He opened the door and stepped back as she entered. Her beautiful hair was about her shoulders and she wore a loose robe of the shade of blue he remembered from the old days was a favourite colour of hers. It had been a favourite of his for the same reason.
He took her hands and said: ‘Oh God, Isabella … you are indeed here.’
‘I am no phantom. You may assure yourself of that, Hugh.’
He drew back a little. He was a man of honour and he remembered the appealing youth of his affianced bride.
‘So now he is dead …’ he said, in a vain effort to throw a cold douche of hatred on the fires which were rising within him.
‘John. The brute. The lecher. You could not know how I suffered with him.’
‘Yet … you went to him.’
‘You know I had no choice. I was but a child. My parents forced me to it and so I did it.’
‘You were there when …’
‘When he put you in chains and you rode in the tumbril drawn by oxen. Did you feel my hatred for him, Hugh, when you rode past … and my love for you?’
‘I know that you were sad to see me thus. Because of your compassion I was almost glad of the humiliation.’
‘You must have loved me a great deal in those days, Hugh.’
‘Did you ever doubt that?’
‘I never did. And now you love my daughter as you once loved me.’
She waited for him to deny it but he said: ‘She is an enchanting child.’
‘They say she is a little like me.’
‘No one could be like you, Isabella.’
‘Hugh, do you mean that?’
She had seized him by the arms and held her face up to him.
‘No,’ he said, deliberately avoiding her gaze. ‘You must go now, Isabella. You will leave soon and when Joan is a little older we shall marry.’
‘There was one thing I wished to know, Hugh. Promise you’ll tell me … truthfully.’
‘I promise. What is it?’
‘Hold me tightly, Hugh. Kiss me. And then tell me truthfully whether it is now as it was once.’
‘Isabella, you must go. You should never have come here. If you were seen.’
‘Oh, are you afraid of your servants?’
‘I am afraid of your good name.’
‘My good name! Married to that monster all those years … all the calumnies that he circulated about me to cover up his own vile doings! Do you think I have a good name to protect?’
‘I will protect it with my sword,’ he said. ‘If any were to whisper ill against you …’
‘Ah, Hugh, my beloved, you have not changed. I feared you might. Let me tell you this, I have never forgotten you. When I was with him … I could only endure his embraces because I made myself pretend it was you, not him … the man I loved not the loathsome lecher who had taken me from you and made it so I was a prisoner and could do nothing but submit.’
Is this true, indeed?’ he asked.
‘I swear it. When I came here it was to see you, Hugh …’
‘It was to bring your daughter to be my bride,’ he answered.
‘I had to see you. I had to know for myself that you no longer loved me. And if you tell me you do not I will go to Fontevrault where my mother-in-law spent her last days and I will take the veil and never look on another man … though doubtless I shall go on dreaming of you in my convent walls.’
‘You … a nun. Isabella!’
He laughed and she laughed with him. The tension was released. He said: ‘I remember how you always made me laugh.’
‘It is as it ever was. We were never lovers in fact. That seemed the tragedy of my life. I wanted you even as a child … and you wanted me. But you held off. You were afraid. If you had taken me to the forest and seduced me … as I always wanted you to … I don’t believe I should ever have allowed them to marry me to John. I used to dream how wonderful that would have been.’
‘We must not talk in this way, Isabella. I am trying to look after little Joan. I am trying not to frighten her and let her grow accustomed to the idea of marriage.’
‘As you did with me. And all you succeeded in doing was arousing my desire for you … my need for you … and then not satisfying it. Then he came … Oh my God, how I hate him; the terrible things he did to me. He would not leave me alone …’
‘I know. I heard. It was reported all over Europe.’
‘How you must have hated me.’
‘I could never do anything but love you, but my hatred for him knew no bounds.’
‘So you fought for poor little Arthur and were captured and brought to him in chains. How he gloated! But he freed you. Do you know why, Hugh, because I persuaded him that it was best for him to do so. I said you would fight for him if he released you. What a fool he was! He believed me. But he is dead, Hugh … and I am here and you are here …’
‘Isabella, I am betrothed.’
There is one thing I must know. All my life I have wanted to be with you. I would be your mistress … anything … I, a queen, my lord Count, love you still. I had to see you. I had to know whether I still loved you … wanted you for my lover. Hugh, you owe me this. Tonight … this night … and if you find you do not love me, if the years have changed you, then I will go away.
He said hoarsely: ‘I am betrothed to your daughter.’
She laughed softly and slipped her robe from her shoulders. She held out a hand to him. ‘Come, Hugh,’ she said. ‘I command you. Tomorrow you may tell me to go away … but tonight we shall be lovers as we should have been all those years ago.’
He turned from her and seating himself on a stool covered his eyes with his hands. But she was beside him, employing all those skills which life with the greatest sensualist of his age had taught her.
Hugh – who had dreamed of her for years – enamoured of her as he had ever been, was powerless to resist her.
After she had left him – and it was dawn before she did – he lay in his bed thinking of what had happened. He had never thought there could be such ecstasy even with Isabella; he had dreamed of her for twenty years; she had been an ideal in his life; he had never felt the inclination to marry any other woman. That had disturbed his family, since it was his duty to marry, to give the Lusignans their heir. He had brothers, he had excused himself. It was almost as though something had told him that one day she would come back.
And then when it had been suggested that he marry her daughter he had agreed to the betrothal. The marriage had seemed years away and like so many, such arrangements might never come to fruition. Moreover it was her daughter; and that had attracted him in some way. When he had seen the child – with a look of Isabella – and she had stirred his pity for she was a little afraid, he had determined to be kind and gentle with her and in due course do his best to make her happy.
Now Isabella had returned and everything had changed for him.
He must explain to her that he must marry her daughter. As the child had been brought here for that purpose, it was a matter of honour, and Isabella must return to England. He was determined that that which had happened last night must not happen again.
She was with the party which went out to the hunt. Little Joan was there too, so pretty in her riding cloak of red Irish cloth, tendrils of her hair straying out from under the matching hood. She rode beside him as she was accustomed to do, so proud because she sat her horse well and rode, as he had once told her, as though she was born to the saddle. Isabella had come up. Beautiful in her favourite blue. Poor little Joan, how insignificant beside her incomparable mother!