The Scandalous Duchess (45 page)

‘We will celebrate alone. This is the first time in all the years that we have legitimately shared the sheets.'

Holy and sanctified we enjoyed the legal luxury of unclothing each other.

‘I have to be grateful to the setter of fashion.'

‘Why is that?' I asked on a breath as his fingers smoothed over my ribs from breast to thigh.

‘A sleeve without buttons is a miraculous gift.' He groaned as I traced a similar path to his own with the nails of my right hand. ‘But perhaps I would have just torn them off. A husband's rights after all.'

‘Because you would then, as my husband, have to purchase a new gown for me.'

‘I'll buy you a dozen.'

His gift to me that day was beyond price, a glorious affirmation. The physical expression of our love was as powerful now as when we were young.

‘What will we do?' I asked again, when I rose the following morning, a married woman, and broke my fast with my household, still agog with the events of the previous day. ‘Beard the court?'

I thought he might ask my wishes, but he did not. He never had. I doubted he would start now.

‘Eventually. First we go to my own lands. I wish to introduce my new Duchess to my people at Pontefract.'

‘I have no good memories of Pontefract.'

All I recalled of Pontefract were the days of fear and then increasing isolation. Of divided loyalties. My conscience still reminded me that I had refused admittance to Constanza when she was in dire need. The accusations that
I had thrown at the Duke's head in that dusty chamber still haunted me.

‘I'll make your memories there better for you,' he promised as he summoned one of the squires, to issue a stream of succinct orders that would take us to Pontefract where I would begin my life as Duchess of Lancaster.

Chapter Twenty

H
ow astonishing the difference a marriage vow, to impose respectability, could make for me. The towering bulk of Pontefract Castle became a different world from the one I recalled when I was under duress.

‘You know the lady well,' the Duke had advised his steward and Constable when we had first dismounted.

‘Yes, my lord.' Sir William Fincheden, the steward—my steward now—bowed, the Captain likewise. They knew me very well.

‘Lady Katherine is now my Duchess.' I had to admire the Duke's not beating about the bush.

There was the briefest of hesitations.

‘Allow me to offer my good wishes, my lady.' Sir William's face had been impressively wooden. Why was it that stewards, in their officialdom, had difficulty in accepting my status, whether scandalous or superbly legal?

The Constable had bowed without hesitation. ‘You are right welcome, my lady.'

The Duke took my arm to lead me into the hall and nodded. ‘You will serve her, as you would serve me.'

It was in manner of a warning, of course, lightly given. It was all that was needed.

‘If my lady would accept the grace cup?' The steward presented it to me, in my superior position on the dais, before the dishes were served at dinner.

‘Perhaps my lady would try the venison?' The Duke's carver was keen to show his skill.

‘Would my lady wish to cleanse her fingers?' The newest of John's squires knelt at my side with a finger bowl and pristine napkin.

I acquired a page, Guyon, to scurry at my heels and pick up anything I might drop. Doors opened for me as I approached.

‘If it is your will, my lady…'

‘And your head will be as big as a cabbage!' Agnes opined as the poulterer visited me to offer a choice pair of geese for supper. I seemed to have acquired my own personal poulterer as well as a master of game and Stephen of the Saucery who was intent on proving his prowess with a wooden spoon.

I sat at the Duke's side on the dais. I knelt beside him in the chapel. His chaplain beamed on us indiscriminately. I was able to make confession with a glad heart.

‘Would my lady wish to take the merlin or the tercel this morning?'

I had a falconer too. And a groom to hold my stirrup
when I mounted. I never had to shiver in the cold until my horse was readied for me.

I was the Duchess of Lancaster, in the home of the Duke. My wishes were of supreme importance. The Duke saw nothing noteworthy in any of this, but I did, after a lifetime of monumental discretion and subtle insolence.

I did not need it for my happiness, but it proved that my new status was no dream.

The Duke was John now in my mind as well as in my speech. I could think of him as John when he was my husband, in spite of the habits of a lifetime that still clung to me, as a cobweb clings to the hem of a gown. John grew stronger away from court and its network of cunning intrigues. His languor vanished with good food and no pettish demands from Richard. The hunting was good. Yet in all those days of comfort, when my mind should have been put at ease, I was restlessly anxious.

‘Are you worried about going to court?' John asked with an insouciance to which I should have grown accustomed but still had the power to disconcert me.

‘Yes.'

No point in dissembling. I had thought about it often, even if John had not. But it seemed that he had.

‘I will smooth your path. It will not be so very bad. Richard has never been hostile to you.'

I knew he meant it, but how would it be possible? It did not take more than a woman's instinct to know that there were many who would resent my startling promotion. It was not Richard I feared.

‘They will be astonished. It will be no more than a seven-day
wonder,' John announced, turning his mind to the greater importance of ruffling the ears of one of his hounds.

Thus John brushed my megrims aside as a matter of inconsequence compared with a good run after a deer. How typical of a man not to see it. The inhabitants of the aristocratic hencoop would have much to say about my marriage, if I knew anything about them. They would be quick to put me in, as they saw it, my inferior place.

My daughter knew the same.

Arriving at Pontefract, Joan curtsied to me as if to the Queen of England herself before falling into my arms. The twinkle in her eye belied her stern expression as she stepped back and took stock. Married and newly widowed with two little daughters, she had lost none of her calm outlook on life.

‘So you are Duchess now,' she observed, tucking her hand in my arm as we turned to walk indoors, out of a brisk wind that promised snow.

‘So it seems.'

‘And are you growing into your new dignities?'

‘You know your mother.' John had arrived to kiss his daughter. ‘She still feels an urge to supervise.'

I could not deny it when he saluted my cheek, despite the audience of grooms and soldiery and a smirking huntsman, and assured me that he would return before dusk. He always had a thought for my peace of mind.

‘Go and gossip with your daughter,' he added.

‘He looks happier than I have ever seen him, I think,' Joan said as we watched him ride out.

‘Yes.' My eye followed him until the cavalcade disappeared into the grey of the winter's day. He did. The lines
that had seemed ingrained on his return from Aquitaine had smoothed out. He was restored to all his old spirit. It pleased me that it might in some small measure rest on our happiness together.

‘You look happy too,' Joan added, as if she saw the direction of my thoughts.

‘Happy? The word does not express half of what I am.' There was nothing more to say.

Joan slid me a glance. ‘You have thought about what they will say at court, haven't you?'

I had thought about nothing else.

‘What's wrong, Katherine?'

Joan had returned to her own household with a new marriage on her horizon, and I had ridden out with the Duke, hawks on our fists, the hounds milling round our horses' hooves. It was an exhilarating spring day and the rabbits were good prey. John's face was bright with the whip of the wind, and I rode beside him, trying to match his enthusiasm, until he handed over his hawk and mine to the falconers, and pulled my mount into a little space.

I raised my brows with superlative skill. ‘Nothing. What should be wrong?'

Without replying he removed my gloves, tucked them into the breast of his tunic and proceeded to rub my cold hands between his. ‘How long have we been together?' he asked with apparent inconsequence.

‘Twenty-four years, I think.'

‘There! And I thought you would know, to the exact date and time.' I heard the smile in his voice as he rescued my gloves and drew them back on. Then, having completed
the task, the Duke instructed firmly: ‘Then let us try that again. What troubles you, my love?'

For a moment I turned my face away so that he would be unable to see how much I had been distressed, for I now knew considerably more about the reception waiting for me in London.
You are being ridiculous
, I told myself.
You have faced far worse than this. Are you not capable of conducting yourself with perfect propriety and seemliness at court?

But despite all good sense, my belly would not tolerate food and sleep was a fitful thing with difficult dreams. I tried to hide it beneath a facade of smooth conversation and a loving spirit. I thought I was successful. The royal court could hold no terrors for me. If I could play the mummer through John's public rejection of me and the ignominy as a whore at Walsingham's hands, I could preserve a smiling equanimity as the wedded and bedded Duchess of Lancaster. Well, I thought I could.

But now my reply to my husband was stark enough because the truth was unpalatable.

‘I have it on official authority that I am a mean, lowborn woman, not fit to fill the shoes of the sainted Blanche or the courageous Constanza. Sorry,' as he frowned, ‘I did not mean it to sound quite like that.'

‘I know you didn't. And who says that of you?'

‘The royal and courtly hen-roost.'

He grunted, his hand closing warmly around mine again, undoubtedly in comfort. ‘And who specifically?'

‘The Duchess of Gloucester, the Countess of Arundel. Others—anyone with an ounce of royal or aristocratic blood from as far back as…' My teeth snapped shut. I was having difficulty in keeping my temper. ‘They are women I did
not see as enemies. Once the Countess of Arundel and I exchanged experiences on how to dose a sickly child. She was pleased enough to accept my help then, with a dose of boiled tansy roots to dispel worms.'

‘Worms?'

The Duke had a tendency to laugh at inappropriate moments. I grimaced at the banality of my attack. ‘But now the Countess of Arundel and her like are sharpening their tongues and their talons. Perhaps they are not hens at all but hawks.' I looked over to where my new merlin hunched on her perch with her fellow raptors. They were all prettier than the Duchess of Gloucester. ‘Or bitches!' I added. ‘Even the Countess of Hereford has joined their ranks, so I am informed.'

And that wounded me more than all the rest. I had thought her to be my friend, my daughter named for her. How could we share the suffering at Mary's deathbed, as well as the joy at the birth of Mary's sons, and then she disown me?

John laughed. ‘It's the marriage then. As we thought.'

‘No need for you to laugh. You are denounced too.' Oh, the gossip, carefully expurgated by Joan, I had no doubt, had been detailed enough and Agnes had been bullied into repeating it for me. ‘You are guilty of defying convention, putting me above every woman in the realm, when I am not fit…'

I took a breath, entirely ruffled, angry with their ability to make me feel unworthy. Of course they would hate me. John had made me pre-eminent over every last one of them. But I ought to have the presence to withstand their hostility. That was the problem, of course. I had not expected
quite such a degree of virulence from women I knew well and who knew me.

‘It does not matter.' His fingers were smooth as they stroked the soft leather over my wrist where my blood thundered.

‘It might.' I worried at it, like a loose thread on a sleeve. ‘Men of power and title do not marry their mistresses. Oh, John—we should have foreseen this. Now I am condemned as an upstart while you are castigated as a fool…'

‘I am?' I could just make out the little lines of a frown, not masked by the shadow of the velvet folds of his fringed and elegant chaperon. He never took kindly to criticism, but I might as well warn him.

‘You are a fool, they say, because you could have made a grand marriage for profit or alliance.' I would not tell him that the epithet fool had come from the lips of his own brother of York. ‘But don't despair. They'll forgive
you
, with your high blood and noble rank. Whereas I will always be a woman of questionable morals and tainted blood, from a family of low degree. My reputation is tarnished beyond repair. You are a fool, but I am and always will be little better than a whore who has been raised beyond her station.'

I watched as John's brows registered astonishment at my bitterness and at the vicious detail of my informant.

‘Where did you get all of this?'

‘From those who write and gossip. It's too good a scandal not to spread, isn't it? I seem to have been causing a scandal for most of my life.' My voice, caught on an excess of emotion, was whipped away by the stiff wind. ‘I'm sorry. I know you'll say it's not worth such a fuss—and yet it hurts me.'

‘I presume it's Walsingham?'

‘Who else? He gossips worse than a woman. And to more effect, unfortunately.'

‘His words cannot hurt you now. You are my wife.'

I was not soothed at all. ‘And because I am your wife, the Countess of Gloucester and her coterie will take their revenge, to prove to me that I am not superior. Do you know what angers them most? Well, you did warn me of it, didn't you? That until the King weds again, you have made me the most pre-eminent woman in the land. The court women of my acquaintance are preparing to take a stand against me, to show me how inferior I am.'

‘Which is not so. Your family is entirely respectable.'

‘But not sufficiently noble for you!'

‘You can withstand that. What can they do to undermine your confidence? You know to an inch how to go on at court. What Queen Philippa did not know about court etiquette could be written on one of your very pretty fingernails. You cannot be tricked or undermined. You cannot be humiliated, or your behaviour made to appear inappropriate.'

Which only repeated what I had told myself. And yet:

‘Do you know what they are saying?' His compassion for my situation I thought to be waning, as would any man's after such a deluge of hopeless misery from a woman who claimed to have superior intelligence. So I would shock him into seeing the fear that lived with me.