The Scandalous Duchess. Anne O'Brien

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