Anne O'Brien - The Scandalous Duchess

As he opened the door for me he stood for a moment, holding me back.

‘I’ll woo you and win you, lady. I’ll give battle to your conscience and defeat it. I give you fair warning.’

‘I will not be won over.’

‘Do you say?’ His lips were against my ear as he whispered: ‘I’ll have you yet.’

In a spirit of defiance I knelt for Compline with the household. I would be honest and firm. I would restore myself to God’s good grace. I would not be swayed by either specious argument or base desire.

I would refuse the Duke of Lancaster.

As the priest made the sign of the benediction and the service ended, the chapel emptied, but, because I had been so commanded, I remained on my knees, with a brief smile for Lady Alice who presumed that I had a final personal petition to make. Immediately I heard the door close behind me, and there was the Duke moving softly to stand at my side.

Not daring to look at him in all his magnificent smooth elegance, his tunic and jewels gleaming, I fixed my eye on the figure of the suffering Christ on the altar’s gold crucifix. This should be a very brief confrontation.

‘My answer is still no, my lord.’ I could not make it plainer.

Which the Duke ignored.

‘You have returned to your doleful black,’ he remarked, surveying my widow’s weeds from head to foot. There was laughter in his voice.

‘Yes, my lord. I have.’

‘You have also, it seems, reverted to stiff formality.’

‘Yes, my lord. It is for the best.’

‘For whom? Don’t answer that.’ As I opened my mouth to do just that.

‘There is nothing more to say between us, my lord,’ I said instead.

Which deterred him not at all, offering his hand, persisting when I was slow to take it. ‘Perhaps we should discuss my proposal further, and I would rather you were not on your knees, my lady. Did I not vow to persuade you of the rightness of our being together? I will do it, but I would rather contemplate your lovely face than that unflattering veil.’

Colour rushed to my cheeks but I took the offered hand and stood, conscious of nothing but his touch. The altar shimmered with gold, my bones turned to water, my flesh was consumed with heat. I suspected this was going to take longer than I had foreseen.

‘This is not an appropriate place, my lord.’

I kept my gaze level on the glittering altar panel of saints and angels surrounding the risen Christ. Every one of them was regarding me with judgement in his face.

‘This, my delight, is the only privacy we’ll get. Keep your piety under control.’ And when I stiffened in outrage, he laughed. ‘We’ll make the most of the time we have here without interference.’ And placing his hands on my shoulders he turned me to face him, taking me entirely by surprise when he leaned to kiss the space between my brows. ‘Do you know that your skin has the glow of the most precious pearl I possess? And since this is the only area of skin you allow me to see…’ Disturbing the pattern of my heartbeat further, he stroked my cheek from brow to chin with the tips of his fingers. ‘It is softer than the finest silk.’

My thoughts were in a tumble of awareness of him. The breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his hands. The striking lines of his features. The brush of his lips against my skin had completely unravelled my certainty, like the mayhem a kitten might have created in a box of embroidery silks.

‘You brows are the gold of a summer gilly-flower,’ he continued, smiling as if unaware of my chaotic emotions. Of course he was aware. This was quite deliberate. ‘You have the grace of one of the iridescent damselflies over the mere at Kenilworth. Your eyes hold a depth of ancient amber. You, Madame de Swynford, are a rare and beautiful woman.’

I trembled in his grasp. I could not prevent it.

‘Is this a wooing, my lord?’

‘Of course.’

‘Or a sophisticated flirtation, to undermine my decision?’

‘That too. I always knew that you were an intelligent woman as well as a beautiful one.’ He paused, watching every expression on my face. ‘Am I succeeding?’ His eyes became intent, the flippancy dissipating in an instant, his hands more urgent, but he kept his tone light. ‘Do I engage your senses to any degree?’ he enquired conversationally, as if asking after my state of health. ‘Your veil is shivering with your response to me. But will you admit it?’

What could I say? Honesty had its own dangers. ‘Yes, my lord. I admit to feeling an…an attraction to you.’

The intensity deepened. ‘Then be with me,’ he urged, his fingers flexing. ‘Be with me, Madame Katherine, and allow me to open the doors of heaven for you.’

It seemed to me that the angelic throng frowned its disapproval.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘What have I said now to distress you?’

‘The angels disapprove,’ I observed.

‘The angels are free to make their own judgement. This is not their concern. This is between you and me.’

And before I could speak he had framed my face with his hands and kissed my lips, the gentlest, most tender of kisses, his lips just brushing mine. It took my breath.

‘There,’ he said. ‘I knew that kissing you would be like sipping honeyed wine. And God will forgive me for taking it.’

Which robbed me even more of words. How like him, I thought mutinously. How like the Duke of Lancaster to flout convention and woo me so carnally in this holy place, in the sight of God, and apparently with all due reverence.

‘If I recall,’ he continued, ‘your hair—which you do not allow me to see—would challenge the sun itself in its brightness.’ Then: ‘Look at me, Katherine.’

And I did. I had no will to resist under the power of his words even if I had not been entranced by that kiss. The Duke’s eyes, reflecting the gilding on angel and cherub, were level and clear on mine.

‘I saw you in my audience chamber and I wanted you. You know that. I wanted you to be mine. I still do, and I won’t let you go. You were made to belong to me. It is my right to claim you.’

As if there could be no other reason for our being here. Perhaps there was no other for a man such as he. He saw me and wanted me. I simply stared. If the angels were astounded to hear it so forcefully expressed, so was I.

His hands moved slowly down from my shoulders in one long caress, until he was in possession of my hands.

‘You came to me because you needed help,’ he said. ‘There you stood, pale and worn and overwrought with too many sleepless nights and worries, and for the first time since I had known you, you were in need. I had never thought of you as fragile, but on that day I wanted to lift the burden from your shoulders.’ His breathing was rather fast, matching mine. ‘I still do. And I want more than that. I want to strip that black garment from you and take you to my bed and show you the pleasures that can exist between a man and a woman who have, if you will, an attraction. I will care for you, protect you and bestow every comfort on you. I will respect you and hold you in esteem. You will be my mistress and my heart’s desire. All I ask is that you say yes, for I have a powerful need of you.’

He was so close that I thought he would kiss me again. And that if he did not I would drown in longing.

The Duke kissed me. Not a tender embrace, no fleeting moment, no chivalrous brush of mouth against mouth, but a kiss of heat, of passion. Of promise of what might be. And I drowned anyway in the splendour of it.

At last, when I clung to him, the Duke lifted his head. ‘Well, Madame de Swynford, my superbly respectable, black-clad widow? What do you say?’

There was the shadow of passion, now well governed. What could I say to so powerful a declaration, such a heart-stopping invitation? Severe in my widow’s black, my thoughts anything but respectable, I regarded him, thinking of what this would mean for me.