The deserted bride, p.2
The Deserted Bride, page 2
“Hate,” he repeated. “Well, Lady Elizabeth must learn to tolerate her groom. It will not be many years before he returns for her, and she must be ready for him.”
But Andrew Exford did not return. The years went by. Bess’s father died of an ague, leaving Bess mistress of the House and all the Atherington lands, with her uncle Hamilton as her guardian. Soon afterwards he had a fall in the hunting field, and became a cripple, helpless and confined to his room. Aunt Hamilton became her niece’s constant companion, and if Bess was a queen in Leicestershire, much as her namesake, Queen Elizabeth, was Queen of England, aunt Hamilton was in some sort her Queen Mother.
With the help of the vast staff, numbering over three hundred souls, which Robert Atherington had trained, Bess reigned over her small kingdom. Accounts and details of the estate which he owned, but never saw, were sent to her husband, and occasional monies which he needed to keep up his position at court. They were all acknowledged by his secretary, never by him. So far as Bess was concerned, he did not exist, and she had no wish to see him.
Looking back over the years to her wedding day, Bess stifled a sigh. How different her life would have been if she had not overheard Drew Exford’s sneering comment. Not that she had any quarrel with her life. There was always so much to do, so little time to do it. She had become expert in the running of her estate, and enjoyed herself mightily in performing all those duties which her husband would normally have carried out. Never having known him, she did not miss him, and hoped that he would stay away forever, as her distant cousin Lucy Sheldon’s absent husband had done.
One thing which she never did was look in a mirror. And if, occasionally, aunt Hamilton said, “Bess, my dear, you grow more handsome every day,” Bess put such an unlikely statement down to her aunt’s kindness. Her aunt had mellowed with age, and she and Kirsty were a good pair of flatterers, as Bess frequently told them.
And now Drew Exford was proposing to visit her—if she could believe him. Useless to worry about how she was to greet him. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” she said aloud. “I’ll think about that when he arrives.”
“Damn it, Philip. Why can’t I be like you, unencumbered?”
Drew Exford was towelling himself off after a hard game of tennis against Philip Sidney, who had been his friend since they had spent part of the Grand Tour of Europe together shortly after Drew had been married.
Philip smiled wryly. “Unencumbered is it, dear friend? I think not. I am most encumbered since the Queen took Oxford’s part against me after our recent fracas on the tennis court. I am encumbered by her disfavour and her dislike, particularly since she knows that I am much against her flirtation with the notion of a marriage to the French Duc d’Alençon. I am thinking of retiring to Wilton. Why not come with me? The air is sweet there, and most poetical. But what is it that troubles you? After all, you retain the Queen’s favour, you are your own master and may do as you please.”
Drew buried his face in his towel. Philip was a good fellow, and although his pride was that of the devil he had a sweet nature, and a kind heart.
“If you must know, I am envying you your single state.”
“Eh, what’s that?” Drew’s voice had been muffled by the towel and Philip was not sure that he had heard aright. “I thought that you were single, too. And I am beginning to lament my single state.”
Drew emerged from the towel. “Oh, I was married in a hugger-mugger fashion ten years agone, before we posted to Europe together and spent our wild oats in Paris.” He paused, and made his confession. “I have not seen the lady since.”
His friend stared at him. “Ten years—and not seen her since? That beggars belief. Why so?”
He might have known that Philip’s reaction would be a critical one. Philip Sidney liked—and respected—women. If he had affairs, he was so discreet that no one knew of them. His kindness and gentleness in his relations with the fair sex were a byword.
“She was but ten,” Drew said, almost as though confessing something, he was not sure what. He could not tell Philip that for some little time his adventurous life had begun to pall on him, and the game of illicit love, too. He had begun to dream of the child he had married. Strange dreams, for she was still a child in them, who must now be a woman. A woman who could be the mother of his children. His uncle had railed at him recently for not providing the line with an heir.
“She didn’t like me,” he said, somewhat defiant in the face of Philip’s raised brows, “and she…” He stopped. He could not be ungallant and repeat exactly what he had said ten years ago to his uncle— “You are marrying me to a monkey”—but he thought it.
“And all these years, whilst you jaunted round Europe and sailed the Atlantic, and ran dangerous diplomatic errands in France for that old fox Walsingham, I thought you single! Was she dark or fair, your child bride who didn’t like you? I thought all the world, and the Queen, liked Drew Exford!”
“Well, she did not. And she was dark. I remember at the banquet after the wedding ceremony, she ate little—and rewarded me with the most basilisk stare. I thought that the Gorgon herself had brought forth a child, and that child was trying to stare me stone dead!”
“And did you bed the Gorgon?”
“After the usual fashion. They put a bolster between us for some little time. She turned her back on me, and never looked at me again. For which I was thankful. She was not pretty.”
“Poor child!” Philip’s sympathy for Drew’s neglected child bride was sincere. “And where is she now? I suppose you know.” This last came out in Philip Sidney’s most arrogant manner, revealing that he thought his friend’s role in this sad story was not a kind one.
“At Atherington House, in Leicestershire. Her father died; her uncle acts as a kind of guardian to her in my absence.”
He strolled restlessly away from Philip to stare across the tennis court and towards the lawns and flowerbeds beyond. He remembered his anger at the whole wretched business. His uncle had sprung the marriage upon him without warning, and had expected him to be overjoyed. He had not felt really angry until that fatal morning in Atherington House’s chapel when he had first seen his bride.
An anger which had finally found its full vent when he had been left in the Great Bed with his wife. I have been given a child, he had thought savagely, not yet to be touched, and what’s more, a child who will never attract me. I do not like her and I fear that she does not like me because, somehow, she overheard what I said of her.
Lying there, he had made a vow. In two days’ time he would journey to London to take up his life again, leaving his monkey wife in the care of her father until she was of an age to be truly bedded. Once he had reached London and the court he would make sure that he never visited the Midland Shires again, except on the one occasion in the distant future when he needed to make himself an heir.
Now, in his middle twenties, that time had come, compelling him to remember what he had for so long preferred to forget. For to recall that unhappy day always filled him with a mixture of regret, anger, and self-dislike. His friendship with Philip Sidney had made the boy he had once been seem a selfish barbarian, not only in the manner that he had treated his neglected wife, but in other ways as well.
“Preux chevalier”, or, the stainless knight, he had once mockingly dubbed Philip—who was not yet a knight—but at the same time he had been envious of him and his courtly manners.
Drew flung the towel down, aware that Philip had been silently gazing at him as he mused.
“What to do?” he asked, his voice mournful. “The past is gone. I cannot alter it.”
“No,” returned Philip, smiling at last. “But there is always the future—which may change things again. A thought with which I try to reassure myself these days. We grow old, Drew. We are no longer careless boys. I must marry, and I must advise you to seek out your wife and come to terms with her—and with yourself. The man who writes sonnets to imaginary beauties, must at the last write one to his wife.”
“Come,” riposted Drew, laughing. “Sonnets are written to mistresses, never to wives, you know that, chevalier Philip. But I take your point.”
“Well said, friend.” Philip flung an arm around Drew’s shoulders as they walked from the tennis court together. “Remember what I said about visiting me at Wilton some time. It is on the way to your place in Somerset. Tarry awhile there, I pray you.”
“Perhaps,” Drew answered him with a frown. For here came a page with a letter in his hand which, by his mien, was either for himself or for Philip. He stopped before them to hand the missive to Drew.
“From my master, Sir Francis Walsingham,” he piped, being yet a child. “You are to read it and give me an answer straightway.”
Drew opened the sealed paper and read the few lines on it.
“Simple enough to answer at once,” he said cheerfully. “You will tell Sir Francis that Andrew Exford thanks him for his invitation and will sup with him this evening.”
Philip Sidney watched the boy trot off in order to deliver his message. “Well,” he said, smiling, “at least, if Walsingham knows that you are already married, he will not be inviting you to supper in order to offer you his daughter, who is still only a child!”
Drew made his friend no answer, for he suspected that Sir Francis Walsingham was about to offer him something quite different. Something which might require him to journey to the Midland Shires which he had foresworn, and to the wife whom he had deserted ten years ago.
Chapter Two
“I cannot abide another moment indoors, Aunt. I have ordered Tib to saddle Titus for me. I intend to ride to the hunting lodge and break my fast in the open. The day is too fair for me to waste it indoors.”
Aunt Hamilton raised her brows. Bess’s teeming energy always made her feel faint. That her niece was wearing a roughspun brown riding habit which barely reached mid-calf, showing below it a heavy pair of boots more suited to a twenty-year-old groom than a young woman of gentle birth, only served to increase her faintness.
“Must you sally out garbed more like a yeoman’s daughter than the Lady of Atherington, dear child? It is not seemly. If you should chance to meet…”
She got no further. Bess, who was tapping her whip against the offending boots, retorted briskly, “Who in the world do you imagine I shall meet on a ride on my own land who will care whether I am accoutred like the Queen, or one of her servants? I am comfortable in this, and have no intention of pretending that I am one of the Queen’s ladies. Everyone for miles around Atherington knows who I am—and will treat me accordingly.”
Useless to say anything. Bess would always go her own way—as she had done since the day she was married. Mary Hamilton sighed and walked to the tall window which looked out on to the drive and beyond that towards Charnwood Forest. She watched Bess ride out; Tib and Roger Jacks, her chief groom in attendance.
If only her errant husband would come for her! He would soon put a stop to Bess’s wilfulness, see that she dressed properly and conducted herself as a young noblewoman ought. Her niece behaved in all ways like the son her late brother had never managed to father, and the dear God alone knew where that would all end.
Bess, riding at a steady trot towards the distant hill on which the lodge stood, was also thinking about her absent husband. It was now a month since his letter had arrived and there was still no sign of him. She had hung his miniature on a black ribbon and wore it around her neck when she changed into a more ladylike dress on the Sabbath in order to please her aunt.
Occasionally she looked at the miniature in order to inspect him “in small” as he had called it in his letter. She saw a slim, shapely man with a stronger face than the one which she remembered. If the painter had been accurate, his hair had darkened from silver gilt into a deep gold, and his mouth was no longer a Cupid’s bow but a stern-seeming, straight line. It would be as well to remember that he was twenty-six years old, was very much a man, no longer a child. Bess felt a sudden keen curiosity to know what that man was like: whether the spoiled boy—she was sure now that he had been spoiled—had turned into a spoiled man.
They were almost at the small tower, which was all that the lodge consisted of. It stood high on its hill above the scrub and the stands of trees, for Charnwood Forest was thin on Atherington land, merging into pasture where cattle grazed. The open fields of nearby villages had been enclosed these fifty years and charcoal burning had stripped the forest of many of its trees. Over the centuries, successive Atherington lords had run deer for the chase, and the deer had attacked and stripped most of the trees which the charcoal burners had left.
“Shall you eat inside the tower—or out, mistress?” Tib asked her.
He had called her “mistress” since they had been children together, and Bess had indulged him by allowing him to continue the custom when the rest of her servants had learned to call her Lady Bess. Another of her many offences, according to her aunt.
“After all,” Bess had said sensibly and practically, “my true title is m’lady Exford, but since I do not care to use it, then any name will do, for all but his are equally incorrect.”
Aunt Hamilton knew who his referred to and was silenced. A common occurrence when she argued with her niece.
“Outside,” Bess told Tib, “at the bottom of the hill. My uncle Hamilton once told me that the Queen picnicked in the open, and I am content to follow her example. All that will be missing will be her courtiers.”
Tib grinned at her. “Roger and I will be your courtiers, mistress.”
Roger grunted at that. “You grow pert, lad, and forget yourself.”
Really, to bring Roger along was like bringing her aunt with her! He was nearly as insistent on reminding her of her great station as she was. Nevertheless, Bess smiled at him as she shared her meal with them. Inside a wicker basket lined with a white cloth were a large meat pasty, several cold chicken legs, bread and cheese and the sweet biscuits always known as Bosworth Jumbles, and wine in a leather bottle. A feast, indeed, all provided by the kitchen for her and her two grooms. All her staff were agreed that the Lady Bess was a kind and generous mistress.
“Food in the open always tastes much better than food in the house,” she declared, her mouth full of bread and cheese, “and wine, too.” She threw the bread crusts and the remains of the pasty to the two hounds which had followed in their rear, before lying back and sighing, “Oh, the blessed peace.”
She could not have said anything more inapposite! The words were scarce out of her mouth when the noise of an approaching horse and rider broke the silence Bess had been praising. They were approaching at speed through the trees, and as they drew near it was apparent that the horse, a noble black, which was tossing its head and snorting, was almost out of his rider’s control.
Foam dripped from its mouth: something—or someone—had frightened it, that much was plain. But its rider, a tall young man, was gradually mastering it, until, just as he reached Bess’s small party, his steed suddenly caught its forefoot in a rabbit hole, causing it to stumble forward. His master, taken by surprise, was thrown over his horse’s head—to land semiconscious at Bess’s feet.
She and her two grooms had sprung to their feet to try to avoid a collision. Their horses, tethered to nearby trees, neighed and pranced, whilst Bess’s two hounds added to the confusion caused by this unexpected turn by running around, barking madly.
One of them, Pompey, bent over the stunned young man to lick his face. The other, Crassus, ran after the black horse which, hurt less than his rider, had recovered itself, and was galloping madly away. Roger un-tethered his mount and chased after it. Bess and Tib joined Pompey in inspecting the young man, who was starting to sit up.
Bess fell to her knees beside him, so that when, still a trifle dazed, he turned his head in her direction, she looked him full in the face.
Could it be? Oh, yes! Indeed, it could! There was no doubt at all that sitting beside her was the husband whom she had not seen for ten long years. He had stepped out of the miniature, to be present in large, not in small. If he had been beautiful as a boy, as a man he was stunningly handsome, with a body to match. So handsome, indeed, that Bess’s heart skipped a beat at the mere sight of him, just as it had done on the long-ago day when she had first seen him.
What would he say this time to disillusion her? To hurt her so much that the memory of his unkind words was still strong enough to distress her?
He gave a pained half-smile, and muttered hoarsely, “Fair nymph, from what grove have you strayed to rescue me?” before dropping his head into his hands for a moment, and thus missing Bess’s stunned reaction to the fulsome compliment which he had just paid her.
It was quite plain that though she had known at once who he was, he had not the slightest notion that she was his deserted monkey bride!
Drew Exford had left London for Atherington a few days earlier. His supper with Sir Francis Walsingham had, as he had suspected, brought him a new task.
After they had eaten, and the women had left them alone with their wine, Sir Francis had said in his usual bland and fatherly fashion, “You can doubtless guess why I have summoned you hither this night, friend Drew.”
Drew had laughed. “I believe that you wish to ask me to do you yet another favour. Even though I told you two years ago that I had done my duty by my Queen, and would not again become involved in the devious doings of the State’s underworld, as I did when I was with the Embassy in France.”
Sir Francis nodded. “Aye, I well remember you telling me that. Nor would I call on you for assistance again were it not that you are singularly well placed to assist me to preserve our lady the Queen and her blessed peace against those who would destroy it—and her.”
Drew raised his finely arched brows. “How so?”
Sir Francis did not speak for a moment; instead, he drank down the remains of his wine. “Your wife, I believe, lives at Atherington on the edge of Charnwood Forest. There are many Papists in the Midland counties who are sympathetic towards the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, and would wish to kill her cousin, the Queen, and place Mary on the throne instead. Each summer the Queen of Scots is allowed by her gaoler, the Earl of Shrewsbury, to visit Buxton, to take the waters there. Her sympathisers from the surrounding counties visit the spa, and plot together on her behalf.
