Carole Mortimer - Historical Romance – The Best Of The Year

She did look at him then, long and hard and silent, as if she were making a hard decision. ‘Of the past. You asked me once if I knew who witnessed her marriage to Holland. I do. It was my mother. My mother was the witness.’

If he had been standing, he would have fallen.

He tried to reorder the pieces, to fit together everything he had learned, confirmed and did not know.

A clandestine marriage with a witness. And all his questions had come to naught. It had seemed strange at the time, but she had insisted she did not know.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘I asked you and you lied.’ Anger doubled, for lie upon lie. He should not have been surprised. And yet... ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She looked down at her lap. ‘I have never told anyone.’ Her words were a whisper, as if she did not want to tell him either.

Yet here, breathing the scent of her, knowing this would be the last time he would see her, his anger shattered.

He let his hands slip off her shoulders and gathered her fingers in his. ‘Tell me.’

* * *

With her fingers tight in his, Anne felt at once safe and trapped. She had led him this far, exchanged a night of passion for a night of truth, or partial truth, uncertain whether she was looking for redemption, forgiveness, or simply a witness.

The top of Nicholas’s head met hers as they looked down at their clasped fingers. ‘Where were they? When they married?’ he whispered, the words muddied as they bounced against the walls and down the stairs.

This part was easy to tell. She had repeated it many times. ‘Flanders.’

‘Why were they in Flanders?’

‘Thomas Holland went in the retinue of the Earl of Salisbury. He was part of the embassy of earls and bishops sent to present the King’s statement of grievances to Philip of France.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘And Joan?’

His question was sharp. He might not forgive her for this, but then, it would not matter now.

‘The following summer. She was not yet ten and still in the care of the Queen, so when she came to Flanders to join the King, Joan and some of her children came, too.’

‘And your mother? Why was she there?’

‘Serving the Queen.’ She could see him about to ask the next question. ‘She brought me with her.’

‘You couldn’t have been...’

‘Barely born. She could have left me with a wet nurse, but the Queen brought some of her own children, as well as Joan, too, so she could not force Mother to leave me behind. Already, they could tell I was not going to be...’ still hard to say ‘...like other children.’ A smile now. ‘We were there for three years, travelling with court.’

‘In the midst of a war.’ His sigh said he knew exactly what that meant. ‘At least I was never asked to find food and lodging for the Queen as well as for fighting men.’

She nodded. ‘It was difficult. An Abbey one night. A peasant’s house another. Some nights, we did not know where we would be sleeping. Mother was supposed to watch over Joan, but it was hard. Some nights...’

Some nights, no one was certain where Joan slept.

She could see understanding dawn on his face. ‘And Holland was there?’

‘By late summer of the third year, I think. Mother told me, but it is hard to remember clearly.’

‘You were a babe.’

‘Nearly four by then. But it was clear...’ She looked down at her leg. ‘Mother had her hands full with me. The Queen had three of her own children with her. No one had much extra time to mind the Lady Joan.’

‘If she was twelve, she was a maiden of age, capable of taking care of herself,’ he said, with a cynical edge to the words. ‘But Holland was a fully fledged fighting man by then.’

She nodded. ‘Six and twenty. And weary of the battle, I’m sure. They had a victory at sea, then a defeat on land. The King and his men were in Ghent, frustrated, short on funds and trapped. The King had to escape in the dark, leaving the Queen and the rest of us behind as hostages. No one knew when we might see home again.’

She remembered none of it well. None of it except the fear.

‘And that was when...?’

She nodded.

‘Men at war lack...control.’ The grim set of his lips told her he understood. ‘Did he even woo her?’

‘I don’t know. But he was dashing and had served as the King’s lieutenant in Brittany. No doubt he would have drawn a young maiden’s eye.’ But then, most men drew Lady Joan’s attention. Anne imagined it had always been so.

‘And she his?’

She gripped her hands together. It was hard to talk of this part, particularly after she and Nicholas had just...

‘Mother told me that one night, she stumbled into a dark corner of the Abbey where they were staying and saw the two of them together and they were...’

There was no question, her mother had told her later. No other explanation for what they were doing. He was fully plunged between her spread legs, her skin white in contrast to the dark wool hose he hadn’t bothered to remove. Joan looked up, horror on her face, trying to scramble away, begging forgiveness immediately.

Thomas, being a man, took longer to come to his senses.

She tried to explain. ‘But they had not, Thomas had not fully...’ She knew not how to describe something she had never experienced.

Nicholas coughed and cleared his throat. ‘And then what?’

She had wondered that, exactly, for years. But the Joan she knew always tried to please. First, perhaps, to please Anne’s mother. Then, to please Thomas Holland. ‘She apologised. She promised it would never happen again. But Mother said that Holland grabbed the girl’s hand, swore an oath that they were married and she matched it with her vow. “Wait for me,” he said. He said he would come for her. That they would be together.’

Nicholas scoffed. ‘A man still in heat who had not released his seed? He would have promised anything.’

She blushed. ‘My mother thought the same.’

‘And she told no one?’

‘Joan begged her not to, so Mother held her tongue. What else could she do? If she told the truth, it would only mean ruin for all.’ She lifted her eyes to his. ‘So, when Holland returned and Mother was asked, later, whether they had married, Joan gave her permission to tell.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ He looked...hurt. As if she had owed him the truth. ‘When you knew...?’

‘Knew what? I knew what my mother told me. I was not the witness. Yet I knew they were married. And that everything was as it had been said.’

‘Would you have told me if it weren’t?’

She should never have said even this much. She had raised suspicions safely laid to rest, but with him, it had always been hard to lie.

But she would. Even now, she would. All would be as it must. ‘Do you doubt it? You did what was asked. You are free to leave. To return to France, a man content.’

Yet he did not look content. ‘And suddenly, after a lifetime, Joan wants to forget all this by putting you out of sight?’

‘You must understand. Lady Joan will be the Queen. No Queen has ever had such a history. It is still a...difficult matter.’

‘Difficult!’ He raised his brows and his voice. ‘I travelled to Avignon and Canterbury and back for this marriage. Don’t tell me how difficult it is.’

She must throw him off. ‘What I mean is that some people... Memories are long...’ Did she look close to tears? Would he reach over and touch her, forgiving?

She had learned too much from the Lady Joan.

‘You do not want to go.’ It was not a question.

Too perceptive, Nicholas Lovayne. She looked away, too late, for he had already seen the truth. ‘No. I do not.’

And she would soak up as many memories as she could before they locked her behind the walls.