This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  I will name her Lorena, she thought dreamily. For my mother.

  She cradled the baby in the crook of her arm. “You must grow up beautiful—and strong, Lorena,” she murmured, cuddling the child to her. “For your father cannot give you his name, and you will have to fight the world for your birthright. I will help you.” Gently she hugged the baby. “But most of it will be up to you.”

  Then she laughed at herself for trying to counsel a newborn infant, and went deeply, peacefully to sleep with Lorena warm and pink beside her.

  It was the third of June, 1652. Outside the midnight bells were chiming in the rain.

  CHAPTER 17

  Michael bustled in the next morning, chafing because Mistress Watts had sternly denied him entrance to Lenore’s lodgings until she had been served her breakfast tray. Had he but known it, he had also waited until Mistress Daunt had completed her morning toilette. She had combed out her long, bright hair, let it fall loose around her shoulders as she fed the baby, and when she lay back it spread luxuriantly over the pillow. She had wound the long gown Lally had given her for this occasion round and round the baby to keep her feet and body toasty warm, arranged the baby in the crook of her arm for viewing, and smiled as Michael entered the room.

  He tossed his red cloak onto a chair and came and gazed at Lenore as she lay in the big bed with a kind of reverent awe. Lenore was touched by the look of wonder in his eyes. Michael had been a devoted friend, and she was positive he must have had a very bad night because of her. “Isn’t she beautiful?” she asked him, gazing fondly at Lorena.

  Michael looked at Lenore, with her red-gold hair tumbled in shimmering masses about the pillow, her skin— from the long winter and being indoors so much—pearly and sheer. He swallowed. “ Tis you who are beautiful!” he declared intensely. “Ah, Lenore, Lenore.” He sank down on his knees beside the bed. “Sometimes I think I will die of love of you!”

  Lenore looked at him in trepidation. She had known Michael loved her in a young, unformed way; that he had cherished secret thoughts about her she had long since guessed. But now to look at that woebegone cherubic countenance, flushed and earnest, and to hear his boyish voice blurting out such things. ..!

  “Michael,” she said, distressed, “you must not say such things to me—not even if you think them. You must remember that I am a married woman.”

  Though he reddened still further at this soft rebuff, Michael sturdily held his ground, impelled by desperation and by last night’s very real threat of losing her. “Gossip has it ye are not married to Geoffrey, that he leaves ye alone while he prowls the highroads with a scarf over his face, seeking coaches to plunder!” The abject pain in his voice took away the sting of his words.

  “ ’Tis true we are not legal wed in a church, Geoffrey and I,” Lenore said carefully, “but we are wed in our hearts, Michael—’tis a bond I cannot break, nor would if I could.”

  He looked so crestfallen that she reached out and touched his hand. “You are very young,” she said gently, “and when—”

  “I am older than you!” he interrupted defiantly.

  In years, perhaps, she thought, but women of his age were having babies, while he was still at his books. She sighed. “Someday you will understand. Perhaps by then you will have met a girl who means as much to you as I do to Geoffrey.”

  His voice roughened in despair. “I want no other girl!

  And you mean more to me than you do to Geoffrey! Ah, but say the word, Lenore, and I will take you away and shelter you and the babe—”

  She put gentle fingers to his lips to silence him. “These things may be thought, Michael, but they must not be said,” she told him sternly. “Your mother has great plans for you. I know, for you have told me so.”

  “I would take you home to her,” he sulked.

  And she would throw me out! thought Lenore wryly. She could well imagine the scene if young Michael showed up with the Angel of Worcester in tow—and carrying a new-born babe! “Your mother would faint at such an alliance,” she reproved him. “Michael, I am honored that you love me, but—”

  “But—you will stay with Geoffrey?” he finished for her.

  She nodded, smiling a little sadly.

  Michael sighed, got up off his knees, and dusted them off. She had the faintly amused feeling that he had been delighted to unburden himself of his feelings, but that he was also faintly relieved that she had not taken him up on his rash proposal.

  “Wouldst tell Mistress Watts that I have finished with my breakfast tray, Michael?” This small errand, she felt, would give him a chance to retire gracefully and collect himself.

  He gave her a pensive look. “I'll tell her on my way out, Lenore.”

  “Come back soon, Michael—I don’t know what I’d have done without you.” She pressed his hand, and he stood looking down at her with big reproachful eyes in his youthful cherub face, then clattered downstairs and was gone.

  Not till after he had left did she learn from Mistress Watts that he had paid the midwife. It embarrassed her that he had done so, and she was sorry she had not known so that she could thank him.

  The rain that had begun on the day of Lorena’s birth continued to drizzle down. But word reached Oxford from muddy farmers who struggled through mired roads into the city with their carts that the rains were worse to the south. There it rained steadily for days and washed out all the roads. Lenore was not surprised that Geoffrey was late in returning, for he must have found his way blocked by torrential rains that made the roads impassable.

  Lenore, at first unable to walk, began to mend. Her natural youth and strength prevailed, and by the time Geoffrey returned—slogging in from the south through deep mud that made the bay’s chest heave with exertion—she was up and about, dressed in the green dress she had been wearing when she met him—although she had made herself a new white cambric petticoat. And in her arms was clutched her small daughter, whose frosting of pale hair haloed a small head and framed a small face of surpassing beauty.

  What matter that Lorena’s hair was pale and Geoffrey’s dark? She was so proud of Lorena! She could hardly wait to exhibit her to Geoffrey.

  It was mid-afternoon when he came in. The drizzle that had greened up moss all over Oxford had stopped at last, but the skies were still sullen, gray clouds chased each other overhead, and the air was damp. Lenore heard him running up the stairs three at a time, and her heart thudded with joy. Geoffrey was back!

  Quickly she snatched Lorena up from the bed and seated herself gracefully on a chair by the window where the fight would glow on her red-gold hair and Lorena’s moonlight frosting. She had planned for Geoffrey to see them thus—a lovely sight for a new father, she thought.

  The door came open as if blown by a gust. Lenore started, and the motion tipped the blanket she was holding down around the top of baby Lorena’s head. Geoffrey strode in, tall and energetic, on muddy boots. His cloak was flying, and he tossed his hat on a chair and came toward her pulling off his gauntlets. His gray eyes lit up to see her sitting there, slender and beautiful again, with her bright hair agleam and her eyes shining in greeting.

  “Lenore!” His voice was deep-timbred as he bent to kiss her. “And who’s this? Don’t hide the baby under a blanket—let me see his face!” He sounded so happy Lenore wanted to cry.

  “Her face, Geoffrey,” she corrected huskily. “We have a daughter.”

  Gently she drew back the blanket that had slid down almost obscuring the baby’s eyes, and Lorena, who had been sleeping, opened her eyes—they were big and blue —and stared up in wonder at the dark, smiling visage that looked down into hers. The blanket slid back to show that small perfect head and the frosting of silky pale hair.

  “A daughter!” Geoffrey stared down at the baby eagerly. Then his features stiffened, and his jaw seemed to harden into iron; it was a furious look he flung at Lenore.

  “Her hair is white as hemp and her eyes are blue!” he accused her.

  “All babies�
� eyes are blue,” defended Lenore, encircling Lorena with protective arms.

  “ ’Tis not mine!” he cried, and she winced at the note of anguish in his harsh voice. “ Tis the child of that fellow at Worcester!”

  From the moment she’d seen the baby’s coloring—so identical with Jamie’s—Lenore had feared he would say that, but she had deliberately put the thought from her. “And is that so terrible?” she demanded. “You knew I was handfasted before you!”

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely, I knew it—damn you! You’ve cheated me! Ye said the child was mine!”

  Fury gave her strength. She leaped to her feet with the child clutched in her arms. Her body was rigid with rage and the agony of Geoffrey’s betrayal. “How dare you accuse me!” she shouted. "You with a wife in France!” She fell to crying stormily.

  He flung out, slamming the door so hard the house shook, and she heard his boots clatter loudly down the stairs.

  Anger and disappointment and fright fought within her. She set Lorena down carefully, clawed at the casement, got it open, and stuck her head out. Geoffrey was just remounting the bay, who looked tired and woebegone.

  “Where are you going?” she screamed.

  “To France!” Geoffrey roared back at her and was off around the corner into Magpie Lane as if driven by devils.

  Lenore slammed the casement—so hard the leaded panes nearly splintered—and fell back, covering her face with her hands, trying to control her sobs. Lorena, who until now had been quiet and bewildered, gave a sudden cry and Lenore picked her up. Wounded to the heart, Lenore grimly surveyed the tiny, perfect child in her arms through tear-wet eyes. What if Lorena did have Jamie’s hemp-white hair and blue eyes? A beauty she was, so tiny and soft. Lenore held her and rocked her and wept afresh. This was her child, no matter who the father was! Hers to cherish, hers to love!

  Never for an instant did she believe that Geoffrey meant his threat about going to France. But Mistress Watts, who had been just coming in from marketing when Geoffrey left, heard it and believed it and sent word on her own account to Gilbert. “For I know you are Mister Daunt’s cousin,” she wrote, “and that you would wish no harm to come to Mistress Daunt. Especially now that the baby has come.”

  Lounging in his cluttered lodgings, Gilbert read the note thoughtfully and crumpled it. Geoffrey gone to France, leaving the beauteous Lenore? He could hardly credit it! He got up and went on a tour of the taverns and found Geoffrey, lying drunk at a disreputable alehouse at Headington Quarry. Obviously Geoffrey had chosen a place where he would not be likely to encounter any of his friends. Gilbert went and stood over his tall cousin, stretched out on a bench and snoring lustily.

  A very vicious smile lit Gilbert’s handsome face. He fingered the jaw Geoffrey had struck, and thought of the delights of holding Lenore in his arms. There was a way to induce her to his bed, which Lally had so lately left and which was in dire need of warming these nights by someone better than drunken Dorothy, the tavern maid.

  He turned about to go and speak to the tavernkeeper, a brawny giant of a man who watched him silently, great arms folded. As he did so his foot caught on a loose board. He tripped and was thrust against a wooden table before he could right himself. With a curse he got his footing again, never noting that the rough table edge had torn off one of his fancy enameled buttons. It had rolled unnoticed against Geoffrey’s arm, which dangled to the floor from the bench.

  Seeing the proprietor eyeing him, Gilbert thoughtfully dusted himself off and looked around him. Save for the snoring Geoffrey, he and the tavernkeeper were alone here.

  “That long, tall fellow with the black hair.” Gilbert’s casual nod indicated Geoffrey’s prone figure. “Do you think you could keep him drunk for a week?”

  The tavernkeeper scratched his head with a stubby finger and studied this caramel creation with shrewd, practiced eyes. Gentlemen didn’t often frequent his establishment, and here were two on the same day. The first had spun into the place in a fury and drunk alone, but this one with the hard caramel eyes—up to no good, he reasoned.

  “Now that might be done for a price,” he admitted. “But ’twould take an ocean of ale, for it took an ocean of ale to put him on his back there.”

  Deliberately Gilbert was counting out coins. They fell from his gloved hand with little tinkles onto a scarred wooden table top. At the sight of gold, the tavernkeeper’s eyes glinted with greed.

  “Here’s the price,” Gilbert said in a ruthless voice. “I care not how you do it, but keep him here for a week. He’s not to know I ordered it, he’s to see no one, talk to no one.”

  “I’ve a back room.” The tavernkeeper’s big hand swept up the coins. “Leastways, there’s a curtain that separates it.” He nodded toward some filthy hangings.

  “Nay,” said Gilbert thoughtfully. “That would make him suspicious when he wakes. Ye’d best leave him where he is—just keep pouring ale into him.”

  “Aye, that I will.” The tavernkeeper winked. “A husband, I’ll be bound? And you plan to frolic with the wife while he tarries here?”

  Gilbert gave him a wintry look from flat caramel eyes.

  “Just see that he stays where he is,” he said with a thin smile. “And there’ll be more coins for you.”

  As he left, the landlord—galvanized by this sudden wealth—was trying to pour ale down the unconscious Geoffrey’s throat.

  The first night Geoffrey was gone, Lenore frowned angrily and flounced off to bed. The next day she sought out Mistress Watts to ask if anyone had seen Geoffrey.

  For once Mistress Watts’s cheerful composure cracked. “Men!” she declared gloomily. “They’ll be the death of us! If they’re not off getting themselves killed in wars, they’re home deserting us for other women! Though why any man would leave a face like yours is a puzzle.”

  “He already has a wife,” said Lenore in a thick voice. She had a desperate need for someone to confide in.

  “I knew that, my dear,” said her landlady bluntly. “For all knew your lover’s name to be Wyndham and not Daunt, as he claimed. But I presumed you knew and did not care.”

  “I—cared,” said Lenore haltingly. “But I—I found out about her too late.” Ah, was that the truth? she asked herself wildly. Would she not have succumbed to Geoffrey’s charms in any event? And where had it led her?

  “Did ... everyone know I was not his wife?” she asked painfully.

  “All within the range of Master Gilbert’s voice,” was the wry response. “For I think he sought to supplant Master Geoffrey in your affections and did not wish to be thought dangling after another man’s wife.”

  Lenore was overwrought. “Tell Master Gilbert for me,” she said with suppressed violence, “that I hope he sinks into the pit!”

  Mistress Watts sighed and tried to reason with Lenore. “This is no time to be taking on this way. Now that Mistress Lally has departed, ’tis surely Master Gilbert you must turn to now.”

  Such blazing anger gripped Lenore that she felt her head must melt. “I would as soon bed a demon—tell him that, too!”

  “Then . . . where will you go? What will become of you?”

  Lenore guessed this was Mistress Watts’s subtle way of telling her the lodgings must be paid for, and a woman with a small babe had scant chance of earning a living.

  “Geoffrey cannot have left me,” she said, taking a deep breath. “He would not do that.”

  “Fine gentlemen have a way of leaving.”

  There was so much bitterness in Mistress Watts’s voice as she said that, that for all her misery, Lenore cast a startled look at her landlady. That hatchet-face had once been young and piquant. Those eyes, melting . . . That dumpy figure had once been ripe and supple. Mistress Watts, too. had loved and lost. For a moment Lenore, who felt bereft herself, pitied Mistress Watts, trying to make do with her elderly suitor across the street.

  “I must go and look for Geoffrey,” she said abruptly. “He may be lying hurt somewhere.”

&n
bsp; Mistress Watts shook her head as determined young Mistress Daunt climbed the wooden stairs and returned again carrying Lorena, wrapped in a shawl. “You’re not taking the baby?” she cried, scandalized.

  “I must,” said Lenore simply. “I shall walk all over town and inquire about Geoffrey—and I cannot keep coming back here to feed Lorena. She’d best go with me.

  Mistress Watts was still shaking her head as her determined young lodger went out the door.

  Into the town went Lenore, asking all of Geoffrey’s friends if they had seen him. Encountering Michael on the High Street, she hailed him and asked him to help her in her search. Michael assented eagerly, glad to be of service to his adored Lenore. He looked in all the wrong places, earnestly searching the halls of the university, the Ashmoleum Museum, the Magdalen Tower, the churches. He seemed to think Geoffrey might be hiding from Lenore with a good book. Crestfallen, he had to admit he’d come up with nothing.

  Lenore did not give up easily. She made the rounds of likely taverns and asked all his friends again. None had seen him for more than a fortnight, they swore—and all were telling the truth, for none of them frequented the disreputable alehouse at Headington Quarry, where Geoffrey was having more ale poured down his gullet every time he sat up. It did not occur to her to ask Gilbert, nor would she have gained the truth if she had.

  Five days later, with all avenues of information exhausted, Lenore faced the bleak fact that Geoffrey was not going to return. And now the pain that went through her was of a different kind, but in its way as sharp and deep as the pain of Lorena’s birth. Geoffrey was gone. He had deserted her in anger.

  And without even a goodbye.

  Her face must have reflected this terrible new certainty, for her landlady, when Lenore came downstairs asking as usual if Mistress Watts had heard anything, gave her a sharp look. “Your fine gentleman’s really gone,” she surmised. “Ach, that’s the way they go—once the babe is born.”

  Lenore couldn’t speak. She made her way unsteadily upstairs and sat down to think.