The House Of Allerbrook. Valerie Anand

shook her head, but her eyes gleamed with malice, and Mary Stone, with maddening obtuseness, chose to be persistent. “Dorothy, you can’t say just a little and then stop. You must tell us what you mean.”

      Dorothy looked at Jane. “Well, the king did dance with you once or twice, but he danced with most of the ladies at times. That wasn’t really why you left the court, was it?”

      “Yes, it was,” said Jane, and heard the defensiveness in her own voice. It was she, not Dorothy, who sounded unconvincing.

      “Oh, Jane! You know you kept losing things, and arriving late for this or that occasion and you often said how homesick you were. In the end, Queen Anna decided you’d never be a successful maid of honour and kindly arranged for you to go home. I understood, though,” said Dorothy with spurious sympathy. “I missed my home, too. No one blames you. But it wasn’t anything to do with the king.”

      “I’m afraid it was,” said Jane, as coolly as she could. “I did indeed miss my home but I came back, of my own choice, for the reason I have given. My maid Lisa will bear me out.”

      “Oh, no doubt. I’m sure Lisa is loyal to you, and so she should be. No one would criticize her for that,” said Dorothy sweetly.

      It was clever, Jane thought bitterly. It was fiendishly clever, couched in terms that sounded kind, even though the intention behind it was as unkind as it could possibly get.

      “Well, well,” said Francis calmly. “I daresay, Jane, that you did miss your home, though you’d have got over that if you’d given yourself time. And maybe you were a little overwhelmed by a few compliments from King Henry or invitations to dance. It’s all in the past now. Let us not talk of this anymore. Has anyone else had trouble lately with foxes trying to get at their poultry? There was a dogfox prowling after mine last week, though the dogs and the gander saw him off….”

      They were home again and Jane had retired to her chamber to sit on a stool in her loose bedgown and over-robe while Lisa brushed her hair, when Francis tapped on the door and was admitted. He gave Lisa a dismissive glance and she left them together. Francis sat down on the side of the bed. “So, now we know.”

      “Now we know what?” Jane asked, brushing her long brown hair herself. It gave her hands something to do and stopped them from shaking. Francis looked so very forbidding.

      “The real reason why you left the court. You weren’t afraid of the king! You were ordered home for idleness and incompetence. You seem to have added lies to foolishness.”

      “You believe Dorothy, then?”

      “Why should Dorothy lie? You often said you didn’t want to go to court. I suspect that you simply gave way to your absurd pining for home, failed to do your duties properly and got yourself dismissed—half if not entirely deliberately.”

      “Dorothy lied because she doesn’t like me,” said Jane tiredly.

      “That’s absurd. Why ever shouldn’t she?”

      “I have no interest in Ralph Palmer,” said Jane, deciding on candour. “But Dorothy believes he only cares for her dowry and that if mine were bigger, he’d prefer me to her. She was also jealous of the attention the king paid me! She hates me for it.”

      “If you have no interest in Ralph Palmer,” said Francis unexpectedly, “then I’m surprised at you. He’s personable enough, I would have said! Though I saw your face when Peter Carew rode away. I suppose he’s the one you’d like. You can forget that, my girl. The Carews, even more than the Palmers, go in for advantageous marriages. What am I to do with you?”

      “I wish you’d just try believing me, Francis! It’s true I didn’t really want to go to court, but I fled from it for the reasons I told you. I was not dismissed. Can’t I be useful to you here?”

      “I don’t need you here, Jane. Peggy manages very well with the maids.” Francis rose to his feet. “I don’t know for sure whether the liar is Dorothy or you, but I’m inclined to think it’s you. I don’t mind keeping Lisa on, if she’s willing to stay. She must be a good seamstress—tirewomen usually are. There is always work for a skilled needle in a house like this. But as for you…”

      “Francis, what are you saying?”

      “Harry Hudd is still looking for a young wife and you don’t want to go far from home. He’s a decent, honest man, Jane. He’s older than you, but he’s still under fifty, and he lives just down the hill. Your dowry will be more than enough for him! I shall talk to him tomorrow.”

      “Francis, no!” Jane could hardly believe her ears. She stared blankly at her brother. Memories flooded back—of their parents’ deaths, of how Francis had hugged his sisters and they had hugged him back and they had all cried together. Now Sybil was exiled and Jane was to be thrown to—Harry Hudd and Rixons.

      “Please!” Jane said to her brother’s implacable eyes. “He’s…he’s old and Rixons farmhouse is awful, so cramped and dirty and…”

      “The roof is sound. I’ve seen to that, and you can clean the house. Don’t argue, Jane. I don’t suppose he will. I wouldn’t have foisted Sybil on to him, carrying another man’s love child, but you’re a different matter. Determinedly virtuous, according to you,” said Francis with a kind of grim humour. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s settled.”

      He left the room. That night Jane did not sleep. In the morning he went out early, riding his new horse Silvertail. He didn’t return until after dinner and Peggy expressed anxiety. “Saw that new animal of his bucking as the master rode off. The master’s good in the saddle, but I’d say that horse has a vicious streak.”

      Francis, however, reappeared at suppertime, looking pleased with himself. Over the meal, he said, “Jane, tomorrow morning you will have a caller. Wait in the courtyard at the back if the weather’s fine, in the parlour if not. Don’t wear brocade or damask, but look clean and tidy.”

      “Why? Who is the caller?”

      “Wait and see,” said Francis, and withdrew to his chamber before she could ask any further. Not that she needed to ask. She already knew. Ahead of her lay another sleepless night.

      Next day it was sunny. Shortly after breakfast the caller duly arrived and Francis brought him to the rear courtyard, where Jane was miserably sitting on a stone bench. Harry Hudd, his cap in his hand, his wind-reddened face carefully shaved and his square body encased in the brown fustian doublet and hose which were his nearest approach to a formal suit, had come to ask Jane Sweetwater to marry him.

      “I’ve your brother’s consent. There’s no need to worry about that, maid.”

      Worry about it? Could even Harry Hudd imagine that she would worry if Francis forbade the banns?

      “I’ve not that much to offer, but I’ve got summat. Good health I’ve got. I’m all in workin’ order and likely there’ll be little ones. I reckon ’ee’d like that. Most women want childer. House b’ain’t much, but I’ll leave ’ee free to do whatever’s best. There’ll be money enough—thy dowry and a bit I’ve got put by, only bein’ just a man, I’ve never known how to make a house pretty. My old wife long ago, she knew, but that’s long in the past. She were sickly, that’s why we had no babbies. That were her, not me. I’ve a good flock of sheep, all my own, and half a dozen cows in milk and I hear ’ee’s handy in the dairy. Hear ’ee’s good with poultry, too. We don’t keep geese, but there’s a duck pond….”

      He went on and on, reciting the virtues of Rixons, as if she didn’t know them already and as if they could possibly compensate for the shortcomings of their proprietor. At the end, she said that she must have time to think and he seemed to approve of that. Maidenly and very proper were the words he used to describe it. He’d come back the next day for her answer, he said, and bowed himself out.

      “The