Secrets at Court

by Blythe Gifford

She gasped.

  He cupped her head in his hands, lifted her face to his and kissed her.

  Her lips moved over his, soft and gentle, and, surprisingly, so was the kiss. A kiss not of passion, but of dreams. Of tumbling slowly into something inevitable and irresistible, for good or ill, impossible to resist.

  He did not stop to ask himself why he did this. Or why she did. If he let himself think, he, she, both of them might wake from the dream. And for once, that was not what he wanted.

  They parted only for a breath before her lips took his again.

  He had no thoughts after that. At least, none that found words.

  Chapter Twelve

  Anne’s first thought was to fight, not surrender. She had struggled all her life against her feeble flesh, refusing to yield to its weakness, refusing to be the slave of pain. She could not ignore her damaged leg, but she could suffer it as a knight might suffer a scar of battle, knowing he had earned it bravely.

  Pleasure was still an unfamiliar foe, yet even against pleasure, she might have triumphed. It was the heart’s want that she could not fight. The want that he must not see. The want she had buried so deeply she no longer knew it was there, so when it rose, fierce and fiery as a dragon, she had no defence. She simply let herself be kissed.

  And then, she kissed back.

  She couldn’t stop the gasp of desire that gripped her throat, the tears that burned her eyes at the realisation that someone would want to get so close. Without judgement. With desire.

  At least one time.

  One of them—he? She?—took a breath. A pause that broke the kiss only to let him take her lips again

  But with that breath, she was Anne again. Anne with ugly hair and a lame foot and nothing but lies to tell this man.

  She pursed her lips, pushed him away and squeezed her eyes shut so he would not see the wistful look that must have crept into her gaze. She should not have kissed him. Not the first time and not the second and least of all now.

  Safer to remain ignored and unseen.

  He stood and stepped away, out of reach, seeking distance as much as she, and parted his lips to speak.

  ‘Don’t!’ she said. Her strength was gone. His regrets would only sharpen her own. ‘Do not say you are sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  She held her breath, waiting for him to break the silence.

  ‘I am not sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I am not sorry at all.’

  If he had crossed the room to touch her again, she would have turned to fire, a flame of yes and yes and yes once more.

  But he did not. He left the room, pulling the wooden door behind him, and not until she could no longer hear his steps did she breathe.

  He had not kissed her out of pity and he was not sorry that he had and that was the most frightening thing of all.

  * * *

  Nicholas slept little that night, so when the Archbishop summoned him to the Priory the next morning, he wasted little time.

  As soon as he arrived, and without ceremony, the man thrust a parchment into his hands. ‘Here.’

  He glanced at the carefully written lines. He had a little Latin, more than most of his station, so he stumbled through, trying to decipher the words.

  Silence stretched.

  ‘It says,’ the Archbishop said, finally, ‘that given that Thomas Holland and Joan plighted their troth before a witness months prior to her marriage to Salisbury, the church says that marriage is valid, the marriage to Salisbury should be put aside and the Pope should so judge the same.’

  All as he had expected. ‘So it is confirmed,’ he said, with a surprising sense of relief. ‘You will rule accordingly.’

  He had not realised until that moment that he had feared they might not find it at all.

  ‘I will gather the bishops together. We will review the document—’

  ‘Review? Is there something irregular?’

  Islip frowned, the lines in his brow as deep as furrows cut by a plough. ‘Let us hope, for all our sakes, that there was not.’

  An odd comment. Nicholas shrugged off the worry. Nothing could be wrong. Lady Joan had been raised under the protection of the King and Queen. The stakes had been too high then.

  They were even higher now.

  ‘So if there is nothing irregular,’ he began, ‘how long will all this take?’

  ‘How long before they can wed in truth, you mean?’

  How long before I can leave this island? was what he actually meant, but Nicholas nodded. ‘The official word from Avignon is expected soon after Michaelmas.’ In less than two months.

  ‘We will be done by then. I will send word directly to the King.’ His face relaxed then. ‘I look forward to celebrating the Prince’s wedding ceremony.’ As Primate of All England, the duty would fall to him. ‘Will they marry at Windsor?’

  ‘I believe so.’ He shrugged, not caring. His work was done. He could return Anne to court and be free of all the responsibilities and complications of these last few weeks. The unwelcome feelings he had for her would fade, he was certain, as soon as he set foot on a ship.

  He bowed respectful thanks and turned to go, but as he did, the Archbishop’s summation of the document echoed in his head. The words had slipped by then, but thinking back, they clanged loud as a church bell.

  ...Holland and Joan plighted their troth before a witness...

  He turned back to the Archbishop. ‘It said vows were exchanged before a witness.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who? What is the name?’

  Islip raised his brows. ‘Do you think to question them?’

  He had thought nothing of this at all until it became so difficult. ‘That’s not necessary, is it?’

  ‘Let us hope not. It does not list a name.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be customary? For the witness to be named?’

  ‘It is not customary,’ Islip said, his temper short again, ‘for a clandestine wedding to be witnessed at all!’

  Not customary at all. Yet in the midst of a foreign city and a war, a twelve-year-old maiden and a twenty-six-year-old man had been careful enough to find a witness who conveniently appeared and then disappeared. Who?

  And why?

  * * *

  Anne sat in the inn’s common room all morning, stitching another new emblem for the Prince’s bed hangings, lifting her eyes occasionally to see today’s hopeful pilgrims passing by on their way to the Cathedral.

  Agatha had begged leave to go with Eustace and buy her own token of her visit to Canterbury and Anne had let her go. She suspected the maid’s sudden desire for a pilgrim’s badge had more to do with Nicholas’s squire than with piety, but their absence relieved her of the need to talk.

  Soon, Nicholas would return from his visit with the Archbishop. She could only pray he had received what he needed and that they could return to the court, where she knew what her life must be and what was expected of her and she could be invisible Anne again.

  He had seen her and did not shame her or revile her or look at her with pity. He saw her and accepted, even respected what he saw. He saw Anne and not Anne’s limp. When had anyone done that?

  Her father had seen nothing but the limp, so he wanted not to see her at all.

  Even her mother had seen her lameness first and arranged Anne’s life around it, particularly after her father had died and left them with little. When she searched her memories of her mother, all she found were worries. Was Anne safe? Was Anne in pain? How would Anne live? The entire, elaborate web of secrets, all because she did not think Anne could make a life. Not because she was Anne.

  Because she limped.

  Anne was fortunate, she supposed, that she had not been drowned like a kitten or that people had not cursed her and her moth
er both for God’s punishment, for there were those who still believed that such ills were retribution from God. Yet the pestilence had taken bishops and children, the evil and the good.

  But until she met Nicholas, how long had it been since anyone had touched her? All these years, alone, since her mother’s death. Years in which no one but Lady Joan would come close enough to risk brushing her skirt or her skin. She had donned invisible armour, strong enough to ward off any approach. Strong enough to make Anne herself disappear.

  While Lady Joan, the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, floated through life on a sea of admiring glances, no one saw Anne. No lingering looks lifted her gracefully through the day. No knight, no page, not even the man who emptied the night waste had ever looked at her and smiled in delight at what he saw.

  Until now.

  Yes, people had averted their eyes. So had she. She did not want to look, to know the thing.

  But this man, rife with his own buried pain, had seen that which was hidden, touched the untouchable, acknowledged what no one else would.

  Dangerous. So dangerous to be so close to a man who really saw her, beyond the obvious, beyond her limp. There were things he must not see. Things that must be as hidden as her twisted foot.

  Things that made Nicholas the most dangerous of all men.

  Late in the afternoon, sun rays slanted in the window. She looked around to check the room was empty, then raised her skirt to look at her foot, safely hidden beneath red hose.

  As Nicholas had said, sometimes the healing did not happen immediately. Sometimes, people waited near the healing shrine until they recovered. Or died.

  Maybe—

  At the sound of the door, she dropped her skirt, picked up her needle, and looked up to see Nicholas, scowling, at the inn’s door.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, not waiting for a greeting. ‘Didn’t the Archbishop find the document?’

  ‘He found it.’

  ‘Did he find something wrong?’ A question she should never have asked. Nothing could be wrong. Not after all these years.

  ‘He did not. It will be summarily blessed by a gathering of bishops, purely for the sake of spectacle.’

  ‘So all is well.’

  He growled. ‘For them, yes.’

  ‘And for you?’

  ‘There was a witness to that wedding.’

  Her heart started pounding, as if a ghost had finally escaped the dungeon she had hoped would hold him for ever. ‘How do you know that?’ Her words were as shaky as her leg.

  ‘It said so. In the petition.’

  ‘Did it say who?’

  ‘No.’ He looked at her, then, as if seeing her as a link to all that had gone before. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Why would I know?’ She wanted to say she was sorry she must lie to him. ‘I was no more than four.’

  ‘But don’t you find it strange? That a clandestine wedding should have a witness?’

  She shook her head and looked down at her stitching, yet another copy of the emblem of the Prince of Wales. White feathers. The motto Ich Dien. I serve.

  And that was what Anne would continue to do.

  ‘Not so strange,’ she said. A risk, now, but she must take it. She must steer him away from that wedding and back to this one. ‘I witnessed her wedding to the Prince.’

  He stared, as if struck dumb. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Because she asked me to.’

  Shock quickly merged with anger. ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

  A shrug. As if it were of no significance. Now meet his eyes, as if you have nothing to hide. ‘Is it important?’ Last night’s kiss still burned on her lips, lips she would use to tell him all about this wedding.

  The one that didn’t matter.

  ‘That night, Lady Joan woke me and asked me to come with her. She did not say why. But when we entered the chapel, I saw the Prince and then—’ another shrug ‘—they exchanged their vows.’

  ‘You knew the marriage was forbidden.’

  You mustn’t. You cannot! The King, you are too close... ‘The entire court knew that.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you stop them?’

  Laughter came easily then. ‘Am I to tell the Prince of Wales and the Countess of Kent what they cannot do?’

  ‘But you knew what would happen, how grave the danger, to their souls, to the kingdom!’

  ‘I did, but what I did not know is how deeply it would trouble Sir Nicholas Lovayne to be called on to resolve the issue.’ He had barked at her as if he, not the kingdom, had been affronted.

  ‘That is not what troubles me.’ Hurried words. Angry.

  And as his temper rose, hers must fall. ‘Then why are you so angry?’ Yet as she asked, she knew.

  He stood and she could see him wrap himself in calm, as protective as a cloak. ‘When next you witness their wedding, you will see one the church can bless,’ he said, letting her question lie unanswered. ‘We return to the court in the morning.’

  She rose, eager to retreat to her room. ‘I will be ready.’ Ready to leave this man who had a habit of goading her to say too much.

  Or perhaps it was her own weakness that made her say things she should not? How had she kept the secret all these years, she wondered, as she climbed the stairs to her room, when after a few days and a few kisses he had her babbling of things she should not?

  Yet how could she have understood the freedom of being away from Lady Joan? All her life, in her lady’s presence, she had rarely said more than yes, my lady, no, my lady, thank you, my lady, all the while bursting to say more.

  Well, her confession had done what she had intended. It turned his attention to this wedding and away from the other one.

  The one her mother had claimed to witness.

  * * *

  Nicholas spent the rest of the day concerning himself with details he could control: making sure the horses were ready, packing food for the journey. The court had returned to Windsor, which would cut the return trip down to scarcely five days.

  Five days too many to spend with Anne of Stamford.

  Why are you so angry?

  He was still wrestling with her question the next morning, as he walked to the stables to retrieve his horse. The inn’s stable had not had room for all their mounts and he wanted the time away from her, from Eustace and the others, just to think.

  Anne had tweaked him with her suggestion that he resented the difficulty of unravelling the Prince’s impulsive marriage. Six weeks travelling to Avignon, innumerable days arguing with papal clerks, then the same, long journey back, only to be handed one last task before he was finally free. Yes, he was irritated and impatient.

  But that was not the reason for the visceral, unfamiliar fury that had moved him when he discovered that Anne had witnessed the wedding and never told him.

  From the beginning, the woman had stirred unwelcome emotions—possession, tenderness, lust and now anger—all those crazed passions he had so proudly spent his life avoiding. The ones that drove men like his father and the Prince into the arms of women who, finally, held them as tight as a prison.

  But when he was drawn to Anne, he let his head convince him that it was logical, or at least harmless, to pass the time with her. Meanwhile, he ignored the urges that originated below his neck.

  In his loins.

  Or even in his heart.

  She had sparked feelings he did not even recognise. From hope and prayer for her to find her miracle to a willingness to confess his own failures to a desire so strong that he nearly went far beyond a kiss. A kiss that was still on his lips when she told him—

  He stopped in mid-stride in the centre of Canterbury’s busiest street as he realised the truth he should have known all along.

  He was angry because she ha
d lied.

  She had fooled him because he had started to believe she was different from other women. She wasn’t. She had created an illusion, lured him in, all the while concealing anything she did not want him to know.

  He had been no wiser than his father, trusting her, thinking she trusted him, but if she had, she would have shared such a confidence long before.

  It made him wonder what else she hid.

  Close to Lady Joan, yes. Closer than he had ever imagined.

  She had made it clear where her loyalty lay.

  A good reminder of a lesson he thought long ago ingrained. Never trust emotions, particularly when it came to women.

  As he mounted his horse, his girdle purse swung against his thigh with a gentle thud. Gathering the reins in his left hand, he reached inside, prinking his finger on the edge of St Thomas’s mitre.

  The pilgrim badge.

  He had broken his rule. Reached for a reminder. Weighed himself down with a token of remembrance.

  Nicholas turned the horse toward the inn and bent his elbow, ready to hurl the bauble across the muddy street.

  At the last moment, he looked down and rubbed his finger over the sharp, pressed pewter and remembered.

  The stubborn set of her jaw, refusing to allow either pain or pity to rule her. Her laughter. Her repudiation of fawning flattery or grovelling thanks when he reached out a hand to help her.

  The press of her body against his. The soft hunger of her lips. The way she had forced him to see.

  He rounded the corner to see the rest of them already gathered with the horses, waiting. Anne was studying the church across from the inn, no doubt memorising the number of stones.

  No. He would collect no more memories. Each one, heavy as a stone, would weigh him down, hold him back. He would let go of this woman and move on to the life he planned.

  He dropped his hand and let the medal fall to the dirt, to be trampled by the next passing horse.

  He wanted no reminders of this journey.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The gate of Windsor Castle rose before him, a blessed end to a journey which had seemed longer than all the ones before. Other than to see that she was comfortable and safe, Nicholas had tried to stay away from Anne, but he had been forced to step in when the others kept tangling the straps he had designed to hold her firmly to her patient jennet.