The Scandalous Duchess. Anne O'Brien

is sure to follow if this rain continues, so we must move the horses to dry accommodations. He says do we send to our neighbours? Then there’s the little matter of water seeping into the well in the court-yard…’

      ‘And I need the funds to put it all right. I know.’ I must have succumbed to dismay, for Agnes approached, eyes narrowed on my face, but I essayed a laugh to deflect her concern. ‘The Duke’s offer could not have come at a more opportune moment. Do you suppose that he foresaw our thatching difficulties?’

      Agnes snorted at my levity. ‘A pretty thing.’ She nodded at the rosary clutched in my hand.

      Lifting it, I allowed the light to play along its length, picking out the carving on the crucifix. ‘Yes. It’s beautiful.’

      Beautiful, but the implications of its giving were dangerous.

      ‘A gift?’ Agnes probed.

      She knew I could not afford to purchase an item of such value.

      ‘Yes.’ How easy it was to be drawn into deception. ‘From Lady Alice.’ And as if to hide my guilt I closed my hand over the beads.

      ‘Nice if you have the money,’ Agnes sniffed. ‘Did I see coral there? And gold?’

      ‘Yes.’ It was as I knew, too valuable even for Lady Alice’s giving.

      ‘I thought you said Lady Alice gave you nothing.’

      ‘Did I?’ Beware, those who lie. I tried a rueful smile. ‘I forgot.’

      ‘Heaven knows you could forget that!’ I squirmed with discomfort but just shook my head. ‘You could sell it and re-roof the stables. Unless you are absolutely fixed on joining the new Duchess?’

      I returned her puzzled stare for a moment, suddenly calmly assured, quite certain in my own mind.

      ‘Yes, I am fixed on it. I will earn enough from my position with Duchess Constanza to re-roof the whole house,’ I said. ‘What possible reason would there be for me to refuse such open-handed generosity?’ I began to slide the paternosters into their leather pouch.

      ‘It’s a very costly gift,’ Agnes remarked, looking at me rather than at the beads.

      ‘Then I must be sure to be worthy of my hire.’

      Tucking the rosary into a coffer, with unwarranted impatience I cast a cloth over the finches whose singing had picked up in volume.

      ‘And you’d better take those with you,’ Agnes continued in the same sceptical tone, as if she did not believe one word I had said, ‘or Margaret will never forgive us. I don’t suppose the Duke will mind.’

      ‘No, I don’t suppose he will,’ I responded briskly.

      And since there was so much to organise, I extinguished the scene I had just conjured up as efficiently as if I had used a candle snuffer, yet there remained with me a complicated interweaving of thoughts, lingering like a final wisp of smoke.

      What would I say to the Duke when our paths next crossed? Would it not be for me like stepping into a hornets’ nest? If he demanded again that I be more than a lady-in-waiting to his wife, as he surely would, what would I say?

      So many questions. I knew the answer to none of them, but my mind was resolved to go to The Savoy, whatever fate might hold in store for me.

      I refused to admit what was in my heart.

      Chapter Four

      My first impression, as she was helped to dismount from the gloriously swagged and curtained palanquin, was how young and insubstantial she was. Or perhaps it was just that she resembled nothing more than a drowned rat. The heavens had inconveniently deposited a torrential downpour of sleety rain on the crowds of gawping bystanders as she was welcomed into the city of London by Prince Edward of Woodstock, struggling from sick-bed to horseback for the occasion. She was not so very young for a royal bride. The noble lady, Constanza of Castile, was after all only five years younger than I, and hardly some protected, pampered child with no mind of her own.

      There we all stood in the Great Hall to receive our new mistress, with freedom for me to appreciate the impression the Duke intended to make, with his tunic blazing in red and black and gold, proclaiming his new status, the royal arms of Castile with its castle and lions quartered with those of England, the gold stitching shimmering as he moved restlessly from foot to foot. It sat well on his tall slenderness: not one of the Castilian entourage could question the presence of this royal duke. I tried to read his expression. Impatience, above all, for we had been waiting for three hours.

      I smoothed my hand down the silk damask of my skirts. When the Duke’s stern eye swept over his assembled household, he had registered with the barest glance the quality and condition of my garments, taking note of my obedience to his demand that I clothe myself with appropriate richness in honour of my new position. So my trailing skirts were in Lancaster blue, the close-fitting bodice, exquisitely fur edged, patterned in blue and white. Out of some female caprice, I had chosen to wear the coral rosary, ostentatiously looped over my girdle.

      Now, waywardly volatile, strangely defiant, I wished I had not.

      He had not even found the time to speak to me. I was merely one of many in the household. How could I have expected more?

      Duchess Constanza trod the shallow steps to the Great Hall, her furs trailing and spiked with wet, her robes plastered to her body. Her pleated hair clung to her head and neck beneath her sodden veiling, the ruffles on her cap sadly limp. I could only imagine her discomfort in spite of her being tucked back into her litter after the welcome. But in spite of it all, yes, I acknowledged, she was beautiful. Not like Blanche, fair and so very English, smooth and pale as a pearl. This young woman was as sharp as a pin. Magnificent eyes, dark and secretive as beryls, were turned on her new surroundings and were not uncritical, and there was a pride in the thin nose, the arched brows. Perhaps her pride was to be expected, given the difficulties of her birth and young life.

      Lady Alice had sniffed her disgust of gossip but Alyne had answered my curiosity as we completed the stitching on that same altar cloth that would be used for the Mass to give thanks for Duchess Constanza’s safe arrival amongst us.

      ‘Constanza is illegitimate, to all intents and purposes…’ she whispered. ‘Her father got three daughters and a son on a whore whilst his wife was still alive.’

      ‘But he claimed to have married her—the whore, that is,’ interposed Lady Alice who, in the end, could not resist the delectable lure of scandal.

      And so, between them, I received the strangely horrifying history of my new mistress whose father King Pedro of Castile had imprisoned his rightfully wedded wife in a dungeon, while he continued his disreputable liaison with Maria de Padilla, whom he claimed to have wed before his marriage to the ill-fated legal wife Blanche of Bourbon. He was a man of persuasive tongue and his children by Maria had been recognised as legitimate by the Castilian Cortes, and so were heirs to the throne.

      ‘Pedro had his wife poisoned, so they say. Died in mysterious circumstances,’ Lady Alice stated with extravagantly raised brows.

      Alyne added in counterpoint: ‘Constanza’s father is also dead, so she is Queen of Castile by right.’

      ‘Except that the Crown has been usurped by King Pedro’s bastard half-brother Enrique.’

      ‘Which means that Queen Constanza has no kingdom to rule over.’

      ‘Only a claim that Enrique will never honour.’

      So there was the skeleton of Constanza’s lineage. It was an unenviable position for the young woman, whom I now assessed as, chin lifted, she approached the Duke. No wonder she held to her pride like a mouse to the last ear of corn during a bad harvest. She had little else.