Paula Marshall - The Deserted Bride

Drew rose and held his goblet high. “With all my heart, my good sir. I give you Good Queen Bess and the Protestant Faith. Drink up, I beg you.” He threw his handsome head back and drained his goblet to the lees.

The whole room echoed him, but Walter had not finished. He called on the servitor to refill his goblet, saying, “Again with your permission, my lord, I ask that the company may now be allowed to toast both you and your good lady, who has guarded Atherington’s interests so bravely on your behalf.”

Now, what could he say to that, but, “Most excellent and all good cheer to you, sir. I will allow your toast—but only if you will omit any salutation to me so that I may be allowed to drink to my lady wife also.”

A hum of delight ran round the table. Some of Atherington’s people, watching their new lord, had feared that he and his lady might be at odds, but such a statement cleared their minds of worry. As for Drew’s followers, including Charles, they were noting with some amusement that their master was using his notorious charm to win over his new subjects.

Bess, somewhat nonplussed by Drew’s apparent change of heart, smiled up at him as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek before he led the company in the toast to her. “Is this reconciliation, my lord? Or have you some other aim in mind?”

Oh, she was a clever minx, his wife! She did not trust him in the least—as he did not trust her. He whispered in her ear as he sat down again, “It is not to Atherington’s benefit for your people to think that we are out of humour with one another—even if we are. Smile, my lady wife, as I do—and thus we make our world happy. We may pursue our real ends when we are alone together.”

Alone together! The mere thought of it had Bess quailing inwardly. No doubt about it, he would be the terrier and she would be the rat. But if so, why, as well as fear, did she feel a strange exhilaration? It was as though she had never lived until she had met him. She was on fire—and knew not why. She only knew that her husband was looking at her strangely, his blue eyes growing larger and larger as they drew nearer and nearer to her.

Panic rose in Bess’s breast. She was sailing into unknown waters, a mariner lost in the steep Atlantic stream of which the poets wrote. To break his spell, deliberately woven, she was sure, to snare her, she turned away from him to see her great hound, Pompey, sitting up before one of the arras, his liquid eyes begging her to feed him.

“Oh, Pompey,” Bess exclaimed, “I have quite forgot you in this hubbub.” She snatched a gnawed beef bone from the great platter before her, turned and tossed it to him, anything to escape her husband’s compelling eyes. Pompey, snarling, leapt upon it, and laying it before her, began to worry at it.

“The hound which licked me yesterday, I suppose,” offered Drew smoothly, showing no sign that he had been thwarted in his desire to bend his wilful wife to his will. A line fit for a poet to use, he thought—so many meanings were there in it.

“Aye, husband, and a faithful one. He honoured you, for until yesterday he chose to like none but myself.”

The moment she had spoken she wished she had not made such an admission, for he pounced on it immediately. “An omen, think you, wife?”

Before Bess could answer him, Pompey picked up the bone, now meatless, and trotted over to lay it at Drew’s feet.

“Oh, traitor hound,” sighed Bess softly, “to transfer your affections with such speed.” As though he had understood what she said, Pompey rose, laid his head in her lap—and then promptly returned to worship at Drew’s feet again.

“They say,” remarked Bess, as platters of sweetmeats and sweet wine to drink with them were laid on the table before them, “that dogs can see into the true hearts of men and women. What does he see in yours, husband, I wonder? A pity he cannot tell me.” The eyes she turned on him were mirthful and artless.

Drew retaliated by plucking a small cake from the platter and popping it into her mouth, not his, so that she could not soon answer him.

“That for your silence, wife. He would say only that he approves of me—or that he knows his true master when he meets him. Nay, do not try to answer me with another witticism, for your well of wisdom will soon run dry if you draw on it too often!”

And now his eyes were mocking hers again, and the excitement which boiled inside Bess rose higher and higher. Did he know what he was doing to her? Of course, he did, and it was done with an end in view; to subdue her, to bend her to his mental as well as to his bodily will—for was not that seduction’s aim?

Unable to speak, Bess stared at him. He stared back. She swallowed, and the action set her long white throat working after a fashion, which, had she but known it, was seducing him.

Bess shivered. Suddenly she was frightened of the powerful attraction he had for her. Unused to the company of young men, let alone handsome and powerful young men, she had never learned those arts which women used, either to attract them, or dissuade them. So far Mother Eve had helped her, but she was approaching dangerous territory where that alone would not be sufficient to save her from him.

Save her! Almost hysterical laughter bubbled up inside Bess. Nothing could save her, for was he not her husband who might do as he pleased with her?

And would.

Any hope that he might be repelled by her as he had been ten years ago, and might not wish to touch her, let alone make love to her, had disappeared. It was difficult to know what he really thought of her—except, of course, that yesterday, not knowing who she was, he had addressed her in most flattering terms—and then tried to seduce her! But what did he think of her now that he knew that she was his wife?

And what did she truly want from him?

Bess swallowed again, and Drew looked away. Against everything which he might have expected as he had thought of this day on the way to Atherington, the wife he had delayed meeting for so long was rousing him simply by sitting beside him—and defying him! What had Philip Sidney once said to him? “There is more pleasure to be gained from a woman who can meet and match you, than in one who is meekly resigned to endure whatever you have to offer her.”

Drew grinned to himself. Philip should meet his wife. They would make a good pair. On second thoughts, perhaps not. He wanted this high-spirited termagant for himself to tame—and to test whether Philip was right in his assessment of the extra pleasure to be gained from mastering such a skittish filly. Except that Philip had not said mastering, he had said meeting.

“Silent, sir?” queried Bess who had just finished eating her extremely sticky sweetmeat. She was beginning to learn that in an untried maiden desire and fear went hand in hand. She had asked herself what she wanted from him, and the answer was, she did not yet know. But the desire to tease him, to see the blue eyes burn at her, was strong in her. For if she could provoke him, why, then she had power over him.

“I was thinking,” Drew announced, “of my friend Philip Sidney, who is a courtier, a scholar and a poet.”

“A paragon, then,” quipped Bess naughtily.

“Indeed,” returned Drew, who was beginning to realise how much he was enjoying this lengthy sparring match with her, carried out, as it was, in public. “He has a high regard for the capacities of women, which I assure you, is rare at the Court, or anywhere else in England for that matter.”

“No need to tell me that, sir. Although we here at Atherington are not so dismissive of women’s understanding.”

“So I see, wife, for it is plain that you have your Council eating out of your hand. I am curious to know how you have accomplished that.”