Chosen for the Marriage Bed (11 page)

Had not Jane Bringsty poured the wine for them all?

Elizabeth could not take her eyes from Jane’s face, struck with a terrible conviction. Jane’s brows rose infinitesimally as she caught her mistress’s regard, and with supreme sat is faction she held the eye contact. There might even have been a little smile hovering in the tight corners of her lips. And Elizabeth knew! Her fingers clamped on the edge of the table. What could she possibly do or say? If Jane, her serving woman, was guilty, then so was she. Her lips felt stiff, her mind unable to grasp the full horror of what Jane had done. The tension stretched, Elizabeth to Jane Bringsty, with a tangible metallic reality in the atmosphere comfort ably redolent of cooked meat and wood smoke. Elizabeth found herself barely able to breathe as her mind raced with sheer terror.

What if Anne Malinder were to die?

Abruptly Elizabeth rose to her feet.

‘If you will excuse me, my lord. There are things that need my attention here. I will leave you to your ale. Jane—I need your help.’

She did not even look at Richard—dared not, for fear of what she would see, or what he would surely interpret from her own rigid demeanour—as she stepped down from the dais. Her belly churned, her face almost as white as Anne’s. Without waiting to see if Jane followed, she strode towards an empty anteroom where they could achieve some degree of privacy. Once there, Elizabeth spun round and wasted no time on polite enquiry.

‘What was it?’

‘Nothing too potent. She’ll not die from it.’ Jane lifted her chin. There was no remorse. ‘I know what I am about.’

‘Jane…I
forbade
you…’

‘I know you did, my lady—but she deserves every second of her present discomfort. She’s little better than a common whore.’ Jane’s expression became contorted with bitter malice. ‘I warned you. Since you disregarded me, I decided to ruffle the fine feathers of Mistress Anne Malinder.’

‘Jane! Do you not realise what you have done?’

‘It was easy enough to achieve,’ Jane Bringsty replied, deliberately misunderstanding, hands folded comfort ably at her waist, only triumph in the flat gleam of her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t do it, so I did.’

Frustrated beyond bearing at her failure to under mine Jane’s belief in her own rightness, Elizabeth could only stare. Jane would never be contrite and Elizabeth knew she must damn her servant for her cruelty. Yet she knew why Jane had taken such a step, could not blame her entirely for her reading of Anne’s character.

‘Belladonna?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘Yes. As you should know. I taught you well enough.’

‘I suppose I should thank God it’s no worse. Aconitum could kill her.’

‘She’ll recover soon enough. Perhaps she’ll return to Moccas. If you’ll take my advice, my lady…’

But Jane’s advice died on her lips, her eyes widening. And Elizabeth realised, with a prickling along her hairline, that they were no longer alone. Slowly she turned, the worst of her fears confirmed.
Richard.
Richard with barely controlled temper in the hard planes and angles of his face, sheer disbelief in his eyes as he had moved with soundless and strangely un nerving grace to stand be side them. His stare locked on Elizabeth’s, held, as he chose to address her, not her servant.

‘Tell me about this little incident. Am I wrong in my interpretation of what I have just heard and seen between you and your woman? Surely I am mistaken.’ Soft, menacing.

Elizabeth, her heart beating thickly in her throat, sought for an explanation that would melt the cold fury in him. He could hardly have mistaken the playing out of the little scene, could he? The quick meeting of eyes that suggested conspiracy. Jane’s terrible complacency, the intimation of
knowledge
. And now he awaited her explanation, condemnation looming beneath the soft questioning. Whilst it leapt into her mind that he should not be so quick to blame her, unfortunately the evidence was clear. Still, she would try to protect Jane.

‘I do not take your meaning, my lord.’ Her first reaction was to step back from the judgement in his face, but she stood her ground. Her mind sought feverishly for words that might defuse the sting of accusation. Could find none.

‘Yes, you do. You take my meaning very well. You are no fool.’ He seized her wrist, holding her close, unaware that his grasp was imprinting her flesh, although she felt she deserved no less. ‘What do you know of this, Elizabeth? Tell me that I am mistaken.’

Elizabeth swallowed, wildly searching for an explanation. It went against the grain to lie, but to speak the truth would bring his wrath down on Jane’s head.

‘No, Elizabeth. I’m not mistaken, am I?’ His voice dropped to a silky purr which was no less threatening, as he pulled her with him, a number of paces away from Jane’s side. ‘Are
you
responsible for Anne’s reaction to some thing she ate or drank?’

‘Why should I be responsible?’ Would he take issue with her so harshly, without true evidence? Dark blue eyes held dark grey, a challenge issued—and accepted.

His voice was hard with accusation. ‘There’s some thing here. You have a reputation, madam wife, that preceded your arrival in my home. That you are not un acquainted with the black arts.’ He waited only the length of a beat of her heart, fingers holding firm when she would have pulled away. ‘Have you poisoned her?’ His voice was hard-edged in outrage.

There was no denying it. Elizabeth drew on all her courage. Without hesitation, she leapt into the crevasse that had widened between them and made her admission. ‘No. Not poison. She will not die. A mere discomfort from which she’ll soon recover.’ What could she say? Merely to deny all knowledge would, in the circumstances, be patently ridiculous.

‘In her wine?’

Elizabeth did not even risk a sideways glance at Jane, standing motionless, listening to the exchange. ‘Yes. In the hippocras.’

‘You would poison my cousin?’ The flare of anger that flooded Richard’s face with contempt and disdain for her, as all his suspicions were in controvertibly proved to be correct, all but singed her. He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Why in God’s name would you cause Anne to suffer? I suppose I should be thankful the potion was not dropped into
my
cup. Has Sir John advised you to take revenge on anyone who bears the name of Malinder, in repayment for Lewis’s death? A few drops—of what?—in my ale and the de Lacy revenge would be complete.’

He did not trust her. Lewis’s death loomed between them still, as did the old rifts between Malinder and de Lacy. Elizabeth saw the truth and feared it, but was now committed to protecting Jane and her own honour. ‘It was belladonna. And, no, my lord.’ She drew all her de Lacy dignity around her. She was as cold as his temper was hot. How dare he be so ready to condemn her without evidence? ‘If I had truly wished to kill you and avenge my brother, Richard, I would not have used belladonna. I would have used aconitum. It is far more difficult to amend. Your death would have been almost assured, and without remedy.’ Now she showed her teeth in a bitter smile. ‘Or, if your death had truly been my intent, even more effective would be a sword between your shoulder blades when you slept in my bed.’ She remembered Robert’s carelessly flippant words that she had over heard. De Lacy methods of retribution.

Richard appeared stunned by her apparent admission of culpability. ‘So you were indeed guilty.’

Sensing Jane’s approach, Elizabeth immediately put out a hand to touch her servant’s wrist. For support or in warning. But she did not turn from the Lord of Ledenshall. Before Jane could speak, Elizabeth made her own confession. ‘The responsibility is all mine, as you suspect. Attribute it to female jealousy, if you will. Because Anne Malinder has all the at tributes that I lack.’ She turned her head, her voice firm, fierce almost. ‘Go now, Jane. I don’t need you here. You know the remedy that will give Mistress Anne some relief. We don’t want her to suffer overmuch. Her family would not wish it. Go now!’ she repeated with all the authority she could muster when Jane would open her mouth to argue. ‘There’s nothing for you to do here. You will say nothing more about this affair.’

The outcome hovered on a knife edge. Elizabeth willed her servant to obey, uncertain, until with a brusque nod of the head Jane did as she was bid. Leaving the bridal pair to face each other in a vast space of vitriol and poison, far worse than any produced by the belladonna. Elizabeth at last wrenched her wrist from Richard’s grasp, but they remained facing each other.

‘I cannot believe what I have just heard from your own lips.’

‘Yet you were quick to accuse me, were you not? Without evidence. Without firm knowledge that your cousin had been poisoned.’

‘God’s blood, Elizabeth! It was difficult not to see the guilt between the two of you. You and your damned serving woman. Her complicity—and yours—was written all over her face.’

‘It was only difficult if you had no trust for me, and were determined to find proof.’

She watched him for a moment, refusing to be impressed by the magnificence of his anger, which lent vibrancy to his features, power to his splendid eyes. She took a breath against the lick of flame in her gut at the sheer magnetism of Richard Malinder before hugging her sense of injustice to her. How
dare
he judge and condemn her? As the injustice swam through her blood, she allowed another weighty issue to escape the guard of her teeth. She would not be the only one to shoulder blame here. She might regret her words, but despair drove her on.

‘Did your journey through the March take you to Hereford?’

‘Yes. What if it did?’ She was rewarded with a narrowed look. ‘What has that to do with your poisoning my cousin?’

‘Since we are discussing the issue of
trust
, I suppose you found the time in Hereford to visit your mistress. And that the visit was not spent purely in conversation and discussion of the price of cloth in Hereford market.’

‘What?’ If he had appeared stunned at her previous ad mission, he was even more startled now. For a moment he was speechless, only able to glare at her, his wife who would dare to question his actions and his integrity.

‘Did you expect no one to tell me?’ she continued, refusing to be silenced by his fury. All the bitterness of her knowledge, her humiliation that he must find physical sat is faction else where, flooded out. ‘Of course they did, even before our marriage. It seems to be a matter of open gossip here. I had hardly been at Ledenshall a day before I was informed of your liaison with a woman in Hereford.
Joanna
, is it not? And yet you say
you
have no trust for
me
. You have not kept your marriage vows intact for long, have you—a matter of days? I would say that is the strongest evidence for mistrust.’

Richard frowned, a heavy black bar. ‘It’s not your concern who or where I might visit in Hereford,’ he snapped.

‘No?’ All Elizabeth could think was that he had not denied it. So it was true after all. ‘I am your wife. I think it is my concern.’

Nor did he deny it now. ‘This is nonsense, madam. Nothing to do with the case at hand. You have admitted the deed. How dare you use poison against one of my family?’ Richard strode to the window and back, prowling with restless power barely curbed. To come and stand before her again. ‘Have I married a witch? A poisoner?’

‘Have I married a murderer and adulterer?’ Elizabeth to her horror found the words spoken before she could check them. How terribly destructive they were in their power. They were on her tongue, in the air between them, in pure retaliation before she could give it thought. ‘The death of Lewis is still unproven. Anne may be uncomfortable for a few hours, but I have not plotted her death. My brother
is
dead!’

Which left nothing more to be said by either combatant. Elizabeth drew in a breath at the vileness of the accusation she had made.

‘Richard… I did not…’

‘You have said enough.’

Elizabeth resisted the urge to watch him as he flung out of the door. She would not let her grief show in her eyes, the devastation that he now thought of her as a woman who would use so des pi cable a weapon as poison to achieve her own ends.

What hope was there of trust, when what poor foundations there were had been so cruelly under mined? Destroyed by Jane Bringsty, who had thought to act in her mistress’s best interest. Elizabeth laughed, a harsh sound without mirth at the disaster that faced her. If she did not laugh, she feared she would weep.

She made her way to the kitchen, to find Jane already employed there to produce a willow bark infusion to heal Anne Malinder. It would be easy enough, far easier than to heal her rift with Richard. Which path her relationship with her husband would follow now, she had no idea.

Chapter Nine

A
nne Malinder took to her bed, too smitten, too overcome with weakening bouts of vomiting and purging to question the source of the problem that attacked her belly and her gut with such virulence. As Jane Bringsty had predicted, the belladonna was easily remedied and flushed from her system. After three days all that would remain to remind the lady of her ill luck was a severe ache between her eyes and a tender stomach that revolted against any thought of food. She was able to rise from her bed, sit beside the fire in her chamber and sip a cup of wine. There would be no lasting ill effects. It was the only good news at Ledenshall.

Richard Malinder prowled his castle in a cloud of bad temper. He kept his distance from everyone, burying himself in estate rolls and rent demands. It was rare, the in habitants of the castle concluded in keen speculation, to see their lord so sharp and short in his responses. Richard kept his thoughts to himself. At the root of it all was one problem. Elizabeth. What had possessed him to be persuaded by John de Lacy to wed her? Within days of the ceremony she had cast his life into turmoil. What could he say to her when she had admitted to a wilful attack on the well-being of his cousin, perhaps on her life? And she, who had ad ministered the lethal draught, had the temerity to accuse him anew of her brother’s murder! After all that had passed between them, when he had thought they had come to some semblance of understanding, when riding home he had looked forwards to being with her again, she had astounded him by exhibiting the purest level of hatred against all Malinders. How could he have been so gullible? His hold over his control was tested to the limit as he slammed a pile of rent rolls down on the table in a cloud of dust. How could he have believed that this marriage had any hope of success?

Self-righteous anger burned through him.

But Richard Malinder had a conscience that did not make for an easy enjoyment of that anger, a conscience that forced him to face the truth of her other accusation. He had assumed her guilty before she had even confessed. And if he had indeed misread the situation… He bared his lips again in a snarl at the possible injustice here. But then, she had confessed, had she not? He remembered Robert’s caustic words about poison and cold steel, as had she, uttered half in jest. Elizabeth had been standing there when they were made.

And yet he could not believe that she would use poison.

But she had admitted it, hadn’t she?

And to accuse him of having a mistress in Hereford. To deflect attention from her own sins, of course. Richard’s sense of injustice promptly flared into life again.

Heart-wrenchingly unhappy, Elizabeth took to her bedchamber where she was driven to des per ate measures to ease at least one of her wounds. It was not sensible, but her misery had driven her be yond sense. Surely it could not make the bottomless abyss that separated Richard from her any wider? It could, it did.

Discovering that he had misplaced a pair of gauntleted gloves, and since he could recall having them with him in Elizabeth’s bedchamber, Richard went in search. He could have sent his squire—contemplated it—but that would have been cowardice. If he and his wife had nothing to say to each other, then so be it. On a brief knock, knowing she might well be there, he entered, to discover his wife seated before the hearth, in candlelight, a startled and distinctly uneasy expression when she looked up.

‘What are you doing?’

Before her on the floor was a bowl of liquid, the candles. With a swift, practised gesture, she drew her hand across the surface, doused the flames.

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t lie, Elizabeth. What is this?’ He towered over her, apprehension growing and with it a renewal of the anger that his growing respect—liking, even—for her should be once again compromised. Black arts practised at Ledenshall? He would never sanction it.

‘I was scrying.’ Elizabeth stood, brushing the ash from her skirts, and looked him full in the eye.

‘Scrying?’ He knew what that was, felt a lurch of his heart. His voice dropped to a harsh murmur as if they might be overheard, but did not disguise his anger, although at the practice itself or for Elizabeth’s safety he could not have said. ‘You would use such practices in my home? Do I want my wife apprehended and burned in the fire as a witch?’

Elizabeth tilted her chin. ‘Since no one other than we two knows what I do here, then I doubt
that
will happen.’

Richard ignored the challenge. ‘What are you doing? Discovering more successful means to rid yourself of my cousin?’ The sneer was heavy.

So he would damn her again and again, without proof. ‘I don’t need scrying for that.’ Elizabeth hesitated for only a second before stirring the small flames into a conflagration. ‘I am trying to see the face of Lewis’s murderer.’

Which brought Richard up short. ‘Ah! So that’s it. Cheap revenge, Elizabeth! So tell me, did you see my face in your scrying bowl?’

‘No.’ Her reply was candidly direct. ‘I did not. I see nothing but darkness.’

‘But you don’t trust me. You can’t accept my word that I am innocent. I doubt you ever will.’ Now the sneer was overlaid with terrible bitterness.

Elizabeth could not afford to soften. He did not trust her either. ‘I have no experience in my life to lead me to put my trust in any man. I don’t know you, Richard Malinder, beyond the shortest of acquaintances and your expressions of innocence. They may be shallow and empty for all I know of you.’

A desperately bleak admission that Richard refused to acknowledge. He focused instead on the present. ‘How can you be so in discreet?’ He flung out his hand in frustration at her way wardness. ‘I at least expect discretion from you.’ He grasped the bed hanging at his side, tugging it impatiently into shape, to find a cloth-wrapped package fall from the folds to land at his feet. ‘What’s this?’

Elizabeth shook her head.

Scooping it up, Richard unwrapped it with impatient fingers. Two wax figures, tightly bound, obscene in their crude sexuality, lay in his hand. Suddenly he was very still. He heard Elizabeth draw in a hiss of a breath.

‘Elizabeth!’ Richard looked from the images to his wife, incredulous. ‘Answer me. This is even worse. What is this?’

And Elizabeth could not hide her horror. ‘Witchcraft!’ she whispered.

‘Witchcraft! Well, you’ll know all about that. And if these—these objects—are what they seem to be…’ He bared his teeth in a snarl. ‘Do you think me incapable of getting a child on you with out the aid of this obscenity?’ His eyes, usually so cool and controlled, blazed.

‘No… It’s not my doing.’

‘Are my skills as a man so limited, then? I don’t recall your complaining that I was unable to perform, that I was incapable of taking your virginity.’

Elizabeth still could not tear her eyes from the slick wax of the two creatures, the traces of dark hair, the limbs forced into stark proximity. ‘I did not make them.’

‘Then your serving woman did. I recall the herbs in our bed on our wedding night. Send for her.’ He made as if to throw the figures into the fire.

Elizabeth sprang forwards. ‘No…!’ She grasped his arm, fingers digging deep.

‘Why not?’ But he halted.

‘Don’t, I beg of you. These are…difficult magic. Fire could harm you if they burn, if they melt…’

And Richard saw such anguish in her face it stopped him, forced him to drop his hand. ‘Send for your serving woman.’

Dour and uncommunicative, Mistress Bringsty came to stand just within the door, heavy with self-righteousness. Her scowl took in the whole room until it lighted on the wax images. Elizabeth saw her stiffen, all expression on her face wiped away.

‘Did you do this?’ Richard demanded immediately. ‘Is this your work?’

‘No, my lord, it is not.’

‘Can I believe you?’ He looked from one to the other of the two women. ‘Can I believe either of you?’

‘These are harmful images, imposing the will of another. Jane would not hurt me,’ Elizabeth answered for her.

‘But she might hurt me! Who knows what the pair of you are plotting?’

‘No, my lord,’ Jane replied simply. ‘I would not harm
you
. Only those who would bring harm or pain to my mistress. Lady Elizabeth cares for you more than you know. More than she knows. Why should I harm you?’

‘I suppose I should be grateful!’ Shaken to the core at what was going on in his home, Richard found himself unable to think of a further response. ‘Get rid of these. I presume you know how.’ Pushing them into Jane’s hands, he stalked out, any thought of the gloves quite vanished.

‘Whose are these? Who put them here?’ Now Elizabeth allowed herself to express the fear that Richard’s accusations had kept in check.

‘I don’t know. Nor how they got here.’ Elizabeth could feel Jane’s tension, a palpable thing in the room, which did nothing to ease her own. ‘Someone far too interested in you and your lord’s marriage.’ Jane managed a bleak smile. ‘Don’t worry, my lady. I’ll destroy this abomination, with no lasting effects. I’ll not allow any one to harm you.’ At the door Jane turned to look back. ‘You should have let me tell him the truth, lady.’

‘Should I? Well, he certainly won’t trust me now, will he?’

The sheer width and depth of the abyss between the Lord and Lady of Ledenshall was painted in the gloomiest of colours when two days later Richard walked into the small parlour where Elizabeth broke her fast. Acting on impulse and her careful training as chatelaine, and perhaps with an intent to mend the breach, Elizabeth rose to her feet, poured and carried a cup of ale to her husband when he came to the table.

His expression was glacial as he looked at the cup, at his wife.

‘Thank you. But, no.’ He deliberately walked around her to pour his own ale, leaving her standing with the cup in her hands. Her cheeks were suddenly white as the ash in the fireplace, her eyes dark with distress.

‘Richard.’ Elizabeth’s voice was clear, commanding. She might have been standing on the battlements to face a besieging army as she demanded Richard’s attention. Tall and straight, the elegant stemmed cup held in both hands.

Richard turned his head, brows raised in polite and freezing enquiry.

Quite deliberately Elizabeth lifted the goblet to her lips. Drank one mouthful, and then another, never once taking her eyes from his face. Then once more.

‘That should be sufficient to bring me a painful death, I think.’ She placed the cup care fully on the table at her side. ‘If I am still alive and well, I shall be present at the mid-day meal as usual. You will have to decide, Richard, if you are willing to sup with me.’ She swept past him, head high, all arrogant pride. ‘As you see, as yet I have no ill effects from the ale.’

‘Elizabeth…’ Richard stretched out a hand.

Elizabeth ignored it. She closed the door behind her with the quietest click.

Hell and the devil! What had possessed him to that piece of provocation, other than sheer bad temper after another restless night? He knew he had been wrong to reject Elizabeth’s olive branch. Knew immediately he had acted that it was graceless and un war ranted, cruel, even, but he had been driven by a band of hurt around his heart that he could not dislodge. Herbs and dried flowers between the sheets were one thing—old wives’ stuff, harmless enough. But scrying, wax figures—it made his blood run cold. Did she really hold such a low opinion of his sexual powers? She had shivered beneath him willingly enough. Pure masculine anger bubbled to turn his blood from ice to raging fire. She had made no complaint in his bed, none at all. As he recalled, she had responded with astonishing readiness, had warmed and arched under his hands. What had prompted her to resort to so blatant a piece of witch craft to lure him into her bed? His potency had never been in question.

As for the black arts, how could he pretend either ignorance or acceptance of such diabolical practices in the hands of his wife and her woman? Turning a blind eye was not a possibility. Yet now he had hurt her—again! Guilt and contempt for his lack of control whipped his unsettled emotions into turmoil, overlaid by a slick of ad mi ration for his wife. As a challenge, her draining the cup of ale had been a powerful blow with a heavy gauntlet and Richard knew it.

What was it that her serving woman had said, surprising enough to grasp his attention, the words even now lingering in his mind?

Lady Elizabeth cares for you more than you know. More than she knows.

What should he do now?

Elizabeth wept helplessly as she had not wept since the death of her mother and she a small child. How could he be so cruel? How could he believe so ill of her? The damage was beyond repair, as evidenced by her empty bed at night—and every night since Richard had returned. Her heart was as empty and desolate as her bed.

Jane Bringsty folded her in her generous arms, murmuring words of comfort until Elizabeth could cry no more.

‘Hush. He matters so much to you, sweet heart,’ Jane crooned, unusually soft.

‘Yes.’ A bald admission.

‘He could be the dark man of the scrying,’ Jane warned, her cheek against Elizabeth’s hair. ‘He could be your enemy.’

‘No. He is not, unless by my own making. It seems that I have made him so. How could I have acted as I did, Jane?’

‘He hurt you, dear one. And you struck back.’

‘I did not think. He hates me now.’

‘Never.’

Misery returned. ‘Am I so unappealing, Jane, that I need you to deploy the black arts to claim his regard, as he accused? Am I so lacking in glamour that I must use poison to remove a rival? I know I cannot hold a candle to the at tractions of Anne Malinder.’ Un wittingly revealing the cause of her sadness.

‘I’m sorry I have brought you pain, lady.’

Elizabeth pushed herself upright, wiping away the tears. ‘I know you did it for me. But the divide between myself and Richard is, I think, impossible to bridge.’

‘Was there ever any chance before?’ Jane asked caustically. ‘He was quick to judge, quick to condemn. Where was the respect in that?’

And that was the crux of the matter, weighing on Elizabeth’s heart, her soul.