The Golden Widows Read online

  Hastings seemed to communicate with the lift of an eyebrow and the man nodded. ‘All is ready, madame. If you please…’

  Intrigued, Kate followed Hastings into a smaller, unfurnished chamber where to her astonishment three peddlers stood waiting with a multitude of children’s toys set out around their feet.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she exclaimed, kneeling down to examine such a treasury. Cecily would be in paradise.

  ‘Choose whatever you will. It is the king’s gift.’ Hastings folded his arms and waited.

  There were rattles, fustian rabbits and hedgehogs, cloth dolls with embroidered smiles, sweetly carved wooden horses, some with detachable saddles, others drawing wains and coaches; ducks and geese on wheels (Cecily had been given one of those already); and a plate of wooden chickens standing in a circle with a ball and strings attached below so that when Kate swung it, the chickens pecked.

  ‘Here is such skill and excellence of craft,’ she exclaimed, sending the peddlers into a flurry of inner preening. ‘By Heaven, you have given me a hard task, my lord.’ She could only marvel at the forethought and trouble he had gone to; the sort of man who might prove an excellent father.

  ‘You are not choosing a doll, then?’ Hastings’ tone held surprise as she finally selected a horse on wheels drawing a little wooden cart. Its doweling sides were so smoothly planed that there was no danger of little fingers getting splinters. ‘This will please Cecily, I’m sure. She can put bricks into the cart.’ Seeing one of the peddlers’ faces break into a smile, she asked, ‘Did you carve this yourself, sirrah?’

  ‘My father does ’em, mistress.’ He smirked at his fellows.

  ‘Settled then.’ Lord Hastings offered Kate his hand and she clambered to her feet, clutching the plaything to her heart.

  ‘Thanks to each one of you, sirs,’ she said graciously to the peddlers. Lord Hastings paid for the cart and gave the others coin for their trouble and left his secretary to see them out.

  ‘That was so kind of you, my lord.’ Kate turned to him in the passageway. ‘Especially when you have so much to occupy you.’

  ‘My pleasure. You made a decision right speedily. Unusual in a woman.’

  She gave him her best smile. ‘All this is most thoughtful of you, my lord. Not every man would have…’ She subsided with a gesture. Goodness, she was babbling out of nervousness; maybe because there was no one else in the passageway and he was standing looking down at her with that faint smile that was hard to read and yet becoming rather endearing. ‘I had better get back,’ she murmured, suddenly finding it easier to study her toes than his expression. ‘I-I promised I would write to my mother this morning and Richard says there is a courier leaving at noon.’

  ‘My lady, a moment. Can you not sense it?’

  ‘Sense what, my lord?’

  ‘A delectable perfume and it is not fish.’ A male arm, entirely clad in silk, slid deftly past her cheekbone. Turning her head, she saw his other arm swiftly bolt her in against the wall. She was a woman of the world, a widow with a child not some timid virgin. Yes, she must be mature about this.

  ‘My lord?’ She would not have been surprised if her voice had emerged as an undignified squeak but it came out more breathy. The fine eyebrows above her lifted in amusement; his lips curled into that devastating smile. Oh heaven, it would be pathetic if she could not deal with this…this situation.

  ‘I am calling in your promise, Lady Katherine. The fishing wager that hasn’t been paid.’

  He wanted her to kiss him?

  ‘I see.’ Her heart was dancing frantically.

  ‘I thought you might not prefer an audience.’

  And how was she to take that remark?

  ‘Of course it also would help if you could look just slightly eager, my lady.’

  That made her laugh, but she felt an honesty towards him. She wanted to say I am afraid of you and then realised, No, I am afraid of myself. No use explaining that.

  His face was closer now, his eyes only for her, as though she filled his entire universe.

  ‘I’m…’ I’m afraid to lose myself to you. ‘I’m not,’ she asserted.

  ‘Not eager?’ He drew back.

  ‘I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Good,’ he answered, ‘then do you mind if we move this?’

  ‘Oh.’ The height of worldliness! Clutching the toy cart to her bosom like a shield! It was still tempting to confess she was out of practice, or had never been practised. Instead she reached up a hand to Hastings’ shoulder curling her fingers round the top of his pouched sleeve. ‘I hope you can kiss better than the king, my lord.’

  Her lips touched his with a feather’s caress.

  ‘I hope you will find out, Lady Katherine.’ His voice was a deep purr.

  ‘What, my lord?’

  ‘That I can kiss better than his grace.’

  ‘Then let’s…’ She parted her lips, ran her hand to the back of his neck, feeling the neat cut of his hair touching the back of her fingers, and kissed him, astounding herself.

  His lips were firm, responsive, playful. He kissed her back, his hands stealing round her shoulders. Curious, compelled, she sighed, let him deepen the kiss. She had never done that with Will. It had been physical domination by consent but this man’s lips aroused an exquisite hunger that almost melted her.

  Then she came to her senses. A door had edged open and a ring handle was being rattled most tactfully. Lord Hastings straightened and stepped back, his arms no longer enclosing her in a sensual prison.

  ‘My lord?’ The secretary advanced to hover a few yards away, and behind him waited a courier. The spell was broken, the wager fulfilled.

  Richard found her at breakfast in Westminster Hall next morning.

  ‘George tells me you have another favour to ask me. I hope it’s less stupid this time.’ He straddled the trestle opposite.

  ‘Ah yes,’ Kate swallowed her spoonful of frumenty, and wondered if she could accidentally kick him. ‘Little Gloucester desires to take his hawk to Middleham but you have told him no. He says Clarence will neglect the bird if it remains here. I am his herald with fanfares and authority to negotiate.’

  Her brother laughed. ‘If it is that precious to the boy, let him bring it, then.’

  ‘Thank you, Richard.’ She blew a kiss on her fingers, leaned across and touched his cheek. Well, that was one set of victory trumpets blaring.

  He idly scuffed a scatter of trencher crumbs into a pile with his forefinger and said smoothly, ‘So what do you reckon about Lord Hastings, Kate? He’s a good match for you, no green wood there. Good teeth, healthy, competent, affable to boot.’

  He had misjudged. She was the green wood.

  ‘And he’ll make a fine profit from administering Cecily’s inheritance,’ she muttered, pushing aside her bowl.

  ‘Of course, he will. The wealthiest heiress in the land. We have to give him some reward.’ Seeing her bristle, he added swiftly, ‘You are too damn spiky, Kate. I didn’t mean it that way. Jesu, dealing with you is like dealing with a ruddy hedgehog.’ He beckoned a servant to bring him a jack of ale. ‘No, I meant he wants to be part of the family.’

  Oh, the family. The ubiquitous, ambitious Nevilles! So that’s what Hastings really wanted. Not her at all. She untangled herself from the bench and strode up to fume in front of the great fireplace.

  Richard followed her there. ‘God’s sakes, stop behaving like a spoilt little fool. Can you not see how much Ned trusts the man? Think how useful that will be to us!’

  ‘Ha!’ Kate reiterated over her shoulder.

  ‘Be damned to your contrariness. Joan warned me you were being too cursed skittish. Our family has been to Hell and back to set England to rights and, well, now it is your turn.’ He ignored her glare and swung round to stare into the fire, which, newly topped with logs, was dull and dark now. She watched his thumbs twisting behind his back, a sure sign of ill temper in Richard but she was not going to be browbeaten.

  �
��Oh, so now I am to do this for the sake of England?’ With an angry sigh, she observed the painstaking progress of a brown cockroach that had just arrived with the firewood. It was running up and down a log surrounded by smoke and just when she thought it was doomed to choke or burn, it opened its back, sprang into the air and landed on the hearth. Richard set a boot heel upon it.

  ‘I am truly disappointed in your attitude,’ he muttered, his face hardening. ‘Curse it, girl, have you no sense of duty? How can you suppose that we would leave you unwed when there are desirable alliances to be made?’ He turned his head, waiting for a white pennon to show in her expression but Kate gave him stubborn look for look. She hoped it was a face any Neville would recognise. With a deep, angry breath, he abandoned further diplomacy and turning his back on the hearth, folded his arms. ‘Stow your plaguey rebelliousness! Just be grateful the man finds you pleasing or by God I’ll match you up with old Lord Wenlock next time he loses a wife.’

  He let that sink in to the haft, and added, ‘Christ Almighty, Katherine, if Hastings can protect your child’s inheritance, what else would you ask of him?’

  Kate stared at him in utter amazement. Maybe Richard was the innocent, not her! Had he never been besotted enough to write a love poem? How could he ask if she wanted more? Of course, she did! Marriage for her must be more than a land contract or how many retainers her prospective husband could bring to the Neville banners.

  Further annoyed, he barked, ‘Devil take it, you’re not smitten with some low-bred Devonshire squireling, are you?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she replied, trying to keep a straight face, and provoked by his outraged expression, added wickedly, ‘It’s one of the Courtenays. What’s more, my friend reckons the Nevilles are a rabble of north country upstarts who breed like rabbits.’ In delight, she watched Richard bristle at the insult to his lineage. Had he been a dog, every hackle would have been showing, and it would have needed an iron chain to hold him. ‘My friend also says,’ Kate purred, ‘that there is no great family left without some Neville worming their way into the marriage bed.’

  His arms instantly unfolded. ‘Who is this false-tongued jack? I’ll deal with him, by God! Why are you laughing? Katherine? Katherine! Are you gulling me?’

  ‘Yes, my lord brother. It is great sport, too.’

  His teeth no longer showed. He sheathed his temper, but famous for tenacity, he could not resist saying in gentler tone, ‘Let us not quarrel further. Come, tell me truly what colours your opinion so? Why can’t you like poor Hastings?’

  Sometimes she forgot her brother was the ultimate strategist. She did so now.

  ‘I do like him, Richard, but I am not quite ready to wed again.’ Prodded to the church door at sword point to ‘please’ her brothers? No!

  ‘Not ready? Not ready and you’re a nineteen-year-old widow? What kind of reason is that?’

  ‘A valid one.’

  Pointing out to him she wanted love and loyalty for her and Cecily would be trying to thread a bodkin with an anchor rope. Demanding words like ‘marital fidelity’ probably did not exist in his glossarium; he already had one bastard daughter. Besides, how could she clarify anything when her feelings were already so confused?

  Maybe if Will had been more like Newton or…And this was where her body was trying to rule her judgment. ‘Forget the fumblings with Will,’ it told her head, ‘and imagine Lord Hastings running his hands across my skin and kissing me awake, hmmm…’ But the demon in her head growled back, ‘If you couldn’t satisfy Will, how could you hope to pleasure a man like Hastings?’

  ‘Oh, do spit it out, Katherine.’ Richard’s fingers tilted her chin up. ‘Maybe I can understand.’

  She disliked the scrutiny, fearing he might prise out her sinful reverie. It was needful to draw back from him. ‘I am sorry, Richard, you’re not a woman. It is hard to expl…’ Her palms rose in apology.

  ‘Try!’ He suddenly looked disgustingly smug. ‘For my part, Katherine, I am attempting to understand why a man and a woman practically devour each other outside an accounting room and then only one of them will admit to desire.’

  The coup de grâce – and she had not seen it coming. The kiss with Hastings had been reported!

  She bit back an angry curse. Did Richard have informers all over the palace or had some weasel of a clerk borne the morsel back for payment? Could she take anything at face value in this court? Was Hastings spying on Richard, too, and Ned on both of them?

  ‘I think you place too much weight on such reports,’ she retorted, ‘no doubt it was the aroma of money in the nearby coffers that enflamed the foolish couple’s senses. I am sure if the lady dangles the deeds of her daughter’s manors in the gentleman’s face, they may achieve the same heat of lust once again.’ She displayed her most cattish smile and hoped it annoyed him. It did.

  ‘For such a young woman,’ he countered, ‘you are prodigiously cynical and too sharp-tongued for your own good. You definitely need a husband.’

  ‘What, to pull me into line?’ It was a pity Richard’s wife had never stood up to him for he badly needed toppling from his saddle. If nobody else in the family would dare gainsay him, someone had to. Kate drew a deep breath that lifted her shoulders and said firmly, ‘Enough! I think I have made myself clear, Richard. I am returning to Devon as soon as the roads are passable. You and Ned may ring the wedding bells for all you are worth but I am not yet in a marrying mind.’

  The gauntlet was picked up. Teeth clenched, her brother met her disobedience with typical Neville hauteur, ‘Gainsay me all you like, little sister, but William Hastings shall have you. By God, he shall!’

  She was not some paynim slave up on a block for sale, Kate thought angrily, as she marched out of the hall and made her way to St Stephen’s Chapel for Mass.

  Even as she knelt in the chapel, staring at the painting of the Adoration of the Magi, she began wondering why there could not have also been a wise princess led by the star to bring a gift to the Baby Jesus. True that Our Lady was depicted in a palace enthroned in robes of rose and azure, with the Magi laying their precious gifts at her feet but she was important only as the mother of Christ. Only as a mother, a carrying vessel. Kate crossed herself with a shudder, horrified at her blasphemy, but it brought home her own circumstances. Noble wives were nothing but bondswomen decked in silk. Ignored by common law, disdained by Holy Church, continually risking childbirth and constantly impregnated. No, not bondwomen but milk cows with pasture attached.

  And milk cow Kate Neville was only marketable for wifehood as the Earl of Warwick’s sister and Cecily’s mother, and even if she fell in love with someone like her mythical Courtenay, her brothers would prevent the marriage.

  She shut her eyes as Ned and his lords strode past her skirts but she knew Lord Hastings was among them. The Devil was tempting her to gaze upon him, setting flint to the fire of lust that was smouldering down below in her body, and finally she could resist no more but looked to where he knelt behind his king’s heels. He appeared moral enough with his fingertips pointing devoutly towards the rood screen and his head tilted forward in prayer yet even now her insides shivered longingly as though her body, breaking free of her mind’s control, acknowledged his presence.

  Chaplain Rotherham, standing on the step above Ned, trapped her staring and embarrassed, Kate ducked her head down and sent a grovelling apology to God.

  Afterwards, instead of following the royal party through to the Painted Chamber, she hastened outside. At Shute or Chewton, she could have called for her mare to be saddled; here, the open water of the Thames drew her. She would tolerate the wind thrusting its breath in her face or numbing her fingertips, providing it was free of incense or heavy perfumes.

  The rain had eased but a miserable, damp fog, heavy with the smoke of the palace chimneys, mantled the colourless river. Tugged low, the tide exposed a dark gritty shoreline and scab lines of debris that invited no close inspection. Stark of leaves, with no squirrels streaking up their
trunks like tiny flames, the oaks and beeches loomed like sinister mourners, brooding and hunched in their dark ivy wrappings.

  A man might have been permitted to idle, to stare across to the Lambeth marshes or watch the cluster of little boats off King’s Bridge jostling for passengers to Queenshithe or observe the bargemen unloading bales of hay and straw for the palace stables, but she felt exposed to the curiosity of the sentries, even though she made sure to keep her gaze modest.

  She was being observed from the water, too. It was not just the ducks who paddled hopefully in the wavelets.

  ‘Take you anywhere, lady?’ called out one of the watermen, swiftly rowing in.

  ‘Queenshithe, my lady?’ shouted another.

  ‘Find you a fine lad in Southwark, darlin’?’

  Although that earned the impudent fellow a ripe reprimand from the household officer who was supervising the bargemen, the wherry boats still followed her. She turned; the cogs and ducks turned. Defeated she followed the trail of hay in beneath the Watergate.

  ‘Freezin’, ain’t it, my lady? You go in, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered the fatherly sentry, but her smile faded. Beyond the handcarts of horse fodder bumping across the cobbles, she glimpsed Lord Hastings escorting a slender, well-dressed lady in a velvet, fur-edged hood – indeed, a married woman, for her hair was utterly concealed by her headdress. Tasselling the respectable cap veil brightly against the darkness of the woman’s cloak were locks of golden hair. Was Hastings procuring the lady? For his king or himself?