why would she need more?’

I did not want to answer any more questions.

‘Still…you look pale, Katherine.’

‘Tired, that’s all,’ I admitted, allowing Margaret to pull me into the private chamber.

‘And Blanche? How is my little Blanche?’ Agnes asked, collecting up Thomas with an experienced arm.

‘Well. They are all well. Lady Alice sends her best wishes to you and wishes a fine husband on you.’ I sank onto a settle by the fire. ‘It’s good to be home.’

Agnes grunted at the suggestion of a husband, fine or otherwise. ‘We have some problems.’

I raised my brows. ‘Some wine first, I think. Then the bad news.’

And while I drank, Agnes told me of the leaking roof, the pest that had affected the chickens, the poor quality wood, and lack of it, set aside for burning. We were short of ale, the last delivery being sour. A request that the road over towards Coleby should be improved at my expense—the list went on.

‘It’s not good,’ I said.

‘Nor is this place good for your health. Or the children’s. You could go into Lincoln. Hire a house there for the winter.’

‘I have no money to be spent on hiring houses. If I have no money to mend the roof, or pay to bring Hugh’s body home, I have no right to squander what I have where it is not necessary.’ I watched Thomas. We had given him a wooden sword for a New Year gift, which he wielded with dangerous vigour. Would he choose to be a soldier like Hugh? ‘How would I forgive myself if I had nothing to give Thomas but a worn-down inheritance, and me sitting in luxury in Lincoln?’

‘Hardly in luxury…’

‘We must do what we can. I suppose the roof is the first priority.’

‘A position at court would have solved the problem.’

‘But I haven’t got one,’ I snapped, then immediately regretted it when Agnes scowled as if I were an ill-mannered child. ‘I ask pardon, Agnes. I am more weary than I thought.’ Then on impulse: ‘Mistress Saxby said I should take a man to my bed.’

‘Did she now. And who is Mistress Saxby?’

‘A pilgrim with a practical turn of mind.’

‘A man would double your problems, some would say!’

And at last I laughed. She was doubtless right. Agnes had never married nor ever would. Her opinion of Hugh had not been high.

‘I have not come home empty-handed,’ I announced before Agnes could consider asking me if I had any particular man in mind. And from my saddle bag I brought sweetmeats for Margaret and Thomas, a length of fine wool of a serviceable dark blue, well wrapped in leather for Agnes.

‘From Lady Alice. She thinks we live in dire penury. I think she assessed the value of the clothes on my back and found them wanting.’

‘She would be right. Did she give you anything?’

‘No.’

I kept the pilgrim’s badge in my scrip, even when I had considered pinning it to Margaret’s bodice. I would keep it for myself, a memento of a very female heart-to-heart.

‘And how was Lord John?’ Agnes asked as, much later, we sat at supper, an unappetising array of pottage and beans and a brace of duck. ‘Apart from being busy.’

‘Why?’ I was immediately on guard.

‘Because he is the only member of the household you have not talked of.’

It was a jolt, but I forced myself to smile, my muscles to relax as I considered my reply, finding a need to dissemble. Agnes of the suspicious mind was watching me. With an arm around her shoulders, I hugged her close. She was very dear to me.

‘Conspicuous,’ I remarked. A word that barely did justice to the Duke’s eye-catching quality, but it would satisfy Agnes. ‘When is he ever not?’

And just as enigmatic, I could have added, but didn’t. Agnes’s eye would have become even more searching. Meanwhile, the Duke’s disturbing assertions continued to echo in my mind like the clang of the passing bell.

‘Visitors, my lady. And by the look of them, they’ve travelled far.’

‘It’s not the Duke of Lancaster, is it?’ I asked caustically.

Master Ingoldsby looked puzzled. ‘Why no, mistress. I’d not say so. Did we expect his lordship?’

I squeezed his arm, sorry to have taken advantage of his limitations. Grey of hair, his face deeply lined, Master Ingoldsby’s years were catching up with him. ‘No, we did not. I doubt he’ll find a path to my door.’

The Duke’s carnal desire for me had died a permanent death. It must be something of a relief to both of us.

I was in the cellars, bewailing the contaminated hams—the roofleaked here also—and assessing the barrels of inferior ale, when Master Ingoldsby came to hover at my shoulder. I left the hams and ale willingly, and went out into the courtyard, tucking the loose strands of my hair beneath my hood, considering whether it might be my sister Philippa. I did not think so. Life in the country did not suit my sister, a town mouse, born and bred.

And no it was not. The sound of horses’ hooves greeted me and the lumbering creak and groan of a heavy wagon on the road, and as I walked out past the gatehouse, I saw that the wagon had an escort of men, without armour or livery to help my identification, but well-mounted with an impressive array of weapons. As Lady of Kettlethorpe I would have to offer them hospitality. I wondered if my cook could stretch our supper of mutton collops and a dish of salt cod to accommodate another half-dozen mouths. Something, I supposed, could be achieved with bread, eggs and a hearty pottage, as I walked towards the man who had already dismounted and was pulling off his hood as he bowed. His expression was severe, his carriage upright, and I thought he had the look of a soldier despite his advancing years.

‘Lady Katherine de Swynford…’

‘Sir?’

The man inclined his head. ‘I am instructed to deliver this to you.’ He raised his chin in the direction of the wagon. ‘I am Nicholas Graves, my lady. A soldier by profession.’

The ever-present nerves in my belly settled, assuaged by his courtesy. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

Intrigued, I walked to the wagon, expecting I knew not what as he drew back the heavy canvas cover.

‘Oh!’

It took me a moment to acknowledge what I saw. A large linen-wrapped bundle of what would be pieces of armour and mail, another swathed roll of knightly weapons. A worn travelling coffer. A smaller box with a lock. And over all was draped a banner. A sea of silver, divided by the slash of a black chevron, three snarling boars heads in gold, teeth and tongues gleaming through the wear and tear of warfare.

The possessions and accoutrements of a knight on military service.

My attention was drawn back to the box with the locked lid. Someone had carved a chevron and three boars’ heads on it, rough but recognisable. It was the small size of it…and as truth struck home at last, my knees buckled and I found myself clinging to the side of the wagon. Then Agnes was beside me, an arm around my shoulder, and Master Ingoldsby had a grip of my arm.

‘I was ordered to arrange to conduct Sir Hugh’s possessions home, my lady,’ the soldier said.

‘Hugh…’ I whispered.

‘Yes, my lady.’ He looked at me as if he expected me to collapse at his feet, but I was made of sterner stuff than that.

‘How did he die?’ I asked as the driver climbed from his seat and began to unload the wrapped pieces of armour. My voice seemed faint to my ears and far away. I was shivering uncontrollably, but it was not the cold of the little wind that had picked up.

‘Dysentery, my lady,’ he replied laconically. ‘He was too ill to travel home in September. We thought he was growing stronger—but he failed. In November.’

‘Yes, I knew it was November. I was told.’ I frowned at the fiercely grinning boars’ heads, hating their vigour. ‘But I did not arrange this. I cannot pay.’ Now I heard the panic in my voice. I had visions of these sad remnants being taken away from me, because I did not have the coin to pay the driver of the wagon or the escort. Where would I find the money for this? I felt Agnes shift her grip and her hands closed tighter on my shoulders.

‘There is no need for your concern. It is all paid for, my lady.’

‘Who paid for it? Who arranged it?’

‘My lord arranged it.’

I shook my head. I could not seem to take my eyes from the battered gauntlet that had slid from its wrapping and lay, fingers curled upwards.

‘The Duke arranged it all. I serve him, my lady. The Duke of Lancaster.’ As if he was addressing a want-wit. ‘And I am instructed to give you these.’ He pushed into my hand two leather bags, one large and one small, and two folded letters.

I blinked as I exhaled slowly. So this was the Duke’s doing.

‘Sir Hugh’s body was too…’ Master Graves began, then bit off his words. ‘Given the circumstances—well, it was decided to bring only his heart back here to England.’

‘Yes…’

‘My lady…?’ I became aware of my steward looking to me for orders. I must think about the Duke of Lancaster’s gift to me, but not now. Not yet.

‘If one of your men could take the…the heart to the church, sir,’ I said, pointing to where the tower of the little church of St Peter and St Paul could be seen behind a stand of trees. And to Master Ingoldsby: ‘And these men need ale, if we can find any fit to drink. Then food.’

How superbly practical I had become as a warmth bloomed in my belly that Hugh’s heart had been brought home. It was enough, and what he would have wanted. Later I would open the other packages brought by Master Graves. Later I would read the two letters. Then I would supervise the cleaning, repair and storing of Hugh’s armour, which would one day belong to Thomas.

And I would, of necessity, consider the implications of such generosity from the Duke, for it was no light matter. Such open-handedness would put me under an obligation.

For no reason that I could fathom, Mistress Saxby of the wide hips and wider hat swayed flirtatiously into my mind. A lady might accept a mirror or a girdle from her lover. Or even a pair of gloves, for they were symbols of a true affection.

What if the impatient lover gave the gift of the husband’s heart? The Duke had restored the only remnant of my dead husband to me, with the money to assure a tomb of some magnificence. The Duke had given far more than a passing thought to what I would most desire. Where did a dead husband’s heart weigh in Mistress Saxby’s assessment?

I had no idea. For a moment I wished she was there in her jingling pilgrim’s garb to advise me.

I knew that would not serve. Any decision I made must be on my own conscience.

The larger leather purse hardly needed investigation. I could tell by its weight that it contained a sum of money sufficient to inter Hugh with honour. I pushed it aside. It meant much to me to be able to pay for an effigy on Hugh’s tomb at the hand of a true craftsman, but it was the demands of the living, not the dead, that drew my eye. Lingering in the hall, I addressed the letter that I considered to be the more innocent of the pair, carrying it to a cresset, my nose wrinkling at the stench of hot fat. The wick needed trimming. It was all a far cry from the fine wax candles of The Savoy.

And there it was. What I had hoped for.

To Lady Katherine de Swynford,

Monseigneur de Lancaster has expressed a wish for your attendance and future service at The Savoy. It is expected that the Duchess of Lancaster, Constanza, Queen of Castile, will make her entry into London in the second week in February. As a valued member of Duchess Blanche’s household, and in recognition of Sir Hugh Swynford’s valuable contribution in

Aquitaine as Monseigneur de Lancaster’s retainer, a place is offered to you in the household of the Duchess Constanza.

Your remuneration will be generous.

We expect to see you forthwith.

It had the pompous tone of a demand rather than a request, much as I would expect from Sir Thomas Hungerford, the Lancaster steward who exercised his authority over all the ducal properties in the south, but my heart leaped, and I was smiling as my eye ran down to the less formal hand, added at the bottom. Lady Alice had applied her own brand of entreaty.

Do come, Katherine. With your knowledge of the dangers of childbirth and your experience in the rearing of young children, you will be invaluable to the new Duchess who seems to be fragile in her pregnancy. Her journey from Dorset has been uncommonly slow. We will judge her calibre when she arrives.

It is expected that your sister Philippa will also return as part of the household since her husband has been dispatched abroad.

It is anticipated that you will bring your children with you.

We expect to be settled at Hertford.

I look to you and your sister to support me against the influx of Castilians. Do you by any chance speak Castilian?

Quite like old times, I think. I look forward to your coming…

Alice had signed her name.

I folded the page and pushed it into the bodice of my overgown, my face warm with pleasure. A position again. A welcome. A generous income to bolster the rents from Kettlethorpe. Perhaps the ever-flooding Fossdyke would be put to rights at last and my neighbours would not glower as I rode past.

I would see Blanche, reunite all my children, install myself with Alyne and Lady Alice. I swept Thomas up into my arms, already on my way to my inner chamber, but then my steps slowed and reality checked my delight. Here was danger. I had made my refusal of the Duke’s demand succinctly clear, but if I returned to The Savoy, into Duchess Constanza’s household, was that not my being complicit in placing myself back within the Duke’s power? Was I not opening myself to a situation that would be a moral insult to both myself and his new wife?

I had wanted this position so badly, yet now all was changed, all my initial naïve pleasure dimmed. I came to a halt halfway up the stairs, furious with the absent Duke, who, I suspected, had answered to no one since the day of his birth. I was not responsible for his arrogant invitation. I was the innocent party, I was not complicit. I had said no. The Duke was under no illusions about my thoughts on this. He might have a claim on my loyalty, he might pay me for service to his wife, but there it would end.

I was perfectly entitled to make my dignified return to The Savoy, on my own terms.

But there was the other folded page and a soft leather bag, small enough to fit into my palm, with a seal on the parchment that was the Duke’s own with the leopards of England quartered with the fleur-de-lis of France.

Open it! I ordered. You are making more of this than need be. It cannot possibly make your obligation to him greater than it already is. Read it!

Instead, I tucked both items into my bodice, where the letter proceeded to burn a hole against my breast and the pouch nestled until it seemed to be a weight on my soul. I could barely resist opening it, even though I knew with certainty that if I did, if I read what must be a personal missive from the Duke, then it would be opening a dangerous window. Better that I consign them both to the flames in my bedchamber.

But I destroyed neither. Instead, dispatching Thomas to Agnes’s care, I wrapped a cloak around me, strapped on a pair of patterns and made my way to the church, squelching through the puddles and wondering if I had lost my senses. Once there I walked down the aisle towards the final resting place of the earthly remains of Hugh Swynford.

Replenishing the candles, re-lighting them, I knelt by the little casket, where one day a fine effigy would stand, and prayed first for the repose of Hugh’s soul. He would have been thirty-two years old, the same age as the Duke.

Looking over my shoulder to ensure that I was alone, I began to explain.

‘I am going to Hertford. I am to have a place in Duchess Constanza’s household. She is the Duke’s new wife, the Castilian Queen. You would not have known about this alliance with Castile—or perhaps you did before you…well!’ I took a breath. Speaking to the dead was foolish perhaps, but I felt a need to do it. ‘I know that is what you would want for me. Have we not always served the royal family? I will take the children with me. But I will not neglect my role here. They already call me the Lady of Kettlethorpe, did you know? I am proud of that and I hope you are too.’ I paused for a moment, trying hard to concentrate. ‘I swear I will preserve your inheritance for your son. Thomas is growing well. His education under Lady Alice’s eye will be of the best. I expect he will become a page and learn all he needs to know about being a good knight. I give thanks for it.’

The letter against my heart almost vibrated with an urgency.

‘I am grateful to the Duke for his generosity. He remembers you with affection.’

I closed my fingers over the cloth of my bodice so that the parchment of the letter crackled. The package felt hard and uneven, its composite parts moving one against the other.

‘It will be good to reunite the children,’ I said. ‘I have missed Blanche.’

I retrieved the letter.

‘Master Ingoldsby will look after everything while I am away. The meadows have flooded again.’

I broke the seal and opened it, smoothing the creases.

‘I don’t have the money to clear out the Fossdyke. Not yet—but perhaps I can do it when I am remunerated. I will try to do my best…’

My words dried and I sank back on my heels and read. Strikingly formal, it was not of any great length. My heart beating in my ears, I read, my eye skimming over the first brief paragraph. It was as if he were standing beside me, with a similar irritation to my own, colouring his choice of words, which were abrupt.

To Madame Katherine de Swynford,

I had hoped that you would remain at The Savoy until my return from Kennington but you found a need to return to Lincolnshire. Perhaps the fault was mine, that circumstances prevented me from making your situation clear. I remedy that now, by the hand of Sir Thomas.

That was good, was it not? Rather sharp and caustic, even a thread of criticism that my precipitate departure had necessitated this letter. My heart steadied.

There was a space on the single page and then:

As for the rest that stands between us, I have no regret in voicing it. The matter is not closed. I live in hope that you will reconsider your refusal. I should warn you that it will be my life’s quest to win you for my own. Your anxieties reached out to my notions of chivalry and honour, demanding that I come to your aid, but it was your infinite beauty, finely drawn through grief and the burden you carry, that smote at my senses. Your image remains with me still, even in your absence, as if I carried a painted icon against my heart. It is beyond my fathoming, but you are ever present, instilling me with your radiance. I need to see you again.

I send you this trifle as a symbol of my regard for your welfare, of both body and soul.

I am, and will always be, despite your expressed qualms, yours to command.

My future happiness, for good or ill, rests with you.

There was another little space. And then:

It is my wish that you will leave your widow’s weeds in Lincolnshire. I wish to see you clad as befits your status in my household. Apart from my own wishes, why would a felicitous bride desire a damsel dressed like storm-crow?

There was no signature. There did not need to be, for the owner of the flamboyant wording and forceful command was without doubt the Duke. As I took in what was imperiously issued with no consideration that I might actually refuse, I scowled at the final comment, and was aware of making a little mew of distress as my heart once again thudded against my ribs. I looked up—surely a sign of guilt—as if Hugh might be aware and would ask what tormented me.

But the church was settled into its habitual silence around me.

So what had the importunate Duke sent me?

I laid the letter down, loosed the draw-string of the little pouch, but, before I could catch it, out slithered a rosary, a string of simple beads threaded on a length of silk, to fall to the floor at my side. But not simple at all, I saw as I scooped them up. The aves in their little groups of ten were of coral, the softest pink, as seductively smooth as a baby’s palm, richly interposed by the larger paternosters of carved jet with gilded flowers.

This was no trifle. I breathed out slowly, lifting the gift so that the candlelight glimmered along its length. I looked again at the letter and the lovely beads, which I allowed to slide again from my hand to be caught by the fullness of my skirts.

And there was Mistress Saxby beside me, with her world-weary smile.

Has he given you a gift? If he does it shows he had designs on your respectability.

So I should refuse any such gift?

I’d say accept any gift he makes you. It may well be that it is the sign of a true regard, if he is willing to spend money on you and he has matched the gift well to your inclination.

He had given me a rosary. He knew that such a gift would be close to my heart.

Unless he merely wishes to lure you into his bed. Mistress Saxby was still needling with her observations.

But a rosary, with its exquisitely carved silver crucifix. Did he make light of my strong faith, which would make the position of mistress, no matter how important the lover, anathema? Were these gifts, a string of beads, a purse of coin and a preserved heart, nothing more than lures to buy my compliance?

Or was he concerned merely to give me what I needed? What would please me?

How could I discover the answers to such impossible questions? For the briefest of moments I covered my face with my hands, then knelt upright and squared my shoulders.

‘Dear Hugh, I want you to know. I honoured you. I was loyal to you in thought and deed through all the years of our marriage. But…forgive me.’ I stuffed the letter and beads back into my overgown and placed my hand flat on the carved coffer lid. ‘I was never unfaithful to you. I was a good wife. But now…’

And because I could no longer stay there in that holy place with my thoughts in such wanton turmoil I stood, genuflected and hurried out.

Will God punish us for snatching at happiness in a world that brings a woman precious little of it?

I pushed Mistress Saxby’s questionable wisdom aside, but shame and desire kept joint pace with me. Returned to the manor, I made excuses—I knew not what—to Agnes and Master Ingoldsby and took refuge behind the closed door of my chamber.

And there, for the first time for almost eight years I allowed thoughts of John of Lancaster to flood in without restraint, and take possession. This was the man. This was what he meant to me.

I stood by the head of my bed, in the shadow of the thick damask hangings, once a lustrous blue, worn and faded now into a uniform greyness. I stood as if I were an onlooker, for the walls of my chamber grew dim in my sight, to be replaced with the rich severity of the chapel at The Savoy where I had been wed to Hugh.

How powerful memory could be. Instead of the dusty silence of my chamber, broken only by occasional rustles and cheeps from the singing finches in their cage, bright little birds that I had bought for Margaret’s amusement, the scene was peopled with faces and figures from the past that I knew well, a little gathering to celebrate an old and sacred rite. The candles were bright, the high quality wax perfumed with incense, the altar heavy with gold, but it was a quiet, intimate scene, without display as was fitting. I, fourteen years old and newly delivered of my daughter, stood with the child in my arms.

It was as if I had stepped into the ceremony already underway with prayers said and promises made. With the appropriate words, the priest lifted the infant from me, allowing the linen covering to fall to the floor, before lowering her into the font where the shock of the cold water caused her to drag in a breath and expel it in a cry of pure anguish. Her hands beat on the water, her dark eyes wide and staring with distress, and I, new mother as I was, was stricken.

It was the Duke, standing as my child’s godfather—was I not highly favoured in the household in those days?—who lifted the baby from the font, wrapping her slippery body with astonishing deftness, in a pearl-encrusted chrysom robe handed to him by Duchess Blanche herself, for whom my baby was called. His cradling of her was sure, confident. I could not imagine Hugh doing as much with his soldier’s hands, rough with old scars and abrasions even though the two men were of an age.

‘Hush then,’ the Duchess murmured, touching her name-sake’s cheek while, cupping her head with his hand, the Duke smiled ruefully.

‘There’s no need for all this, Mistress Blanche Swynford,’ he said. ‘You are named in the sight of God and much loved. Look at all here-present, who will care for you. Why would you weep?’

The unexpected words struck hard at my heart, the unbelievable tenderness of them, and my infant’s cries instantly subsided to whimpers, before ceasing on a sob and a hiccup. Everyone laughed, the domestic replacing, for that one instant, the sacred. As if entranced, little Blanche’s myopic gaze fixed on the face above her.

Entranced? If my daughter was caught up in the Duke’s glamour, then so was I.

It is his hands, I thought, trying to swallow against the lump in my throat. Broad palmed, long fingered, eminently capable, whether lifting a child or wielding a sword. Fine boned and beautiful, they transfixed me.

‘Will you take her, Hugh? The first of your line?’

‘I’m more likely to drop her,’ Hugh admitted. ‘Katherine has a safer pair of hands.’

‘You have a comely daughter, and I foresee a clutch of strong sons.’ The Duke stepped to hand her to me, and in doing so his fingers brushed against mine. The rock in my throat hardened and my breath shuddered between my lips, catching a little as it never did when Hugh touched me far more intimately. When I felt my heart tremble, I clutched little Blanche so tightly that she whimpered again.

‘Gently,’ Duchess Blanche advised, as if it was my inexperience that was the problem.

I loosed my grip, turning my face away, as the priest offered his blessing on the little gathering.

What had happened here? It was the only question in my mind as my daughter settled to sleep against my breast.

I looked at the priest who was smiling benignly. At Hugh, who was every inch the proud husband and father, hoping that indeed next time it would be a son. At Duchess Blanche who, already mother of two fine daughters and despite the loss of her baby son, John, was carrying another ducal child high beneath her jewelled girdle.

And the Duke?

I had known him for ever. What was different today? I had seen him in full royal splendour, all gold and jewels and Plantagenet lions. In gleaming armour, the sun illuminating his tall stature as if resplendent with God’s heavenly blessing. I had seen him walk into the Hall at Kenilworth, at Hertford, at Tutbury, hot and sweaty with effort in the tilt-yard, dishevelled and dust-ridden but his face alive with the expending of energy. I had heard him in furious argument with his brothers. In flirtatious laughter and tender mood with Duchess Blanche. Had seen him short-tempered with a clumsy servant, furious as a youth when his will was thwarted, repentant when taken to task by Queen Philippa.

This was nothing more than a domestic scene, the Duke and Duchess seeing fit to lavish an unexpected honour on two of their dependents, and it should not have moved my heart in this manner. His tunic and hose were plain for a prince, his sleeves wet from the font, the breast of his tunic dark with water. No jewels, no weapons, no armour. No heraldic motif to advertise his power. Nothing here to force a reaction from my nerves that continued to ripple beneath my skin.

And then as I raised my eyes from his hands to his face, I saw the Duke look over at his wife, a glance of such heartfelt compassion, of such gentle understanding for her, for the recent loss of their son. He too longed for a son to be heir to the Lancaster inheritance. The Duke’s love for his wife was a thing of wonder. Such utter devotion, equally returned by his Duchess. A blinding love that I wished was for me.

Before I could be observed, I gave my attention to my child, ordering my thoughts into acceptability. Much, I decided, like pounding herbs and spices through a sieve in a stillroom. This is an infatuation, I remonstrated, from a young girl for her lord who has the glamour and handsome features that a troubadour might sing of, a foolish longing that would fade and die within the time it took for my little Blanche to find her feet and walk unaided.

But it was not. It was a longing that would not leave me.

Why Lord John of Lancaster? I demanded. Why him? It was not his position, his wealth, or his power. It was not his royal blood. As part of Duchess Blanche’s household my path had crossed those of the other royal sons. I did not shiver at the splendid proximity of Prince Edward. Nor was I seduced by the easy charm of the tragically dead Lionel. Or enjoy the easy wit of my lord of Gloucester. It was John of Lancaster who made my blood race. It was that dangerous indefinable allure that moved my heart.

Did I try to douse that flare of desire?

Yes, I tried. Of course I did. Did I not know that the Duke of Lancaster was not for such as I? His royal blood placed him so far above me, while he, oblivious to my youthful yearnings, had eyes only for his beautiful wife, which was as it should be. And so I learned to live with the terrifying discomfort. I was free to admire his glamour and worship silently at his feet. That he had no feelings for me other than honour and duty and a light affection was in some sense a safety net, for he would never look at me and suspect the tenor of the feelings that stalked me.

And Hugh? Did that make me a disloyal wife to my husband? As an arranged marriage between a girl of good birth but no substance and a young man from a solid knightly family, it was a perfect arrangement to suit us both. On a personal level I seemed to please him well enough, for he was briskly considerate and I was of a practical turn of mind. I gave him my loyalty and the duty of my body. I was to bear him another daughter, Margaret, and his precious son and heir, Thomas.

I did not think that I was disloyal.

Except when my mind evaded my conscience.

The scene from the past winked out as a movement, perhaps the hopping of one of the finches from one perch to another, brought my mind back to the here and now so that I once more stood beside my marriage bed, the bed curtain clenched tight in my right hand. As I released it, smoothing out the creases I had made, my thoughts turned inwards. I had been a gracious and well-mannered wife who served the Duchess and administered the Kettlethorpe estates if need arose.

Duty, honour, loyalty. Hard words to cling to when my thoughts were with a man who could wield the power, with the faintest smile, the most innocuous of requests, to make my heart lurch. But I swore that I would go to my death without his knowing how the hand of desire touched me that day with such fervour that the need still growled in my belly. Nor would Duchess Blanche ever guess, for my disloyalty to her was unthinkable.

And yet sometimes when the Duke laced his fingers with Blanche’s, kissed her lips with his, the longing was a raging fire in my veins.

I had never spoken of it, nor would I. Some sins were best kept between the sinner and God. I had been the perfect damsel, and I learned to keep my distance, to hide my thoughts. I was not without intelligence or the ability to dissemble when the need arose and I saw the right sense of it. It was a relief when the Duke went to France to fight at the side of his brother Prince Edward.

But what now?

I sank to the edge of the bed.

As a widow, as a mother with a duty to her children, duty and honour still guided my steps. Acting on the stark awareness that beat beneath my bodice was still not a choice I could ever contemplate. My respectability was assured and inviolable. It was bearable for had I not been the perfect mistress of self-command for more years than I wished to count? I knew what was expected of me and what was due to me and to my family name. I would never follow my chosen path in life with anything but propriety and courtly dignity.

Easy to say. I found that once again I had clutched the hangings, for now all was changed. The Duke’s statement of intent had made it unbearable, and if he would trifle with my emotions, it would undermine all I had done to keep my thoughts under strict discipline. I did not understand how a man of such erstwhile integrity could place this burden at my feet. I did not need this complication. I did not want it.

But he wanted me.

I want you. I want you for my own.

My feelings for him were so complex as to defy definition, my heart and mind in severe conflict: to take care, or to throw care and discretion to the wind. To refuse a priceless gift, or seize it with both hands. To condemn what was a gross sin, or claim it as my heart’s desire. How I wished that he had not spoken, yet when I closed my eyes, the words were written on the darkness of my vision, shimmering there in gold, and horribly seductive.

A light knock, the click of the latch that encouraged the finches to trill briefly, and there was Agnes at the door. ‘We have a problem, Katherine.’

‘Not another.’ I stood, banishing the Duke to where he properly belonged, waiting at The Savoy for the arrival of Duchess Constanza. I had enough to worry about without malingering in the past.

‘The reed thatch on the stable block has collapsed in the inner corner. It’s brought down a portion of the hay loft. Master Ingoldsby says the rest is sure to follow if this rain continues, so we must move the horses to dry accommodations. He says do we send to our neighbours? Then there’s the little matter of water seeping into the well in the court-yard…’

‘And I need the funds to put it all right. I know.’ I must have succumbed to dismay, for Agnes approached, eyes narrowed on my face, but I essayed a laugh to deflect her concern. ‘The Duke’s offer could not have come at a more opportune moment. Do you suppose that he foresaw our thatching difficulties?’

Agnes snorted at my levity. ‘A pretty thing.’ She nodded at the rosary clutched in my hand.

Lifting it, I allowed the light to play along its length, picking out the carving on the crucifix. ‘Yes. It’s beautiful.’

Beautiful, but the implications of its giving were dangerous.

‘A gift?’ Agnes probed.

She knew I could not afford to purchase an item of such value.

‘Yes.’ How easy it was to be drawn into deception. ‘From Lady Alice.’ And as if to hide my guilt I closed my hand over the beads.

‘Nice if you have the money,’ Agnes sniffed. ‘Did I see coral there? And gold?’

‘Yes.’ It was as I knew, too valuable even for Lady Alice’s giving.

‘I thought you said Lady Alice gave you nothing.’

‘Did I?’ Beware, those who lie. I tried a rueful smile. ‘I forgot.’

‘Heaven knows you could forget that!’ I squirmed with discomfort but just shook my head. ‘You could sell it and re-roof the stables. Unless you are absolutely fixed on joining the new Duchess?’

I returned her puzzled stare for a moment, suddenly calmly assured, quite certain in my own mind.

‘Yes, I am fixed on it. I will earn enough from my position with Duchess Constanza to re-roof the whole house,’ I said. ‘What possible reason would there be for me to refuse such open-handed generosity?’ I began to slide the paternosters into their leather pouch.

‘It’s a very costly gift,’ Agnes remarked, looking at me rather than at the beads.

‘Then I must be sure to be worthy of my hire.’

Tucking the rosary into a coffer, with unwarranted impatience I cast a cloth over the finches whose singing had picked up in volume.

‘And you’d better take those with you,’ Agnes continued in the same sceptical tone, as if she did not believe one word I had said, ‘or Margaret will never forgive us. I don’t suppose the Duke will mind.’

‘No, I don’t suppose he will,’ I responded briskly.

And since there was so much to organise, I extinguished the scene I had just conjured up as efficiently as if I had used a candle snuffer, yet there remained with me a complicated interweaving of thoughts, lingering like a final wisp of smoke.

What would I say to the Duke when our paths next crossed? Would it not be for me like stepping into a hornets’ nest? If he demanded again that I be more than a lady-in-waiting to his wife, as he surely would, what would I say?

So many questions. I knew the answer to none of them, but my mind was resolved to go to The Savoy, whatever fate might hold in store for me.

I refused to admit what was in my heart.

Chapter Four

My first impression, as she was helped to dismount from the gloriously swagged and curtained palanquin, was how young and insubstantial she was. Or perhaps it was just that she resembled nothing more than a drowned rat. The heavens had inconveniently deposited a torrential downpour of sleety rain on the crowds of gawping bystanders as she was welcomed into the city of London by Prince Edward of Woodstock, struggling from sick-bed to horseback for the occasion. She was not so very young for a royal bride. The noble lady, Constanza of Castile, was after all only five years younger than I, and hardly some protected, pampered child with no mind of her own.

There we all stood in the Great Hall to receive our new mistress, with freedom for me to appreciate the impression the Duke intended to make, with his tunic blazing in red and black and gold, proclaiming his new status, the royal arms of Castile with its castle and lions quartered with those of England, the gold stitching shimmering as he moved restlessly from foot to foot. It sat well on his tall slenderness: not one of the Castilian entourage could question the presence of this royal duke. I tried to read his expression. Impatience, above all, for we had been waiting for three hours.

I smoothed my hand down the silk damask of my skirts. When the Duke’s stern eye swept over his assembled household, he had registered with the barest glance the quality and condition of my garments, taking note of my obedience to his demand that I clothe myself with appropriate richness in honour of my new position. So my trailing skirts were in Lancaster blue, the close-fitting bodice, exquisitely fur edged, patterned in blue and white. Out of some female caprice, I had chosen to wear the coral rosary, ostentatiously looped over my girdle.

Now, waywardly volatile, strangely defiant, I wished I had not.

He had not even found the time to speak to me. I was merely one of many in the household. How could I have expected more?

Duchess Constanza trod the shallow steps to the Great Hall, her furs trailing and spiked with wet, her robes plastered to her body. Her pleated hair clung to her head and neck beneath her sodden veiling, the ruffles on her cap sadly limp. I could only imagine her discomfort in spite of her being tucked back into her litter after the welcome. But in spite of it all, yes, I acknowledged, she was beautiful. Not like Blanche, fair and so very English, smooth and pale as a pearl. This young woman was as sharp as a pin. Magnificent eyes, dark and secretive as beryls, were turned on her new surroundings and were not uncritical, and there was a pride in the thin nose, the arched brows. Perhaps her pride was to be expected, given the difficulties of her birth and young life.

Lady Alice had sniffed her disgust of gossip but Alyne had answered my curiosity as we completed the stitching on that same altar cloth that would be used for the Mass to give thanks for Duchess Constanza’s safe arrival amongst us.

‘Constanza is illegitimate, to all intents and purposes…’ she whispered. ‘Her father got three daughters and a son on a whore whilst his wife was still alive.’

‘But he claimed to have married her—the whore, that is,’ interposed Lady Alice who, in the end, could not resist the delectable lure of scandal.

And so, between them, I received the strangely horrifying history of my new mistress whose father King Pedro of Castile had imprisoned his rightfully wedded wife in a dungeon, while he continued his disreputable liaison with Maria de Padilla, whom he claimed to have wed before his marriage to the ill-fated legal wife Blanche of Bourbon. He was a man of persuasive tongue and his children by Maria had been recognised as legitimate by the Castilian Cortes, and so were heirs to the throne.

‘Pedro had his wife poisoned, so they say. Died in mysterious circumstances,’ Lady Alice stated with extravagantly raised brows.

Alyne added in counterpoint: ‘Constanza’s father is also dead, so she is Queen of Castile by right.’

‘Except that the Crown has been usurped by King Pedro’s bastard half-brother Enrique.’

‘Which means that Queen Constanza has no kingdom to rule over.’

‘Only a claim that Enrique will never honour.’

So there was the skeleton of Constanza’s lineage. It was an unenviable position for the young woman, whom I now assessed as, chin lifted, she approached the Duke. No wonder she held to her pride like a mouse to the last ear of corn during a bad harvest. She had little else. Owning the title of Queen of Castile certainly gave her a presence, despite the outmoded gown of red velvet with its strangely fashioned blue kirtle. The creation of veils and frills and buckram that covered her hair was a monstrosity.

‘Castilian fashion!’ Lady Alice murmured. ‘I doubt it will catch on.’

The Duke bowed low. We all made appropriate obeisance.

‘You are right welcome, my lady.’

When the Duke held out his hand, she placed hers there, her stark gaze at last come to rest. He smiled, saluted her fingers and then her cheek, her lips. I noticed that although there was no reticence in her response, she did not return the smile. Perhaps she was overawed by the splendour of her new home. Compared with the hovel rumour said she had been reduced to occupying in a village in Bayonne—even worse than Kettlethorpe, Lady Alice had informed me with a wry smile—this palace in the very heart of London must seem to her like paradise.

‘You will never be in danger again,’ the Duke assured her. ‘Nor will you ever again live in poverty. This is your home.’ Then turning to the ranks of his household: ‘I would introduce to you my wife. Queen Constanza of Castile.’

We bowed, curtsied.

The Queen of Castile sneezed.

The Duke was immediately solicitous, for though it was undetectable, we all knew that beneath those voluminous robes the lady carried his child. ‘Your hands are cold. Forgive my thoughtlessness.’ He beckoned to Lady Alice: ‘My wife needs our consideration. The English winter has not been kind today. I’ll leave her in your efficient hands.’

The welcome was thus cut short out of concern for her health and that of her child, and she was handed over to her new household. To me. I found myself directed by Lady Alice, since I had not yet settled into any routine of duties for my new mistress, to conduct the lady to her accommodations, help her disrobe, organise her bathing and then put her to bed with a pan of hot coals and a cup of warm spiced wine. And to instruct her handful of Castilian ladies who were looking apprehensive and as wet as she.

‘You know how we go about things here. None better,’ Lady Alice murmured. ‘And next week, God willing, your sister can take over when she has wished her husband farewell. She can soothe the Castilian fears, and you can concentrate on the welfare of the coming child—as well as giving me a hand with the clutch of growing children in my care.’ She sighed as she observed the Castilian retinue and clicked her tongue. ‘They look frightened to death. Do they think we will eat them?’

I curtsied to the new Duchess, who glanced rather wildly at the Duke, but she followed as I led the way, lingering in every antechamber, every room, to take in the furnishings, the painted ceilings, the glowing tapestries. Even though she shivered with cold, she found a need to take in every aspect of her new home, until I decided that enough was enough when she sneezed again.

‘To take a chill, my lady, would not be good for your child,’ I advised firmly. Subtle deference, I sensed, would not pay with this young woman. ‘It would be better for you and the baby if you were out of those clothes immediately.’

She blinked as if she had not expected me to speak, or did not understand. Perhaps that was it, I realised. How good was her understanding of the French that we habitually spoke at court?

‘You are cold,’ I said clearly, slowly. ‘You need to be dry and warm.’

She nodded and quickened her steps.

‘Ah! Good!’ she said at last. For as we arrived at her private chamber, a wooden bath, the staves held in place by brass mounts carved with fish and dragons, had been manoeuvred before the fire to accommodate the water, steaming and fragrant with herbs. It was, I realised, the first word she had spoken since her arrival.

I stood back to allow her to enter, then, closing the door on the last empty bucket, followed her as the Castilian ladies stood around helplessly.

‘Find your mistress’s garments,’ I chivvied, seeing that some of her coffers had already been placed in the room. ‘A shift, a robe. Some soft shoes…’ I pointed at the bath. ‘Now you must bathe, my lady.’

And under my eye the maidservant I had brought with me began to strip the fur and matted velvet from the Castilian queen’s slight body, releasing her hair from its confinement so that it snaked, damp and tangled, over her shoulders. The Duchess simply stood and allowed it to happen.

‘Clothes for your mistress,’ I snapped again at the damsels, thinking that my sister Philippa, with all her experience in Duchess Blanche’s household, would find it a hard task to help me beat these women into some sort of order. They had clearly not served in a noble household before. Then I addressed the Duchess, who was standing shivering in her embroidered under-gown. ‘How do I address you, my lady?’

She regarded me steadily, looking far younger than her seventeen years. ‘I am Queen of Castile,’ she pronounced carefully.

Which did not help. She was also Duchess of Lancaster. Since she had not objected, I continued as I had called her.

‘A poor welcome for you, my lady.’

‘Yes. This is my sister, the Lady Isabella.’

She gestured casually with her hand towards the young unsmiling woman at her side, before handing to me, without looking at it, the brooch that had been pinned to the bosom of her gown. Making the requisite curtsy to the Lady Isabella, I placed the brooch on the coffer beside me. It was heavy with gold, depicting St George and a flamboyant dragon, all picked out in sapphires, diamonds and pearls. The dragon’s eyes were ruby-red. Much discussed, it was a gift from Prince Edward to acknowledge the Queen of Castile’s arrival, and was indeed worthy of royalty. I was surprised that she treated it with such indifference, for it was a remarkable jewel. Perhaps she was merely tired, yet I did not think so, despite the shadows beneath her eyes and the obvious strain on her aquiline features. I did not think it meant anything to her, and wondered what would move her to true emotion. As I turned back to her, she spoke, carefully:

‘Who are you?’

‘Katherine de Swynford, my lady.’

‘You are part of this…?’ She sought for the word. I had been right. Her French, heavily accented, was not good.

‘Household,’ I supplied. ‘I am part of the Duke’s household. And of yours. I am appointed to be one of your damsels.’

She stared at me. ‘One of my ladies?’ she repeated.

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Do you also care for the Duke’s children?’

‘Yes, my lady. When it is necessary.’

‘I have not met the children yet.’ She frowned. ‘My lord has told me of them.’

‘Tomorrow you will see them.’

She lifted her arms to allow her under-gown to be removed, then stood in her shift as the maid unrolled her stockings, obediently lifting one foot, then the other. ‘I will have a son of my own,’ she announced. ‘You served Duchess Blanche?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

The shift removed, I saw how undeveloped her body was at hip and breast. Childbearing would not be easy for her. The pregnancy showed barely a roundness of her belly. I offered my hand to help her step into the tub and lower herself into the water, where she sighed with pleasure and closed her eyes.

‘Are you married?’ she asked.

‘A widow, my lady.’

‘What is that?’

‘Una viuda,’ murmured one of the women who seemed to have more French than her mistress.

‘I understand. Your husband is dead. Do you have children?’

She had so many questions.

‘Yes. I have three. My daughter Blanche is the Duke’s godchild. What is that?’ I looked at the woman who had replied before.

‘Un ahijado,’ she supplied.

The Duchess’s eyes opened, focused on me, then narrowed. ‘He—the Duke—has a regard for you.’ There was no friendliness there and I sensed a jealousy in what was obviously a question. Who should recognise it better than I?

‘For me, a little, for the service I gave to his wife. And for my husband, much more,’ I explained. ‘He died in Aquitaine last year, in the Duke’s employ. Sir Hugh was a soldier in his retinue.’

‘I see.’ She understood enough, and what was most pertinent. The resentment in her eyes cooled. ‘Your husband was a man of title.’

‘Yes. He was a knight.’

‘Ah!’ She smiled, her face suddenly lit with an inner beauty. ‘So you are Lady Katherine de Swynford.’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Status also meant something to her. I wondered how fluent the Duke was in Castilian. He would need to be, to pick his way through all these Conflicting impulses.

‘Then I have decided. I want you to be my damsel,’ she stated with all the imperiousness of the house of Castile.

‘As I will be. The Duke has appointed me.’ I explained, slowly: ‘My sister, Mistress Chaucer, will also come to care for you.’

‘Is she like you?’

‘She is very capable. She knows about children.’

The new wife stretched out her arm for the maid to wash with a soft cloth. Her glance to me was suddenly sharp. ‘I fear this…’ She spread her free hand over her belly. ‘It makes me feel ill.’

‘There is no need to fear, my lady. You are young and strong.’

‘Still I fear.’ She shrugged. ‘Were you with Duchess Blanche? When she was with child?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘She lost some of her babies, did she not?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ I could not lie, but I poured her a cup of warm wine and offered it, hoping to distract her. It would do no good to speak of the three little boys who had not seen the first anniversary of their birth. Or the girl, Isabella, who had barely breathed.

‘How many?’ the Duchess insisted.

‘Four,’ I admitted. ‘But she carried three who are now grown.’

She waved aside the wine. ‘Have you lost any babies?’

‘No, my lady.’

‘Then you will stay with me. You will give me your advice.’ A demand again, not a request. ‘It is…it is imperativo that I carry un heredero for Castile.’

I caught the gist. ‘Of course,’ I soothed. The Duchess Constanza needed an heir.

‘My lord will get my kingdom back for me. I will not live in England long. My lord will drive my vicioso uncle Enrique from Castile. He will kill him for me. And I will take back what is mine.’

It sounded as if she had learned the phrases. So confident. So driven. Her eyes were aflame, her hands fisted on the edge of the bath. Then she looked at me, gaze narrowed again on my face.

‘You are beautiful.’

Which surprised me. ‘Thank you, my lady.’

‘I am said to be beautiful too.’

‘Yes, my lady. The people of London filled the streets to look at you.’

Her frown deepened into a scowl. ‘Was Blanche beautiful?’

‘Yes, my lady. But fair. Not dark like you.’

‘My lord likes beautiful things.’

‘Yes, my lady. You will lack for nothing here at The Savoy.’

My soothing comment elicited a torrent of Castilian.

‘A excepción de la tierra de mi nacimiento—y la venganza.’

I looked helplessly at the Castilian damsel who had hovered at my side throughout.

‘The Duchess says: “Except for the land of my birth. And vengeance.”’

‘Vengeance for what, my lady?’

Which was answered by a flash of eye and another stream of invective, carefully translated for me:

‘My father—King Pedro—his murderers live on, unpunished. He was ambushed by assassins, paid for by my uncle Enrique. He was decapitated and left unburied to his great dishonour. His head was sent to Seville for public exhibition. Dios mio! It is my life’s ambition to have my father interred in Castilian soil with all honour and his murderers slain. That I will do before I die.’

‘Of course, my lady.’

Her flat chest heaving, extreme vexation in every gesture, Constanza surged to her feet, splashing water, the evidence of the forthcoming child clearer as she arched her body.

‘My lord will take Castile from the deplorable Enrique. We will rule it together as King and Queen. This child—this son—will rule in his own time. I will have fulfilled my destiny—and my new husband’s too. What more could he desire, than to be King of Castile?’

What more could the Duke desire? There was no path for his ambitions in England, but Castile might just provide them. A kingdom of his own, to rule in his own name, answerable to no one. For the first time I understood the importance of this marriage for him. This marriage, the promise of this kingdom, would give him his heart’s desire.

‘I am tired,’ she announced. ‘I will go to bed.’

We dried her with soft linen, combed her hair. Wrapped in an embroidered chamber robe, feet in fur-lined slippers, she was soon propped against the pillows on her bed.

‘Do you think the Duke cares for me?’ she asked.

How could he not love her? She was beautiful and wellborn, an heiress with a kingdom for the taking by a courageous man. Obvious to all, the Duke was chivalrous and caring in his first meeting with her. Of course he loved her.

‘The Duke chose you before all other ladies who wished to wed a Plantagenet prince,’ I replied, for was that not the truth? ‘How could he not care for you?’

‘Bien! I hope it is so.’ She nodded, seeming to understand.

Do you care for him? I felt an urge to ask. I had no idea. She gave nothing away. She was shrewd and sharp, and I knew it was my duty to hope that the Duke would be happy with her and she with him.

Jealousy, bitter as aloes, coated my mouth as I left her to sleep, but then the erratic leap of my thoughts forced me into a wry smile.

Beware of the wife, Mistress Saxby had warned. It’s easy to be carried away by the glamour of stolen kisses, but a wife can make your life a misery. Take my word for it.

I would indeed beware, if ever such kisses came my way. It seemed, on my first steps as a damsel to Duchess Constanza, an unlikely eventuality.

So this marriage to the Queen of Castile was of vast importance to the Duke. It was brought home to me just how critical a step it was for him when a messenger arrived from the King as the household, without the new Duchess, sat at supper in the sumptuous splendour of the Great Hall. He bowed and handed over a sealed document.

‘His Grace the King asks that you consider the contents, Monseigneur d’Espaigne. He would value Monseigneur’s advice at the earliest possible moment.’

The Duke took the packet, inviting the messenger to sit with us while he read.

Monseigneur d’Espaigne.

Already he was recognised as King of Castile in his wife’s name. I would never see him as that—to me he would always be the Duke—even if courtesy and etiquette determined that I comply, but without doubt it would colour the direction of his future life. Would Monseigneur d’Espaigne not forget everything but the road to the throne of Castile, paved with gold and bloodshed, which lay stretching in a glittering seam before him, with the bride at his side? He would take an army and begin a re-conquest of the kingdom—and then he would live there, far from England, far from me, with his wife and new family.

An excellent outcome for all concerned. All my concerns should be allayed.

But they were not.

I offered up a silent prayer for forgiveness as the Duke perused the King’s letter, and my spoon congealed in a rich dish of mammenye ryal, the minced poultry redolent of almond milk and sweet wine, while I listed my sins in silent petition before the Blessed Virgin. Lust for a man who was bound to another. Avarice, the sin of deadly excess, as evidenced by my uncontrolled emotion. Greed that made me wish for an affection that was not mine to take. Envy against the Duchess, beautiful and regal, in her rightful place at the Duke’s side and in his bed. Pride that blinded me to my own unworthiness.

All of those. The tally of them horrified me.

Can you not find evidence of Sloth, Wrath and Gluttony as well? I asked bitterly.

I was sure I could. I put my spoon down, determined to eat no more that night. I should never have come back. It was an unforgivable mistake. I should not have allowed myself to be drawn into dreams of what could never be. I had allowed myself to live, however briefly, in a magical scene in which my love was no longer unrequited. One day spent at The Savoy, absorbing the high politics of the occasion and the determination of the new Duchess, had shown me the futility of it all. The Duke would assuredly have other fish to fry.

‘Has my wife found her chamber to her liking?’ the Duke asked Lady Alice as we rose at last at the end of the meal.

‘Yes, my lord, so I understand. Lady Katherine waited on her.’

Since I was standing within earshot, he could do no other than look to me for clarification.

‘I trust she has suffered no ill effects from the journey, Lady Katherine?’

‘None, my lord,’ I replied, coolly informative and nothing more. ‘The Duchess is weary, of course. She will be strong again by the morning. I am honoured to be appointed as her damsel, my lord,’ I added.

‘I can think of none better.’

He moved on beside Lady Alice, head bent, absorbed in some household problem.

Well, that had been entirely impersonal, completely centred on the well-being of the Castilian Queen, as it should be. His smile was such that he would bestow on any one of his retinue from his most eminent physician to Nichol, the gardener at The Savoy. That briefest of conversations had made everything crystal clear. All my worrying had been futile.

Now it must be for me to put it right in my mind, to return to the calm existence of my previous service at The Savoy. It would be just like before. It would be like stepping back into my old skin, before all the upheaval. Before the Duke had said what he said, and torn my world apart.

Why did he have to do that, when it was obviously an aberration? Why were men sometimes as insensitive as a wild boar’s charge when faced with a huntsman’s lance? And there he was, entirely oblivious to the disturbance he had created, presumably concerned for nothing more than the perfect lie of the damask along his shoulders, the dramatic gleam of the gold chain against the red and black and gold of the cloth.

A little bubble of anger in my belly made me wish I had not eaten those final spoonfuls of the highly spiced dish. I regretted it even more when the Duke abandoned Lady Alice and awaited me by the door. My heart leaped, then plummeted as he raised a hand to stop my progress.

‘Lady Katherine.’

‘My lord?’

‘Are you angry?’ he asked abruptly.

We were, for that one moment, alone.

‘No, my lord,’ I reassured him quickly, smiling lightly, as I smoothed what I thought must be a particularly unyielding expression from my face. How well Queen Philippa had schooled me. ‘There is nothing to disturb me except gratitude for your kindness.’

‘I will send for you,’ he said with a shadow of a frown.

I was not to be allowed to slip into my old skin after all. His appraisal, agate-bright, was direct and uncompromising. I met it the same way, until he gestured for me to precede him from the hall, adding imperiously:

‘You will come to me.’

I opened my mouth, to refuse, or so I thought, until, fleetingly, he touched my arm. My adroitly composed refusal promptly fled, my willpower compromised by the slightest pressure of his fingers against my tight-buttoned sleeve. I think I looked at him in horror.

‘You give me no peace. Why should that be?’ he demanded.

I could find no reply at all to that.

I walked on, conscious that the Duke’s footsteps did not follow me, until a prickle of awareness snatched at my attention. I was being observed from the little knot of newcomers just arrived at the outer door.

There, muffled in furs, eyes cool and searching on my face, a cage of singing finches much like my own in her hand, was Philippa. My sister. I smiled, and kept my smile lively, even though I did not enjoy the judgemental quality of her expression. Philippa was not smiling.

In my own chamber, before she could descend on me, I put the rosary away in my coffer. Caught between sister Philippa and the Duke, I must tread carefully.

‘Where is he then, Philippa?’

‘I have no idea. Picardy, the last I heard.’

As I seated myself on my bed, my sister began to divest herself of her furs, placing them carefully over a polished settle, sweeping her hand down over the lustrous skins. She was not without means, but she took care of her possessions with a neat exactitude I recognised from our shared childhood. Her voice now, in maturity, was clipped with displeasure. ‘A military expedition, so I’m led to believe, but why he should feel the need to go when…’ She hissed her irritation. ‘I am, as usual, kept in the dark. He gave me the finches to keep me company and sweeten my mood.’

‘Very poetic,’ I observed, not daring to laugh.

‘Poetic, but useless,’ she remarked, uncharitably I thought. But then, I was not wed to Geoffrey Chaucer. I did not think that it was an experience I would enjoy, despite his erudition and clever way with words.

Philippa had arrived eventually at my chamber, leaving me much relieved that what I had thought to be a censorious stare had proved to be nothing of the sort, when she had laughed and fallen into my arms. Or perhaps she was keeping the censure for later. I knew my sister well.

‘I am so very pleased to be back here,’ she announced. After Duchess Blanche’s death, when her household was disbanded and I had gone to Kettlethorpe, my sister had taken up residence in the Chaucer family property in Thames Street. ‘It was becoming very cramped. I’ve brought the children too, as you saw.’

As I had. Elizabeth and another Thomas, their ages matching with Margaret and my own son.

Philippa’s eyes glinted. ‘Are you pleased to see me?’

‘Delighted. I’ll happily hand the Duchess over to you, and all her starchy women, while I lurk in the background. Do you speak Castilian?’

‘No.’

‘A pity.’

‘Is she like Blanche?’

‘She is nothing like Blanche.’

‘So I presume we’re going to Tutbury. Or Hertford.’

‘If Queen Constanza can be persuaded that that is where she wishes to go.’

‘So it’s like that, is it? Do you come too?’

‘I am appointed as a damsel with you. Just like old times.’

Except that it was not, and never would be, no matter what the outcome of the promised conversation with the Duke.

Philippa must have seen some shadow of my torment. ‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing.’

‘Missing Hugh?’

‘Yes.’

‘I saw the Duke being very solicitous.’

‘The Duke is always solicitous,’ I replied, more quickly than was perhaps wise.

‘To have a tête-à-tête in the Great Hall, with his wife’s damsel?’

So I had been right about the censure. Philippa had been saving her well-sharpened arrows. Perhaps, divorced from court, dissatisfied with the restrictions on her life because of her perennially absent husband, she had been storing them up for such an occasion as this. It behoved me to keep my wits about me. I might be an innocent party in this situation, but guilt had a habit of encroaching on the edges. I grimaced at the image that sprang to mind, like fat around a bowl of mutton pottage.

‘The Duke is solicitous of everyone, as you well know,’ I responded. ‘He has my eternal gratitude. Without this position, Kettlethorpe would sink beneath the floods.’

‘You look well in the role of Lady of Kettlethorpe.’ The sharp assessment was still there in her eyes. ‘I envy you.’

‘As a widow? With a ruinous estate?’

‘No one would know. You look very sleek and smart.’

I laughed, smoothing the rich fur edging. ‘I was asked to put aside my widow’s weeds.’

‘By the Duke?’

‘Yes. It would not have been appropriate.’

‘I see!’

The twinkle in her eye drove me to employ diversionary tactics. ‘Being a widow has its problems.’

‘I see none!’

‘It has still to be decided who will administer the estates. Since Thomas is a minor, and Hugh a vassal of the crown, they have reverted to the King. The wardship of Thomas could be sold to anyone. Our finances are worse than you can ever imagine. You’re lucky to have a husband with a steady income.’

Philippa found my plight of no great importance compared with her own miseries. ‘I may as well be a widow, the amount of time I spend without him.’

‘But you are financially secure. I had to come begging.’

‘Kettlethorpe as bad as ever?’

I recalled Philippa’s single brief visit there, her pointed comments and her rapid departure, and replied sharply, ‘Worse. Is Geoffrey as bad as ever?’

‘Worse.’

We laughed, not unkindly. It was an old exchange and so we settled into gossip, now that we had established our old relationship: Philippa sharp and brittle, critical of the world, I more tolerant. I was the elder by little more than a year, yet it was not always obvious. Philippa sometimes proved to be the more worldly wise.

I sat and watched her as she told me about the doings of her two children. We were close, neither of us having any memory of our mother, and barely of our father, Sir Gilles de Roet, a knight from Hainault, who had died there when I was three years old, having given us into the tender care of Queen Philippa to whom he owed his service. We had a brother, Walter, taken to soldiering like my father, dying in the retinue of Edward of Woodstock at the battle of Poitiers, and an elder sister, Elizabeth, who, a nun in a monastic house at Mons, had gone from birth to death without my knowing her.

So, to all intents and purposes alone in the world, Philippa and I owed everything to the kindly and maternal Queen: our raising, our education and our position in the household of Duchess Blanche when we were very young, as nothing more than cradle-rockers to the two tiny daughters. Without parents we had clung to each other, and although our lives had taken different directions, the closeness remained. But that did not mean that I was not careful around my sister’s caustic tongue.

‘Are you happy?’ I asked, interrupting a long list of complaints about Agnes, Geoffrey’s ageing mother, who still occupied the Thames Street house.

‘As much as I ever am. I don’t think it is in my nature to be satisfied. Perhaps if I had wed a handsome knight like you.’ A twist of bitterness curved her lips.

‘Your husband is a man of great worth.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘His writing brings him great fame.’

‘True.’

‘You have your children.’

‘And they are a blessing. But I’ll have no more.’

I paused, considering whether to ask why she was so adamant, and decided against it. ‘Geoffrey cares for you,’ I observed instead.

‘Geoffrey is entirely indifferent to me. He has never written a poem to my beauty or my fine eyes. All he does is condemn what he calls the entrapment of marriage.’

I laughed.

‘Don’t laugh! Do you know? He owns over sixty books. He’d rather spend time with them than with me.’ She chuckled as I continued to laugh at her complaint but there was a sadness there that touched my heart. ‘I am just dissatisfied. It will be better at Hertford.’ She rose and walked to the window to look out over the Thames. ‘What about you, Kate? Do you have an eye to another husband?’

‘I have only been a widow for a matter of months.’

‘A lover then.’

‘Philippa!’

‘You’re too pious for your own good. You had not seen Hugh for—how long before his death?’

‘Sixteen months. And I am not pious.’

‘I know you better than you know yourself. You would have to say a full decade of paternosters before leaping into a lover’s bed.’

‘I would not!’

But I would, as I knew only too well, as I was thrown into a puddle of doubt. My conscience was a strong force within me, and sin was not something to be lightly cast aside, as I was finding to my cost when all my strictly held tenets of living seemed to be hanging by a thread in the face of the Duke’s campaign. If I took this step to please him, if I went to him when he summoned me, the thread would be cut as cleanly as if I were finishing the edge of a girdle. I could not hold to any pretence that it would not matter. It would. If I stepped, I must accept the guilt and the condemnation.

‘Katherine.’ Philippa nudged me. ‘Where were you?’

‘Nowhere.’ I knew my cheeks were flushed. ‘You were saying?’

‘That I could take a lover…’ Philippa mused.

‘Geoffrey might mind.’

‘Geoffrey might not even notice. So, have you set your eye on anyone?’

Another diversionary tactic was needed. ‘Speaking of Geoffrey, does he talk to you about court matters?’

‘Sometimes. Why?’

‘I’m interested in the Duke’s ambitions. He’s now addressed as Monseigneur d’Espaigne. Does he truly seek the crown of Castile?’

Does he love the Queen? That is what I wanted to know. Has he wed for love, as he wed Blanche, for the passion that was between them? Or was Constanza a pawn in a foreign alliance, a means to a political end because he saw the crown of Castile as a jewel on his horizon?

‘Geoffrey thinks so,’ Philippa replied carelessly. ‘The Duke has ambitions. It has always been so for him, to seek power. It was once mooted that he become King of Scotland. Now it’s Castile. A chance for a kingdom of his own.’ She shrugged, displaying her own lack of interest. ‘He’s an ambitious man. It’s no surprise. Why are you so interested?’

‘I am not.’

‘Well, he would not remain unwed for long, would he? He only has one son to step into his shoes. Perhaps he fell in love. Love at first sight.’

‘Perhaps he did.’

It confirmed only what I had thought.

‘Geoffrey says he gave her a magnificent wedding gift. A gold cup fashioned as a rose with a white dove on the lid. Sounds like a lover’s gift to me.’

So it did to me. Which made everything so much worse. His invitation to me was the prelude to a mere dalliance, and I would not comply.

You will not comply anyway! My conscience lectured.

‘And she is strikingly beautiful, I hear. Enough to entrap the heart of any man.’

‘Yes, she is.’

Philippa had convinced me.

‘Enough of Constanza.’ Philippa stood, looking round appreciatively at the spacious accommodation reserved for me. ‘Do I share this room with you, or do I have a Castilian damsel to entertain? Let us go and discover, and find my children. By the by, I have been granted an annuity of ten pounds by the Duke in token of my service.’ The slide of her eye was piercing. ‘It’s good to be appreciated. What are you paid? Are you worth more than I?’

I shook my head, quick to lie. How easily half-truths and deceptions leaped to my lips these days. ‘How could I be?’

Another confession that I must make. I was relieved I had packed away the rosary. I would not have liked to explain that gift to her.

Chapter Five

‘Robert!’ I called out as I turned a corner in the early dusk. ‘Robert Rabbas! Where are you, in God’s name!’

It was cold enough to turn the Thames to ice.

Shivering, infuriated, fingers so frozen I could barely bend them, I held my hood close beneath my chin. Why was there neither sight nor sound of a squire or a page or even a household servant when one was most needed to carry out a burdensome task? And why had we been blighted by a basket of green wood which did nothing but smoulder and smoke and give out no heat, when the weather was at its bleakest, driven in by March winds from the north?

Our plans to transfer the whole household to Hertford had gone awry, when Henry, the Lancaster heir, was struck down with a fever. Cross and fractious, sometimes weeping with pains in his joints, his little body alternated between burning heat and intense cold. With concerns for the health of her unborn child—for might it not be the plague?— Duchess Constanza was not to be persuaded that this was a childish ailment and expressed the desire to leave London immediately for the Duke’s castle at Hertford. Within a day she was packed into a palanquin with her ladies and Philippa in attendance and they departed, the Duke accompanying her before returning to London to re-engage with the King and Prince Edward in planning for the campaign against the French for the New Year. It was expected that the Duke would lead the forces.

He had not sent for me. In the circumstances he might well leave England with nothing resolved between us.

Meanwhile we remained at The Savoy, the young people and their household, expecting the fever to run like wildfire through the rest of the children before it wore itself out. It was agreed that we would follow to Hertford when the danger was passed.

I was not sorry, as I sat and bathed Henry’s forehead and heated limbs with common henbane boiled in wine. The large furry leaves might look uninviting but they were of sound reputation in cooling inflammations, I consoled myself. I could hear Constanza’s voice raised in Castilian complaint even as the ducal party rode out of the gate, and silently wished my sister well as I decided that it would be a relief to be free of the Duke’s presence.

Yet living in such a milieu as The Savoy, in the world of the Duke’s own creation of art and wealth, it was hard not to sense his presence, even when he was miles away. At the turn of a stair, there he might be. Kneeling in the chapel, riding his bay stallion into the courtyard, sitting at supper in the Great Hall. Even though he did none of those things, it seemed that I might catch that glimpse of him if I looked carefully enough.

I would not give in to temptation. I would not look.

Better that he is not here! I reprimanded myself.

So now with hoar frost forming on the insides of the glazing and the fire making little impact, we had wrapped the children as warmly as we could in furs and bedcovers and sent for fuel two hours ago, until spurred by righteous anger I had volunteered to chase it up. Thomas Haselden, Controller of the Duke’s Household, was nowhere to be found. Sir Thomas Hungerford, our steward, had travelled with the Duke and Constanza to Hertford. Somehow the smooth running of the household had got out of kilter, and approaching the hour for supper as it was, the servants would be busy in the kitchens, but that was no good reason for us to freeze to death. Elizabeth had developed a cough, exacerbated by the acrid smoke, and I suspected Blanche would follow suit. Even Alyne, usually stalwart, had taken to her bed, feeling her age in her bones, she said. Lady Alice was considering the tenor of her complaint to the Duke when she next set eyes on him.

The shadows here in the inner courtyard were thick and deep in the corners, but as I strode on, there was a movement. Emerging from the side door in the far corner came a dark-clad figure with a bundle under his arm. He would do very well for my errand. I raised my hand to draw his attention. I also raised my voice again.

‘Robert, is it?’ The figure was tall enough to be the lanky page who had brought us the basket of unseasoned logs. ‘We have need of fuel in the schoolroom. Would you arrange it?’

He paused. Hesitated. Bowed.

‘I have already requested more wood. Four hours ago.’ A little exaggeration would not come amiss.

The figure remained motionless. I raised my voice a little more so that it echoed back at me off the dank stones.

‘Fetch some if you please. And don’t just pass the message to someone else and forget about it. It is too cold for the children. And not unseasoned wood either!’ I added, as he disappeared within.

I returned to the schoolroom.

‘Any success?’ Lady Alice shivered in the draught with the opening of the door.

‘It has yet to be seen,’ I replied, thinking that the temperature was little different inside than out. The children looked pinched, and yes, Blanche was coughing, her eyes red-rimmed. Only Henry, newly recovering and already beginning to resent the curb on his freedom, looked full of energy. As I stooped to tuck a fur bedspread more firmly around Philippa, the door behind me was shouldered open.

‘Fuel, mistress,’

‘And about time too!’

‘I came as fast as I could, mistress.’

I swung round. There, placing a basket of logs beside the sulky fire, with an impressive flexing of arm and shoulder muscle, was the Duke. Swinging his short cloak back over one shoulder, he applied himself to brushing twigs and dust from his hands, beating the residue from his tunic.

‘My lord!’ We curtsied hurriedly. The children began to emerge from their wrappings like moths from a cocoon, lured by this timely distraction. I busied myself with some entirely unnecessary task, hiding my flushed cheeks, but not before I had registered the gleam in the ducal eye.

‘More’s on its way.’ He looked round, taking in our beleaguered state, frowning as he pulled his hat from his head and ruffled his hair. ‘Before God, it’s as cold as Hades in here.’

‘What are you doing, John?’ Alice asked, walking across to remove more pieces of debris from his sleeve. ‘Do we employ no servants?’

‘I expect we do.’ His eyes were wide and guileless when they slid in my direction. ‘But I was instructed to fetch this personally, and not pass the message onto another and then forget about it.’

I felt a flush of heat creep even deeper from chin to hairline.

Alice laughed. ‘When did you return?’

‘Just this moment, and not before time, it seems. I’m pleased to be of use.’

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ I said. I could not meet that apparently innocent stare. ‘I would not presume…’

He brushed it aside with a little gesture, much as he had brushed the twigs from the richly figured cloth. ‘I’m rarely mistaken for a servant, much less Robert. Some would say it was good for my soul and I should thank God that I am reminded of the humility of Christ.’ But there was laughter in his voice as he looked round, taking stock, graciously accepting a psalter from Henry, ruffling his son’s hair much as he had ruffled his own. ‘It’s too cold in here. They’ll all come down with the ague.’ With a grin he pulled his soft felt hat low onto his son’s head so that the fur brim covered the child’s eyes, making Henry chortle with delight. ‘Take them to my rooms, Alice, and make them comfortable. Lady Katherine and I will arrange to bring books and whatever else she considers we need…’

‘An excellent thought…’ Without fuss, Alice rounded up and ushered the little party of children and nursemaids out. Leaving me to face my nemesis. There he stood, between me and the door, hands loosely at his sides, his eyes watchful, expression unreadable. There was no escape and he would require an answer from me.

He must have seen me glance at the open door.

‘No…’ Within a breath, he had taken one stride and possessed himself of my hand, his frown deepening. ‘You are frozen.’

And without more ado he seized my other hand, pulled me down to the settle just vacated by his daughters, wrapped my hands in the fur-lined folds of his mantle and held them firmly against the breast of his tunic, tightening his grip when I struggled to release them. Since to continue would be fruitless, and undignified, I gave up the lost cause and simply sat. Beneath my palms I absorbed the beat of his heart, hard and steady, far steadier than mine. All my thoughts were dominated by the one: he was too close, too overpowering, and I did not know what to say to him.

‘I did not know that you were returned,’ I said, inwardly flinching at the banal comment.

‘I had to. I had to see you,’ he replied evenly.

His eyes were dark, their usual brilliance muted, the flat planes of his face still.

‘This is wrong,’ I remonstrated. ‘I must not be here with you like this.’

‘Do you deny me the right to comfort you?’

‘You have no right.’ Panic rose in me, because his touch made my blood beat in my ears.

‘I am Plantagenet.’

Delivered with a swagger that took my breath with its arrogance.

‘So I am yours to command?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know what you want from me, sir.’

‘You. I want you.’

And I struggled even more to find a reply. ‘Your loyalty is to your wife, my lord.’

Beneath my palms I felt him inhale, and tensed for a blast of Plantagenet irritation. Though his response was lightly made, it was unnerving in that he picked up our conversation as if there had not been a strained hiatus of six weeks.

‘You know what I want, Katherine. In God’s name, I made myself plain enough. Too plain. I think if I recall correctly I showed a lamentable lack of finesse—but I had hoped you would reconsider. It’s been too long. How long is it since you came to me and I offered you my service and bed?’

The simplicity of that statement made my own heart bound. ‘Six weeks, my lord.’ I knew exactly.

He laughed, making me feel foolish. ‘So you have been counting too.’

And suddenly I cast off any thoughts of the difference in our status. We were no longer royal duke and loyal dependent, simply a man and a woman encountering a choice that was no choice, and never could be.

‘My answer is no different now,’ I said.

‘Nor is my desire to have you with me. Are we at stale-mate? I wanted you then. I want you now.’ His words were low and urgent, forcing me to listen and consider rather than wilfully reject. ‘I cannot accept that you are indifferent to me. I can feel the blood raging through my body as I hold you, just as I can feel the beat of yours throbbing in your wrists.’

How horribly true. How could I deny what he could sense through the simple fact of our proximity? My throat was dry, my heart furiously beating against my ribs, as his heart did too with increased vehemence against my palms. I would be a fool to claim indifference when my cheeks were flushed with sudden warmth and my whole body trembled.

‘If I kissed you now, this very moment,’ the Duke surmised, eyes as keen as one of his goshawks in the mews, ‘I wager your lips would be warm and welcoming.’

So did I. I knew they would. Close enough that I could see my own reflection in his eyes, it was impossible to hide the turbulence of my thoughts. Helplessly, I turned my face away.

‘If I kissed you, how could you deny the attraction that draws us together?’ Lifting our joined hands, he turned my face to his. ‘Do you fear me? I don’t think you do—and I’ll not kiss you without your permission.’ And with a smile that hacked at the base of all my convictions: ‘Will you be my love, Katherine?’

But I was not so lost to good sense. ‘I can’t!’ Why could he not see? ‘It was wrong then and it is wrong now.’

‘That’s what you said last time.’

‘And I say it again. You should not ask it of me.’

Formality had fallen away from both of us. His eyes moved over my face, as if absorbing every feature. At first their hard brightness had returned, full of what I could only interpret as displeasure that I refused him. But then they softened, perhaps with regret. ‘It is not my intention to distress you.’ It had the sound of a benediction as his grip loosened a little. And then, when I had thought he might actually accept my denial of him and leave me, his gaze sharpened as it flicked over my person.

‘Why are you not wearing my rosary?’ So he had noticed the simple length of wooden beads at my waist, replacing the coral.

‘Because it is an unsuitable gift from you to your wife’s damsel.’

‘Unsuitable? What is unsuitable for the Duke of Lancaster to do?’ Arrested, he lifted his chin. ‘I thought it most suitable. I thought you would like it, and would find more use for it than a hanap.’

‘I do. Of course I do. It is magnificent.’ I felt an urge to shake him, as a woman might shake any obtuse man who could not follow her line of reasoning. ‘To give me such a gift—a gift of such portent—and then ask me to become your mistress, when I am part of your new wife’s establishment…it is too much.’

His brows, previously amused or lightly assured, drew into a flat line. ‘A sin, in effect.’

‘Yes.’ My mouth was dry, my heart as cold as stone, but it must be said. ‘It is immoral,’ I whispered. ‘It goes against all I learned as a child, in my upbringing at your mother’s hand. And in your careful raising too, I imagine.’

Nostrils flaring, the royal blood had never been so obvious. ‘If a man had said that to me, I would have cleaved his head with my sword. So you accuse me of immorality, Lady de Swynford?’

‘Yes. No…’ I had, hadn’t I? I felt my face flush again as I stumbled over my muddled response.

‘Well, that’s clear enough.’

‘It’s not clear at all!’ His fingers tightened around the soft wrappings as I tried to pull away again. ‘It weights on my conscience.’

‘So you reject me because of conscience.’

‘Yes. But not only that.’ I determined to explain. ‘I would never become the mistress of a man who did not respect me, or whom I could not respect to the same degree.’ So I asked him. A question I had never asked any man, certainly not a question I could ever envisage presenting to the Duke of Lancaster. ‘Can you respect a woman who agreed to give herself, in carnal sin, into a relationship with a man without the blessing of the Church?’

There was no hesitation: ‘Yes, I can, if you are that woman. Since I have made my desire for you more than plain, how can you ask it? I am the man who will cherish you, with or without the Church’s blessing, and I will stand protection for you against the accusatory world.’

A fine promise that touched my emotions. So he might be that man, but was I the woman to give myself over to that sin? Could I live a life founded on lust, on unholy, unsanctified, physical desire, which would call ignominy down on my head? It would take a strong will to face family and friends as the acknowledged mistress of the Duke of Lancaster and accept their judgement.

‘Do you deny my power to accomplish it?’ the Duke demanded. ‘I will make you my mistress, and as the woman who is chosen by a prince of the Plantagenet line, you will be answerable to no man.’

But I would be answerable to my own conscience and to God. All I could do was retreat to a dilemma that he must understand.

‘I cannot. I am too far below you, my lord, a mere daughter of a royal official, a widow of a minor knight. But nor am I a court whore, willing to please any man in exchange for nightly gratification and a handful of jewels, as he sees fit. I know what is due to me, just as I know my place in the ordering of worldly affairs, and that place is not in your bed. I cannot accept your invitation simply because…because…’

‘Because I have an itch that is in need of scratching. Is that what you wished to say?’

‘Yes.’

My cheeks were on fire from the deliberate crudity, but the Duke laughed.

‘Your scruples, madam, are magnificent.’

‘I know that you value my service,’ I tried to explain despite the sharp irony, for was he not still smiling at me? ‘I know that you have a kindness for me and my children. I will serve the house of Lancaster in heartfelt gratitude for all you have done for us. But how do you desire me? You loved Blanche to the depths of your soul. Your love for her shone as a bright halo around you, around the pair of you. I know the pain of your grief when she died.’ I held his whole attention now. ‘You have a new and beautiful high-born wife who is carrying your child. She brings you a kingdom, a valuable alliance. She is young and vulnerable and would appeal to your chivalry. Would you not love her too? I know you have a care for her—you treat her as if she is made of fine glass. Why would you not adore her?’

Why did I have a need to say all this? It was fruitless, painting a picture that was far more familiar to him than it was to me. But still I would speak out. I took a breath, flattening my hands, still warmly enwrapped, against his chest.

‘I will not be the mistress of any man who simply wants me for a casual hour of dalliance and a fast satisfaction between the bedsheets,’ I declared, as outspoken as he.

‘And a handful of jewels. So you said.’ The Duke tilted his chin as his eyes gleamed with something like appreciation. I thought I had surprised him after all. ‘That was quite a speech. I knew there was a reason I appointed you as the Duchess’s damsel. I am mightily impressed. Have you finished dissecting my morals and my character?’ he asked. ‘In my own defence then, I worshipped Blanche. Her death near broke my heart. But she is dead three years now, and a flame does not remain alight for ever.’

I thought about this, accepted it. ‘Yet now there is Constanza, my lord.’ The Queen of Castile stood between us, as formidably as if she had stepped into the room.

‘Do you think I dishonour her?’ he asked, his brows angling. ‘Constanza does not love me, nor I her, if that concerns you. It is a political marriage, to our mutual benefit, and one that could bring me great power. I am a man with ambitions that I will not see fulfilled as my father’s third-born son, and so I value Constanza for what she can bring me. I will never show her less than respect. I will do nothing to harm her or cause her distress. I will never hold her up to ridicule or slights in public, but will treat her with every courtesy.’

‘I think you might be hypocritical if you invite me to be your mistress within a six-month of your bridal vows, my lord. And no, I was not dissecting your character,’ I continued, my words carrying an unmistakable burden of acidity. ‘I’ll not be any man’s mistress, to be enjoyed for a few passing weeks of pleasure when the desire runs strong, only to be cast aside when the appetite palls.’

The Duke grinned. ‘I see that you don’t think much of my staying power. I think the pleasure we would find together would be of longer duration than that. Do you think I’d cast you adrift after only a few weeks?’

‘I don’t know.’ And to my dismay I felt the sting of tears. I swallowed hard. ‘I think you do not understand my dilemma. I have a conscience,’ I repeated, feeling that I was fighting a losing battle against his obstinacy.

‘And you think I do not, it seems. What a very low opinion you have of me.’ He shook his head in mock reproof. ‘You have given me a hard task, have you not? I must find a way to prove it to you that an hour or two of dalliance would be most enjoyable.’

‘I defy you to try, my lord. I’ll not be persuaded.’

The Duke stood, pulling me with him, drawing me into his arms when I tried to step back. So we stood, unmoving, breast to breast, thigh to thigh. I thought for a moment, in which I stopped breathing, that it was in his mind to kiss me. Then footsteps sounded in the distance, approaching briskly, and he raised his head.

‘I vow I will do it. Stay in the chapel after Compline.’

‘I’ll not change my mind.’

‘I command you, Katherine. And it will give you time to think. I can feel your body shivering with the beat of your heart. I swear you feel this strange appeal between us just as strongly as I, and it’s in my mind to make you abandon your so carefully constructed arguments and admit it.’

He addressed me with such a note of intractability, forcing me to acknowledge just how ruthless John of Lancaster could be. It chilled me to the bone, if it had not been for the little leap of fire in my heart. He unwrapped his cloak from around my hands, releasing me at last.

‘At least I’ve made your hands warm. Now it is my holy grail to make you smile again. And I will do it.’

He said no more for the footsteps materialised into the form of the absent Robert, but I felt the weight of the Duke’s obstinacy, as he ordered the servant to collect up an abandoned lute and drum, pushed books into my hands, tucking others under his arm. I followed him to his rooms where, surrounded by childish voices and blessed warmth, some form of normality returned.

As he opened the door for me he stood for a moment, holding me back.

‘I’ll woo you and win you, lady. I’ll give battle to your conscience and defeat it. I give you fair warning.’

‘I will not be won over.’

‘Do you say?’ His lips were against my ear as he whispered: ‘I’ll have you yet.’

In a spirit of defiance I knelt for Compline with the household. I would be honest and firm. I would restore myself to God’s good grace. I would not be swayed by either specious argument or base desire.

I would refuse the Duke of Lancaster.

As the priest made the sign of the benediction and the service ended, the chapel emptied, but, because I had been so commanded, I remained on my knees, with a brief smile for Lady Alice who presumed that I had a final personal petition to make. Immediately I heard the door close behind me, and there was the Duke moving softly to stand at my side.

Not daring to look at him in all his magnificent smooth elegance, his tunic and jewels gleaming, I fixed my eye on the figure of the suffering Christ on the altar’s gold crucifix. This should be a very brief confrontation.

‘My answer is still no, my lord.’ I could not make it plainer.

Which the Duke ignored.

‘You have returned to your doleful black,’ he remarked, surveying my widow’s weeds from head to foot. There was laughter in his voice.

‘Yes, my lord. I have.’

‘You have also, it seems, reverted to stiff formality.’

‘Yes, my lord. It is for the best.’

‘For whom? Don’t answer that.’ As I opened my mouth to do just that.

‘There is nothing more to say between us, my lord,’ I said instead.

Which deterred him not at all, offering his hand, persisting when I was slow to take it. ‘Perhaps we should discuss my proposal further, and I would rather you were not on your knees, my lady. Did I not vow to persuade you of the rightness of our being together? I will do it, but I would rather contemplate your lovely face than that unflattering veil.’

Colour rushed to my cheeks but I took the offered hand and stood, conscious of nothing but his touch. The altar shimmered with gold, my bones turned to water, my flesh was consumed with heat. I suspected this was going to take longer than I had foreseen.

‘This is not an appropriate place, my lord.’

I kept my gaze level on the glittering altar panel of saints and angels surrounding the risen Christ. Every one of them was regarding me with judgement in his face.

‘This, my delight, is the only privacy we’ll get. Keep your piety under control.’ And when I stiffened in outrage, he laughed. ‘We’ll make the most of the time we have here without interference.’ And placing his hands on my shoulders he turned me to face him, taking me entirely by surprise when he leaned to kiss the space between my brows. ‘Do you know that your skin has the glow of the most precious pearl I possess? And since this is the only area of skin you allow me to see…’ Disturbing the pattern of my heartbeat further, he stroked my cheek from brow to chin with the tips of his fingers. ‘It is softer than the finest silk.’

My thoughts were in a tumble of awareness of him. The breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his hands. The striking lines of his features. The brush of his lips against my skin had completely unravelled my certainty, like the mayhem a kitten might have created in a box of embroidery silks.

‘You brows are the gold of a summer gilly-flower,’ he continued, smiling as if unaware of my chaotic emotions. Of course he was aware. This was quite deliberate. ‘You have the grace of one of the iridescent damselflies over the mere at Kenilworth. Your eyes hold a depth of ancient amber. You, Madame de Swynford, are a rare and beautiful woman.’

I trembled in his grasp. I could not prevent it.

‘Is this a wooing, my lord?’

‘Of course.’

‘Or a sophisticated flirtation, to undermine my decision?’

‘That too. I always knew that you were an intelligent woman as well as a beautiful one.’ He paused, watching every expression on my face. ‘Am I succeeding?’ His eyes became intent, the flippancy dissipating in an instant, his hands more urgent, but he kept his tone light. ‘Do I engage your senses to any degree?’ he enquired conversationally, as if asking after my state of health. ‘Your veil is shivering with your response to me. But will you admit it?’

What could I say? Honesty had its own dangers. ‘Yes, my lord. I admit to feeling an…an attraction to you.’

The intensity deepened. ‘Then be with me,’ he urged, his fingers flexing. ‘Be with me, Madame Katherine, and allow me to open the doors of heaven for you.’

It seemed to me that the angelic throng frowned its disapproval.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘What have I said now to distress you?’

‘The angels disapprove,’ I observed.

‘The angels are free to make their own judgement. This is not their concern. This is between you and me.’

And before I could speak he had framed my face with his hands and kissed my lips, the gentlest, most tender of kisses, his lips just brushing mine. It took my breath.

‘There,’ he said. ‘I knew that kissing you would be like sipping honeyed wine. And God will forgive me for taking it.’

Which robbed me even more of words. How like him, I thought mutinously. How like the Duke of Lancaster to flout convention and woo me so carnally in this holy place, in the sight of God, and apparently with all due reverence.

‘If I recall,’ he continued, ‘your hair—which you do not allow me to see—would challenge the sun itself in its brightness.’ Then: ‘Look at me, Katherine.’

And I did. I had no will to resist under the power of his words even if I had not been entranced by that kiss. The Duke’s eyes, reflecting the gilding on angel and cherub, were level and clear on mine.

‘I saw you in my audience chamber and I wanted you. You know that. I wanted you to be mine. I still do, and I won’t let you go. You were made to belong to me. It is my right to claim you.’

As if there could be no other reason for our being here. Perhaps there was no other for a man such as he. He saw me and wanted me. I simply stared. If the angels were astounded to hear it so forcefully expressed, so was I.

His hands moved slowly down from my shoulders in one long caress, until he was in possession of my hands.

‘You came to me because you needed help,’ he said. ‘There you stood, pale and worn and overwrought with too many sleepless nights and worries, and for the first time since I had known you, you were in need. I had never thought of you as fragile, but on that day I wanted to lift the burden from your shoulders.’ His breathing was rather fast, matching mine. ‘I still do. And I want more than that. I want to strip that black garment from you and take you to my bed and show you the pleasures that can exist between a man and a woman who have, if you will, an attraction. I will care for you, protect you and bestow every comfort on you. I will respect you and hold you in esteem. You will be my mistress and my heart’s desire. All I ask is that you say yes, for I have a powerful need of you.’

He was so close that I thought he would kiss me again. And that if he did not I would drown in longing.

The Duke kissed me. Not a tender embrace, no fleeting moment, no chivalrous brush of mouth against mouth, but a kiss of heat, of passion. Of promise of what might be. And I drowned anyway in the splendour of it.

At last, when I clung to him, the Duke lifted his head. ‘Well, Madame de Swynford, my superbly respectable, black-clad widow? What do you say?’

There was the shadow of passion, now well governed. What could I say to so powerful a declaration, such a heart-stopping invitation? Severe in my widow’s black, my thoughts anything but respectable, I regarded him, thinking of what this would mean for me.

‘You wish me to be your mistress,’ I stated.

‘Yes.’

‘You wish me to be part of your household.’

‘Of course.’

‘You will treat me with respect and esteem.’

‘Yes. I will revere and honour you as well. Before God, Katherine! Is this a catechism? Here it is, laid out for your appreciation. I cannot give you my name.’ As if negotiating a deal between traders, I found myself thinking in a moment of ridiculous levity. ‘I cannot give you any recognition in the eyes of the world, but all I am, and all that is within my power to give you happiness, that is what I can give you. That is what I offer you, Katherine de Swynford, if you will only stop prevaricating and step willingly into my arms.’

The candles, now burning low, seemed to leap and shiver, casting an even greater mystery over our surroundings, even more furious reactions on the faces of the angelic throng.

‘I can still see your heart beating through the shiver of your veil,’ he continued when I remained mute, attempting to encompass all. ‘Can you breathe enough to give me a reply? Why can you not simply accept that you and I should be together?’

He wanted me. John of Lancaster desired me. The levity returned in full force.

‘If I give myself to you, will you fetch wood for me?’ I asked.

His brows rose, his eyes gleamed, but he replied with equanimity.

‘I will. And all else you ask of me. I will pour your wine and tie your laces.’

Which made a breath of laughter rise inappropriately to the surface, but I looked away, absorbing the reality of the threshold before which I found myself standing.

‘I could not bear to be the object of gossip, my lord.’

‘You know the ways of the court.’

‘I know that it is impossible to hide anything for long.’

‘I would never draw attention to you. To us. Is that what you fear?’

I breathed out slowly. ‘Is such discretion possible?’

‘I don’t know.’ He was honest too. ‘All I know is that I have a need of you, beyond all good sense.’

His words slid over my flesh like the finest cloth, like the blue and white damask he had given me. How fatally simple it was, after the recent weeks of heart-searching. His assurance had the power of a battle mace against an enemy’s helm. His conviction could have carried an army to victory against the most powerful foe.

‘Come to me. Allow me to take care of you and worship at your perfect feet.’

He saw no difficulty in my choice, whereas I could count every trap in the path of an unwary woman. And yet in spite of my qualms, all I could do was marvel at the richness of the gift he had placed at my feet. How could I have ever believed that the Duke of Lancaster would invite me to take my place at his side, in his life?

‘Do it. Say yes, lovely Katherine.’

‘Does nothing at all about this worry you?’ I asked instead in bewilderment.

‘Not a thing.’

The silence of the chapel around us grew taut, for had we not turned full circle, to face once more the unpardonable sin? The Duke was so assured whereas I wallowed in a puddle of indecision.

‘I said I would kneel at your feet. Behold I do.’ And still holding my hand he dropped to one knee, looking up at me with all the old glamour in his presence. ‘It is this easy, my lady. I want you. Do you want me?’

‘My lord…’ I studied his handsome features, of which he was very well aware. In a final attempt to combat temptation, I adopted as remote a tone as I was able. ‘I would ask one thing of you.’

‘And I will grant it.’

‘Will you give me one night? To consider my answer.’

‘God’s Blood, woman! What can you decide in one night, that you haven’t managed to decide in six weeks?’

‘It is a dangerous step.’

‘It is a glorious step!’

Which understandable irritation I ignored, for I would not be rushed into a decision that would have so great an impact on my life. ‘And will you agree to abide by the choice I make, my lord?’

‘That’s two things.’ He looked askance.

‘Then make it three. I wish to borrow a book from you, my lord.’

‘A book?’ The irritation was overlaid with bafflement. ‘A missal? Come then, if that is your wish. And perhaps you could practise not calling me my lord with every breath. My name is John.’

‘As I know, my lord.’

With an appreciative laugh, opening the door, we left the angels in no way the wiser as the Duke escorted me to his library, leaving me there to make my choice. For a moment he stood, watching as I lit a candle from a wall-torch.

‘Katherine?’

I looked back at him where he stood by the open door. How had I never realised the caress of his voice on my name, even when the mischief had vanished. The Duke was very serious as he bowed deeply.

‘How you intrigue me. You kisses are sensuous yet you are governed with stark piety. Promise me that you will not allow fear of what the world will say to guide your choice. Promise that you will not give power to past sorrows and present fears to chain you to your bleak widowhood. I swear there is more for you in this life than what you are today. And I should tell you: for me it is no mere attraction. It is an overwhelming desire.’

‘I promise, my lord.’

Briefly I read naked desire in his face, before courtesy returned and he strode back across the room to kiss my fingers with typical flamboyance.

‘When you smile, you are so very beautiful. Don’t look so baffled. Sleep well, my dearest one. I would give you happiness and fulfilment, not anguished soul-searching.’

And with a final salute to my fingers he left me to my search.

The decision I was about to make was hazardous indeed: to follow the hard and narrow but entirely respectable path dictated by morality and virtue, or to step aside to snatch at that bright happiness the Duke offered me. I knew full well what I ought to do. My conscience was a lively creature, prompting me into the way of godly righteousness, for how should I live with so great a sin on my soul?

I swore the Duke of Lancaster stood at my shoulder as I selected my book. My mind was all chaos.

I discovered the Duke in his library, where he would be engaged in business affairs after early Mass and breaking his fast. Quietly, only half-opening the door, I paused. Then, entirely certain of what I must do, I pushed it open, the well-greased hinges failing to announce my presence. There, his back to me, the Duke poured over a large expanse of vellum on which I could see was drawn a map of England and France and the northern reaches of Castile.

I stood, watching him as he worked, unaware of his audience, his finger tracing what I thought was a route to Aquitaine, continuing south to Castile, the object of his new ambitions. The success or failure of this new expedition would rest on his shoulders.

I moved inadvertently, my shoe scuffing along the tiles, but he did not respond, probably did not even hear.

‘My lord.’

‘Leave it over there.’

The Duke was not the only one to be mistaken for a servant.

‘I would rather—’

‘Go away.’ He was more abstracted than I had thought. ‘Come back later.’

With a grunt of exasperation he scrubbed his fist along the edge of his chin, much as young Henry had done earlier in the day when reprimanded for cleaning his inky fingers on the front of his tunic, so that I smiled at the similarity.

I was so sure, my decision clear in my mind. So sure that I walked softly forward and placed my hand on his shoulder.

‘I will return if it pleases you. I thought you wanted an answer from me. I am here to give it.’

‘Ah…have you come to refuse me?’ he asked, staring ahead.

Every muscle in that shoulder was tensed beneath my palm as he anticipated my ultimate rejection. His hands clenched into fists on the map.

‘So you pre-empt me,’ I replied evenly.

‘Why not? You would not be the first virtuous woman to find lechery too painful to contemplate,’ he replied, his voice harsh, his observation grating against my senses. ‘Perhaps you have not the courage to seize what you desire.’

Here was a man who never questioned his own courage, but he would question mine. I lifted my palm and stepped back. Did he think it would not take courage to refuse him?

‘I am here to give you my reply,’ I said with a calmness that belied by leaping heart. ‘Whether I have courage, it is for you to judge.’

Standing, stretching to his full height, quite carefully the Duke placed the pen beside the document, and turned. I remained motionless. I did not say a word: I did not have to. I watched as a smile began, slowly at first, then growing to illuminate his face, enhancing his beauty as he saw what I had done. Fisting his hands on his hips, he tilted his head in contemplation, making me smile again for it was as if he was appreciating some new object in his collection. I remained perfectly still and let him look.

‘What have you got behind your back?’ he asked softly when, as I knew he would, he had taken in every aspect of my appearance.

With one hand I produced the book I had borrowed, like a wise-woman revealing some mystical source of magic. ‘I have this to return.’ I placed it on the table next to the map.

‘The missal you borrowed to direct your actions into righteous pathways.’

‘No missal,’ I replied solemnly, for it was not a book of prayer that I had sought for my night of contemplation, with the Duke’s kiss still hot on my lips.

The Duke opened the cover page, and looked up quizzically. ‘I would not have expected this.’

‘Why not?’ Its depictions of Love in all its forms in the Roman de la Rose had occupied my hours, while the sensuous illustrations had seduced my senses.

‘Did it help?’ The Duke closed the page, his gaze holding mine. ‘Did it persuade you that Divine Love was your ultimate goal in this life?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Platonic love, then. Is that what you seek between us?’

‘No, my lord.’

He knew I did not. His eyes glittered with a sense of victory, as if he had just overcome an enemy of great power. How could he not know? He knew my answer, as I had intended, without a word being exchanged between us, as he had taken in my appearance from the little round buckram hat that fixed my gold-edged veil, to my gilded slippers. For what had I done? Rejecting the respectable widow for ever, I was dressed as if for a bridal in green and gold, my bodice gleamingly patterned, my oversleeves trimmed with a full meadow of embroidered flowers. As far from my mourning robes as I could make them. And at my belt hung the coral and gold beads of the Duke’s gift.

This was no penitential garb.

The Duke gestured with his chin. ‘And in your other hand?’

‘This is for you.’

Discovered in The Savoy garden almost before dawn, it was a poor apology, frost-bitten and withered, showing the merest tinge of colour within its grey of decomposition.

‘One should never plan to express the state of one’s heart with a rose in winter,’ I said. ‘It will shed its petals within the hour.’

‘I will not hold its imperfections against you.’ He took the sad corpse from me. And in taking it his fingers, at last, closed over mine.

‘I read Jean de Meun’s poem,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice even, for his handclasp stirred my blood to a shiver of delight. ‘How the Lover battled to win the heart of his Beloved. I recognised the enemies he faced. Jealousy. Danger. Shame and fear. I recognised all of those. Do I not see them in my own choices? I see the dangers in what you ask of me, for I am afraid of the shame that others would heap on me. Am I not jealous of every moment you spend with Constanza, away from me?’

His hand wrapped even more strongly round mine, as if to give comfort and strength when my voice caught a little on the emotion of the moment. But I did not need his courage. I had enough of my own. My night had been well spent.

‘But you see,’ I went on to explain, ‘the Lover won his battle, and his tormenters fled. He gained entrance to the walled garden and plucked the precious rosebud for his Love. As I have plucked this for you, from your own garden. My doubts too have fled.’

And they had. I had made my decision for good or ill.

‘So I am here. To say yes to you.’

‘I think it was supremely difficult for you.’ The timbre of his voice was like velvet, to stroke my senses.

‘To find a rose? Well nigh impossible. This was the only one…’ I smiled when he used his free hand to silence me, his fingers gentle on my lips.

‘To make the decision, my dearest girl! My very dear Katherine.’

‘Yes. It was,’ I admitted, but still I smiled against his fingers for my heart was leaping with joy. ‘Do you remember who it was who helped the Lover in his battle?’ I knew that he would.

‘Oh, yes. All-powerful, all-conquering Venus. The goddess of carnal desire, of all physical delights.’ His hand tightening around mine and the suffering rosebud, he drew me closer. ‘So, Madame de Swynford, you will give yourself up to me and all the pleasures I can bring to you?’

‘I will.’

‘For ever?’

‘For all time.’

‘Then we will be together for all time. And I will extract a promise from you.’

‘Only one?’

‘One will do for now.’ He stroked his knuckles over my embroidered bodice, over the swell of my breasts, in a possessive movement that made me hold my breath. ‘Will you promise me that you will never wear black again?’

‘I promise.’

He kissed me on the lips, as light and insubstantial as that first kiss, as a butterfly’s wing, although I felt the rigid tension of the muscles in his forearms as he tucked the sad rose into the bodice of my gown. It was like feeling the explosive force of a warhorse, held on a tight rein until released into the heat of battle. I was in no doubt of his desire for me. My fingers trembled as I smoothed them over the knap of his sleeve. I needed him to take the next step, for it was beyond me.

Abandoning the map and the forthcoming expedition, he led me to the door.

‘Does Lady Alice expect you?’

‘No, my lord. I am in your employ.’

‘Then I have need of an hour of your time.’ For a moment he hesitated, his eyes studying my face, smoothing my lower lip with the pad of his thumb, a more poignant gesture than any other. ‘Or a month, a year. Even a lifetime…’

‘You must make do with an hour, my lord,’ I remarked practically, even as my heart throbbed. ‘Lady Alice will ask after me.’

‘An hour it shall be,’ he agreed, ‘for I too, unfortunately, have demands on my time.’

And in that moment of perception I knew that this would always be so. The Duke’s duty was to England. Any woman in his life must accept that she would never be pre-eminent, no matter how strong his desire to be with her. I knew that this driving force in him to be pre-eminent, to wield power, would colour all our days together, however long or short our liaison might be. And in that moment, I witnessed the path of my life stretched out before me, with all its shadows, its moments of brilliance.

You can still step back, my conscience whispered in my mind. Are you indeed brave enough? Do you have the fortitude to take what you want, what you have always dreamed of taking? Or will you step back and preserve the moral high ground? If you take this step, there will never be any moral high ground, ever again, for you.

There is no marriage in this for you.

If you accept you will be no better than a court harlot, damned as a fallen woman. What will you say to your children? How will you explain to your son when he asks why those at court point and gossip?

There is still time to retreat. To return to your widowhood, your conscience clear as you kneel before the priest with a clean heart.

There will never be the possibility of marriage for you in this relationship.

Go back to Kettlethorpe and take up the reins of the estates.

But I would not. My decision was made, finally and irrevocably, even when my conscience struck a final blow.

The Duke has never said that he loves you.

I would not listen. Had any woman ever refused him? I could not.

Once outside the library, the Duke broke the contact between us but I walked beside him as he opened the door into his private accommodations and dismissed his body servant who was engaged in laying garments in a clothes press. He did not even glance at me, probably thinking—if he even considered it—that I had come to report to the Duke about one of the children. Yet, even so…

‘Is this discretion, my lord?’ I asked. ‘Coming to your rooms in the broad light of day?’

‘I will not lurk and skulk.’ A vestige of a frown momentarily settled on his brow. He was unused to his actions being questioned. ‘It is not in my nature to hide and dissemble. But nor am I lacking in good sense. You have my word. I will not willingly put you or Constanza into the public eye. Enough! This hour is for us. An hour in which I’ll turn your beautifully ordered world upside down.’

Strides quickening, he led me through the sumptuous rooms to his bedchamber, where he flung the door wide.

‘Welcome, Katherine.’

I stepped over the threshold, entirely of my own volition. I took in the splendour of the furnishings, the polished wood, the silver sconces, the velvet-padded prie-dieu with its heavy silver crucifix, but my mind was not on prayer. And there was the ducal bed.

The Duke shut and barred the door.

‘My bed is cold. Who will warm it for me?’

I did not hesitate.

‘I will, my lord.’

Desire swept away all discretion when the Duke closed his door against the world. Passion ruled, all the words, all the explanations, the warnings, all the anxieties excoriated in a blaze of heat. If any doubts remained in my heart, they would have been obliterated. But since there were none, I let my senses be seduced. There were no uncertainties to undermine my decision to be with him.

His control was superb. Had he not promised to tie my laces? He was equally proficient at unlacing them, although he growled at the row of buttons that stretched from elbow to little finger on my sleeves. He proved to be just as skilled at removing my intricately latched crispinette and veil and loosing the braids of my hair. I shivered under his hands, under the sway of his marvellous expertise.

‘I thought I remembered, but I had forgotten how rich it was,’ he murmured as the length of my hair uncoiled to spread over my shoulder, and his, when I leaned against him. ‘The sun’s burnish…’ He buried his face in it as I rested my head against his breast. It was good to rest against a man taller than I.

There was little rest. He needed no help from me to disrobe, even though I offered to be his squire for the occasion. Nor did he need help to remove my shift.

No restraint, now, he turned my limbs to flame, my heart to breathless excitement, my blood to molten gold. He wakened my body to a sensual pleasure where there were no past shades keep us company.

I adored him.

I no longer cared what doubts the heavenly creatures harboured. It did not trouble me that the Duke never spoke of love. It was enough that he treated me as if, for him, I was the most precious creature in the universe.

An hour was too short to encompass all we wished to say, every emotion that demanded expression.

‘It is a taste of a banquet that will last us a lifetime,’ he whispered against my throat.

‘I must go, my lord,’ I said when the minutes fled, as if winged.

‘And you must call me John.’

‘It is not easy.’

‘But you will practise. Soon it will come readily to your lips.’

His assurance never failed to move me. How could I even contemplate the future with fear when the Duke of Lancaster held me in his arms and looked ahead with such confidence? He helped me to dress and hide my hair, he retied my laces. He wrapped a plain cloak around me to hide my inexplicable finery until it could be put to rights. How fast we learned the need for ultimate prudence.

‘The rose has fallen into pieces,’ I said, seeing it on the coffer with my rosary.

‘It is a transient thing. But my desire for you is not.’ He tucked the tell-tale gold of my veil into the neck of the cloak. ‘Do you have regrets?’

‘None.’

‘Nor I. You are of my Life and Death the Queen…’

I sighed as I recognised the beautiful sentiment, the expression of utmost poetic devotion from the Lover to his Lady.

‘Your brother-in-law, Master Chaucer, has a masterful way with words.’ The Duke kissed me as if he would linger still, although we both knew that good sense dictated that we could not. ‘Keep me in your mind, until we can be together again. Promise me that.’

‘Yes, John. I will keep you in my mind.’

Collecting up the rosary into the palm of my hand, I walked slowly back to my room.

I was John of Lancaster’s mistress.

Back in my chamber I removed my finery, recalling with a smile it being removed with much more alacrity and much less care.

I loved him, I adored him. I would never not love him.

Why had I done it? Why had I turned my back on every rule I had lived by? It shocked me that I had done so, laying aside my principles because a man had asked it of me, as I would lay aside an old gown that I no longer had use for. Now I had a new garment. A glittering cloak made of love, a magical cloak that in my naïve mind would protect me from the slights and condemnations of the society in which I lived. I was wrapped about by happiness. Pickled in it, I decided fancifully with a smile, as I would store beans in brine to last me through the winter.

Why had I done it? Because I loved the Duke and he had offered me the moon and the stars and the sun in one magnificent gesture. The firmament was mine in all its glory.

I searched for a comb beneath Philippa’s haphazardly strewn belongings and addressed the tangles in my hair, allowing other truths to step into my mind.

The end is inevitable, as night will follow this bright day. As grey will streak the gold of your hair and a web of lines mar your skin. One day you will be parted.

I was no blind fool. I could see it so clearly. All the insurmountable obstacles to what for many lovers would be a permanent happiness, whatever words of commitment the Duke and I might choose to exchange. Whatever he might vow to me and I to him. Whatever lasting passion our bodies might promise when they fused with desire.

Did the Duke see those obstacles as clearly as I, an impossible bulwark of walls and ditches, not to mention the stalwart portcullis that would one day bring about our separation and stand between. I did not think he did. When did a Plantagenet prince ever have need to question his own worth? His needs and desires were there to be satisfied.

What would it be that intervened, to destroy this idyll—for that is surely what it was—I mused. Family. Political battles. The demands of England’s policy abroad. He might desire me but his life was not his own to direct as he chose.

Nor was I his first mistress. Would I be his last? In all honesty I did not think so. He wanted me now, but I might yet be a forgotten name on the list of women who took his appreciative eye. It might be that the Duke would simply fall out of need for me.

This day I had stepped beyond the acceptable. I had crossed a forbidden line, knowing that I would have consequences to face. At some point, on one day in the future, for some reason that I could not quite see, he would have to make a choice—and then what of me? What would be left for me but memories and a reputation that would destroy my good name for ever?

Momentarily I closed my eyes to hide the contempt that I would assuredly read in the eyes of many who knew me. Then opened them as I briskly coiled my hair into its netted confines.

I would not allow such thoughts to cloud my happiness. The memory of the Duke’s arms holding me, the heated demand of his kisses—they were more than enough. And indeed they would have to be, for the Duke had not said those stark, simple words: I love you. Not once. Desire and longing. Passion and need. But not love.

What did it matter? I would not allow it to matter. His need for me in his life was enough, and I was free to love him without restraint. But I would choose my words with care. The Duke did not talk of love, so I would not burden him with mine. Silently I vowed that he must never be compromised by my adoration, which he could not return.

Chapter Six

June 1372: Hertford Castle

‘She’ll have a hard time of it, mark my words.’ Mistress Elyot, experienced midwife summoned by the Duke to attend his wife, was quick to give her opinion. We were all established at last at Hertford and the important event loomed.

‘Narrow hips. And she’s not strong. Comes of being Castilian, I expect.’

Tears filled Mistress Elyot’s eyes and she sniffed in doleful anticipation.

I did not see that Duchess Constanza being Castilian had any bearing on her ability to grit her teeth, hold onto the hand of one of her Castilian damsels and push hard when instructed to do so, but since Mistress Elyot had the reputation of a wise-woman, and her nature was well-known to me, I did not argue the point. Mistress Elyot had supported Blanche through her pregnancies so her reputation was well-earned and perhaps she was right. The weather was June-sultry, the rooms at Hertford uncomfortably hot, but Constanza insisted on the windows tight shut to ward off malign forces, since she was Queen of Castile and that is how all royal children were born.

‘This son,’ she panted between groans and heart-rending cries, ‘will be King of Castile.’

We suffered with her, for her demands were frequent. At least the nausea that had so afflicted her in the early months had vanished, but now her ankles and feet were so swollen that the skin was as tight as a drum. I drew on all the knowledge I had, bathing the afflicted areas in rose oil and vinegar, encouraging her to eat lightly of chicken. Praising the beneficial properties of quince fruits and pomegranate.

Duchess Constanza was a poor patient but for the sake of the child gave in to my ministrations.

Mistress Elyot nodded curtly, faint but noteworthy praise. Constanza insisted on my remaining at her side, day and night. The little cluster of damsels, useless except to carry carefully learned messages and fetch trays of food that went for the most part uneaten, glowered speechlessly at me. My sister Philippa, dislodged from her place at Constanza’s right hand, observed with a caustic shrug that there was no accounting for the strange decisions of pregnant queens.

‘This is a great endeavour for me,’ Constanza whispered as her strength waned, despite the cups of spiced wine held to her lips. ‘I must bear a son for my lord.’

Her final words, before a dark-haired, red-faced, squalling scrap of humanity took its first breath and howled. Strong enough, lively enough, but not received with any great rejoicing. Constanza’s great endeavour was a girl.

Washed gently and wrapped in linen, the baby had improved to the eye when Constanza, also restored, held out her arms. I placed the infant there.

‘She has the look of my sister Isabella,’ Constanza observed, touching the dark hair, before handing her back to me almost immediately. ‘Take her. Fetch me new linen for my bed.’

‘She is a fine daughter,’ I assured her, the light weight of the child in my arms reminding me of my own labours, the joy and relief at the outcome. That the Duchess showed so little concern except for her own discomfort was worrying me. I would not have handed my new daughter to other arms, with barely a glance.

‘Better a son,’ the Duchess announced.

‘Next time, my lady,’ Mistress Elyot cooed.

‘I suppose I must.’ Her brow was furrowed. ‘It is my duty. To my country.’

And I knew that she did not mean England. The frown remained heavy on Constanza’s brow.

‘Your daughter will be of great value in a marriage alliance when she grows, to the glory of Castile,’ I said. An angry woman did not make a good mother. ‘She will be very beautiful, and much sought after,’ I tried.

‘Yes.’ She was not soothed. ‘I will call her Katalina. Katherine, I think you say.’

I felt my whole body tense, my arms tightening around the child who whimpered a little, as the unpalatable incongruity of it struck home. The Duke’s child called after the Duke’s mistress. As dismay stirred uneasily in my belly, I could only imagine the waspish tongues, stinging at my expense, heaping mockery on all of us, if the truth ever became the talk of the court.

I would not wish that for the Duchess.

‘It is not a royal name in England, my lady,’ I suggested lightly, keeping my eyes on the child, keeping my mouth in a smile, selecting the only argument that I thought would hold any weight with her. ‘Monseigneur might not like it.’

‘Why would he not? It is a beautiful name.’ She looked directly at me. ‘Is it not, Katherine?’

There was a rustle of laughter at this rather laboured attempt at humour. But for me, although I kept the smile intact, dismay turned to horror. Constanza could not know that I had kissed the Duke with more than the respect expected from a damsel of the household. She could not.

‘St Katherine is the saint I admire most,’ Constanza continued, impervious to my cold fear.

Of course she did not know. And relief flooded through me. I must learn to control my reactions. I could not allow myself to be so vulnerable, so open to every breath of possible scandal, for the rest of my life. The die was cast and I had the audacity to hold my nerve.

‘It is an admirable name,’ I replied easily now, for I too admired St Katherine, a virgin princess of Alexandria, martyred for her faith by a Roman Emperor.

‘I approve of her courage in adversity, holding fast to her faith in the face of death,’ Constanza announced. ‘As I will hold fast to mine—that my lord will recover Castile for me. And next time I will bear a son. Go to the chapel and give thanks to St Katherine and the Virgin, for my safe delivery,’ she directed us. ‘And for the child, of course. I expect my lord daily.’

As I handed the babe to the waiting wet nurse, my compassion was stirred a little, for I saw the disappointment swim in Constanza’s eyes with the unshed tears. She would not weep. Queens of Castile, she had informed us, did not weep. But that did not mean that she was untouched by what she saw as a failure.

I would see no successful birth of a child of mine as a failure, son or daughter.

And I too looked for the Duke’s arrival. He was in London, in attendance on the King. It was almost three months since we had been together for that shortest of hours, a lifetime of absence and longing.

My sister prayed beside me, then kept step with me as we left the chapel.

‘Since when did you care what she calls the child?’ she asked sotto voce since Lady Alice with her sharp hearing was a mere few steps in front of us. Philippa’s glance was equally sharp. ‘Does it matter?’

My reply was cool. ‘I spoke without any real intent.’

‘You never speak without intent, Kate. Your cheeks are flushed.’

‘Are we not all flushed in this heat?’

‘Perhaps…it’s having an effect on your temper too.’

‘And on my patience!’ I responded as my sister’s barbs got the better of me.

Lady Alice, falling back to walk with us, clicked her tongue. Philippa stalked off ahead. I sighed.

‘I promise to offer up two novenas in penance,’ I remarked, but with a wry smile.

Lady Alice laughed. ‘But your sister is right. Something is troubling your equanimity.’

‘Nothing that a good night’s sleep and a cup of warm ale would not cure. If the Duchess can allow me out of her sight for an hour or two.’

‘Perhaps she will become less demanding when the Duke arrives. It will be good to see him.’

I lay on my bed, the hangings drawn back to allow even a breath of air. I wished with all my heart that the Duke would come.

‘I present to you your daughter, my lord.’

The Duke had arrived at Hertford.

But I did not want this. I did not want to be in this formal audience chamber with the newest royal child in my arms, under the combined eyes of a nursemaid, a servant, a liveried page and William de Burgh, the chaplain, but the office had been given to me. Since Constanza remained secluded in her chambers until she was churched, it was decided that I should be the one to present Katalina, now two weeks old, to her father.

I did not want to do this at all.

I had once shivered at that brutal word hypocrisy. Here it stared me in the face, that I, the mistress, should present the child of the legitimate wife to her lover.

My excuses were ignored, rolled over like a charge of cavalry, my suggestions for one of the Castilian damsels to have the honour swatted away. Mistress Elyot declared herself too busy. And at least, she added, with a jaundiced eye to the damsels, I could speak good French when I conversed with my lord, which was more than…

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