Anne O'Brien - The Scandalous Duchess

Some said he had his own ambitions for the English crown, for no man of sense would place a wager on the longevity of either the King or the Prince. If the worse came to the worst, better an able man at thirty-two years and in his prime to wear the crown than a child of fewer years than fingers of one hand.

Looking at him now, at the authority inherent in his stance from his ordered hair to the fine leather of his boots, I wondered where his ambitions did lie. I did not know.

‘The situation in Aquitaine and Gascony rests on a knife-edge,’ he continued, as if picking up my thoughts. ‘The progress of the English troops, without direct leadership—it’s not good. I’m going to Kennington to talk with the Prince. I’ll need to stay if it’s decided that I lead an expedition. We badly need a victory against France, and it may be that Parliament must be summoned to finance such a lengthy campaign. It will not be popular, even though a victory’s in everyone’s mind…’

He was already moving towards the door, as if the burden of these decisions was driving him into action.

‘I’ll send word when I know my future movements.’

So, after shaking my world into disorder, he would leave without making any decision about me. My mind leaped crossly with indecision.

I really need to know where I stand .

It is not appropriate for you to trouble him with your inconsequential needs when the government of England rests on his shoulders .

I followed him to the door.

‘My lord?’

He turned his head, his hand on the latch.

‘Lady Katherine.’ Impatient to be gone, yet as he took in my appearance not without a glint in his eye. ‘Still garbed like a winter raven, I see.’

‘And, as a widow, will continue to be until the year of my mourning is ended,’ I replied tartly.

‘As you will, lady.’

Oh, he was preoccupied, and I bristled beneath my widow’s black. If the royal duke had been suffering yesterday from a blast of inappropriate lust for my person, it had been a remarkably short-lived one. Which was hardly flattering to me.

‘Lady Katherine…?’ His brows flattened. ‘My time is precious.’

So I asked him one question. The one question that had troubled me, to which I needed to have the answer. Not why he had impugned my honour. Not if he would consider a position for me—a respectable position—in the household of his new duchess, or even an inferior position in one of his other establishments. But the question that had teased my female interest.

‘My lord, why did you laugh at me yesterday? Was it all a piece of mockery?’

For if he had been amused, perhaps his intent had been to disconcert me, simply to see what a respectable widow, given the chance to become an unrespectable whore, would say. I could not believe him guilty of such dishonour, yet there had to be a reason that I could not see.

‘Did my discomfiture amuse you?’ I repeated.

He seemed to consider this for an inordinate length of time. Then, when his stare had disconcerted me so that my cheeks were flushed the pink of summer eglantine: ‘Amuse me?’ He shook his head, his mouth settling in a wry twist. ‘I was not amused at all.’ There was no laughter in him today, rather a lick of temper.

‘You laughed at me, my lord.’

‘Then I must ask your pardon, Lady Katherine.’ It did not sound like an apology. ‘If it was laughter, it was because it seemed to me impossible that it should happen twice in a lifetime.’

‘What should? What should not happen twice?’ I asked, as confused as ever, refusing to be intimidated by that penetrating regard.

His hand fell from the latch and he turned to face me fully as he lowered his voice. At least he had the consideration to do that.

‘That the woman at whose feet I would kneel in knightly adoration should refuse me outright.’

‘My lord…!’

I simply did not know how to respond as, cursed with fair skin, my face flamed even brighter. I was saved from further embarrassment only when William Parr pushed open the door to appear behind the Duke’s shoulder.

‘Your escort is ready, my lord,’ the squire advised.

‘One moment, if you will.’

But Will Parr, well used to the Duke’s manner, persisted. ‘Forgive me, my lord. A message has just been delivered, that the King too will travel to Kennington. He requests that you accompany him.’

‘Of course. I’ll come now.’

He held out his hand to me, the jewels stitched on the cuff of his glove glinting, leaving me with no response but to put my hand there on the costly leather. With a curt little bow, he touched his lips to my fingers.

‘It would be unforgivable of me to make you an object of mockery, Madame de Swynford. What it would please me to do is to put the light back into your eyes.’

And then I was left staring at his back.

He had made no decision on my future at all, and I had not asked him. How could I when he had clearly pushed me to the back of his busy mind? It might be a superbly romantic conception to serve me unto death, but only when the Duke considered that he had the time to encompass it.

We took the children to watch the departure from the steps that led down from the Great Hall into the inner courtyard. Since the Duke would travel by road to Westminster and then on from there to the Prince’s palace at Kennington south of the Thames, rather than travelling by river the whole way, the great portcullis had been raised. The gates were opened and the courtyard thronged with horses and liveried servants in the Lancaster colours of blue and white. I lifted Henry in my arms so that he could see the Duke swing into the saddle of his favourite bay stallion. The escort fell into formation.

Without doubt, even his critics must acknowledge that he was superb, that he wore the power that had been his from birth with smooth ownership, as elegantly as he wore the livery chain on his breast, and just as arrogantly, as now, when he raised his chin, lifting his hand in a peremptory gesture to summon one of his henchmen who moved smartly to obey. Too arrogant for many. The Duke made as many enemies as friends.

‘Did Duchess Blanche refuse to wed Lord John?’ I asked Lady Alice. It was time that I sought enlightenment from the best source. She would know, as a cousin to both the Duke and Blanche of Lancaster. I thought my query innocuous enough.

‘So they say.’ Lady Alice glanced in my direction but without suspicion.

‘I did not know. I was too young, I suppose.’

I had been sent, by Queen Philippa, to take up a position in Duchess Blanche’s household in the months following her marriage to the Duke, when I was barely ten years old. If there had been gossip, I had not understood the implications.

A blast of the horn from John Tyas, the herald suitably puffed-up in Lancaster livery, a nod from the Duke and they rode out, stillness finally settling round us. So Blanche had initially repulsed him. But the Duke had obviously refused to take no for an answer from the woman he had loved. He had persisted, wooed her and won her.

But why had he placed me beside Duchess Blanche? He clearly did not love me in the same overwhelming manner. Lust, perhaps. Were not all men subject to bouts of uncontrolled desire?

‘Why would any woman refuse to wed him?’ Lady Alice mused, picking up the conversation as if there had been no hiatus—something she often did. ‘It seems to me that he has every prerequisite for a husband. Exceptional features, grace, nobility, courtesy…as well as wealth and royal blood and all that implies.’ There appeared the faintest sneer on her lips. ‘Constanza of Castile was quick to take up the offer.’

‘So why did she?’

‘Because Constanza wants the Duke to win back Castile for her and—’