The Scandalous Duchess

by Anne O'Brien

‘No, John,’ I spoke at last. ‘No more waiting. If I had intended to say no to you, I would not have come to your chamber and made myself the gossip of choice of the whole household here at Hertford. Take me to bed, John. Take me to bed, my dear love, and heal all my wounds.’

  No, we were not as young as we were, but neither were we old. Less supple perhaps, less beautiful to the eye, so many new wounds and abrasions for John, whereas my hips and waist bore witness to the passing years. But here were so many caresses and responses to revisit, so much to recall and renew to bring us back to the pleasure we had once known in each other’s arms. I had never forgotten how the Duke could make my blood run hot, and I was not disappointed, for there was no reticence between us. How could there be? We were confident and demanding in our passion, devouring each other with infinite and exquisite slowness, before naked desire destroyed all self-control. My lack of breath had nothing to do with age. Nor for him. Until finally lack of stamina dictated that we rest, my head cushioned on his breast.

  ‘Would you not look for a younger woman in your bed?’ I sighed with happiness, daring him to agree.

  ‘You are my younger woman.’

  Still that last little seed of fear remained. He was not his own man. Would England claim him again and snatch him from me?

  ‘John—if you regret this, if you turn away from me again, I don’t think I can live with it.’

  ‘I have no regrets. I will never let you go.’

  His kisses made me weep.

  ‘Must we confess?’ I remembered the heart-wrenching confessions. How could I confess a sin when I would repeat it again within the day?

  ‘If you wish it.’ He smoothed the tears away. ‘But you are my true love. I cannot believe that God will punish us for this. We harm no one. We love in true spirit.’

  I sniffed, and smiled, still disbelieving that we shared the same small space, breathed the same air and would never be parted again.

  The Duke leaned forward, and sniffed my hair. ‘It smells of…?’

  ‘Of ambergris. Joan’s perfume.’ I laughed as I realised. ‘It is an aphrodisiac, so it is said.’

  ‘Shall we prove it?’

  And, oh, it was. It worked its magic on all our senses. Or perhaps we did not really need it. I would have loved him on a bed of straw in my stable at Kettlethorpe.

  ‘You will be my love. But circumspectly,’ he said when he could. ‘We will not be reckless again. We will not ride through the streets together.’

  There was nothing circumspect in our behaviour for the next hour.

  We were renewed. Reborn. We gave permission for our minds to touch, to slide, to enmesh one into the other when we were parted, as we gave sanction for our bodies to become one again when time and duty smiled on us. It was a strange moment of transition from estrangement to reconciliation, marked by tentative steps at first.

  We had hurt each other. How cruel the wounds we had inflicted on each other. Now we had to learn to step together again, in trust, in renewed loyalty. In harmony, picking out the same notes from the troubadours’ songs of requited love.

  ‘I regret our time apart with every drop of blood in my body,’ the Duke said.

  ‘It was a living death,’ I replied. ‘Without hope. Without happiness.’

  But now, grasping our permission to bloom, our love would not be gainsaid. Soft as a blessing, fervent as a nun’s prayer, it healed our wounds.

  ‘You are the music that stirs my heart to weep at the beauty of it,’ he said.

  ‘And you are the succulent coney that enlivens my winter frumenty.’ I would not allow him to be solemn for long.

  ‘And there was I thinking that you preferred venison,’ he growled, lips against my throat.

  ‘Only when I have a rich patron to provide it.’

  ‘Patron?’ His brows lifted splendidly.

  ‘Or lover.’

  ‘So I should hope. Now why is it that you remind me of a plump roast partridge?’ And there was the gleam that I had once thought never to see again.

  As his brows winged at my culinary flight of fancy, and his hand slid over my hip, my blood warmed and my heart beat hard. I relented, and gave him kind for kind. ‘You, my dear man, are the sweet verse that awakens my mind to love’s glory.’

  Our souls were replete in each other, as smoothly close-knit as the feathers on the breast of a collared dove.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Why is it not in the human condition to be satisfied with what we have?

  Fear creeps in to spoil and destroy, like the first ravages of the moth in a fine wool tapestry, impossible to distinguish by the naked eye until the damage is done and the glorious hunting scene is punctured by as many holes as a sieve. So fear crept into my consciousness.

  What if my lover, my dearest friend, my only heart’s desire, the glorious apple of my very critical eye, were to wed again? What if the Duke of Lancaster should take another Duchess to his marital bed?

  It was a thought that I despised, but one that kept me brooding company. I could see no reason at all why he should not. It would be good political strategy on the part of King Richard to arrange it. To insist on it, if he were of a mind to exert his authority over his family.

  Duchess Constanza was dead. Constanza who had, in her eyes, failed to achieve her life’s wish, had died. We had not foreseen it. How would we? There had been no rumour of ill-health, only of the end when it came, when in March at Leicester Castle, surrounded by her Castilian ladies, Constanza breathed her last of English air.

  In Lincoln, I had known of her death before the Duke, for he was in France concluding a long-awaited, four-year truce with the French. What a blow it had been for him to return to this loss, full of the success of his diplomacy, and be plunged into funerary rights. Even though they had lived apart since the abandoning of the Castilian campaign, yet his respect for her, his Duchess for more than twenty years, was great. He was not a man to be left unmoved, and in moments of honesty his conscience troubled him. He had not always made life easy for her.

  He had not talked to me of it and I was too careful to step mindlessly where I might not be wanted. My discretion these days was a thing of wonder.

  But now the Duke was free, had been free for four months. In excellent health in mind and body, he would be an asset to any plans Richard had for a European alliance. Would the King put pressure on the Duke to wed again at his dictates? I imagined that Richard already had such a plan in his mind, so that before too many more months, the Duke would be participating in a third nuptial celebration.

  I could not think of that. Not yet.

  Such a prospect would bring me too much pain in a year that had seemed to bring nothing but pain. What a year of deaths it had been. Of tears and graves and mourning. A year of portents, when I had set my mind to luxuriate in my restored happiness, even during John’s absence in France, but happiness is not in the gift of Man when God takes his due. For a year in which contentment should have enfolded me, blessed me, I spent an unconscionable length of time on my knees. And so did the Duke. Death had blown in without warning, as disturbing as a summer storm.

  Now I knelt in Westminster Abbey with the royal court, for Queen Anne was dead from the plague, which took no account of her rank or her mere twenty-eight years. Richard, unhinged almost to madness, had ordered the rooms of the palace at Sheen where she had breathed her last to be razed to the ground.

  I allowed my eyes to rest on the rigid shoulder-blades of the Duke. Straight backed, the Duke was suffering from grief too, and not only for the passing of Duchess Constanza. The wound of desperate loss was made so much worse for him for Mary, dear, sweet Mary, Henry’s child bride, was dead at Hertford with her seventh child—a daughter, Philippa—in her arms. I was there with her, and heartbroken. Henry was inconsolable. Had he not sent her a basket of delicate fish which she loved to help her through the pregnancy? And now she was dead.

  What a crippling homecoming for the Duke, to bury Constanza and Ma
ry at Leicester, within a day of each other.

  The ceremony was drawing to a close. Ahead, Richard stood, looking distracted. Was he already drawing up new marriage contracts for himself and for the Duke? All I knew of high policy was that Richard had confirmed my lord as Duke of Aquitaine and that the Duke was already preparing to sail to enforce his authority there. What if he came back with a wife, some Aquitainian beauty, as he had once returned with Constanza?

  There were rumours. There were always rumours.

  Be sensible, I abjured myself. Rumours can be false as often as they are true.

  My abjuration had no noticeable effect.

  ‘Do you intend to remarry? Will you return with a new bride?’

  My demands were made as soon as I stepped across the threshold of the Duke’s record chamber at Leicester on this eve of departure. I had barely taken time to greet my son John whom I had passed between stable and Great Hall.

  The Duke looked up but did not stir from where he sat. Demands—other than mine—lay heavily on him, as I could see. He was harassed.

  ‘And a good day to you, Lady de Swynford,’ he growled.

  I strode up to stand before the long trestle table that habitually occupied the centre of the room. It was covered with documents from one end to the other.

  ‘I hear that Richard has a new marriage arranged for you. Has he?’

  ‘And who would be the fortunate lady?’ The pen was thrown aside. Elbows planted on the table, the Duke rested his chin on his hands and looked me in the eye.

  ‘I have no idea. Would you not know before me?’

  ‘I expect I would. Why would I want a wife when I have you to hound me?’

  ‘I am allowed to hound you. I am your love.’ I smiled with deceptive sweetness. ‘I am told that you intend to wed again. For an alliance.’

  ‘I intend to go to Aquitaine. If I can ever manage to get the fleet together and the forces to accompany me. And Richard has his mind set on his own new wife rather than on mine.’

  I was almost intrigued enough to ask who she might be, but would not be distracted. He was short on temper, but then so was I. Short on patience too. I saw documents, lists and tallies under his hand. In the circumstances he might wish I wasn’t there. I hunched a shoulder as I moved to occupy one of the stools set along the wall, as if I were a clerk waiting instructions.

  ‘When will you return?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I have to get there first.’

  ‘When do you go?’

  ‘Next week. From Plymouth if I’m allowed to get on with it.’

  I breathed out, no better at bearing the looming absence than I had twenty years before, for that was at the heart of my ill-humour. I would be alone, without knowledge of him, for as many months as it would take. There were plenty who would try their hand again, to rid the world of the new Duke of Aquitaine, with a cup of poison. Or a hidden dagger.

  The Duke stacked the documents into a pile, then the endless lists with brisk irritability, before tunnelling his fingers through his hair. The sun highlighted more silver than I had recalled. And I sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, quite as irritable as he. It did not sound like an apology.

  For what?’

  ‘For disturbing you when you might wish to be left alone. But I had to come.’

  He stared at me. I knew he would wait until I had confessed all.

  ‘And for thinking that you would marry again without telling me.’ I scowled a little. ‘I still think you might.’

  The Duke thrust aside the papers, stood and stepped round the table and in one fluid movement, lifting me to my feet, took me in his arms. He could still move fast enough to take me by surprise. Especially when I did not try very hard to escape.

  ‘If I take a wife, you will be the first to know.’ He kissed me gently. Then more fiercely, after which I smoothed the line between his eyes with my finger. ‘Does that settle your ill-temper?’

  ‘A little.’ I was almost won over.

  ‘Where will you go?’ he asked.

  ‘To Lincoln. It suits me very well. Send word to me when you can.’

  ‘You know that I will.’ He kissed me again. Then, ‘Pray for me,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘When do I ever not?’ His urgency had surprised me.

  ‘Pray that Richard isn’t swayed into seeing me as his enemy who has an eye to royal power. Pray for me and for Richard, Katherine. He’s not to be trusted in where he takes his advice. Who will advise him to have that good sense when I am away?’

  There was no answer to the question. ‘I will pray.’

  ‘And pray that Henry can keep his head and not provoke Richard to something outrageous, from which there is no way back.’

  ‘I will.’

  For a long moment he rested his cheek against mine so that we stood, breathing slowly together, his arms holding me firmly against him, and I allowed myself to hold fast to what would be a precious memory in the coming months.

  ‘I feel set about with worries for this kingdom,’ he said at last.

  ‘Then I will pray all the harder.’ I smiled in an attempt to lift the burden by whatever small amount I could manage. ‘If you kiss me. And at least pretend for the next few hours that you have time for me.’

  He did. He did both.

  Yet next morning when I left him to his arrangements, his embrace was perfunctory and abstracted. I would also pray that he did not return with a new bride of European importance. I could withstand it. But I would not like it.

  It was January with snow on the ground yet the Duke, new returned from Aquitaine, had braved the roads to come to Lincoln with an impressive retinue. This no longer stirred any surprise in me, although his choice of travelling weather did. So what was afoot? I surveyed his arrival most deliberately from the vantage point of my parlour in the Chancery. There was the Duke, of course, swathed in heavily furred cloak and hat. A tight knot of soldiers and a sergeant-at-arms. A clerk, his confessor, a master of horse and sundry others of squires and pages.

  My heart was thundering beneath the heavy volume of my houppelande.

  And then my heart steadied. There was no female figure. He did not have a new wife with him. He was alone and here with me at last, filling my vision completely, and I was smiling when I drew him into my parlour, all the niggling worries of my days smoothed out like a new wool cloth. Once alone, he duly kissed my cheeks and lips in formal acknowledgement, and sank into the chair I pushed him towards. I did not bother him with personal questions or demands. It always took a little time for us to step across the divide that the months apart had created. The moments of intimacy would present themselves eventually, and would be sweeter for the delay

  ‘Katherine.’

  That was all he said. It was all he needed to say to restore the bond that held us after a full year of separation. His eyes, full of light, full of love, rested on my face.

  ‘John,’ I replied in kind, pressing my palm against his shoulder, then moving quietly to pour ale. He drank deeply from the cup, before placing it on the hearth, stretching out his legs to cross his ankles before the fire. His boots steamed, so did his travelling clothes, filling the room with the pungency of horse and leather and wet wool.

  ‘It’s good to be still for more than two minutes together.’

  I sank to a cushion on the settle opposite, prepared to wait.

  Briefly his eyes closed, his face such a mask of weariness that my hands clenched hard around my own cup. It was easy to forget how the years passed and added to our tally of age, but that was all forgotten when he opened his eyes and smiled at me. They were keen and bright, not weary at all. The austere lines of his face softened into the handsome man I knew so well.

  ‘Well?’ I asked in response to his smile, returning it. I had missed him so very much. Everything in my world tilted back to normality.

  John leaned forward, arms braced on his thighs, looking across to me. ‘Do you know what I most admire in you?’ />
  ‘My intelligence?’ I responded promptly. My hands relaxed in my lap. This was certainly the man I knew.

  ‘Your intelligence is unsurpassed—but no, not that.’

  ‘My hair.’

  ‘Not that either. Nor can I see it since it’s covered with that little padded creation that I understand has become the rage. I like the beads. You look like a Twelfth Night gift.’ Those eyes gleamed as they had done in the past, dispelling for ever the image of age and death. ‘I’ll take pleasure in winding your hair round my wrist later and show you how much I admire it.’

  I remained suitably stern. ‘Then it must be that you admire my way with land drainage and poor crops and tenant squabbles.’

  He laughed. ‘Never! You’ll never solve the drainage problems.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to tell me.’

  ‘It is your ineffable patience. And your generosity of spirit.’

  I tilted my head against the high back of the settle. If only he knew. How often had I run to my window, drawn by the sound of hooves? How often had I buried myself in a frenzy of paperwork to drive him from my mind when he could not be with me?

  ‘I’ve been back a month and could not come to you. You never complain.’

  ‘Agnes would not agree with you,’ I remarked drily.

  ‘Which makes your even temper even more marvellous. I was summoned to present myself at court by our illustrious King.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Ruffled feathers all round. Richard wanted my support.’ The taut line of his jaw suggested that there was something else, apart from Richard’s obtuse refusal to see the dangers that surrounded him. ‘He wants a French alliance,’ he continued. ‘A French bride perhaps.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I think that what I think no longer matters. My brother Gloucester abhors any such suggestion. Richard hopes I can persuade him, or at least hold the balance between the pair of them. They were at each other’s throats like rabid alaunts when I got there.’

  ‘Will he listen to you?’

  ‘Richard or Gloucester? Who’s to say? We all parted amicably enough, but I think my days of holding any influence over Richard are well and truly numbered. And then I went to Canterbury. A prayer before St Thomas never goes amiss.’