The Traitor's Wife (3 page)

“I want no wife.”

“Nor do I. But I must have one, and you really must yourself, you know. When I am king, you shall have titles and lands and that means you must get heirs. And Eleanor would have been a fine wife for you. Sweet and shy, but with a sly wit once you get to know her.”

“And now I won't have the opportunity. I shall throw myself in the Thames forthwith.”

“There's her sister Margaret. A good-natured girl, not as much so as Eleanor, but a definite possibility. Elizabeth is by far the prettiest but has too much of the grande dame about her even at her young age. Yes, I would pick Margaret.”

“Before I have recovered from the loss of Eleanor? For shame! Is my rival Hugh pleased with the match?”

“He ought to be, getting a Clare for a wife; I would have thought my father would have insisted on an earl for Eleanor. But who knows what young Hugh thinks of anything? He keeps his own counsel. It is disconcerting in a youth of his age.” He bestowed a tender kiss on Piers. “I prefer the more open temperament.”

“And so do I.” Piers returned the kiss, with compound interest, and for some time afterward no talking was done.

Eleanor de Clare, some chambers away from her uncle and his friend in Westminster Palace, had been passing the morning less pleasantly, though more decorously. Though in her naiveté she was quite content with the drape of her wedding dress, the styling of her hair, and the placement of her jewels, her mother, aunts, sisters, and attendant ladies were not, and each was discontent in a different way. As her hair was debated over and rearranged for the seventh time, she snapped, “Enough, Mama! I know Hugh is not being plagued in this manner. He must take me as I am.”

Gladys, a widow who had long served Eleanor's mother as a damsel and who had agreed to go into Eleanor's household, grinned. “Aye, my lady, and he won't much care what you are wearing. It will be what is underneath that will count.” She patted Eleanor's rump with approval. “And he will be pleased.”

Elizabeth gasped. Margaret tittered. Eleanor, however, giggled. “Do you truly think so, Gladys?”

“Of course. You're well developed for your age, and men love that. And you will be a good breeder of children, too, mark me. You will have a fine brood.”

“You can tell me, Gladys. What will it be like? Tonight?”

Eleanor's mother, Joan, the Countess of Gloucester, had been sniffling sentimentally at the prospect of her first daughter's marriage. Now she raised an eyebrow. “Your little sisters, Eleanor—”

“They shall be married soon, too, won't they? They might as well know.”

“We might as well,” Margaret agreed.

“Each man will go about his business in his own way, my lady. But I'll wager that he will be gentle about the matter.”

“Will I be expected to—help at all?” At thirteen Eleanor was not quite as naive as she pretended, having heard enough courtiers and servant girls whispering to piece together what happened on a wedding night, but it had occurred to her that no one was fussing over her hair now.

Gladys had been left entirely on her own by the gaggle of women, who were plainly finding this entertaining. When Gladys paused before answering, Mary, Eleanor's aunt the nun, piped up, “Well, answer, my dear, because I certainly can't.”

“I've no doubt that once you get interested in him, my lady, you shall want to help.”

Eleanor nodded and considered this in silence.

Margaret, sitting on a window seat, sighed. “I wish I was getting married,” she explained.

“I'm sure you will be soon.”

“And better.” Elizabeth sniffed.

“Elizabeth! What mean you?” Her mother glared.

“I only repeat what I overheard you say the other day.” Elizabeth was only ten, but she had the dignity of a woman twice that age. “Nelly is an earl's daughter, and Hugh is only a mere knight. He has no land to speak of. And he's not even truly handsome, like my uncle's friend Piers Gaveston.”

“As though we need more of that!” Joan went over and patted her oldest daughter on the shoulder. “I did think you could have done better,” she said gently, “but it was your grandfather's match, and he has always thought highly of Hugh's father, who has served him well for years. There is no reason why his fortunes should not grow in years to come.” She frowned at a tangle in Eleanor's waist-length red hair—it was difficult at times to determine what was tangle and what was curl—and began to brush it out.

Eleanor glared at her youngest sister.

“Tell me,” she said, submitting ungraciously to having some color put on her naturally pale cheeks, “who is this Piers to my uncle? I have never seen my uncle out of his company since we came to Westminster. And why does his being around him vex my grandfather the king so?”

Gladys became deeply interested in a discarded bracelet lying on a table. The other women stared absorbedly at Eleanor's robes. Only her little sisters looked at Eleanor, and their faces were as curious as hers.

“We must get to the chapel,” Joan said. “Come, ladies.”

Eleanor's husband-to-be was only nineteen, a fact that had gratified her, as she had long worried about being married to an ancient knight in his thirties or even older. He was not a stranger to her, having been brought over to meet Eleanor a few days after his father and the king made the marriage contract, but they had exchanged only a few words and had never been alone in each other's company. It startled her as they exchanged their vows in the king's chapel to find that his dark, unreadable eyes were searching her face as closely as she was searching his own.

The wedding feast and the bedding ceremony that followed were subdued affairs. The elderly but still intimidating king, even though accompanied by his second queen, Margaret, more than forty years his junior, lent an air of dampening dignity to the occasion. The prince and Piers, who might have otherwise enlivened matters, behaved themselves with tedious decorum in his presence, and the other young men—all of whom had been knighted only days before in a splendid ceremony meant to provide recruits for the never-ending Scottish wars—followed suit. Only Eleanor's fourteen-year-old brother, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in England and with only his good-natured stepfather to hold him in check, felt free to overindulge in wine and to make ribald jokes so feeble that no one but his young sisters tittered at them.

Eleanor's bridal nerves, meanwhile, were beginning to show. She openly fidgeted as the priest blessed the marriage bed. She submitted to the king's toast, to the prince's toast, to her stepfather's toast, to her father-in-law's toast. When her brother began his own meandering toast, however, she snapped, “Gilbert, you fool, go to bed! All of you! Leave me alone!” To her utter mortification, she burst into tears. She yanked the covers over her head.

There was a stir among the onlookers, and then she heard Hugh's pleasant voice. “You heard my wife, good people. Let her alone.” From under the covers, she heard some laughter, then the sound of feet filing out of the room. Her husband, however, had not moved. Without budging from underneath the covers, she commanded, “You, too.”

“Me?”

“Especially you! I don't want to be married.”

“But you have been.” Hugh lifted the covers from his own end and revealed Eleanor. She had been put to bed naked by the other ladies before Hugh arrived clad only in his robe, and the expression of tolerant amusement on his face changed to admiration as he saw her body. “You're lovely, Eleanor.”

“Go away!” She flounced away from him.

“You're as lovely from the back as from the front.”

“Stop it!”

“You're nervous, I know. It's natural for girls getting married.”

“How would you know?”

“I've sisters.”

“I've a brother. But I've never set myself up as an expert on men.”

He took off his robe and wrapped his arms around her, and she lay against him grudgingly as he talked into her hair. “My sister Isabel, the mildest creature in the world, threw a comb at my mother on her wedding day. Then she threw a bracelet at her servant. By the time her husband appeared she'd run out of missiles, which was fortunate for him.” Hugh saw a glimmer of a smile on Eleanor's face. He began scratching her back, very slowly. “I'm nervous too, you know.”

“You? Why?”

“I've only been with whores, who are paid to act delighted. So now I have a beautiful girl in my bed, to live with for the rest of our lives. What if I can't please her?”

She said confidently, “I am not beautiful.”

“Who told you that?”

“My sisters, for one.”

“They are silly chits.” His hands were browsing. With Hugh's encouragement, Eleanor's were doing the same, rather to her surprise. “All my family, all your family, have let me know that you are too good for me. And looking at you now, I think they're right.”

“They say that to you?”

Hugh's voice held a trace of bitterness. “You are the eldest daughter of a great earl, the granddaughter of the king, while I am the landless son of one of many advisors of the king. They have let me know the difference between us, believe me.”

“But Hugh, I don't think that at all.” She pulled back and looked at him in the candlelight. He did not have the overwhelming good looks of Gaveston, which demanded the full attention of man and woman alike, but his sharp features were agreeable and regular, and were much improved by an expression of alertness and intelligence. She had been proud to see him standing beside her at the altar, no matter what her sister had said.

“No?”

“Truly, no.” She put a hand on his bare shoulder and looked imploringly at him.

“Good.” He looked her in the eyes solemnly. “But someday I will make you proud of me, I swear to it. I will be the man your father was.”

“Hugh.”

“Yes.”

“Stop
talking
.”

He laughed and kissed her, and it was much, much later when he spoke again. “Do you still want me to leave?”

Eleanor shook her head. “No.” She settled herself against the body she had just learned so much about and looked up at Hugh wonderingly. “I don't ever want you to go.”

I
N THE CHILL OF A FEBRUARY MORNING, DOVER CASTLE SPARKLED IN THE sunshine as though scrubbed for the occasion. It had indeed had some freshening done to it, for it was in a state of high hospitality, with flags flying and the drawbridge lowered as noble after noble rode over it. Eleanor saw none of this, however, for she was dozing in Gladys's lap in the litter that both ladies rode in.