Blythe Gifford - In The Master's Bed

‘You don’t like people from this part of the country, do you?’ John gave him an odd glance through his eyelashes.

Odd. He’d never noticed a man’s eyelashes before. ‘Some days, I hate them. And they don’t like me much either.’

‘Do you hate me?’

The lad had twisted his feelings in all directions, save that one. ‘No, I don’t hate you, lad.’ He put his hand on the gilt-gold hair and tussled it. A few strands wound their way around his fingers. ‘You’ve some growing up to do, but when you’re not whining or pouting, I nearly like you.’

And the blinding smile John gave him caused a strange shiver in the pit of his stomach.

Alys de Weston watched Justin squeeze Solay’s hand. His wife did not respond. As the hours lengthened and the candles shortened, Alys had tried without success to shoo him out of the lying-in room. He was not swayed.

Stubborn, that man, always.

She had told neither of them that Jane was gone. As long as his wife had been in childbirth, he could think of nothing else. And in the days since, the babe was so small and frail it took all of them to keep little William alive.

William and his mother.

So she had said nothing, not wanting them to worry. But Alys? Alys was worried.

‘Come,’ she said, tugging his tunic. The man hadn’t eaten in days and had slept less than his wife. ‘Solay is sleeping and you need food.’

She forced him down the stairs into the dim, smoky kitchen. The kitchen girl had fallen asleep, waiting for her summons, so Alys served the soup herself.

‘Justin,’ she said, as he munched bread and cheese without savouring it. ‘Jane is missing.’

She could tell from his absent gaze he had not understood her words. ‘What do you mean, missing?’

A wonderful man and a good son-in-law, but sometimes, they all were dolts. ‘Missing. She’s run away and left her skirts behind.’

She had his attention now. ‘How long?’

‘Since the day the babe was born.’

‘And you didn’t speak til now?’

‘Could you have listened?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Solay, the babe…I didn’t even notice.’

She patted his arm. ‘You wouldn’t have noticed if the sun had fallen to earth.’ Her older daughter was a fortunate woman.

‘You’re sure? You’ve searched?’

‘The entire property. I knew she did not want to wed, but I had hoped…’

She had hoped marriage would turn her younger daughter into a normal girl. She’d been a pretty blonde-haired, blue-eyed child, but they had left the court when she was five and, during the years of exile, she had become a different creature. Shoulders too wide and breasts too small for beauty, only her singing voice marked her as a woman.

It was Solay who garnered Alys’s attention. Beautiful Solay, who understood what it meant to be a woman and what women must do to survive. Jane, poor, strange child, never did.

So Alys had made no demands, trying to make up for losing their life at court. She let Jane play with horses and books, more boy than girl, until, too late, she realised that her daughter had become fit for nothing else.

Alys sighed. Yet another of her failures as a mother.

‘I would never have forced her into marriage,’ Justin said. ‘Surely she knew that. But I thought if she met him, they might, she might…’ He shook his head. ‘Solay warned me. I should have listened.’

‘The bridegroom comes next week. What shall we tell him?’

‘The truth. He will recover. My worry is Jane.’ Yet he glanced towards the stairs, as if he had already been away from Solay too long.

‘Solay must be your concern.’ She did not have to say it. For this man, there would never be a question of who was first in his life. ‘Besides, where would we look? Where could she go?’

In the spring, Alys and Jane had moved into the empty dower house on Justin’s family’s land. Until then, the sheltered girl had known nothing but the house she had lived in with her mother after they had left court.

The house Alys’s stubbornness had lost.

‘She once said she wished she were a man so she could be a lawyer and serve the King, as I did,’ he answered. ‘Maybe she went to the Inns at Court.’

Their eyes met. London. A naïve country girl would be swallowed whole.

He rose, all attention. ‘I’ll send a messenger that way. She’s been gone for days. She could be in the city by now.’

Oh, Jane. She felt her lip quiver. Alys de Weston, who had stood before the condemnation of Parliament unbowed, was afraid she was going to cry.

She bit her lip. She never cried. Not when they had charged her. Not when she had fled court with her children. Not even at the death of the King. The man she loved.

Who had called another man’s daughters his.

Jane woke, snug on a warm, dry pallet, and sighed with delight.

Normally, the hostel would have been full of men, every room shared, but the term’s start was still days away. She had a chance at privacy she would not see again to rewrap her breasts and relieve herself without fear.

What she really wanted was a bath, but that would be quick, cold and risky.

She said her prayers for Solay and her mother and started downstairs. She would spend the day reading, she decided. The hostel had a few volumes that would afford her good Latin practice.

But at the bottom of the stairs, Duncan handed her a pile of tunics and hose. ‘Wash these.’

She crossed her arms, not touching the garments in his hands. ‘Laundry’s no work for a man.’ Nor for the child of a king.

‘For a poor orphan, you’ve elevated expectations.’ Duncan dropped the clothes on the floor at her feet. ‘I told you you’d have to work for your lessons. Now do as I say.’

‘I want to talk to the principal,’ she said, lifting her chin. A man in power wouldn’t make her do such menial tasks. ‘Who’s responsible for this hostel?’

Duncan raised his eyebrows and looked at her aslant. ‘I am.’

She swallowed, grateful that her blunder had made him laugh instead of roar. From the first, this man had been nothing that she’d expected.

She tried not to think about how many ways she had insulted him already. ‘And you don’t have laundry women?’

‘We don’t waste money sending out the wash. And it’s the gaol for any women found within these walls, laundress or lady.’

Gaol. She stooped to gather the pile, shuddering. She was at this man’s mercy in a world beyond women. She’d have no one to turn to, no one to confide in and no protection if she were discovered.

‘And wash your own clothes, while you’re about it,’ he said, leaving her to grapple with the laundry. ‘You smell of the stables.’

As she grudgingly heated the water to fill the washtub, she savoured his words and allowed herself a secret smile. No women allowed, yet here she was. She had cracked their kingdom and they didn’t even know.

And yet she was still doing women’s work.

The thought lingered as she set up the tub in a sunny corner of the yard. She started to throw the garments into the water, but the coarse linen lingered in her hand, warm and alive with the smell of his body and his days on the road. She buried her nose in the fabric and breathed his scent until she sat behind him on the horse again, felt him nestled between her spread legs.

The memory made something within her run soft and wet.

She dropped the shirts in the hot water as quickly as she dropped the thought. What would Duncan think if he saw ‘John’ with his nose buried in another man’s shirt?

She plunged her arms into the wash water, the damp heat taking her back to the birthing room. What had happened to Solay? The babe must have been born days ago. Something weighed heavy in her chest, reminding her of what she had lost. She would never see her family again, never even know if they were safe.