The Golden Widows Read online

  As they disappeared beneath the opposite archway, perversity drove Kate across the yard, and she halted hidden in the dark of the inner archway, determined to confirm her belief that Hastings was no more to be trusted than Will had been. Her quarry had reached the stables and now they stood close to each other, deep in conversation. Conversation? No, more than that. Kate could tell from Hastings’ stance that he was listening and looking at the woman with the same intense expression he had been wearing yesterday when he had kissed her. Had Will Bonville looked so meeting Lovidia on the stairs at Shute?

  The lady’s gloved hands rose and he caught them as though in reassurance. Then as a groom led a saddled mare forth and halted at a respectful distance, the lady seemed to recollect herself, glanced over her shoulder towards her servant, and then withdrew one of her hands. Hastings embraced her and they parted; she mounting with the help of her servant’s cupped hand and he began walking towards the very archway where Kate stood, with a smile on his face, like a man utterly sure of his charm.

  Panicking, Kate looked for a bolthole but Heaven was merciful. Halloed respectfully by the chief groom, Hastings turned back.

  Still she lingered, watching Ned’s friend like some infatuated young maid, beguiled by the confidence of his stride, the way his cloak descended from his shoulders and fluttered at the spurs on his heels. Velvet, leather and steel. She crossed herself, grateful to God that her suspicions had been confirmed before it was too late. How could she hold a man like him? He was made to break hearts just like Ned. She imagined a fraught future, were she joined with him, bucklering herself against the gossip, showing a wifely calm demeanour while she ached with jealousy imagining him selecting his concubine for the night from among the eager London wives. No, he was not for her nor a mirror of morality for Cecily.

  ‘Isn’t this rather draughty for an assignation, young Katherine?’

  Kate started, blushing. ‘By my faith! Godmother!’

  Aunt Catherine Neville, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, warmly wrapped to her chin and gloved to her elbows, was standing behind her. ‘Not one of the grooms surely, my dear?’

  ‘No, one of the horses,’ Kate retaliated with a skin-deep smile as she made a hasty obeisance. ‘What about you, Godmama?’ It was an effort to sound pert and cheerful when she was hurting inside.

  Her godmother stared across her shoulder. ‘Hmm, the young man yonder with the large handcart would suit me perfectly. The muscularity of a fist fighter and the face of a scholarly angel. Trouble is he’ll stink of the stable but that’s sometimes a welcome change.’

  Kate giggled. Not only because her godmother was in her sixties, but she resembled a tall, austere abbess if you discounted the dyed black hair showing beneath her pointed cap and the redrawn eyebrows. ‘But if that is a piquant sauce for you,’ continued the dowager dryly, ‘you can ask young Hastings to splash on a bit of attar de cheval.’

  ‘I believe you’ve have been listening to too much gossip, dear Godmama.’

  ‘Have I? Your brother is hearing wedding bells for sure. Didn’t you know you’re one of the prizes for loyalty and fidelity?’

  Kate’s good humour fled. ‘I think Cecily’s inheritance is the prize. For my acquiescence, I win a lord who has an eye for every passing wench.’

  ‘Does he?’ queried Aunt Catherine pensively, peering at the stable entrance for a sighting. ‘I’ve a mind for a walk. Shall you come with me or have you had enough?’ She was observing Kate’s mud-spattered boots. ‘How about as far as the Sanctuary?’

  ‘I should be glad to keep you company.’ Perhaps her aunt had skills in bandaging aching hearts or rescuing self-worth. Yet a suspicion struck her as they circumambulated the laden barrows. ‘Richard has not sent you to drive sense into me, has he?’

  ‘Like a battering ram? I fancy I look more like an assault tower on wheels. No, your brother has said nothing to me but your mother will ask me how you fare when next I see her. So, is it true then?’

  ‘Maybe everyone knows except Lord Hastings.’ Kate sighed. ‘I don’t know either. That is, I mean my consent has not been requested. My brothers can’t make me, not unless they hold a dagger to my throat. It’s just that I am not ready to marry again.’ Then she confided sadly, ‘I suppose I’m still wound licking. Will Bonville cuckolded me.’

  ‘Ah.’ They walked on in companionable silence. ‘You’re still very innocent, poppet, at least from my ancient perspective.’

  Oh, not another accusation of innocence! Kate halted, rebellious at her aunt’s patronising tone. ‘I intend to bring up Cecily to be a decent Christian in a loving family, Godmama, and…well, I don’t see it is wrong to wish for a loyal and loving stepfather for her.’ Having provoked a sheepish expression from her godmother, they resumed walking.

  ‘To my observation,’ muttered Aunt Catherine, ‘and I have been married for over fifty years, on and off, most husbands do some dilly-dallying. Not all but most, especially when they’re not at home. Weak as nestlings, can’t resist temptation, the naughty lads.’ She nodded graciously at a pair of Richard’s retainers as they winked and doffed their hats to her. ‘My third, Beaumont, didn’t. We trotted gloriously together, but then, with a third husband, one usually does. I still miss him, particularly on cold nights. Now with my second, we both used to have a bit of dalliance on the side.’

  ‘And you my godmother!’ Kate chided but she had dismounted the high horse of morality. ‘So you are advising me to accept Lord Hastings?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Her godmother waggled a gloved hand in the air.

  ‘Not exactly? And pray what do you mean by that, Godmama?’

  ‘Instinct will out, poppet. Like…like a haystack suddenly bursting into flame.’

  ‘I see,’ replied Kate politely. ‘But don’t haystacks in those circumstances burn down to nothing?’

  The old lady raised her palms in exasperation. ‘Behold the white cloth of surrender, Katherine, take all my weaponry. I give up, defeated by your youth and experience.’

  It would be discourteous to scowl. A grind of teeth was tempting. ‘Perhaps we should turn back now?’ Kate suggested.

  ‘As you wish. I am invited to Aunt York’s for dinner. I hope she has a decent fire in the hall. Baynard’s can be disgustingly damp this time of year. Mind, so can Fotheringay. I’ll save visiting your mother until the spring. Maybe she’ll be more cheerful than last time.’

  ‘So, what shall you tell her when you see her?’ Kate asked, when they drew near the steps leading up to the eastern door of the Painted Chamber.

  ‘That she has a daughter who is a good mother.’

  Kate was able to smile; it would make a good epitaph, if nothing else. ‘Then give her a daughter’s love from me, Godmama.’

  ‘That is a promise.’ They passed the guards and halted in the antechamber. One of the royal greyhounds came out to investigate their soles. Beyond the great doors, a counter-tenor was singing.

  ‘I cannot stand castrati,’ sighed Aunt Catherine. ‘Poor knaves. Such a waste.’ Then she held out her arms to embrace Kate. ‘Adieu, my poppet. I shall be leaving tomorrow morning, rain or shine. My chaplain says the weather will turn cold and it already feels as though the wind is shifting.’ She kissed Kate’s cheek and straightened. ‘Why, by the Saints, I think there is a young man waiting for you. And a duke, no less. Farewell.’

  Surprised, Kate turned round and found young Gloucester petting the greyhound, clearly biding his time to waylay her.

  ‘Madame cousin,’ he said, rising to his feet and giving her a formal bow. ‘I…I saw you talking earlier with Cousin Richard.’ Kate must have looked blank for the boy’s face crumpled. ‘He doesn’t want me to take Verity, does he?’

  ‘V-Verity?’ Her memory returned and with it, a slow smile. ‘Yes, of course, you may take Verity. He agreed with no trouble.’

  ‘Oh!’ Not only did the child fling his arms about her waist but the greyhound scampered over to join in. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ The litt
le duke beamed up at her with such joy. ‘Yet he looked so angry, I thought…

  She hugged him with one arm and managed to caress the hound as well. ‘With me, not you, cousin. So, do not worry any more.’

  Gloucester scrambled back. ‘I’ll tell the falconers that she’s allowed.’ In delight, he took to his heels and then halted abruptly on the outside step as though invisible fingers had grabbed hold of him. He turned so solemnly that Kate put her fingers to her lips to stifle her laughter. ‘Your pardon, cousin!’ Once more the little courtier, he bowed and said gravely, ‘I made you a promise. Maybe one day when I am grown, I can repay you. Please do not forget.’ He bowed again.

  Kate curtsied demurely and was licked on the cheek by the amicable dog.

  ‘As your grace pleases.’

  Brown eyes examined her face as though he suspected she might not be taking this matter with equal seriousness and then satisfied, he raced off towards the mews.

  Kate straightened and shook her skirts. It was time to feel irritable again. Why did everyone keep calling her an innocent. If she was, then she was definitely not a match for a man of the world like Hastings. She wanted a husband who would love her, not betray her.

  She was spared meeting Lord Hastings at the midday repast next day. Lord Arundel mentioned that my Lord Chamberlain was gone to the Tower of London. Wearing his Master of the Royal Mint hat? Or maybe he had refused Ned’s suggestion that he marry a Neville and had been sent to the dungeons in manacles – wearing his worried expression, of course.

  ‘I hear you are in the market for a husband again.’ Meg, Ned’s thirteen-year-old sister, leaned over Kate’s shoulders following the last course, still sucking one of the almond paste mice that had been served with the wafers and quince paste.

  Kate jerked the girl’s auburn tresses. ‘Go away, gossip. There’s no truth to it at all.’

  ‘Then you won’t be interested in coming to Cheapside with me this afternoon. There’s a new shipment of cloth come in from Bruges and Ned has granted me forty pounds a year so I can well afford a new gown.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘Please, Kate, I need a married lady with me and I’ll be hanged if I’ll take any of Mother’s crones else they’ll make me choose some old-fangled weave and…’

  ‘Enough. I’ll come with you right happily. It’s something I planned to do anyway. Ughh, Meg, must you?’ she protested as the girl bestowed a sticky kiss upon her cheek.

  London always had a touchy edge to it. Compared to Fore Street, Exeter, Cheapside with its shops and stalls was exuberant, deafening and full of thieves. Kate, riding pillion behind her groom, both relished and disliked the press of people, the stink and scents, the raucous voices of the touting apprentices as they caught at sleeves and stirrups. Babble and Babel! She caught the guttural snatch of Flemish and German among the crowd.

  Meg was not a whit fazed by any of it, for she had spent almost the last year at Baynard’s Castle and the Londoners knew her. With her brother’s soldiers keeping any braggarts at pikestaff distance, the girl could enjoy the whistles. Let London indulge her, thought Kate benevolently. Before long she would be shipped out of England to seal an alliance with her maidenhead. By comparison, Kate could refuse; Meg would be given no choice.

  The display chamber of the warehouse that her cousin sought was already crowded with wealthy wives, clothiers from the shires and noblemen’s agents but the crowd obsequiously made way for the king’s sister. Kate’s womanly heart thumped in delight. Bales of glistening Italian and Syrian silks, tisshews, gauzes and finest English wool, re-imported as cloth from Bruges, were stacked to the ceiling and Kate was soon utterly distracted by the rivers of fabric that were rippled out across the counter for consideration. She had a shopping list. Lady Bonville would make a pincushion of her if she went back to Shute without a sumpter loaded with cloth.

  She made her selection and then sat down happily on a bench while the fabric was being measured out.

  ‘An’ I saw him go in. No lie.’ Behind her, a woman’s voice – London, by the dialect – spoken softly, leaving a question.

  ‘My Lord Chamberlain, no, truly?’ The second voice was younger, astonished.

  Kate stopped counting the measures of cloth and sat still as a rock.

  ‘An’ I asked her, she standing there with her raven hair all loose beneath her cap. “I saw you had a fine visitor to dinner,” I said. An’ she said, “Oh, yes, he was here to order gold for the Royal Mint from my husband.” “A pity your husband was not here to greet him, then,” I said, “for didn’t I see him riding to the Goldsmiths’ Hall this morning at nine o’ the clock?” “Aye, mayhap, you did,” she said blushing withal. “But I think he went away satisfied nonetheless.”’

  It hurt Kate as much as a vicious box on the ear. Not just a fleeting hurt though; this pain would eat away inside her head like a canker.

  ‘My lady, shall you take this still?’ The apprentice was poised with the scissors in his hand over the lustrous fabric she had chosen for herself but now it seemed too gaudy and extravagant, fit for flaunting a harlot’s body, not for quiet dinners with Devon neighbours. Or did she have a harlot’s heart, putting her arms round Hastings’ neck and drawing him close? She, a respectable widow and mother!

  ‘Madame?’

  ‘Yes, of course, she’ll take it.’ Meg was back, flinging an arm round her. ‘What’s amiss? You look pale as ashes. Have I exhausted you?’

  ‘I’m not six foot under yet,’ growled Kate. Except that life had just barrelled a great cart of dung across her path.

  A pox on men! she thought angrily riding back towards Ludgate, the Westminster Garden of Paradise had been exquisite at times but the daydream was over. Primus, she was not going to permit a gallivanting whoreson to become stepfather and guardian to Cecily; secundus, she was not going to marry any nobleman who was going to be absent most of the time nursemaiding and procuring for Ned; tertius, Lord Hastings was far too handsome for a plain-looking creature like her; and quartus, he had not even stated he wished to marry her and it was probably just some bee of an idea buzzing around in Ned’s skull at the moment.

  As though the Devil was determined to tempt her further, a party of riders caught up with them as they were leaving the city and Lord Hastings cheerfully doffed his high-brimmed hat and seemed intent on riding alongside her, his boots almost brushing her skirts.

  ‘You’re looking weary, my lord,’ she observed. ‘A tiring day?’ An unattiring morning with a goldsmith’s wife perhaps?

  He was looking her over with a jaunty eye. ‘No, but perhaps you have. Are your Devon ponies strong enough to carry home all your purchases?’

  ‘Oh, you should see the cloth she has chosen, Lord Hastings,’ chimed in Meg, watching them from her pillion on the horse in front. ‘She’ll make some suitor’s mouth water in that, I can tell you.’

  ‘My lady!’ snapped Kate, with a look that told the maiden to mind her language.

  ‘What colour have you chosen, tell me.’ Hastings sounded genuinely interested and maybe he was. All the garments she had seen him in enhanced his colouring and flattered his body. The dye of his doublet now was a stormy blue that echoed the silver-blue starbursts of his eyes and…Jesu! He was bewitching her again, this sorcerer, and repeating his question.

  ‘Green.’

  ‘Emerald, chrysolite, peapod, apple, fir?’ he prompted.

  ‘Like the hue of blemished copper, my lord, shot with gilt and silver thread.’

  ‘You will look well in it if your hair is the same colour as your brothers’. Of course, he had never seen her hair.

  Meg had to interfere. ‘Kate’s is cinnamon. “Neville Ginger”, Mother calls it.’

  Lord Hastings’ gaze locked with Kate’s. The message that he would like to see her cinnamon hair unbound passed between them sure as Doomsday.

  ‘I have heard…’ started Kate, trying to rescue her integrity and instead scuffing the mire of tittle-tattle, ‘I have heard that the woman with the lo
veliest hair in London is a goldsmith’s wife.’

  The man’s eyes narrowed when they should have widened. ‘It could be true. Juliana Shaa, perhaps, or Mistress Rede.’ Perhaps? Had he not savoured the perfume in the woman’s hair, parted it to set kisses upon her, touched her below? It could be true. A wreath of carefully woven words adorning the grave of any future between them.

  ‘She probably uses henna.’ Meg was trying to sound knowledgeable.

  ‘No, hers is raven, I believe,’ Kate said. ‘Does that ring any bells, Lord Hastings?’ He did not answer but directed a sidelong glance from beneath his own fair lashes; an almost imperceptible annoyance tightened his mouth.

  The narrowness of the bridge that divided Westminster from the hiatus of Charing forced the riders to ride two by two. Two of the outriders closed in behind Meg and with her out of earshot, Lord Hastings seized his opportunity.

  ‘May I desire a favour of you, Lady Katherine? There’s another troupe of players petitioning me to let them present an entertainment for the court but I would have your opinion of them.’

  ‘Mine, my lord?’ An innocuous request, flattering one might say. It was needful to inspect his expression for some illicit motive. After all, she had not anticipated that the selection of a toy for Cecily would lead to kisses.

  ‘I have given them leave to practise the day after tomorrow in the tenez court. If you would care to come as well? See if there is aught in their piece that might offend the older noblewomen.’

  ‘Are you implying that I am old for my years, my lord?’ she asked with a hint of tartness.

  ‘If I value my life, no, Lady Katherine.’

  He reached the stables ahead of her groom, dismounted easily and came across to assist her down. To resist would have been impolite.

  ‘God as my witness, I should truly value your opinion on the piece, my lady.’ Here was no lingering touch about her waist as she sprang down from the seat, not with Meg and a score of retainers to observe them. She should have said no to this philanderer.