Virgin Widow (40 page)

I sighed, a slow acceptance. Yes, that was undoubtedly what would have happened. ‘Richard…’

‘For that reason I killed him,’ Richard continued as if I had not spoken. ‘As Constable of England the personal security of the King and of the realm is given into my keeping. Would you have me stand back and allow Lancaster to stab Edward to the heart?’

‘No. I would not.’ I knew it for the truth.

‘Anne…did you care for him?’ In one stride Richard stood close before me, had reclaimed my hands, forcefully now, and I saw the lines of anger in his face. I knew I had hurt him, questioning his integrity. His eyes were all darkness on mine so that a flutter of trepidation, not unpleasant, caught in my throat. ‘Did he have a place in your heart?’ he
demanded, harshly. ‘You were with him, wed to him for nigh on six months. Did he kiss you like this?’ His lips were hard and sure on mine, leaving me breathless. ‘Did he touch you like this?’ His hands swept down from shoulder to hip, a deliberate, almost insolent act of possession that set up a tremor in my limbs.

‘No. Nothing like that.’ Startled by this sudden slip of control in a man who governed every emotion, every action, I was even more shocked by my own delight that I could move him to such emotion. Yet I could not tell him the truth, not all of it. Shame held me silent, as if the blame was mine.

‘You were mine before you were ever his.’ Desire, rich and ripe, flowed over me from his words.

‘I always was. But you had left me…’

‘Not of my own volition.’ Then, with difficulty and a bid for softness, ‘Did you love him, Anne?’

So that was it. I had not realised the depths of his jealousy. It might be difficult for Richard to ask it, but there was no hesitation in my answering. My assurance came directly, fiercely even. ‘No. I did not love him. I pitied him—at first. As I grew to know him—I feared him. Even hated him.’ I would not explain how he had struck me when he had found Richard’s letter, how he had exulted in my humiliation when my father was dead. The vicious accusations without foundation. ‘I did not love him. And without doubt
he despised me, unless he needed someone to impress with his skills and his glorious ambition.’

‘He was handsome enough.’ Richard was still not convinced. ‘He had the measure of me there.’

And I laughed softly. So my love was as susceptible to vanity as I. ‘He was handsome. But there was a darkness in him that repelled me.’ In a strange reversal, I felt in that moment unutterably sad, for the Prince, slain for his intemperate ambitions, for the grief and humiliation he had wilfully heaped on me, for all of us caught up in this conflict. When I blinked and tried to focus on the jewels in Richard’s collar my eyes blurred with tears.

‘Look up,’ Richard murmured, gentle in response to my grief, hands now loosely around my wrists. ‘I would not distress you. Then there are no secrets between us?’

‘No. There are none.’

Yet I saw the shine of doubt in his eyes. He hesitated as if the thoughts were difficult to express for a man who leaned towards reticence. Then plunged. ‘You raised the matter and I answered. I need to know that you accept what I did. Oh, I admit readily to jealousy. I hated that he should have you when I could not. But that had no part in Lancaster’s death. My killing of the Prince was an act of sheer necessity. If you cannot accept what I did, Anne, it will always lie between us. In its shadow there can be no trust. Sometimes duty and the needs of the hour demand a course
of action. I am not always proud of what I have done, but I have never acted in cruelty or self-interest. You should know me well enough to know that I would not.’ He hesitated the length of a heartbeat. ‘I know you never gave your consent to this marriage—even though Edward presumed that you would. You said only that you would consider it. I need you to consider it now. Can you accept me, as I am, blemishes and all? Sins and all? If you take the good parts you have to take the less than good. Can you accept that? Otherwise I see no happiness between us.’

I let his words, this amazing stripping of his soul, lie on my heart, as I searched his face, seeking the thoughts behind the stern set of his features. When had he become so difficult to read? When had he decided that it was better to hide his emotions from everyone as if they did not exist? Life at Court, I supposed, where enemies masqueraded as friends, where it was necessary to guard one’s political back from the assassin’s knife. Once I would have pried and poked until I cracked the smooth face of the surface, regardless of his feelings. I could no longer do that, unless he allowed it.

‘Will you wed me? With Edward of Lancaster’s blood on my hands?’ he asked again when I still hesitated, suspended in my own indecision.

Richard needed honesty from me at this time more than ever before. So I would give it. ‘I said I would
consider marriage and I will. I would like this night to do so. Give me until tomorrow, Richard, and I will give you my answer.’

It tore my heart to do it, to see the flicker, the faintest flicker of doubt that I had sown in his mind. But I would weigh his words and make my decision. And in the way of a woman who had been made to feel insecure, unwanted, unloved—and had still not heard the man who would wed her actually speak the words that his love was hers!—I would keep him waiting just a little while.

Richard stepped back. Bowed formally.

‘Until tomorrow, lady.’

How difficult it was to balance one side against the other. I had long acknowledged that the boy I had known had gone for good. Now I was faced with the man. Could I love him, respect him? Put all the past behind me with the guilt and recriminations? If I couldn’t, as Richard had intimated, there was no comfortable path forwards for us.

One thing was clear. This was not the simple continuation of our childhood relationship, but a different and complicated leap into a world of power and political scheming. How strange it was. We had so many shared memories, such intimate knowledge of each other and yet…It was as if the foundations were the same but the walls were different. Different construction,
different perspectives. I saw in this man a wielder of power, a man who would enjoy the rewards of it. I thought he might be ruthless in getting his own way. He was certainly more reserved, more taciturn than he had ever been, more unapproachable. Could I truly love him?

‘Is it possible for a woman to love a man who has blood on his hands?’ I asked Margery as she braided my hair.

‘Depends whose blood, and why it lies there, my lady.’ She attacked a knot with vigour.

‘Because the man who was killed was a danger to others, and to the kingdom.’

‘If you mean my lord of Gloucester’s dispatching of the Prince of Lancaster…Good riddance, I say!’

I sighed. I would get no fair balancing of judgement here.

How much blood had my mother been forced to accept on my father’s hands? Too much, many would say, and not all in battle. Yet she had remained true to him, loyal until the day of his death. Had she ever questioned, ever cast recrimination, as I was now doing? Of course she had. She would not be the woman she was if she had accepted all without judgement.

‘Ask yourself this, lady.’ Margery left me to my solitary contemplations. ‘If the Prince could have
killed Gloucester, would he have given it more than a passing thought? Even if it was stabbing him in the back?’

‘No.’

‘Why, then, do you need to worry your sleep?’

I presumed that Richard had spent as troubled a night as I since he was at my door barely after dawn. And launched into his obviously prepared speech before I had pushed aside my cup and platter. Gone was the cold composure, the careful distancing. Here was the boy I had loved, full of tense energy. For the first time I felt that the outcome between us mattered to Richard on a purely personal level.

‘Before you give me your decision, let me say this, Anne. Whatever the outcome…you have my love, my regard. There will be no compulsion…’

All my intentions of graciously soft and smooth words fled. ‘No compulsion? You’ll hound me unmercifully until you get your own way! We both know it, so don’t tell me that you’ll allow me to retire unwed, or accept the hand of another.’

‘Am I so obstinate?’ I saw the flare of temper. ‘Not as obstinate as you—’

I stopped him with a hand on his arm. ‘Hear my decision first. Then tell me I’m obstinate. I accept what you did. I acknowledge the need. I’ll not allow the Prince of Lancaster to stand between us in death
as he did in life. He will not be a restless ghost to divide us.’

Richard flexed his shoulders as if a weight had been lifted. I could see the storm of relief move through him. So I would leap the second barrier. ‘Now I need to know this—do you love me, Richard?’

‘You know that I do.’

‘No, I don’t! When we were together at Court, when we were young, then I knew, or I thought I did. Even when we were at Warwick and all was so difficult…But so much has happened since. Treachery and exile for both of us. I am not so ingenuous, believing that love will overcome all. We are so taken up with power and inheritance, the demands of Clarence, the threat of renewed warfare. You have barely exchanged a handful of words with me since my return to Court. You were driven to abduct me, but even then it was all dealing and negotiation. How do I know that you love me? You have not said so.’ I could feel my anxieties rising again as the words poured out. ‘I will wed you, but my fears have not been laid to rest. For all I still know, you want my inheritance more than you want me.’

‘We’ve been over this before, Anne. I thought…’ He looked beleaguered.

‘Richard…I understand what you say, but I’ve spent an unconscionable length of time as a kitchen maid because of it. I am carried along like a twig, helplessly
into every ripple and eddy of a stream in full flood, and I don’t like it. Do you love me, Richard? We were children when we last spoke of this. If your heart has changed…I would rather know the truth. I will marry you because it is in the best interests of both of us. I can accept that. But do you
love
me, because my heart aches for you?’ I could not make it plainer. I never thought I would lay myself open to such possibility of hurt, but I had done just that.

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Is that it?’

‘I love you with every bone in my body.’

I thought he was smiling at me. I would not have it. ‘You have been distant and silent, Richard, keeping me from your confidence. Deliberately so to my mind. And don’t smile at me! I am no longer a child to be patronised!’

The smile vanished. ‘This seems to be the day for truth. Your intuition is as strong as ever.’ Amusement glimmered again before solemnity set it. ‘I stand accused and am guilty, but in my own defence I would say this. My purpose, first and last, was always to protect
you.
Clarence would stop at nothing to block our marriage. I could not put myself weakly into his hands by singling you out. It was better that he think I was uninterested or looking elsewhere for a wife. So I remained cold and distant, as you rightly say. I did not seek you out. I did not ask you to dance. Look at what happened when he
discovered my interest? He was going to parcel you off to Tewkesbury; then, when time ran out, he put you into his kitchens! I had to safeguard you until I could marry you and protect you myself. I couldn’t rely on Edward, so all I could do was lure Clarence into thinking that all was at an end between us. That he could plot to take your inheritance without fear of redress.’

‘You kept your distance to protect me.’ I could feel the first knots begin to untie, the fist of ice to melt.

‘Yes.’

‘I wish I’d known. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘And have you reveal it to Isabel?’

‘I would never have done such a thing! I am not indiscreet!’

‘In all honesty, I was uncertain how close your sister was in Clarence’s plans, or how matters stood between the two of you. I dared not risk it.’

Which reasoning I might accept. But, ‘You never said you loved me,’ I challenged, returning to my primary grievance.

‘I kissed you!’

‘A chaste salute when you brought me here and I reeked of tallow. Unless you count the…the
assault
on my person at Westminster.’

‘Assault? Which assault?’ His brows rose expressively, annoyingly.

‘So it seemed to me. I was swept up, all but smothered, and dropped back on my feet with an avowal
that you would have me against all odds. I don’t know if that was love. Your kiss was no wooing, I swear! I don’t even know if you enjoyed it!’

Richard laughed outright as light dawned. ‘Anne, my love, my heart! I enjoyed it. My only excuse—that my control was not at its best. All I wanted at that moment was to keep you with me, safely behind locked doors, never to let you out of my sight.’ He cocked his head as I remembered him doing as a child. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Yes…no. That doesn’t matter!’ I glared, horribly flustered.

‘Then I see that I must put things right, so that they do matter.’ Richard advanced. ‘That is—if you wish it, lady.’

I did. Oh, I did. After all that had separated us I had no intention of holding back with a simper and virginal modesty. So it was not Richard who covered the distance between us in the end. I took the step, I lifted my arms to clip around his neck to pull him close, I lifted my face to encourage his kisses. But it was Richard who spoke the words. For both of us.

‘I love you.’ He sighed them against my mouth. ‘You are the half of me that makes me whole. My other self.’

‘And I love you.’

There was no distance between there and the bed, for two lovers of a consenting mind.

‘I should go…’ Richard murmured reluctantly,
continuing to press his mouth all along the line of my jaw to the soft skin below my ear.

I held on, fingers burrowed into his tunic. ‘You will notice, dear Richard, that I have no chaperon.’

‘Where is she?’ His mouth moved deliciously to where the blood beat at the base of my throat.

‘Gone to visit her family.’ I gasped as his lips burned. ‘She’ll not be back for hours…’

‘I should go…’

‘Stay with me,’ I whispered against his lips. Nothing would separate us now, even though the sun illuminated the room with its sharp brilliance, hardly setting the mood for a subtle seduction. Chastity was a fine commodity for a righteous woman, but desire was in my mind. Nothing would separate us—except for the one omission that leapt starkly before my eyes. The omission that I could sidestep no longer.