Carole Mortimer - Historical Romance – The Best Of The Year

She rushed on. ‘Holland was not always an Earl. It was through Joan that he received the title.’ Did she sound too bright? Too careless? ‘He was a squire in the first Earl’s retinue. That was why he was in Flanders when he married Joan.’

‘But you’re not talking about the old Earl now, are you?’

She shook her head.

‘When was this? That he worked for his wife’s husband?’

How bald it sounded, when he said it. ‘I was about eight.’

Nicholas blinked. ‘Why would Holland work for a man who had taken his wife? A wife he was trying to claim.’

Could she lie again? Could she tell him she did not remember? Even he would not believe that.

She shrugged. ‘Children do not notice such things.’

Even in that, she lied. Children noticed exactly those things. As a child, she had known that the way Lady Joan and the steward had shared touches was meant for a man and his wife.

And why.

* * *

Nicholas sat up in the bed and shook his head, certain he had misunderstood. He did not even want to marry, yet he could not have done what either of those men had done. ‘If a man had stolen my wife, I would be challenging him on the field of honour, not toiling as his steward. Why would Salisbury hire the man who claimed his wife?’

‘Well, he did not know that at the time.’ She nodded, lips pursed, and said no more.

He thought he had memorised every detail of the convoluted history of Joan’s marriages, but there must have been a gap, something he had missed or forgotten. ‘So they marry in Flanders when Joan is twelve, Holland goes off to fight for another three years, then returns to England and works for Salisbury and then waits for three years before he petitions the Pope to restore Joan to him?’

‘He didn’t have enough money to do so earlier,’ she rushed to explain. ‘Not until he went to France and captured a prisoner to be ransomed.’

She must misremember. She had only been a child.

But the words reminded him of doubts he had smothered before. Why would a man wait seven years to claim his rightful wife? Why would Joan have even agreed to the marriage with Salisbury if she believed she was already wed?

Worse, why would Holland live with, even serve the man, day by day, and then watch his own wife go up to bed with him night after night?

He could not imagine it. No man he knew could tolerate such a thing. Unless...

Unless he had not been married to her. Unless he only started sleeping with her himself after he came to work for her husband and used the clandestine marriage as an excuse to break a valid marriage and take her himself.

That explanation looked obvious, now that he faced it. The story about the secret wedding in Flanders, that could be swallowed. But what man in love and in the right, with God on his side would return to find his wife married to another man and after what must count as a truly perfunctory protest, wait years to pursue his claim?

What husband brings into his household a man who claims to have wed his wife?

Anne was looking down at her hands, as if she wished they were busy with needle and thread. Could she have known? Had she known all along?

He tried to tell himself no. Tried to tell himself that she was too young.

My mother was the witness.

And Anne had been with Lady Joan ever since.

He tried to think of another interpretation, but what had been justified as kindness now seemed like coercion.

And the only way the plan worked was for Anne to know, too. As well as her mother did. Well enough that Lady Joan had to pay her with protection for life.

Yes, Anne’s mother had good reason to lie before God and man. To provide for a child that would have no place in the world otherwise.

But now, that child was a liability because she knew the truth of a matter so huge that it would rock the throne of England.

And now, so did he.

‘Anne.’ His very tone commanded that she meet his eyes and when she did, he saw what he should have recognised all along. ‘There was no marriage, was there?’

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