Rose Bride (26 page)

Master Hayes, the old retainer, knocked at his chamber door, grizzled and looking puzzled to see his master back home without warning, standing in the narrow chamber he had occupied as a child rather than the larger room that overlooked their small park and was now his proper place.

‘Will you want supper tonight, master? Only Mistress Hayes is asking so she may set the ham on to boil.’

‘No need for your wife to prepare a big meal; I will be dining at the manor. With my mother too. Mistress Tulkey is already there; I left her at the door an hour ago with . . . with Mistress Christina.’

The old man smiled, bowing. ‘Very good, Master Elton. And may I wish you very happy, master?’ He looked at him slyly, sideways. ‘We heard about the wedding. May, they were saying in the village.’

‘Were they?’ Virgil turned resolutely away from the window. He had seen enough. ‘Then May it must be. Fetch my horse round, would you? No, don’t bother. I shall walk over to the manor. The snow has almost gone, and it’s been too long since I walked the boundaries.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Christina looked frail and exhausted. The journey back from court had left her weak and barely able to stand, but she managed to preside over the dinner table with a certain grim determination. Afterwards his mother discreetly took up some embroidery by the corner window, her work illuminated by a costly branch of candles, while he sat beside the fire with Christina, warming his damp boots and listening to her talk of guests and church banns and his own attire at the wedding, subjects which left him pained and silent.

‘Virgil,’ she said at last, her thin brows drawn together, ‘it seems your mind is on other matters. I asked if you wished your cousins to be invited to stay here at the manor or at Applegate?’

‘Forgive me, Christina,’ he said, hearing the hoarseness in his voice, and suddenly clasped her hand. ‘Forgive me.’

He had lowered his voice, aware that his mother might not be as deaf to their conversation as she pretended. He looked at Christina’s surprised face, and told himself that he should wait until the morning, or another day, or some time when they could be properly private. But then the fear gripped him that he might put if off forever, and he had to speak, audience or not.

‘There is something I need to ask and I cannot seem to . . .’ He became aware that he was avoiding the question, so forced himself to ask rather abruptly, ‘Are you sure we are not rushing this wedding?’

She stared. ‘I have been planning for months. There is no rush.’

‘Spring, though. It seems very soon.’

‘We agreed upon May.’

‘But that was months ago,’ he pointed out. ‘And now . . .’

‘Virgil, what are you saying?’ Her eyes were very cool, but there was anger there. He knew her too well not to see it. ‘You do not wish to be wed in May?’

‘No,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I do not.’

Christina took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. A log collapsed in the fire, and she glanced at it blindly. Her fair hair was so neatly arranged about her simple black hood, he could not imagine her with it hanging to her waist, standing before him proud and naked.

What had put such a lewd thought in his head? His jaw clenched.

Damn Margerie Croft. She had seemed to be everywhere at court. He did not want her here as well, standing between him and the stark truth, confusing him with her faint scent of roses and the softness of her red hair.

‘Very well,’ Christina murmured, watching him, ‘when would suit, then? Midsummer? Or is that too soon as well?’

He fought the urge to drop her hand and stand up, to leave the room. Leave the manor house with its knowing servants and expensive candles, and walk back through the dark to the familiar tallow stink of Applegate. God’s blood, he would walk all the way back to the royal court, if necessary, in this mood.

‘Christina, I . . .’ He lurched to his feet, restless and angry, and caught his mother’s disapproving look. ‘I should have said this long ago. Back when you were still a child and the wound would have healed more readily. Forgive me now for hurting you, but I do not wish to marry you.’ He realised too late how rude that sounded, and tried to make recompense. ‘That is, I am not ready to wed. And I would make you a very poor husband.’

His mother had stood up too, the forgotten embroidery falling to the floor. ‘Virgil! What are you saying? How can you treat Christina so cruelly?’

‘This is none of your affair, Mother.’ Virgil looked at the cold disapproval in her face, and the anger he had been crushing inside his heart suddenly flamed out. ‘And how can you accuse me of cruelty, a woman who thought nothing of allowing her husband to beat and starve her child, and shut him up in the cellar for days on end? And all so I would stop visiting Christina and attend more to my lessons in swordplay.’

Shocked, Christina stared from his face to his mother’s. ‘What?’

‘You heard me,’ he said flatly.

His mother said nothing in response to this revelation, but her lips had tightened and she seemed unrepentant. He did not know what he had expected from her, in truth. An apology, perhaps? He would be waiting a long time to hear that, he thought grimly.

Christina looked back at him, shaking her head, very pale. ‘Virgil, oh Virgil, I am sorry. I did not know any of this. Why did you never tell me?’

‘You were too young for me to confide in, Christina. And later, where would have been the help in raking over old injuries? No, I locked it in my head, just as Master Tulkey locked me in the cellar.’

He heard pain and bitterness ringing in his voice, and with a kind of horror discovered that he was close to tears. It was with a powerful effort that he got himself back in hand. ‘But all that is past. What matters now is our future.’

‘A future you are about to throw away,’ his mother said, her voice shaking as badly as his had been.

‘You are mistaken, Mother. Much as I regret hurting Christina, I must be true to my own destiny. And my path does not lie with Christina.’

‘Destiny? Your path? None of this means anything, Virgil. You must marry. Or the Elton line will die.’

‘Then let it die,’ he said simply, and lifted his gaze to his mother’s face, his voice steadier now, his control back. ‘Not every man can beget a child. And perhaps some men should not. Perhaps I am one of those men.’

Christina had sat waiting during this exchange, not looking at either of them anymore, hands clasped in her lap. He could see her lips working as though she wished to speak but could not find the words.

‘I cannot marry you,’ he said more gently, kneeling beside her and taking her pale hand. ‘I love you as a friend, my dearest Christina. I always have, and I believe you love me the same way. I have done you a most bitter and grievous wrong in not admitting this earlier, and if you hate me now, I will not be surprised, nor consider you to blame for it. It is entirely my fault. I allowed the deceit to go on far too long, when I should have said all this months past.’

‘Then why did you not?’ Christina demanded.

‘Because I am a coward.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, then turned her head in cold dignity. ‘I am tired now. You had better return to Applegate.’

‘I do not wish to leave you alone.’

‘Your mother is here,’ she said icily.

He glanced at his mother, surprised to see that she had sat down again, the embroidery back in her lap, and was looking over at him with every indication of contempt.

‘You are staying?’ he asked her, taken aback.

‘Christina may no longer be going to become my daughter,’ his mother pointed out, ‘but she is still and always will be my closest neighbour. We take care of each other.’

Virgil knew himself despised.

He stood, then bowed low to both his mother and Christina. ‘Goodnight then, ladies,’ he muttered, and made his way out alone through the moonlit hallway without waiting for the servant to appear with a lantern.

He had lost his temper with his mother, he thought with regret, recalling what he had said in anger and how she had responded. He had not merely snapped at her but spoken to her of her violent dead husband, used his name, spoken directly of his crimes, then laid the blame at her door. Virgil was shocked, despite himself. He had never raised his voice to his mother, though he had sometimes spoken sharply when she was trying his patience.

Master Tulkey, like most men, had been lord and master in his own home, and most boys were beaten occasionally for bad behaviour. It was the severity of those beatings though, for the mildest of offences, and the long incarcerations without food, that had darkened his childhood. The little boy inside him argued that his mother should at least have made an attempt to stop her husband. Not turned away, mute.

He would never marry now, Virgil thought, gazing up at the moon on his way home across the icy fields. The years stretched ahead in his mind, empty of passion and the laughter of children. Margerie thought him a poor second to Lord Munro. Christina was not the woman for him. He had run out of lovers.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘With child?’ Virgil turned from his dissection of a frog, his thin-bladed knife still in mid-air, unable to hide his shock. ‘Are you sure?’

‘She is most definitely with child, I assure you. I examined her myself yesterday. These are early days yet, of course, but from the signs she described to me, and the date of cessation of her courses, I would estimate her being brought to bed sometime this autumn.’

Virgil sat stunned and incredulous.

Master Greene grinned at his expression. ‘Come, sir,’ he said, nudging his arm as though it were a tremendous jest, ‘do not frown as though you do not understand the significance of this event. You are to be congratulated!’

Virgil was even more surprised by that. ‘How so?’

‘Need you ask such a question? Lay down that knife, sir, let me shake your hand.’

When Virgil obeyed, still reeling from the news, Master Greene seized his hand and shook it with great enthusiasm, seeming not to care that he had just been prodding a frog’s innards with it.

‘My dear Virgil, the queen is with child, and there is no doubt in my mind that your special cordial, that mysterious Eastern aphrodisiac you laboured over for so many months, is the cause.’

‘His Majesty is the sole cause of our queen’s pregnancy,’ Virgil said drily. ‘After Anne Boleyn’s fall from grace, you would do well to remember it.’

‘Quite so, of course. The king has performed admirably and his new wife is with child. Your involvement in that process is not something that has been spoken of openly about the court, you may be assured. But many know this is your doing, and you will be rewarded for it, albeit discreetly.’ His master sketched him an ironic little bow. ‘Soon you will be among those doctors summoned to attend His Majesty first, and I will trail behind like an apprentice, in awe at your skill and importance.’

‘You overstate the case,’ Virgil remarked calmly, yet he was pleased nonetheless.

Pleased for the king and queen, and greatly pleased for the success of his aphrodisiac. If that had indeed been the cause of Her Majesty’s pregnancy.

‘And if the child born of this triumph should turn out to be a son, and heir to the Tudor throne, your future will be assured.’

Virgil covered the splayed remains of the frog with a cloth, hoping to return to it later in the day for further study, and wiped his hands.

‘How is Her Majesty? Well, I trust?’ He would be unlikely to be granted an opportunity to examine the royal lady herself, so knew he must rely on Master Greene’s experienced observations for his news. ‘There is no fever, and no sign of sickness yet?’

‘She has suffered a little nausea in the early mornings, but is otherwise in prime health.’

‘I thank God for it. Long may she continue so.’

‘Amen to that, sir. But what of your own nuptials?’ Master Greene watched as Virgil closed the journal in which he meticulously recorded all his findings, and placed it back on his workshop shelf. ‘Has the date been set for this auspicious occasion, or is the noose still dangling empty?’

‘There is to be no wedding.’

Master Greene frowned. ‘But at New Year you said . . .’

‘Christina no longer wishes to be my wife,’ Virgil said flatly, not keen to go into his reasons for dissolving the knot, and thinking it better that he preserved her honour with a lie. ‘She has changed her mind. So that’s that.’

Truth be told, he did not know his reasons for saying no to Christina. But that was not something he wished to divulge, even to one of the men he had known longest at court.

‘I am sorry to hear that, Virgil.’

‘Do not be sorry, I pray you. It is for the best.’

‘If you say so.’ Master Greene bowed, looking embarrassed, and made his way to the door, no doubt wishing to leave Virgil to his grim humour.

Virgil shrugged, his arms folded across his chest, staring at the floor. ‘I do say so, yes,’ he said quietly, then glanced up at his friend and master. ‘I have thought long and hard on this matter since returning from Kent last month, and I have come to the conclusion that I should never marry. I would make a bad husband.’

Master Greene turned at that, and his brows shot up. ‘With the secret of such a powerful aphrodisiac in your pocket? No, my friend, you would make a
good
husband.’ He gave Virgil a dry look as he left the workshop. ‘Though a demanding one, perhaps.’