Lady of the Butterflies (46 page)

“It is far better to be revered than reviled. That is another lesson I learned from my years in exile. To live too long without friendship and love is not to live at all.”

I saw that there’d been no scheme behind what he’d just done beyond a simple and deep need to be loved and respected. “You do not live here,” I pointed out quietly.

His eyes met mine. “I shall do if you agree to marry me.”

He took my hands and stood, raising me to my feet with him.

“I have money enough to bribe a chaplain.” He slid his open fingers into my hair, lifted the long strands of it that were still damp at the ends, but which the seawater had made curlier than ever. He arranged it very carefully, so it fell around my face and over my breasts. “We could go to a Bristol church and have it done immediately. You could be my wife tonight. In a few hours we would be together.”

I caught his hand and trapped it against my cheek, turned my face into it and kissed his palm. “You could take me and make me your wife right now,” I suggested softly. “Once our promise is made we are as good as wedded. It is permitted and proper for us to lie with one another.”

He snatched his hand away as if I had bitten him.

“We do not need to do it in that bed,” I said, misunderstanding. “There are . . . other places.”

“I will not lie with you, in a bed or otherwise, until you are properly mine,” he said. “I cannot lie with Edmund’s widow, with Eleanor Ashfield. I need you to be Eleanor Glanville.”

I smiled, surprised by his intensity but thinking it a quaint sentiment. “I want to be Eleanor Glanville,” I said. “I want it more than anything. But surely you are not serious about Bristol?”

“Either you leave with me now, or I leave alone.”

“I am being held to ransom, for a kiss?”

“If that is how you choose to see it.”

I opened my mouth to say yes, I would go with him. I would go wherever he wanted me to go, do whatever he wanted me to do. But I stopped. Other words came out. I was no serving maid who could marry as I pleased without care or consideration. I was first and foremost a landowner, guardian of an estate. “It took months to arrange my first marriage,” I said. “There were contracts to be drawn up and to be signed, all kinds of negotiations.”

“I don’t want there to be any negotiating between us, Nell. I want us to be married like commoners and to live like kings.”

“You mean, in debauchery?”

“I mean in some luxury,” he said, ignoring my weak attempt at humor. “That is what you’ve always yearned for, I think? Twenty gowns and footmen in livery and a velvet-upholstered coach drawn by four horses? As my wife, I would make sure you had all that. I would make sure you had all you ever wanted, and more besides.”

“I cannot do it like this. For my children’s sake, I cannot.”

He picked up his glass and downed the contents in one gulp, his eyes flaring with mercurial light. “First Edmund stood between us and now it is his children. I thought there were just the two of us now, but seemingly already there are four.”

He must know as well as I did that children of a previous marriage always suffered if a widowed mother married again. “Tickenham Court is Forest’s rightful inheritance,” I said. “The estate’s wealth is my daughter’s marriage portion. But if I marry you tonight and we should have children, those children would take precedence over Edmund’s son and daughter. My little Ashfield children would be the ones to lose out. I love you, so much, and I want to be your wife. I want you in my bed, this night and every night, for the rest of my life. I want your face to be my first sight when I awake and the last before I sleep. I want you to get a dozen children on me. I am ready right now to give up my freedom, to give you my body and my soul and my heart, but I am not prepared to hand you my children’s home, their security, their future.”

He was already walking toward the door.

“Wait! Please wait!”

He did.

“There has to be a way.”

He looked doubtful, but he was listening.

“Let me find one. I will find one.”

“You sound very certain of it.”

“You said yourself, I am a determined little doxy. I would not marry you tonight, in any case,” I said, finding a smile for him. “I do not want to sneak off by ourselves to a church and then to a tavern. I do not want to do it quietly, not this time. You also said to me once that if I became your wife, you’d want to celebrate before everyone, with a feast that went on for twelve days.”

I instantly regretted referring to the conversation we had had that dark Valentine’s Day morning, for conjuring Edmund’s ghost to stand between us again. But oddly, Richard seemed not to be troubled by the memory of our illicit kiss, as he was evidently still so troubled by Edmund’s death. I did not want to dwell on why that might be. “Twelve days of feasting.” He smiled. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

RICHARD SLEPT in the chamber he had stayed in when Edmund was alive, and this time I woke before he did. I rode back toward Clevedon to visit George Digby. I would ask him if he knew how I might make provision for my children should I take another husband. As he was a member of Parliament, I trusted that he had some understanding of such legal matters.

Impressively attired in sumptuous tawny silk, the Earl was playing an effortless game of tennis on the Clevedon Court lawn with his tall, gangly son, but he readily broke off to entertain me. Elegantly mopping his brow with scented linen, he declared he was glad of an excuse to catch his breath while he was two games ahead. “I did at least gain one useful skill during my years in exile,” he said. “Enforced idleness and lack of funds meant that I spent days and days playing tennis. Much cheaper than hunting, you see. And even now that I can afford to hunt all day long if I so please, I’ve never lost my love of the racket.”

I smiled to myself, struck by a memory I thought long forgotten.

“I do count myself a great wit,” he said pleasantly. “But I had not thought to be one at the present. Yet it seems I have inadvertently amused you.”

“My father once told me how Cavaliers enjoyed tennis so much they’d brawl and duel over the results,” I explained. “It seems he was right about that, as about much else.”

“To be precise, the duel was over a bet of seven sovereigns on who would win the game. It was a measure of the depth of irritability and frustration we all suffered from, the tensions of exile. So tell me,” he asked jovially as we walked past the knot garden toward the terrace. “What else did your good father have to say about us? Besides a penchant for dueling and tennis, did he allot us any other vices?”

I hesitated.

“Come now,” Digby encouraged. “I am intrigued. And I promise you, I shall not be offended at all.”

I smiled. “Other vices? Well, let me see now. Debauchery. Drunkenness. Adultery. Fornication. Lust.” I ticked the list off on my fingers. “General excess and moral corruption.”

“Is that why you constantly refuse that lad?” the Earl asked, with a wickedly impudent gleam in his eyes. “Is it that you fear him to be debauched and morally corrupt?” He grinned at my astonished face. “Oh, Richard petitioned me not a month ago to appeal to you on his behalf. I was waiting for the right opportunity to present itself.”

“It is because of him that I am here, sir.”

“Ah.”

Seated in a gold-and-green-paneled room on plump chairs covered in striped silk, and sipping sweetened tea served in a delicate gilded china tea set, I started to explain my predicament.

“So I have no need to petition you,” the Earl interrupted. “Young Richard has succeeded in his pursuit of you at last, and without any help. Good for him. I am glad for him—for you both.”

“I have not agreed to wed him yet,” I said quietly.

He peered at me over the rim of his cup, arched one eyebrow. “And you will not agree if I cannot provide you with the information you need?”

“It must be a common problem,” I persisted. “There must be a solution.”

He laughed. “What a wonderfully optimistic approach to life you have, my dear lady.” He set down the cup with a tinkle. “You are right, of course, that many landed gentlemen leave behind pretty widows who are still of childbearing age, but you are wrong to think that many of those ladies are as intent on defending the position of their firstborn as are you. Or else, if they are, I imagine they take the standard precautions to ensure that there is no issue from their second marriage. A matter of timing, I understand, either of the moon or else of a man’s rod at the pinnacle of pleasure?”

I laughed, did not blush at such base talk as I would once have done, but I was rather shocked to hear it from the lips of so lofty a person as the Earl. Even if he had spent years in exile with a young king in waiting who presided over the most dissolute and debauched court. “I would not deny Richard the joy of a child,” I said seriously.

“But you would deny him the joy of seeing that child inherit your estate? I do believe you would deny yourself the joy of marriage, if it came to it.” His lips curled in a knowing smile. “It is a cool head you have on your pretty little shoulders,” he said contemplatively. “When I watched the two of you dancing here together, some years ago, I saw only the charge of passion between you. But it seems that your passion for Tickenham Court is the stronger, hmm?”

“I do this for my children,” I said. “Not for Tickenham Court. Not for myself.”

“But a marriage settlement will also benefit you considerably.”

“A marriage settlement?”

He grinned. “An excellent invention and one commonly enough used now amongst the gentry. Quite simply, it is a signed agreement that preserves a wife’s property rights and allows her to avoid giving up her liberty, estate and all authority to her husband. In real terms, with such a settlement in place, Tickenham Court would remain yours after you marry, whosoever you marry. It even remains yours to dispose of upon your death.”

I set down my own cup, felt a stirring of happiness which I held in abeyance. For now. “And gentlemen willingly agree to a settlement that so diminishes their position?”

The Earl shrugged. “It depends on the gentleman in question, of course. On how amenable he is. But most are quite content with the arrangement.” He studied me, saw I was still unconvinced. “Oho. I do detect Major Goodricke’s influence and unfavorable opinions of us lingering in your generous and loving heart. Much as you love young Richard, you cannot help thinking of his passion for Spanish stallions and silk suits and sack, and you deduce, therefore, that he’ll not be satisfied with any less than all of the coins in your coffers. Am I right? Much as you are drawn to him, you cannot help assuming that, being a Cavalier, he is therefore inclined to luxury and ease, and entirely profligate?”

“Of course not.”

But the Earl smiled almost delightedly, as if he did not mind at all my harboring such dark opinions of all Royalists, himself included.

“It is my guess that you find profligacy not so unattractive, after a life of frugal living with your papa and Edmund Ashfield. And who would ever blame you for that, little lady? Now, I do not know your Richard nearly well enough to know if he is a wastrel or not, but I do know that life as an exile can be the most wretched existence. I know that in all likelihood, he’d have spent his most tender years in paralyzing unhappiness, endless uncertainty and much personal distress, as well as in precarious and constant need of money and a home. So I imagine he’d be more than content with regular payments from your estate, only too glad to be granted the security of an independent income. And when and if your estate reaps the rewards of drainage, his percentage will be all the more attractive. Although I imagine he might willingly forgo those extra riches to retain the goodwill of his neighbors. During those years as a fugitive, he’ll have witnessed enough faction fighting and personal feuds to last him a lifetime, given that he strikes me as a rather overly sensitive boy, not very robust in his emotions. You are just what he needs, I think.” He raised his teacup as if in a toast. “I vouch the lad will not refuse your terms, whatever they may be.”

WHEN I ARRIVED BACK at Tickenham Court, I found Richard entertaining William Merrick in the parlor. They seemed to be on good terms but broke off their conversation and stood as I entered.