Exile's Return (15 page)

She turned and left the room.

Daniel glanced at Agnes. ‘Was she crying?'

Agnes nodded as she bent to pick up the tray. ‘Yes. So many broken lives, Daniel.'

Daniel sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Leave me. I am poor company, Agnes.'

Her heels clicked on the wooden floor and the door creaked open.

‘I will see you in the morning. Good night, Daniel,' she said.

As the door closed behind her, Daniel lay awake staring up at the panelled ceiling of the bed. “So many broken lives”, Agnes had said, and he was coming to see how much the affairs of men had impacted the lives of their women.

He thought of his mother and sister, forced to eke out an existence in a few rooms of a ruined house; of Agnes, who had nothing and no one; and Lady Longley, who had been forced to be mother and father to children, who would not recognize their father if he walked through the door.

And what had been the cause of all this misery? The stubborn pride of a little man who called himself King had brought England to civil war. At that traitorous thought, he closed his eyes and turned his thoughts instead to that man's son, who had also suffered through his father's hubris. There would never be peace until a king sat once more upon his throne in England and he, Daniel, still had a part to play in bringing the world back to rights.

***

Agnes found Eleanor Longley in the nursery, engrossed in a game of spillikins with a boy of about seven. A younger boy of Henry's age, still in skirts, seemed to be hell bent on disturbing the game, while the nursery maid was singularly failing in the task of quieting a small girl of a similar age to the younger boy.

Agnes took the unhappy child in her arms.

‘Now then, little maid, what ails you?'

‘Teeth,' said the harassed nursery maid.

‘Ah, teeth are nothing but a trial from the very beginning. Now, what is your name?'

The child stopped crying long enough to gulp out, ‘Clare.'

‘Clare, show me where it hurts.'

Clare opened wide and Agnes could see the red, swollen gum. She inserted her finger and rubbed the sore spot, swaying in the instinctive dance of all mothers. Clare's sobs reduced to gulps and she snuggled against Agnes, two pudgy fingers in her mouth.

‘You have a good way with children.' Lady Longley rose to her feet.

‘I love children.' Agnes looked down at the fair head against her shoulder and brushed the silken strands out of the child's eyes.

‘This is my son, Charles,' Lady Longley put her hand on the shoulder of the older boy. ‘Charles, this is Mistress Fletcher.'

The boy swept her a courtly bow.

‘May I call you Agnes? These two,' Lady Longley indicated the two younger children, ‘are twins. Richard and Clare. They are Jon and Kate's children. Of course you have met Tabitha, Jon's daughter, and Thomas, Kate's son by her first marriage, and my eldest child, Ann.'

Agnes smiled and shook her head. ‘This is a very complicated family.'

Lady Longley nodded. ‘Both Jonathan and Kate had other lives before they met. Kate's first husband, Tom's father, died at Marston Moor, and Jonathan only discovered Tabitha a few years ago. She is his natural child.'

A child of passion born out of wedlock?
Agnes wondered and her gaze rested on Richard. ‘My sister's child, Henry, is Richard's age. I cared for him since he was born.'

‘You must miss him.'

Every moment of every day, with a pain that threatens to break my heart
, Agnes thought.

‘Very much. And you, Lady Longley?'

Her companion pulled a face. ‘Please, call me Nell. No one calls me Lady Longley. What about me? My home is in the possession of a poxy Roundhead. My husband, Giles, is with the King in the Low Country, where he has been for twelve years now with only occasional fleeting visits.' Lady Longley's face saddened. ‘I have not seen him in eight years, but by all accounts he does not want for company.'

Agnes caught her meaning in the sad twist of her mouth. She glanced down at Charles, who had turned to spinning a top for his younger cousins.

‘So he's not met his son?'

Nell shook her head. ‘I had hoped Giles, like Jon, would make his peace and return before this, but I think he prefers his life on the Continent to that of domesticity with a wife and children.'

Agnes looked at Lord Longley's handsome wife and fine little boy and wondered how Longley could not want hearth and home.

‘But enough of such gloomy domestic talk,' Nell said with a smile. ‘Your friend Master Lovell is acquainted with Jonathan from the days of Worcester, I believe.'

‘So he says. It is his brother, Kit Lovell, who was Sir Jonathan's friend.'

A smile lifted Nell's face. ‘Oh, of course, Kit Lovell. I remember him. If I had not been so besotted with Giles, I could have fallen in love with Kit. He was half-French, I recall, with all the charm of Frenchman.' She frowned. ‘He's dead, isn't he?'

‘I believe he was hanged a few years ago for some part in a plot to kill Cromwell.'

Nell nodded. ‘Oh yes, I remember Jon reading about it in a London newssheet. But what about this brother, Daniel?'

The child she held had grown heavy, her head lolling against Agnes's shoulder. ‘I think someone is ready for bed,' she said, handing the drowsy child to the nursemaid.

‘You too, Master Richard,' the nursemaid said.

The boy stuck out his lower lip. ‘But I want to play wiv Charles,' he said.

‘Charles is going to bed too. Kiss Mama,' Nell said, rising to her feet. She stooped and the boy threw his arms around his mother's neck, planting a large, sloppy kiss on her cheek.

Agnes's heart broke just a little more.

‘They are such a joy for Kate and I,' Nell said, a fond smile on her lips as the door to the bedchamber closed. ‘Come, Agnes. It is time for supper.'

As they left the room, Nell slipped her arm into Agnes's. ‘Now tell me, Agnes. You and the handsome Daniel Lovell. Is it true, are you just friends?

‘Hardly even that,' Agnes responded a little too quickly. ‘
Is
he handsome?'

Nell's mouth quirked. ‘Oh yes, he has some of the look of his brother, but rather less … French. I warrant that out of the sick bed, he is a fine-looking man.'

Agnes swallowed. ‘I am no judge of these matters,' she mumbled. ‘I know very little about him.'

Nell frowned. ‘So, how do you come to be in his company?”

How strange it would sound to this woman if Agnes were to even try to explain that her relationship to Daniel came only from a mutual acquaintance with a man they both hated!

‘As I told you last night, I was abandoned in London without the means to support myself and Daniel came to my aid.'

‘A knight errant,' Nell held up her hand. ‘But I won't ask anything more of you. I have learned that in this day and age it is best not to know too much.'

They had reached the door to the dining chamber and Nell pushed it open. The rest of the family was already seated. Agnes slipped into her now-familiar place at the Thornton table, and after answering Kate's question about how Daniel fared that evening, she let the family gossip wash around her.

***

In a well-cushioned chair, a table beside him on which had been placed a jug of small ale and a plate with two late season apples, and a London newssheet lying unregarded on his lap, Daniel stared into the cheerful fire crackling on the hearth.

It occurred to him since meeting Agnes – since coming to this house – something in his universe had shifted and he could describe it in one single word: kindness.

The years of exile had been wasted years and had left him at the age of twenty-eight with only the prospect of a long and lonely life. There had been no room in his life in recent years for sentiment or charity. His had been a hand-to-mouth existence, lived among hard men with a brutal job. When he had sought relief from life aboard a privateer it had been in the arms of the whores of Fort Royal. When he had been stricken with the fever it had been the rough tending of his shipmates that had nursed him back to health.

He looked around the pleasant room, redolent with the scents of beeswax polish and lavender. A fitful late autumn sun spilled in through the diamond panes of the window, bringing back memories of happier times at Eveleigh, a house of a similar age and history to this one.

He wondered now how real those memories were. It seemed he had lived his whole life in the shadow of conflict, but there must have been a time before the war when they had lived as a family at Eveleigh. He recalled games of hide and seek with Kit – on the occasions Kit had been at home. Being ten years older, there had been school and Oxford and other distractions for a young man, but when he had been at Eveleigh there had always been time for romping with his younger brother and sister.

But it was more than just the kindness of the strangers who had taken him in. There was Agnes – that perplexing little woman who had sat beside him as he tossed in fever. He remembered more than she probably realised, but most particularly the touch of her hands as she had cooled his body. No one had touched him like that, with such … he struggled to find the word … intimacy? Yet it had not been about carnal desire. Her touch had come with – again, that word – kindness.

Or was there more than that?

He'd never been in love. Even with Jennet Pritchard, who had made no secret of her feelings for him. He had liked Jennet enough to have contemplated a life with her but love … ? No, not love. If he had married Jennet it would have been for one reason only – an escape from servitude. She knew that, she understood. She had told him love could come later.

But it had been death that took her away and plunged him into Hell.

A rap on the door startled him out of his reverie and he straightened in his chair as Sir Jonathan entered the room, ducking his head to avoid one of the low beams of the ceiling. He had aged in the years since Worcester, the dark hair now streaked with silver and lines etched around his mouth and eyes.

‘Good to see you up,' Thornton said. ‘May I join you?'

‘Of course,' Daniel waved a hand at a second chair.

Thornton sat down and stretched out his long legs, crossing his feet at the ankles. ‘Agnes says you have a letter for me, from Giles.'

Daniel rose unsteadily to his feet and retrieved the letter from his bag. As he resumed his seat, Jonathan broke the seal and scanned the contents, his face grave. He crumpled it in one hand and tossed it on the fire where it sparked and glowed before bursting into bright flame.'

Thank you for bringing me news from the court,' he said. ‘England balances on a fine wire at the moment.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The restoration of the King seems inevitable, but yet there is still so much to do to accomplish it. Foolish ventures such as that which saw Agnes's brother in law lose his head do not help.' He glanced at the fire as the letter dissolved in ashes and fell into the hearth. ‘The time for the sword is past. Old soldiers like Giles and I can be of little use in the months to come. We must put our trust in politicians.'

Sir Jonathan lifted his right hand to smooth back the hair from his forehead, the cuff of his shirt falling away to reveal a circlet of whitened scars around his wrist. Daniel caught his breath. The marks were unmistakable. He had seen them too many times before. He bore them on his own wrists.

‘Manacles,' Daniel said aloud.

Jonathan rubbed his wrists as if he still felt the weight of the irons. ‘You are quite right. I barely survived incarceration in the Tower of London in the months after Worcester.' He sighed. ‘I've seen the scars you bear, Lovell. Do you wish to tell me about it?'

Daniel shook his head and looked away. ‘The man who did it is dead.'

‘Did you kill him?'

‘No. I would have done, without hesitation, but I heard that they hanged him in Holetown for his crimes. Justice was served.'

Thornton studied him with a knowing gaze.

‘As you say,' Thornton said at length. ‘Justice was served. Now, tell me about your time at the exiled court. What did they ask of you?'

Daniel looked up. ‘What do you mean?'

‘When you went to the court in Bruges, they would have asked something of you, I am sure.'

Daniel shook his head. ‘I made it clear that I have no interest in their games. I have given eight years of my life for the decision to follow Kit into battle that day, Sir Jonathan. I have nothing more to give.' He paused. ‘Did Lord Longley say something in his letter to you?'

Thornton stood up and walked across to the window. He stood for a long time in silence, his hands behind his back, before turning to face Daniel again.

‘They want money.' Thornton huffed a humourless laugh. ‘Giles knows full well they'll get nothing from me. It is as much as Kate and I can do to hold this estate together and provide for our family and our tenants from year to year.' He returned to his chair, leaning forward and gazing into the fire, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. ‘The fines levied on us have been crippling, Lovell, but we have managed and now it begins again. I have nothing to spare for the King's coffers and nothing to give of myself.' He looked across at Daniel. ‘Even if it were wanted, I gave my oath as a gentleman never to raise my sword against the Commonwealth. Much as that decision galled me, I gave it gladly. It ensured me home and hearth and contentment.'

Daniel frowned. ‘And that is enough?'

Thornton returned his gaze to the fire and a rueful smile lifted his countenance. ‘Between us, Lovell, there are days when the beat of the drums echoes in my blood, but the only thing of value I have left is my honour and I will not break my oath and take up arms again.' He straightened. ‘I can tell you, Lovell, because I know you understand. I for one have no desire to return to the Tower of London. In the meantime I have plenty to occupy me in keeping this estate running and ensuring my tenants are fed, housed, and clothed, let alone my own family. My stepson, Thomas Ashley, will inherit the estate when he is twenty-one and I wish to ensure he has something worth inheriting; not the rundown, impoverished estate I found when I returned home.'