by K. E. Martin
Aghast, I asked at once after Margaret and was informed that the mistress was bearing up but was seeing no one until her husband had been laid to rest. Realising that the fraught man had pressing concerns and urgently desired to be rid of us, we beat a hasty retreat from that place of grief. We took the bed cover with us, estimating that it would not be tactful to leave it under the present circumstances.
My head reeling with this new development, I gave Matthew a few coins and directed him to find some dinner at the tavern we had frequented with Will a few weeks earlier. Then I rode directly to the Minster and knelt before the altar in the Lady Chapel. There I remained some long moments as I struggled to compose my thoughts and then, when I was calm, I proceeded to swear three solemn promises with the Blessed Virgin as my witness.
Firstly, I vowed to enquire at all the religious houses in Caen until I located the one my mother had entered when Blanche and I were eight. If I succeeded in finding it, and if she lived yet, mayhap I could persuade her to explain her decision to keep Blanche but abandon me when we were babes.
Secondly, now that my beloved Margaret was so suddenly and unexpectedly a widow, I vowed I would do everything within my power to make her my wife. Only since losing her had I come to understand how much she meant to me and I was not about to squander this unlooked for second chance at happiness. Though I knew my foolish reluctance to wed her had left her both wounded and angered, I prayed that in time she would find forgiveness for me. With luck, perhaps then she would rediscover the love I knew she had once felt for me.
And thirdly, with granite in my heart I vowed I would not rest until I had found the means to make Sir Stephen Plaincourt and Anthony, Earl Rivers suffer for the murder of young Geoffrey. This I would do, however long it might take, for the sake of my friend Dickon whose sense of morality was outraged by the crime, for the boy himself whose short life had been filled with pain and misery, but perhaps most of all for my dead sister who to my mind at least, had been another victim of the Plaincourt Manor affair.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to a number of people for their interest in this project. Richard Fitzgeorge-Parker, Vicky Gwilliam, Bea Keen, Anita Lee and Eva Offord took the time to read the manuscript and share their thoughts with me. Their feedback was immensely helpful and encouraging although it hardly needs to be said that any flaws are entirely my own responsibility.
I’d like to thank the lovely Laura Hirst at Pen & Sword for being consistently positive and helpful and my copy editor Debbie Ambrose for her diligence.
Finally, two people lived this story every step of the way with me – my husband Alastair and daughter Amy. To them I can only reiterate what they already know, that I couldn’t have done it without their love and support.