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Drew Exford was towelling himself off after a hard game of tennis against Philip Sidney, who had been his friend since they had spent part of the Grand Tour of Europe together shortly after Drew had been married.
Philip smiled wryly. “Unencumbered is it, dear friend? I think not. I am most encumbered since the Queen took Oxford’s part against me after our recent fracas on the tennis court. I am encumbered by her disfavour and her dislike, particularly since she knows that I am much against her flirtation with the notion of a marriage to the French Duc d’Alençon. I am thinking of retiring to Wilton. Why not come with me? The air is sweet there, and most poetical. But what is it that troubles you? After all, you retain the Queen’s favour, you are your own master and may do as you please.”
Drew buried his face in his towel. Philip was a good fellow, and although his pride was that of the devil he had a sweet nature, and a kind heart.
“If you must know, I am envying you your single state.”
“Eh, what’s that?” Drew’s voice had been muffled by the towel and Philip was not sure that he had heard aright. “I thought that you were single, too. And I am beginning to lament my single state.”
Drew emerged from the towel. “Oh, I was married in a hugger-mugger fashion ten years agone, before we posted to Europe together and spent our wild oats in Paris.” He paused, and made his confession. “I have not seen the lady since.”
His friend stared at him. “Ten years—and not seen her since? That beggars belief. Why so?”
He might have known that Philip’s reaction would be a critical one. Philip Sidney liked—and respected—women. If he had affairs, he was so discreet that no one knew of them. His kindness and gentleness in his relations with the fair sex were a byword.
“She was but ten,” Drew said, almost as though confessing something, he was not sure what. He could not tell Philip that for some little time his adventurous life had begun to pall on him, and the game of illicit love, too. He had begun to dream of the child he had married. Strange dreams, for she was still a child in them, who must now be a woman. A woman who could be the mother of his children. His uncle had railed at him recently for not providing the line with an heir.
“She didn’t like me,” he said, somewhat defiant in the face of Philip’s raised brows, “and she…” He stopped. He could not be ungallant and repeat exactly what he had said ten years ago to his uncle— “You are marrying me to a monkey”—but he thought it.
“And all these years, whilst you jaunted round Europe and sailed the Atlantic, and ran dangerous diplomatic errands in France for that old fox Walsingham, I thought you single! Was she dark or fair, your child bride who didn’t like you? I thought all the world, and the Queen, liked Drew Exford!”
“Well, she did not. And she was dark. I remember at the banquet after the wedding ceremony, she ate little—and rewarded me with the most basilisk stare. I thought that the Gorgon herself had brought forth a child, and that child was trying to stare me stone dead!”
“And did you bed the Gorgon?”
“After the usual fashion. They put a bolster between us for some little time. She turned her back on me, and never looked at me again. For which I was thankful. She was not pretty.”
“Poor child!” Philip’s sympathy for Drew’s neglected child bride was sincere. “And where is she now? I suppose you know.” This last came out in Philip Sidney’s most arrogant manner, revealing that he thought his friend’s role in this sad story was not a kind one.
“At Atherington House, in Leicestershire. Her father died; her uncle acts as a kind of guardian to her in my absence.”
He strolled restlessly away from Philip to stare across the tennis court and towards the lawns and flowerbeds beyond. He remembered his anger at the whole wretched business. His uncle had sprung the marriage upon him without warning, and had expected him to be overjoyed. He had not felt really angry until that fatal morning in Atherington House’s chapel when he had first seen his bride.
An anger which had finally found its full vent when he had been left in the Great Bed with his wife. I have been given a child, he had thought savagely, not yet to be touched, and what’s more, a child who will never attract me. I do not like her and I fear that she does not like me because, somehow, she overheard what I said of her.
Lying there, he had made a vow. In two days’ time he would journey to London to take up his life again, leaving his monkey wife in the care of her father until she was of an age to be truly bedded. Once he had reached London and the court he would make sure that he never visited the Midland Shires again, except on the one occasion in the distant future when he needed to make himself an heir.
Now, in his middle twenties, that time had come, compelling him to remember what he had for so long preferred to forget. For to recall that unhappy day always filled him with a mixture of regret, anger, and self-dislike. His friendship with Philip Sidney had made the boy he had once been seem a selfish barbarian, not only in the manner that he had treated his neglected wife, but in other ways as well.
“Preux chevalier”, or, the stainless knight, he had once mockingly dubbed Philip—who was not yet a knight—but at the same time he had been envious of him and his courtly manners.
Drew flung the towel down, aware that Philip had been silently gazing at him as he mused.
“What to do?” he asked, his voice mournful. “The past is gone. I cannot alter it.”
“No,” returned Philip, smiling at last. “But there is always the future—which may change things again. A thought with which I try to reassure myself these days. We grow old, Drew. We are no longer careless boys. I must marry, and I must advise you to seek out your wife and come to terms with her—and with yourself. The man who writes sonnets to imaginary beauties, must at the last write one to his wife.”
“Come,” riposted Drew, laughing. “Sonnets are written to mistresses, never to wives, you know that, chevalier Philip. But I take your point.”
“Well said, friend.” Philip flung an arm around Drew’s shoulders as they walked from the tennis court together. “Remember what I said about visiting me at Wilton some time. It is on the way to your place in Somerset. Tarry awhile there, I pray you.”
“Perhaps,” Drew answered him with a frown. For here came a page with a letter in his hand which, by his mien, was either for himself or for Philip. He stopped before them to hand the missive to Drew.
“From my master, Sir Francis Walsingham,” he piped, being yet a child. “You are to read it and give me an answer straightway.”
Drew opened the sealed paper and read the few lines on it.
“Simple enough to answer at once,” he said cheerfully. “You will tell Sir Francis that Andrew Exford thanks him for his invitation and will sup with him this evening.”
Philip Sidney watched the boy trot off in order to deliver his message. “Well,” he said, smiling, “at least, if Walsingham knows that you are already married, he will not be inviting you to supper in order to offer you his daughter, who is still only a child!”
Drew made his friend no answer, for he suspected that Sir Francis Walsingham was about to offer him something quite different. Something which might require him to journey to the Midland Shires which he had foresworn, and to the wife whom he had deserted ten years ago.
Chapter Two
“I cannot abide another moment indoors, Aunt. I have ordered Tib to saddle Titus for me. I intend to ride to the hunting lodge and break my fast in the open. The day is too fair for me to waste it indoors.”
Aunt Hamilton raised her brows. Bess’s teeming energy always made her feel faint. That her niece was wearing a roughspun brown riding habit which barely reached mid-calf, showing below it a heavy pair of boots more suited to a twenty-year-old groom than a young woman of gentle birth, only served to increase her faintness.
“Must you sally out garbed more like a yeoman’s daughter than the Lady of Atherington, dear child? It is not seemly. If you should chance to meet…”
She got no further. Bess, who was tapping her whip against the offending boots, retorted briskly, “Who in the world do you imagine I shall meet on a ride on my own land who will care whether I am accoutred like the Queen, or one of her servants? I am comfortable in this, and have no intention of pretending that I am one of the Queen’s ladies. Everyone for miles around Atherington knows who I am—and will treat me accordingly.”
Useless to say anything. Bess would always go her own way—as she had done since the day she was married. Mary Hamilton sighed and walked to the tall window which looked out on to the drive and beyond that towards Charnwood Forest. She watched Bess ride out; Tib and Roger Jacks, her chief groom in attendance.
If only her errant husband would come for her! He would soon put a stop to Bess’s wilfulness, see that she dressed properly and conducted herself as a young noblewoman ought. Her niece behaved in all ways like the son her late brother had never managed to father, and the dear God alone knew where that would all end.
Bess, riding at a steady trot towards the distant hill on which the lodge stood, was also thinking about her absent husband. It was now a month since his letter had arrived and there was still no sign of him. She had hung his miniature on a black ribbon and wore it around her neck when she changed into a more ladylike dress on the Sabbath in order to please her aunt.
Occasionally she looked at the miniature in order to inspect him “in small” as he had called it in his letter. She saw a slim, shapely man with a stronger face than the one which she remembered. If the painter had been accurate, his hair had darkened from silver gilt into a deep gold, and his mouth was no longer a Cupid’s bow but a stern-seeming, straight line. It would be as well to remember that he was twenty-six years old, was very much a man, no longer a child. Bess felt a sudden keen curiosity to know what that man was like: whether the spoiled boy—she was sure now that he had been spoiled—had turned into a spoiled man.
They were almost at the small tower, which was all that the lodge consisted of. It stood high on its hill above the scrub and the stands of trees, for Charnwood Forest was thin on Atherington land, merging into pasture where cattle grazed. The open fields of nearby villages had been enclosed these fifty years and charcoal burning had stripped the forest of many of its trees. Over the centuries, successive Atherington lords had run deer for the chase, and the deer had attacked and stripped most of the trees which the charcoal burners had left.
“Shall you eat inside the tower—or out, mistress?” Tib asked her.
He had called her “mistress” since they had been children together, and Bess had indulged him by allowing him to continue the custom when the rest of her servants had learned to call her Lady Bess. Another of her many offences, according to her aunt.
“After all,” Bess had said sensibly and practically, “my true title is m’lady Exford, but since I do not care to use it, then any name will do, for all but his are equally incorrect.”
Aunt Hamilton knew who his referred to and was silenced. A common occurrence when she argued with her niece.
“Outside,” Bess told Tib, “at the bottom of the hill. My uncle Hamilton once told me that the Queen picnicked in the open, and I am content to follow her example. All that will be missing will be her courtiers.”
Tib grinned at her. “Roger and I will be your courtiers, mistress.”
Roger grunted at that. “You grow pert, lad, and forget yourself.”
Really, to bring Roger along was like bringing her aunt with her! He was nearly as insistent on reminding her of her great station as she was. Nevertheless, Bess smiled at him as she shared her meal with them. Inside a wicker basket lined with a white cloth were a large meat pasty, several cold chicken legs, bread and cheese and the sweet biscuits always known as Bosworth Jumbles, and wine in a leather bottle. A feast, indeed, all provided by the kitchen for her and her two grooms. All her staff were agreed that the Lady Bess was a kind and generous mistress.
“Food in the open always tastes much better than food in the house,” she declared, her mouth full of bread and cheese, “and wine, too.” She threw the bread crusts and the remains of the pasty to the two hounds which had followed in their rear, before lying back and sighing, “Oh, the blessed peace.”
She could not have said anything more inapposite! The words were scarce out of her mouth when the noise of an approaching horse and rider broke the silence Bess had been praising. They were approaching at speed through the trees, and as they drew near it was apparent that the horse, a noble black, which was tossing its head and snorting, was almost out of his rider’s control.
Foam dripped from its mouth: something—or someone—had frightened it, that much was plain. But its rider, a tall young man, was gradually mastering it, until, just as he reached Bess’s small party, his steed suddenly caught its forefoot in a rabbit hole, causing it to stumble forward. His master, taken by surprise, was thrown over his horse’s head—to land semiconscious at Bess’s feet.
She and her two grooms had sprung to their feet to try to avoid a collision. Their horses, tethered to nearby trees, neighed and pranced, whilst Bess’s two hounds added to the confusion caused by this unexpected turn by running around, barking madly.
One of them, Pompey, bent over the stunned young man to lick his face. The other, Crassus, ran after the black horse which, hurt less than his rider, had recovered itself, and was galloping madly away. Roger un-tethered his mount and chased after it. Bess and Tib joined Pompey in inspecting the young man, who was starting to sit up.
Bess fell to her knees beside him, so that when, still a trifle dazed, he turned his head in her direction, she looked him full in the face.
Could it be? Oh, yes! Indeed, it could! There was no doubt at all that sitting beside her was the husband whom she had not seen for ten long years. He had stepped out of the miniature, to be present in large, not in small. If he had been beautiful as a boy, as a man he was stunningly handsome, with a body to match. So handsome, indeed, that Bess’s heart skipped a beat at the mere sight of him, just as it had done on the long-ago day when she had first seen him.
What would he say this time to disillusion her? To hurt her so much that the memory of his unkind words was still strong enough to distress her?
He gave a pained half-smile, and muttered hoarsely, “Fair nymph, from what grove have you strayed to rescue me?” before dropping his head into his hands for a moment, and thus missing Bess’s stunned reaction to the fulsome compliment which he had just paid her.
It was quite plain that though she had known at once who he was, he had not the slightest notion that she was his deserted monkey bride!
Drew Exford had left London for Atherington a few days earlier. His supper with Sir Francis Walsingham had, as he had suspected, brought him a new task.
After they had eaten, and the women had left them alone with their wine, Sir Francis had said in his usual bland and fatherly fashion, “You can doubtless guess why I have summoned you hither this night, friend Drew.”
Drew had laughed. “I believe that you wish to ask me to do you yet another favour. Even though I told you two years ago that I had done my duty by my Queen, and would not again become involved in the devious doings of the State’s underworld, as I did when I was with the Embassy in France.”
Sir Francis nodded. “Aye, I well remember you telling me that. Nor would I call on you for assistance again were it not that you are singularly well placed to assist me to preserve our lady the Queen and her blessed peace against those who would destroy it—and her.”
Drew raised his finely arched brows. “How so?”
Sir Francis did not speak for a moment; instead, he drank down the remains of his wine. “Your wife, I believe, lives at Atherington on the edge of Charnwood Forest. There are many Papists in the Midland counties who are sympathetic towards the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, and would wish to kill her cousin, the Queen, and place Mary on the throne instead. Each summer the Queen of Scots is allowed by her gaoler, the Earl of Shrewsbury, to visit Buxton, to take the waters there. Her sympathisers from the surrounding counties visit the spa, and plot together on her behalf.
“I have reason to believe that this plotting has become more than talk. It is not so long since another party of silly Catholic squires from roundabout were caught trying to rebel against the Crown—and were duly punished for their treason. Alas, this has not, we now know, deterred others from trying to do the same.”
Drew leaned forward. “A moment, sir. Are you telling me that my wife is one of these plotters?”
Sir Francis shook his head vigorously. “No, no. The Crown has no more loyal servant than the Turvilles of Atherington. Your wife’s father was a friend of the Queen and helped to seat her on the throne. What I wish you to do is to go first to Atherington and thence to Buxton to find out what you can of this latest piece of treason—and then inform me through one of my men who will arrive some time after you do. You will know that he is my man and that you may trust him because he will show you a button identical with those I am wearing on my doublet tonight.
“You may give it about that your real objective in the Midland counties is to take up your true position as the lady’s husband. Consequently, no one will suspect that you have an ulterior motive for journeying there. Thus you will kill two birds with one stone. You will do the state some service—and get yourself an heir at the same time.”
“Most kind of you,” riposted Drew somewhat sardonically, “to consider my welfare as well as that of the Crown.”
“Exactly so,” returned Sir Francis, taking Drew’s comment at face value. “It is always my aim to assist my friends, and despite the difference in our ages, you are my friend, are you not?”
Drew thought it politic to signify his agreement.
His host showed his pleasure by pouring his guest another drink, and saying, “You are a promising fellow, Drew. You have outgrown your youthful vanity—if you will allow me to say so—and you have a commendable shrewdness which has been honed by your journeyings to both the New and the Old World. I would wish to think of you as one of my inheritors. England needs such as yourself when Burghley and I are gone to our last rest.”
Drew laughed, his charm never more evident. “There is little need to flatter me, sir. I will do your errand without it. But this will be the last. I would prefer to perform upon a larger stage—and not be suspected of being a common spy!”
“And so you shall. I repeat, I would not ask you were it not that your presence near to the Queen of Scots will be thought to be the result of your family circumstances—and for no other reason. Drink your wine, man, and pledge with me confusion to that Queen. I fear that, as long as she lives, our own Queen’s life is not safe.”
That was Walsingham’s coda. Afterwards they joined Lady Walsingham and her daughter and talked of idle and pleasant things.
And so Drew had no other choice than to see again the wife whom he had avoided for ten long years. He was not sure whether he was glad or sorry that meeting her was part of the duty which Walsingham had laid upon him. Each mile that he covered once London was left behind found him still reluctant to commit himself to Atherington House and its lady.
So much so that, when he had come almost to its gates, he and his magnificent train had stopped at an inn instead of journeying on, and he had taken Cicero out into the forest to try to catch a glimpse of the House, as though by doing so he could gauge the nature of either his welcome, or that of the greeting he would give her.
Except that Cicero, usually the most well-behaved of horses, saw fit to take against the whole notion of riding through the forest, and whilst trying to control him, he had lost control himself. As a result he was now sitting, shaken, not far from the House, and looking into the great dark eyes of a beautiful nymph who seemed to have strayed from the Tuscan countryside which he had visited with Philip Sidney and whose glories he had never forgotten.
By her clothing she was the daughter of one of the yeoman farmers who frequented these parts, and he wondered if they knew what a treasure they had in their midst. Well, if boredom overtook him at the House, he would know where to look for entertainment!
Something of this showed on his face. Bess, agitated, turned away from him in order to rise to her feet, so that she might not be too near him. He was altogether so overwhelming that she was fearful that she might lose the perfect control which had characterised her life since the day she had married him. He was not so shaken that he was incapable of putting forward his perfect hand and attempting to stay her.
“Nay, do not leave me, fair nymph, your presence acts as a restorative. You live in these parts?”
Bess, allowing herself to be detained, said, “Indeed. All my life.” She had suddenly determined that she would not tell him her name, and prayed that neither Tib nor Roger, when he returned, would betray her.
“Send your brother away, my fair one, and I will give you a reward which will be sure to please you.” The smile Drew offered her was a dazzling one, full of promise, and he raised his hand to cup her sweet small breast, so delicately rounded.
Tib! He thought Tib her brother, not her servant! Aunt Hamilton had been right for once about the effect her clothing would have on a stranger. For was he not promising to seduce her? He was busy stroking her breast, and had blessed the hollow in her neck with a kiss which was causing her whole body to tremble in response. Oh, shameful! What would he do next? And would she like that, too?
She was about to be seduced by the husband who had once rejected her! Was not this strange encounter as good as a play? Or one of Messer Boccaccio’s naughty stories?
She must end it at once. Now, before she forgot herself. Bess escaped his impudent hands and rose to her feet, putting her finger on her lips to silence Tib who, full of indignation at this slur upon his mistress, was about to tell their unexpected guest exactly who she was.
“Not now,” she murmured, smiling coyly at Drew, her expression full of promise. “Another time—when we are alone.”
“Ah, I see you are a practised nymph, but then all nymphs are practised in Arcadia, are they not?” smiled Drew, enjoying the sight of her now that his senses had cleared. For not only was she a dark beauty of a kind which he had learned to appreciate in Italy, but she had a body to match, of which her rough riding habit hid little, since she was wearing no petticoats under it, nor any form of stiffening designed to conceal the body’s contours. He had not thought Leicestershire harboured such treasures as this.
Bess’s reply to him was a simper, and a toss of the head. She was astonished at herself: she had not believed that she could be capable of such deceptive frivolity.
But I am, after all, a daughter of Eve, she thought with no little amusement, and, faced with a flattering man, Eve’s descendants always know how to behave. Perhaps it might be the thing to flounce her skirt a little as she had seen her cousin Helen do when she visited her and wished to attract one of the gallants whose attentions Bess always avoided, she being a married woman.
Also present was the gleeful thought, How shocked he will be when he learns who I really am, and that he was offering to seduce his own wife!
She watched him stand up with Tib’s help, which he did not really need, although he courteously accepted the proffered arm. By his manner and expression he was about to continue his Arcadian wooing, but, alas for him, even as did so he heard in the distance a troop of horse arriving.
Drew stifled a sigh. It was almost certainly part of his household who had followed him at a discreet distance to ensure his safety, even though he had repeatedly told them not to.
“Yes, it must be another time, I fear, that we dally among the spring flowers,” he said regretfully.
His cousin Charles Breton, his mother’s sister’s son, arrived in the small clearing, at the head of his followers, exclaiming as he did so, “So, there you are, Drew. But where is your horse?”
“He unshipped me most scurvily,” Drew told him, no whit ashamed, Bess noted, at having to confess his failure to control his errant steed. “But I have been rescued by the shepherdess you see before you—and her brother,” and he waved a negligent hand at Tib. “They have not yet had time to offer me a share of their picnic, else my pastoral adventure would be complete. Ah, I see that they have even rescued Cicero for me.”
So they had, for Roger rode up, his face one scowl, with Cicero trotting meekly along beside him, apparently unharmed.
“Here is your horse, young sir,” he growled, “and another time show the forest a little more respect. It is not like the green lanes of the south where a man may gallop at his will!”
