“You’re very pretty,” relented Emeline. “But you’re a baby and have no idea what seduction’s all about.”
“Really pretty?”
“Avice, of course you are but all I can think about is Nicholas. I miss him. What if he’s sick? What if he’s gone to live with his mistress? What if he’s dead?”
“Has he really got a mistress? With that horrid scar?”
“What scar? Oh – yes, that scar.” Emeline sighed. “I had meant to ask him how – but it seems so rude, you know, and now I’ve virtually forgotten all about it. He is actually terribly attractive once you forget about the scar. And he has such wonderful fierce cheekbones, and a wonderfully strong jaw, and those wonderful brilliant blue eyes.”
Avice shook her head. “Perhaps his mistress did it with the carving knife when she discovered him in someone else’s arms. “
“It is rather odd,” said Emeline after a moment’s agonised pause, “when I realise how little I know about my own husband. Peter told me things – but now I don’t think they were true. And when the marriage was arranged and I asked questions, Papa said it was none of my business. I always thought that was a little unfair. And then of course with the fire, and Nicholas being horribly burned, and me being angry – well we didn’t really see each other for weeks.”
Avice squinted into the bed’s shadows. “So you’ve changed your mind from hating him to adoring him without even knowing anything about him.”
“Avice, go back to bed,” sighed Emeline. “At least now I’m a lady and I know my own mind. You just enjoy dreaming about one man after the other, when you don’t even know what love is. You’re just longing to be in love with anyone. It’s because of all those silly romantic stories you read. Lancelot and Igraine. Papa would burn them if he knew.”
“Maman knows. She gave them to me.”
Emeline gazed into the empty space across her sister’s shoulder. “I might be living the romantic stories myself,” she murmured, “if only life had been a little kinder. I could be in his arms now. But now he might be lying somewhere all alone in agony. He might be dying. He might be dead.”
Chapter Eighteen
The curve of his thigh skimmed the trestle where two wine cups had been left, the flagon already empty. A fine white cloth covered the table but the meal was long finished, the platters had been cleared and the stools drawn back. There was no evidence of household servants, but the small downstairs had been left neat and clean.
It was a simple house but not impoverished, and the remains of a generous fire still flickered within the recesses of the hearth. The chamber reflected and absorbed the dance of warmth, light and shadow. Only the gentleman who had recently forced his way inside now occupied the space, but there were noises from upstairs, echoes reverberating; voices, and laughter. The bumps and thumps, since the upper floor was the same planked barrier as the ceiling below, shuddered and the walls shook.
The uninvited visitor sat silent for a while, listening. He did not smile. His movements were quiet and careful, smothered by the upstairs sounds, so when he climbed the stairs and entered the upper chamber, he remained unheard.
A splash of late afternoon sunshine slanted through the window, angling past the rooftops outside. The beam lit the woman’s face. She was plump, pretty and young. She giggled, “Oh, Jamie, how naughty. How strong. How exciting. But surely you cannot do it again already?”
The man who lay beside her on the bed was elderly and somewhat scrawny, but animated. He was naked and so was she and his head was buried between her breasts. His voice was therefore muffled. “With you, my pigeon, I can, and I shall.” His head moved lower.
“Oh, my big strong man, have pity on my poor weak female body,” the woman panted, arching her back.
“Big, and strong indeed, my piglet,” the man mumbled. “And this time it shall be my way. You know how I like it.”
As he crawled downwards over the humps of dishevelled sheeting, his face now hidden in the folds of her belly while breathing the heat of her sweat, his hands remained firm on her breasts, the fingers digging hard into the soft heaped flesh. He clung, as though fearing to fall if he released her. The girl squeaked, “Oh Jamie, that hurts,” and the man sniggered.
“I pay enough to keep you here, Bess, and I shall take you as and how I want. Now, my girl, roll over.” She was obedient, and rolled. Her buttocks bounced upwards, and the elderly man slapped each one, making her squeal again.
“Naughty, naughty, James.” Her giggles disappeared into the pillows as he climbed gleefully astride.
The quiet intruder stood listening and watching from the doorway. The two in the bed saw nothing but each other. What they did now absorbed them so entirely, the possibility they could be interrupted while in the seclusion of their private bedchamber, did not at all occur to them. They did not see the knife, even when the sunlight turned the blade to topaz.
Eventually, as he retraced his steps down the stairs to the chamber below, the unannounced visitor spoke very softly to himself. “There is little more ungainly, more incongruous, or more shameful,” he murmured as he wiped the soiled blade of his knife on the tablecloth, “than an adulterous lecher fornicating with a whore. Hypocrisy once again must pay the price.”
He bent a moment beside the hearth, and flung the crumpled and now bloodstained table linen to the flames. The smoke billowed and the little sparks shrank back, then flared anew. The white cloth flapped as a draught gusted down the chimney. Like a bellows, the air urged on the flames. The cloth raged, catching alight and turning flicker to blaze.
Still bending by the grate, the man moved back a little, the heat too sudden in his eyes. But he caught the corner of the burning material and swept it out so the fire spun like molten gold, and licked each thing it passed, infecting like the contagion of disease until small fires had kindled in every corner. Some fizzled, finding little fuel. Other sparks hissed, and grew. One wrapped around the banisters, and discovering old dry wood, leapt up the steps.
It was silent now, upstairs. The previous jolly vulgarity had been quenched. As the flames licked and climbed, they found the bed, its half open curtains and its sprawled occupants. The two bodies lay quite silent now, one half covering the other, their nakedness almost concealed beneath the blood.
There were no stars to signify the deed by song, for it was bright daylight. But the man had no doubts. He smiled at last, and quickly left the house, closing the door firmly behind him.
From the comfortably snug corner of his exceedingly cluttered chamber, the Earl of Chatwyn pursed his lips, clutched his wine cup, and regarded his nephew with faint distrust. “No damned reason I can see,” he said, “so why should I either know – or care?”
The court at Westminster remained partially in mourning. The deprivations of Lent had been more dour than was usual, and only days after the queen’s great Abbey funeral, Easter Friday had seen grief not only with regard to the usual religious traditions, but also on a state and personal level. Now six weeks since her grace’s death, black was still the eternal shadow, the tapestries remained covered, feasting was curtailed, and as the sunbeams dappled the gentle river’s pollution, so couples walked the banks in quiet contemplation, other entertainments not yet resumed. His royal highness was back at business. Those first wretched days of desperate escape out on the heath when the March winds blustered and the falcons stooped to the dash of the hare, were all the king had permitted himself. Even those had been interrupted by the necessities of the season, and his gracious highness had performed the duties of Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday with bleak solemnity and a bowed head.