The Widow's Kiss

by Jane Feather

  Guinevere laughed ruefully. “Keeping it was a laborious task. The girls did best at it, I believe.”

  “Aye. Henry has really taken a fancy to them. They’re always so natural with him. They neither flatter him nor shrink from him.”

  He picked up the parchment again and said slowly, “Which brings me to this.”

  “It bears the king's seal,” Guinevere said quietly, preparing herself for whatever was coming.

  “Aye. The king has seen fit to confer the earldom of Kendal upon me.”

  Guinevere smiled. “That's hardly a matter for such gravity. It seems rather to be a matter for congratulation.”

  Hugh inclined his head. “Perhaps. But as we know, what Henry gives, he can take away as the whim moves him. I’ve accepted gracefully of course, and we’ll see what happens next. But my real news concerns Pen.”

  “Yes?”

  “Henry wishes her to take up residence in the Lady Mary's household. It's a considerable honor, now that Mary's made her submission and is restored to the king's favor, if not to legitimacy.” He hesitated and when Guinevere made no response continued, “Pen's of the right age for such a move.”

  Still Guinevere said nothing. It was true that Pen at thirteen was at the age when the children of the nobility frequently took up residence in other households where they could make advantageous alliances. Robin, for the last three years, had been in the household of Henry Grey, the marquis of Dorset, whose wife was the king's niece. It was a good place for the new earl of Kendal's son and it would be a similar honor for the new earl's stepdaughter to enter the service of the king's daughter. The king would take a particular interest in Pen and would consider it his duty to promote a good marriage for her.

  But it was not what Guinevere had wanted for her daughter. Pen was surely not ready to find her own way through the devious scheming, the plotting, the lies, the enticements and dangers of life at court. How would she avoid the pitfalls? How would she know who was true and who was false?

  “Can we say no?”

  Hugh pursed his lips. “At the risk of offending the king's majesty, yes.”

  “Not a risk worth taking,” Guinevere murmured more to herself than to Hugh.

  “No,” he agreed. “But don’t forget that for as long as we stay in London Pen will never be more than a few miles from us. She’ll be free to come and visit as often as she likes. And she’ll see much of Robin at court. He has some experience now in the ways of that life. He’ll be able to help her clear a path for herself.”

  “If she doesn’t wish to go, then I’ll not press her,” Guinevere stated, getting to her feet, her pale silk skirts settling around her. “And the king's favor may go to hell and back. We’ll return to Mallory Hall.”

  “If that's what you want, then we will. But at least ask Pen … and without prejudice,” he added with a half smile. “Let her make up her own mind.”

  “I always do!”

  “You think you do. But Pen can read your mind and she always wants to please you.”

  Guinevere considered this and had to admit it was true. And she knew she couldn’t stand in Pen's way just because she couldn’t bear to lose her.

  “You be the one to tell her then,” she said. “When you’ve talked to her send her to me in my workroom.”

  She left him to await his stepdaughter under the trellis.

  Half an hour later as she sat in her workroom, the door ajar, an open book in front of her, she heard her daughter's light step in the corridor outside.

  “Come in, Pen.”

  Pen came in, quickly, gracefully, and stood in her gown of rose damask poised just inside the door, like a butterfly on a rose Guinevere thought, and then she saw the suppressed excitement in Pen's face and her heart beat fast with dismay. But she smiled and beckoned the girl in.

  “Did Lord Hugh tell you?” Pen asked, coming up to the table where her mother sat.

  Guinevere nodded. “And what do you think of the king's offer?”

  Pen looked searchingly at Guinevere as if trying to read her mind and Guinevere remained quietly smiling, offering no hint of her thoughts.

  “I think it would be very exciting,” Pen said, her hazel eyes asparkle. She clasped her hands tightly. “I think it's time for me to do this, Mama, don’t you?”

  With a stab of loss Guinevere recognized that her daughter had made up her mind without any recourse to her mother's opinion. It was time to accept that Pen was all but grown-up.

  “If you think it's time, sweeting, then it's time.” Guinevere rose from her chair and came around the table. She put her arm around Pen and held her close. “I shall miss you, but you won’t be far away.”

  “No, and Lord Hugh says I shall be able to come and visit often. And Robin's in the marquis of Dorset's service and they are great friends of the Lady Mary's so I shall have my brother to guide me and stand my friend.”

  Guinevere kissed the top of Pen's head. Robin would take care of his stepsister. Their youthful infatuation had died a natural death but it had been replaced with a close and abiding friendship. Pen would never lack for comfort and support while Robin was near her.

  “You should tell Pippa yourself,” she said. “It will hit her hard.”

  Some of the light left Pen's eyes. “I shall miss her most terribly. Even all her chattering.”

  “Just think of all the questions she's going to ask you whenever you come to visit.”

  They both turned to the door at Hugh's easy tones. He stood foursquare, regarding them with smiling understanding that nonetheless held a hint of anxiety as his gaze rested upon Guinevere.

  Pen's responding smile was a little misty. “She’ll talk my ears off. But I expect I’ll be glad of it.”

  “I’m sure you will be. You’d better find her now before she bursts with impatience.” He came towards her and kissed her brow.

  Pen nodded and lifted her face for her mother's kiss. “You really don’t mind, Mama?”

  “I do mind,” Guinevere said. “But that's different from saying that I don’t want you to do what's right for you. If I had my way I’d keep you as a child forever, but the world doesn’t work like that.” She caressed the delicate curve of Pen's cheek. “But we shall be here, Hugh and I. You’ll not be alone. Remember that.”

  “I know that.” Pen stood on tiptoe to embrace her mother. For a moment they clung to each other, then Guinevere gently drew back, but her hands remained resting on the girl's narrow shoulders.

  Pen closed her own hands over her mother's then said firmly, “I’ll go and talk to Pippa now.” She closed the door behind her as she left.

  “A new beginning.” Guinevere turned towards Hugh. He held out his arms and she went into his embrace, her head nestled beneath his chin as he held her until he knew she was strong again.

  “A new beginning for the earl and countess of Kendal.” Hugh grinned down at her and the solemnity of the last minutes dissipated. “Should I perhaps give you the house and estates at Kendal as a belated marriage settlement? Since the original settlements were somewhat one-sided.”

  Guinevere's eyes gleamed. “You mean now that Cromwell is gone there's no need to pretend that you stole all my assets?”

  “I would prefer shared,” he murmured, lifting her chin on his forefinger.

  “Well, since in reality that seems to be the case, I am content to leave matters well alone,” she conceded. “That pot has been stirred sufficiently I believe.”

  “There is one that has not.” His eyes narrowed as he licked a finger and traced her mouth with its tip.

  She caught his meaning instantly. “Ah,” she said. “Now that pot can never be stirred sufficiently.” She sucked the finger deep into her mouth.

  Hugh leaned over her shoulder and threw the bolt on the door.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JANE FEATHER is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of The Least Likely Bride, The Accidental Bride, The Hostage Bride, A Valentine Wedding, The Emer
ald Swan, and many other historical romances. She was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in the New Forest, in the south of England. She began her writing career after she and her family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1981. She now has over six million copies of her books in print.

  Jane Feather's “Kiss” trilogy continues with

  TO KISS A SPY

  A Bantam paperback

  Read on for a preview of Pen's story….

  High Wycombe, England, July 1550

  The attenuated cry of an infant pierced the black miasma of exhaustion. The woman on the bed was slumped motionless against pillows, her eyes closed, her skin the color of old parchment. At the baby's cry her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open and she sank once more into the merciful oblivion.

  Not one of the three other women in the stifling chamber glanced toward the bed. The baby's mother didn’t interest them. They worked quickly and in silence and when they had done what had to be done they left the chamber soundlessly, closing the door behind them.

  More than three hours passed before Pen emerged from her deep stupor. She was soaked in sweat. The room was like a furnace, the windows tight closed, the fire blazing in the deep hearth. She heard whispers and with a soft moan tried to raise herself on the pillows, but her body ached as if she’d been racked, and she had barely sufficient strength to open her eyes.

  “Ah, you are awake.” It was the voice of her mother-in-law. Effortfully Pen opened her eyes. The dowager countess of Bryanston looked down at her daughter-in-law. Her hard brown eyes were dispassionate as stones, her mouth a thin line above a heavy jutting chin. She made no attempt to disguise her contemptuous dislike of the frail young woman on the bed. The young woman who was the widow of Lady Bryanston's elder son. The widow who had just labored for some twenty anguished hours to bring forth her husband's posthumous son, who from the moment of his birth would inherit his father's titles and estates.

  “The baby,” Pen said, her voice coming from a great distance through her cracked lips. “Where is my baby?”

  Lady Bryanston said nothing for a moment, and there was a rustle of skirts as another woman joined her at the bedside.

  Frightened now, Pen gazed up at the two faces bent over her. Her heart felt squeezed. “My baby? Where's my baby?” Panic rose in her voice.

  “He was stillborn,” Lady Bryanston said without expression. “He was born early, four weeks too soon. He did not live.”

  “But … but I heard him cry,” Pen said. “I heard him.”

  Her mother-in-law shook her head. “You were unconscious when we pulled him from you with the forceps. You heard nothing unless ’twas in your dreams.” She turned from the bed with a dismissive gesture and left the chamber.

  Pen closed her eyes on the tears that filled them, on the despairing weakness that swamped her anew. Since Philip's death she had lived for the child growing in her womb. Philip's child, the child of their love.

  “Let me make you more comfortable, madam.” A brisk voice accompanied firm hands, and Pen kept her eyes shut as the woman cleansed her, changed her smock, pulled from beneath her the wadded sheets that had protected the feather mattress.

  Pen wanted her mother. It was a childlike want, an all-consuming need. Her mother was on her way, making the long journey into High Wycombe from Mallory Hall in Derbyshire to be at her daughter's confinement, but the baby had come early and the countess of Kendal had not yet arrived. Instead, Pen had endured the cold ministrations of her mother-in-law, and the women, all strangers, that Lady Bryanston had appointed to assist at the birth.

  And it had all been for nothing. Those dreadful hours had been for nothing.

  But she had heard the baby cry. The baby had entered the world alive.

  Pen opened her eyes and fixed her attendant with a clear and commanding eye. “I wish to see my son's body,” she stated, pushing aside the cup of warmed wine the woman held to her lips.

  “Madam, he was buried immediately,” the woman said. “In this heat, it's not wise to keep a body unburied.” She hurried to the window and drew back the heavy velvet curtains. The pitiless midday sun poured into the already sweltering chamber.

  Pen had endured the last weeks of her pregnancy through one of the hottest summers in memory. Bodies did not remain unburied. Pen slipped down in the bed and closed her eyes again. She opened them immediately at the sound of the door latch lifting followed by a heavy tread approaching the bed.

  Miles Bryanston, her husband's younger brother, stood beside the bed. His eyes—malicious, brown, cold—so like his mother's, regarded her with a degree of complacency. “Sister, I’m sorry you have had such ill luck,” he declared.

  “ ’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good,” Pen returned with a cynical smile that despite her weakness came easily. Miles was now the earl of Bryanston. Red-faced, heavily built, thick-witted, strong as an ox, the absolute antithesis of his elder brother. Philip had been thin and quick, but physically frail. A dreamer, a poet, a musician. Everything his brother was not.

  And Pen had loved him.

  She turned her head aside, away from her brother-in-law's smug countenance.

  She had heard her baby cry. She had.

  London, December 1552

  What I propose is a matter of some refinement, my dear sir. A scheme of some complexity.” Antoine de Noailles paused to lift a silver chalice to his lips. He drank with an assessing frown, then nodded his satisfaction and gestured to his companion that he drink from his own chalice. He waited to see if the wine found favor with his guest before he continued speaking. “Yes, a complex scheme, a two-pronged scheme. Very neat.” Noailles smiled happily. “One perfectly suited to your own particularly delicate methods, Owen.”

  Owen d’Arcy contented himself with a raised eyebrow. Antoine de Noailles, the French ambassador to the English court of the young king Edward VI, delighted in taking his time when revealing to his master spy an intrigue that he considered especially ingenious.

  Owen d’Arcy was a tall man, lithe and slender, and when necessary as deadly as the rapier in the chased silver scabbard at his waist. His black eyes were never still, they missed nothing, and the fertile brain behind them ceaselessly absorbed, sorted, and acted upon the information they transmitted. He knew now without being told that the ambassador was about to drop a choice plum in his lap. So he sipped his wine and waited.

  “I believe that the king is dying,” Noailles said calmly. “His Privy Council thinks to keep the true state of the young man's health a state secret, but …” He shrugged and smiled at this absurdity. “The issue, of course, is what happens on the boy's death.”

  “The crown goes to Mary,” Owen said, his voice surprisingly dark and rich with a musical lilt to it.

  “It certainly should,” the ambassador agreed. “King Henry so decreed it. After Edward, if the boy has no issue, Mary is next in line, Elizabeth is second.” He paused and again Owen waited with no sign of impatience.

  “I fear, however, that our friend Northumberland, the Grand Master of the realm, has some other plans,” the ambassador said in musing tone.

  The two men were standing before the fire in a small paneled chamber in the ambassador's residence at Whitehall. Outside the clerestory window snow was falling softly, dulling the ceaseless sound of traffic along Whitehall, the clop of hooves, the clang of iron wheels on the cobbles, the shouts of barrow boys.

  The chamber was lit only by the fire and a many-branched candelabrum on the long table that stood against the wall opposite the window. In the shadowy gloom the ambassador's scarlet gown glowed in vivid contrast to his companion's black velvet, and when he moved his plump hands the firelight caught the jeweled rings on his fingers in flashes of green and red and turquoise.

  Owen left the fire and refilled his chalice from the flagon on the table. “Do we know what Northumberland is planning?”

  Noailles extended his own chalice to be filled. “That, my dear Owen, brings us to the crux of the matter.”
/>   “Ah.” Owen tipped the flagon and watched the red stream of wine arc into the silver vessel. “This is where I come in?”

  “Precisely.” Noailles turned back to the fire. “There's a certain woman who attends Princess Mary who is particularly well-placed to provide us with the most intimate information about what goes on in the princess's household. She is a trusted confidante and a party to Mary's thoughts and intentions.”

  Noailles glanced over his shoulder at Owen, who still stood beside the table in the flickering candlelight, his black eyes sharp and alert, belying the impassivity of his countenance.

  “You could perhaps become … shall we say acquainted … with the lady,” Noailles suggested. “It's a task most suited to your talents, I believe.” He chuckled, his round face shining.

  Owen did not respond to the ambassador's amusement. He said simply, “And the other prong to this attack?” He took a sip of wine, regarding the ambassador thoughtfully over the lip of the chalice.

  Noailles beamed. “Ah, yes. Here lies the beauty of it. The lady is closely connected to a man, her stepbrother in fact, who is a trusted friend of the duke of Suffolk and his family. I hardly need tell you that Suffolk is an intimate of Northumberland's. Their interests lie closely bound, and whatever Northumberland is planning Suffolk will be a part of it. ’Tis not unreasonable to assume that Robin of Beaucaire is privy to some of their secrets.”

  “And we assume that the lady in question exchanges confidences with her stepbrother,” Owen stated, setting down his chalice. He walked to the window, his short black velvet gown swinging from his shoulders.

  “They are very intimate and they spend a great deal of time together when they’re both in London.”

  “As happens to be the case now, I presume.” Owen looked down on the street below. The snow was falling heavily.

  “Yes, both Princess Mary and Suffolk are in their London residences for the Christmas festivities. I understand that Edward ordered his sister's presence. She’ll find it hard to celebrate a Christmas mass under the king's eye.”