LIBERTINE in the Tudor Court: One Night in Paradise / A Most Unseemly Summer

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‘Let me go home,’ she whispered, shakily. ‘You have taken advantage of me, sir.’ She stood, clinging to one of the wooden pillars for support.

He came to stand behind her, his hands beneath her cloak covering her breasts and pulling her back to him, possessively. ‘Oh, no,’ he said into her ear. ‘Oh, no, sweet maid. That I did not, and you know it. If I had truly taken advantage of you, I could have plied you with more wine instead of telling you to stop. I could have taken you into any one of a dozen dark rooms. I could still have you stark naked and on your back right now, if that’s what—’

‘No!’ she panted. ‘That you will never do! Now release me.’ For all its apparent fervour, her plea lacked momentum under his persuasive hands that cleverly drew her mind from resentment towards the breathtaking response of her body. Still tingling from his attentions, she had no will to protest as his wandering hands reinforced his first lesson.

‘You started this, my beauty, and now you’re in it up to your pretty little hocks again, aren’t you. And no guardians to run to.’

‘Master Fowler will…be my…’ Her mouth was taken over by his kiss.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘run to your Gentleman Controller as often as you wish, but he’ll never have control of you as I shall. You can stop playing your game of run-and-hide now, Adorna. It’s time to face reality.’ He caught her wrist and swung her round to face him, taking a fistful of her golden hair to tilt her face under his. ‘I want you and I shall have you. Fume and fight as much as you like; your opposition will make my winning and your losing all the sweeter.’

‘Fine words,’ she snarled, ‘from one who makes a secret assignation with no intention of keeping it. If that’s the reality you intend me to face, sir, I’ll stick with my so-called games a while longer, I thank you.’

‘So that’s niggling at you, is it? Well, if I’d thought you’d have accepted my explanation any earlier, I’d have given it to you, though there’s hardly been a good moment for apologies, has there? I was foaling a mare. A first foal. Premature.’

‘And you could not have sent a message?’

His voice softened with an invisible smile. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I could have. I could have sent your Master Fowler. He was with me in the courtyard when the stable-lad came to tell me that the mare had started. I could have asked him to go to the banqueting house where you’d be waiting for me and tell you not to. Should I have done that, do you think?’

The idea was absurd, she realised that now. He could not have sent anyone with such a message. ‘I was not waiting for you,’ she said, angrily pulling at his grip on her wrist. ‘I went in.’

‘Ah, I see.’ He smiled, releasing her. ‘Then there is no real harm done after all, is there? And no apology needed. Now, anything else before I take you home?’

‘Yes, there is. Have you warned him to stay away from me?’

‘Who? Master Fowler?’ His smile grew into a soft laugh. ‘No, mistress. I do not warn men off. I don’t need to. Our Gentleman Controller will get the message soon enough without any extra help from me. I think you’ve already seen that tonight.’

‘And I think, sir, that the less I remember of this night the happier I shall be. I choose my own friends and I shall choose my own lovers when I’m ready. And you will not be among them. Master Fowler would never have behaved as you have.’

‘In which case, Mistress Adorna Pickering,’ he said, pulling her to him once more, ‘you would not have behaved the way you just have, would you? And that would have been a pity.’ Like his first kiss, he gentled her lips with his own, reminding her of how she had responded to him and luring her into another betrayal of her slumbering protests. It also made her aware that this theory, though probably sound, was way beyond her understanding at that moment and had better be analysed on the morrow.

Chapter Six

F ortunately, Lady Marion was entertaining some friends when Adorna arrived home like a sleeping child in Sir Nicholas’s arms, and Sir Thomas had not yet returned from the palace. Consequently, no one except Maybelle and the Pickerings’ chamberlain were there to see how carefully she was deposited on the bed from which she did not wake until well past dawn. And then she wished she had not.

It was not so much her head that pained her, though that was worse than anything she could remember, but the shattering burden of self-reproach that grew with each of her searching questions to Maybelle about her behaviour, her clothes—or lack of them—and about Sir Nicholas’s part in getting her home. The pain worsened as her mother kindly lectured her on the dangers of allowing a man too much familiarity. How did she know about the journey home? ‘Because I pay my chamberlain to tell me what’s going on in my own house,’ she replied. Unfortunately, it was not possible for Adorna to discover exactly what the chamberlain had implied, or how much her mother suspected, or indeed how far Sir Nicholas had gone. And having no one but herself to blame for her determination to drink too much undiluted wine, she realised that she must get herself out of this situation with the same defiance she had used to get into it.

Neither the pain nor her temper was improved by Hester’s somewhat ill-timed opinion that Sir Nicholas would make a good husband. ‘For you?’ Adorna said, wincing at the sunlit garden.

‘Well, yes. My inherited wealth and his inherited title would go together rather well, I think. And Sir Nicholas has noticed how much I’ve changed. Isn’t that nice?’

‘Very nice,’ Adorna murmured, watching a butterfly head off towards a gaudy marigold. ‘That makes all our efforts worthwhile.’ Secretly, it rankled that the plan she had been so eager to put into action only a short time ago had now begun to look as if it had Hester’s approval and, what was worse, that it might actually work. The only comforting thought she could find was that, one day quite soon, Sir Nicholas and Peter would both be gone up to Kenilworth with the Earl of Leicester to prepare to welcome the Queen.

Adorna had missed the Sunday-morning service in the Queen’s royal chapel, but felt obliged to attend the evening one at which she hoped Sir Nicholas would not be present. Her hopes were soon sent packing. He came in with the earl’s household only moments before the Queen herself, fitting into a space on the bench immediately behind her. It was Hester and Lady Pickering who turned to smile at him, but the unkind lurch of Adorna’s heart had already responded to some strange telepathy, and from then on it was all she could do to keep her mind on course instead of on his presence at her back, his hands so close, his eyes taking in every detail.

She devised a series of strategies for evading him afterwards, but her father and Hester demolished them by keeping her between them as they turned to speak to Sir Nicholas, compelling her to respond to his query about her health. His ‘You are well, I hope?’ was accompanied by a lack of gravity in his eyes that suggested he might already know the answer.

She had no intention of telling him the truth. ‘Well enough, I thank you, sir.’ Against her will, her eyes evaluated the impeccable green silk doublet and matching trunk-hose, its surfaces slashed to show long puffs of pale gold silk beneath. A small white ruff sat neatly beneath his chin, but her examination stopped at his mouth, lacking the courage to meet the laughter in his eyes.

Hester, apparently, felt that Adorna’s response was sadly wanting in detail. ‘She is now,’ she said, in the awkward silence that followed. ‘She’s been unwell all morning with a terrible headache. Poor Adorna.’ She looked pityingly at her cousin, trying to imagine what a headache felt like.

‘Hester!’ Adorna said through her teeth. But the damage was done.

‘Really?’ Sir Nicholas replied, adopting an expression of extreme concern. ‘Is that so, mistress? Now what could possibly have caused that, I wonder?’

Sir Thomas came to the rescue, dismissing the problem with his usual bluffness. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘anyone who has to dress eight noblewomen as Water Maidens all at the same time is entitled to a headache, I’d say. It gave me one just to think about it. Hah! Now, Sir Nicholas, I believe I owe you our thanks for escorting Mistress Adorna home last night. Very thoughtful. Mighty good of you. I was tied up till the early hours, you know.’

Sir Nicholas’s response was a slight bow, though his eyes and voice still denied a proper seriousness. ‘No thanks are necessary, Sir Thomas, I assure you. It was a great pleasure to escort your daughter to her bed…er…room. In fact, it was the highlight of the evening for me.’

But any deeper meaning of Sir Nicholas’s words was quite lost upon Sir Thomas as his attention was caught by another friend, and he began to move away. Not so with Hester, who appeared to be getting the hang of social chit-chat with a remarkable degree of clumsiness. ‘Oh, you didn’t tell me that,’ she said to Adorna, ignoring the bright pink flush that had risen in her cousin’s cheeks. ‘Did Sir Nicholas…er…did you really…?’

‘Sir Nicholas is jesting, Hester dear,’ Adorna almost snarled, looking daggers at the man to warn him not to say another word. ‘Remind me to tell you how some men enjoy making ladies blush, will you?’ She took Hester’s arm in a firm grip to steer her away.

Hester, however, had taken the bit firmly between her teeth. ‘But Sir Nicholas would not do that, would you, Sir Nicholas?’ she said, resisting the pressure.

‘Yes, he would,’ Adorna said, under her breath. Her glance across at her parents gave her even more cause for concern, for now there were eyes flickering in her direction as snippets of gossip were passed back and forth by their friends, heads nodding, smiles of surprise, grimaces of shock. She could not doubt that she and Sir Nicholas were the topic of their conversation.

Sir Nicholas himself offered her little consolation. ‘Yes, I would,’ he said to Hester. ‘But you should also ask Mistress Adorna to explain that a blush of embarrassment doesn’t necessarily imply guilt. Ask her about it, Mistress Hester.’

This was getting too deep for her. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, looking as if she had already lost the thread. ‘Yes, I will.’ She bobbed a curtsy, glanced once more at the rosy signs of Adorna’s extreme vexation, and moved away to join Lady Pickering, presumably to hear the details with which Adorna had not supplied her.

Adorna herself would have left Sir Nicholas at that point had he not kept hold of her arm. ‘No, sir,’ she hissed. ‘Let me go now. How could you have begun such a conversation before my father and Hester? Now they’ll think—’

‘What will they think?’ he said, close to her ear. ‘Are you pretending that your parents will never hear that we were together at the masque? That they’ll never know how you stood in for Lady Mary? Of course they will. Look at that crowd. They can hardly wait to talk about it. What d’ye think they’re saying, then?’

The temptation to look was strong, but she could not do it while the embarrassment was so plainly written upon her face. She could not even meet Sir Nicholas’s eyes as she replied, ‘How could I possibly know what they’re saying?’

‘Well, I’ll tell you.’

‘Don’t.’

‘They’re talking about the Water Maiden who refused to be caught. About how she—’

‘Stop!’

‘How she wore a gauzy bodice everyone could see through and—’

‘Please!’

‘And how the Deputy Master of Horse kissed her there before them all, while she struggled in his arms. Then they danced with each other and no one else. Can you hear that roar of laughter? Your father. Your mother and Hester are looking shocked. Well? Would you prefer to go and join them and be invited to explain, or would you rather leave with me and not have to explain anything?’

There appeared to be no choice left to her. The blush, now intensified, was certainly not what she wanted to exhibit to anyone, nor did she wish to see their expressions of shock and amusement. She could guess what they would be saying. ‘Adorna Pickering caught at last? Do explain…she what?’

Without bothering to answer, she followed him quickly out through the small north door into a courtyard and from there through a maze of passageways, smaller courtyards and doors that led on to Paradise Road. ‘I can find my own way from here, sir,’ she said, looking to see if anyone else was about. The track was deserted.

He began to walk with her. ‘You couldn’t find it last night though, could you?’

‘Sir Nicholas, it really is most discourteous of you to insist on reminding me of an incident I would rather forget. Now that there is no one to see, there is no point in continuing to embarrass me. Whatever happened last night is past and gone. It will never happen again. Never. I regret the whole incident and, most of all, I regret the part you played in it. It’s a mercy to me that I cannot recall much of what happened, which you will no doubt see as a chance to make up whatever you like and tell all your gossipy friends. Now, please will you go and leave me to walk home alone.’

‘You have little choice in the matter, my girl,’ he said with his arm across her back. ‘You can either walk sedately by my side to Sheen House or you can be carried there as you were last night. Make up your mind. Which is it to be?’

‘You are insufferable, sir!’

He smiled at her fury, urging her forward. ‘Pity you remember so little, you in your flimsy kirtle in the garden afterwards, and me wrapping you in my—’

She drew back a hand to hit him, to put a stop to the shameful picture she had no wish to see. But this time he was prepared, and she was slowed by the dull thudding in her head. He caught her hand well before it made contact, pulling her uncomfortably close to him in a restricting embrace. ‘That’s enough!’ he said, sternly. ‘So I shall not give you any more details except for one reminder that you must have missed.’

‘And that, sir?’

‘That the game of chase has ended and that you had better start to regard yourself as mine. Which is exactly how those people in there…’ he tipped his head towards the palace wall ‘…are seeing you, whether you like it or not. Far better to go along with it. Less confusing for everybody.’

Only a week or so ago, she would have argued herself in circles at his arrogant assertion that she belonged to anybody. To be held in his arms was something kept only for the night’s secrets, but to be added to his list of conquests was quite a different thing. Yet the appalling headache of the morning had left her feeling distinctly unsteady, and now she was unable to summon up enough strength to continue the contest. ‘Let me go, sir, please, just let me go. We can finish this conversation another time. Tomorrow, perhaps.’ The fields and trees swirled dizzily into a black void as a tingling sensation froze her arms and legs. She had had nothing to eat all day. ‘Please,’ she whispered, ‘I need to sit…down…’

And so it was that Adorna Pickering, against every resolution to keep this man at a distance, was carried once more up Paradise Road, this time in broad daylight, to Sheen House where Maybelle and the Pickerings’ loyal chamberlain were there to take receipt of her yet again.

It was not the most dignified way to end the day, but at least it gave her an excuse to avoid the interrogation that her parents had intended for her after church.

By Monday morning, when they had had time to put the events into some perspective, they had agreed that, all in all, Sir Nicholas’s appropriation of their beloved daughter at the masque was probably no bad thing, even if she had suffered some embarrassment by it. After all, they reasoned, she could have been even more embarrassed without his protection, and he had, apart from the horseplay, behaved in a careful fashion. A storm in a wineglass, one might say.

Sir Thomas returned to Sheen House from the palace, mid-morning, waving a letter he had just received from the Queen thanking him for his efforts last evening. He found Adorna in the still-room preparing some rosewater, her hands deep in a bowl of petals. ‘Well, my lass,’ he said. ‘Her Majesty must have approved of your performance at the masque enough to invite you to go up to Kenilworth with me on Wednesday. I shall have to go with the Wardrobe, even though his lordship is doing his own entertainments, but I shall need all the help I can get with the robes. Are you interested?’

No, she thought, Sir Nicholas will be there. Travelling with us, too. I must stay well away from him now. Far better if I remain here, beyond his reach. But the Queen’s invitation was not something one could decline. It was a royal command. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I am, Father.’

‘Good,’ he said, picking up a handful of the petals and smelling at them. ‘You must take Maybelle and Hester, too. Seton will be there with the players to put on a couple of performances at his lordship’s request, so now we only have to remind your mother that you’re twenty years old instead of fourteen. Eh?’ He laughed, replacing the petals in the wrong bowl. ‘Perhaps if I tell her that Sir Nicholas will be sure to keep an eye on you, she’ll feel easier about it.’

Adorna scooped up the petals and replaced them with the rest. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘I don’t want her to get any ideas about a connection simply because he’s escorted me home a few times. It was not looked for, I assure you. It’s no more than a coincidence.’

‘Ideas about Sir Nicholas, love? Too late, she’s already got them. Look,’ he said, removing her hands from the bowl and taking them in his own, ‘stop worrying about it. I shall be there, too, with hundreds of others. Safety in numbers. So why not go in and start packing? If you and Hester need some extra gowns, I’ll borrow some from the Wardrobe for you. Now, go in and tell your mother and Hester.’

‘Is the earl’s household to go up to Kenilworth with us at the same time?’ She tried to sound only mildly interested.

‘Ah no, lass. They’ve gone. Early this morning.’

‘What—all of them?’

Sir Thomas looked intently at her expression of surprise. ‘Well, the earl is the host at Kenilworth, you know, and he’ll be escorting the Queen. But his men have had to take the horses up ahead of them. Didn’t Sir Nicholas tell you?’

For all she knew, he might have done while she, once again, had been in no position to remember much of what he’d said, though she found it strange that the memory of his hands upon her was sharp enough to send waves of weakness into her legs. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’ By the time I arrive, she thought, he’ll have found others to keep his mind off me. Yet the picture she painted did not give her the satisfaction she had expected it to, nor did Hester’s controlled enthusiasm for the venture convince her that this was the right course to follow.

One who did come to make a more specific farewell was Master Peter Fowler, who felt it to be his duty whilst barely concealing his dismay at the part she had played at the masque. He had little time, for his party was ready to move off, and there were many venues where the locks on the doors must be changed, en route, for Her Majesty’s security.

As kindly as she could, Adorna reminded him that she was free to choose her own companions and that to meet them however she wished was of no concern to anyone but herself.

‘And presumably Sir Nicholas Rayne’s?’ he said, coldly, before immediately relenting. He took her arm. ‘Can we talk reasonably for a moment? I have to join the party before we cross the river. Will you walk with me?’

Adorna lifted her golden-yellow skirts, placing her fingers briefly over his. ‘Peter,’ she said, ‘we must not quarrel over this. I’m not responsible for what Sir Nicholas says to me. He probably says exactly the same things to many other women. But nor am I answerable to anyone except my parents for what I do or don’t do. If you cannot accept that, then I shall be sorry for it, after being your friend since Easter.’

He trapped her hand over his sober grey sleeve. ‘I had hoped to be allowed more of a place in your life than merely a friend of three months, Adorna, but I suppose I shall have to either accept your terms or lose you altogether. I’m prepared to wait. It’s too soon, I see that now.’

‘Yes, Peter. Much too soon. Despite what you believe, I am no nearer committing myself to a man than I was when we first met.’

‘Yet you appeared to be approaching some kind of relationship with Sir Nicholas after Lady Marion’s dinner party,’ he said softly. ‘Or was that my imagination, too? And again at the masque. Does he know of your attitude towards non-commitment?’

She removed her hand. ‘You have no right to ask me that, Peter. Sir Nicholas knows of my friendship with you and yes, if you must know, he has been told that I am not available. But I’m having as hard a time convincing him of it as I am you.’

‘From what I’ve heard, Adorna, his purpose in pursuing a woman is not the same as mine. He is not best known for his fidelity with women, you know. Perhaps it’s as well that he’ll be away from you for a few weeks, too.’

‘Neither of you will, Peter. I go up to Kenilworth with my father on Wednesday.’

He stopped abruptly, leaning one hand on the gateway to the courtyard. ‘You…you’re going?’ he blinked. ‘Oh, I had no idea.’

‘I’ve only just found out myself. Will you look out for me? I shall be glad of an escort.’

‘Of course I will. So Sir Nicholas doesn’t expect you?’

‘No,’ she said, airily, already seeing the handsome figure leading the Queen’s horses, glancing in her direction, keeping company with her father, no doubt.

When Peter had departed, however, she felt a pang of regret that she would not have the pleasure of his company on the journey, for it would have been a comfort to her. Not only that, but the effect of arriving at Kenilworth with Peter would have gone some way towards getting her own back on the one who had, apparently, taken some kind of liberty with her and then left her to think about it while he went off to enjoy the company of other women for several weeks. And if that was what she had secretly predicted, dreaded, and warned herself of, she had only herself to blame for allowing it.