“Yes.”
“Does he speak of me?”
“We all spoke of you when we lost you.”
“Carey too?”
“Yes, Carey.”
“And is he well, Mother?”
“He is indeed. Now, Cat darling, what will you do? Will you marry Jake Pennlyon? I want you to be happy, dearest Cat. More than anything I want that. Jake Pennlyon brought you back. He plans to marry you. He was betrothed to you before and he has waited for you.”
I laughed aloud. “I think I may be going to bear his child.”
“Then you love him.”
“Sometimes I think I hate him.”
“Yet…”
“He insisted,” I said. “He was the Captain. He offered me marriage, but he was impatient.”
She took me by the shoulders and looked into my face.
“My dearest Cat,” she said, “you are changed.”
“I am no longer your virgin daughter. Twice I have been forced to submit. It’s odd, Mother. They both offered marriage.”
“Now you must build up a new life for yourself, Cat. Come home with me to the Abbey.”
“I thought of it. There I should see Carey perhaps. I do not want to open that old wound. Perhaps he will marry. Has he married?” I asked swiftly.
She shook her head. “You married the Spaniard,” she reminded me.
“I married him because I thought I would stay there forever. I wanted to assure my son’s position.”
“And this child you are carrying?”
I hesitated. Was I beginning to ask myself if I could overcome my grief for Felipe, which stirred sadly in my heart, by my hatred of Jake Pennlyon?
I said: “I will marry Jake Pennlyon. He is the father of the child I am carrying. I shall stay here, Mother, for much as I long to be with you I could not return to the Abbey.”
She understood as she had always understood.
Jake Pennlyon was triumphant. The preparations for the wedding began at once.
“We want our son’s birth to take place at a respectable time after the wedding day.”
During the previous year Jake’s father had had an apoplectic fit and died instantly. He had lived so lustily that he had shortened his span, was the general opinion. So Jake was master of Lyon Court and I was to be its mistress.
I made conditions.
The children were to remain with me. He wanted Roberto to go to the Abbey when my mother went. “For to tell the truth,” he said, “the sight of that brat makes my gorge rise.”
“He is my son,” I said. “He shall never be parted from me as long as I live.”
“You should be ashamed of consorting with our enemies. A brat that was forced on you!”
“That could be said of the child I am to bear.”
“Not so. You were willing. Do you think you deceived me?”
“It is you who deceive yourself. My son stays or there will be no marriage.”
“There will be a marriage,” he said. “Don’t think you’ll cheat me twice. No plaguey sweat this time, my girl.”
I laughed at him. “Roberto stays,” I said.
“And the other two,” he said. “By God, I’ve no objection to a nursery. We’ll fill it. Those two boys are game little fellows. I like them.”
“You would. They resemble you. Manuela and Jennet will take care of the nursery, but let me tell you this: There will be no more merry games with my servants.”
He took my chin in his hand and jerked up my face in one of his ungentle gestures. “You must see to it that there is no one but you. I warn you I am a lusty man.”
“I do not need the warning.”
“You need to heed it. You can keep me solely yours, Cat, and you will.”
“Do you think I can manage to retain such a prize?” I asked with sarcasm.
“If you are wise, Cat, you can.”
“Who is to say? Who knows I might welcome your lust for others? All I say is it shall not be in my house and with my servants.”
“I have never had difficulty in finding willing companions.”
“A pretty subject for a man about to marry.”
“But we are not as others, are we, Cat? We know that, do we not? It is what makes the prospect of our union so enthralling. Tell me how does my son today?”
“I am not at all sure that he exists. If he does not … there may not be the need for this wedding.”
“If he is not there rest assured he soon will be.”
I said: “I would like to see the house. There may be changes I wish to make.”
He laughed at me, exulting. I knew he was longing for our wedding with deep intensity.
The day dawned when I was married to Jake Pennlyon. The ceremony took place in the chapel where once Jake had spied through the leper’s squint. There was feasting in Trewynd Grange and afterward I went back with Jake to Lyon Court.
It is no use pretending that I was not excited by this man, and to enter that house of which I should be mistress, to go with him to our bridal chamber, and stand there with him. In those first moments I believe he was moved almost to tenderness. I knew that he had achieved that which he had long desired and when he put his arms about me he was momentarily gentle. This was different from those adventures which were familiar to him.
The moment did not last. His passion was fierce; and because I knew that there was a need in him to subdue, to fight, I resisted him.
But I shared his passion. He knew it. Yet I did not want him to realize how overwhelming were these encounters, how they drove everything from my mind but this intense physical satisfaction.
My relationship with Jake was entirely physical. I could not uphold my refusal to admit my pleasure in them, but it was always the pleasure of the senses and I did not attempt to hide this. If he had no tenderness for me, I had none for him. I was not going to pretend to love him. I was not even going to pretend I had need of him. I found him coarse, crude, arrogant and I was not going to pretend otherwise. I had married him because I was to bear a child he had forced on me. I was a woman with strong natural impulses and his tremendous virility matched a similar quality in me. It was possible to share a sexual encounter and yet not to love one’s partner.
I made this clear to him, but he laughed at me. He had always known, he told me, that I wanted him as he wanted me. He had always been aware that he only had to beckon and I would be in his bed.
“There was much beckoning,” I reminded him, “but I never was in your bed till forced to be there on your ship when there was no escape for me.”
“I could see you longed for me.”
“As silly Jennet did. I’m not Jennet, remember.”
“I know it well. But you are a woman even as she is and a woman like you needs a man like me.”
“Nonsense!” I retorted.
“Let’s prove it.”
And there was no holding him back.
Yes, I was exhilarated by our encounters. I could not hide it. “We were made one for the other,” he said. “I knew it. From the moment I clapped eyes on you on the Hoe, I said to myself, ‘That’s your woman, Jake Pennlyon. She’ll be the best you ever knew.’”
But afterward we would argue and I usually won and he was pleased to let me.
He had only to seize me and although I would often resist he would always have his way … at any time, anywhere.
I said he was shameless and he answered that I was equally so.
And so passed the first month of my marriage to Jake Pennlyon.
Then my mother said she must go home. She had left Rupert too long.
Honey would go with her. Trewynd had too many unhappy memories for her. She would live with my mother at the Abbey and they both said that this was a consolation for saying good-bye to me.
So with Edwina, she set off for the Abbey; Roberto, Carlos and Jacko stayed behind and in the nursery Jennet and Manuela were their nurses.
I was certain by this time that I was pregnant.
Soon, I promised myself, there would be another in my nursery.
Roberto was pining. His dark eyes grew larger in his little olive-skinned face.