The Wife Test (22 page)

“N-no
hunting?”
Old Ketchum clutched his chest with a bony hand, breathing harder as he stared at her.

“You have heirs to make. And no more rich foods or two-day routs with a barrel of ale. She’ll be certain you’re around to see a whole raft of little Ketchums spring up. She’s studied herbals in the convent, you know.” When the old man shook his head, Hugh smiled benevolently. “Oh, yes. Always brewing up some smelly concoction or other and insisting everyone rub it on them or take it as a tonic. And did I mention how pious she is? Confesses constantly and hears mass twice daily. She will have you on your knees in no time …”

The old boy was wild-eyed, teetering on the edge of either an explosion or a collapse. Hugh couldn’t resist giving him one more little push.

“You may, however, have to dig a new well on your estate. She bathes frequently and insists on using plenty of water. And
soap.
Go on, give her a sniff.”

The old fellow bit his lip, leaned warily toward her, and inhaled. The scent of lavender was apparently too much for him.

“Ohhh!” He clutched the front of his doublet with both hands and sank to his knees. “My heart … my spleen … my liver …”

Hugh and Graham rushed to his side, and he clutched their sleeves as they lowered him to the floor and called for the servants to bring a litter.

“Let me see him. I can help,” Chloe said anxiously, trying to kneel beside them, but prevented by the old boy’s outstretched arm fending her off.

“No, no—it’s just one of my spells.” On closer inspection his eyes seemed more widened with panic than pain. “Have awful fits an’ spells … my liver goes cold and my spleen fluxes … nerves go all swarmy …” As a pair of servants scooped him onto a sling litter and carried him out, he halted them long enough to push up and address the king.

“Highness … I must beg that in my grievous infirmities I be excused from”—he glanced at Chloe with unmistakable dread—“the rigors of marriage.”

The king rose and stared gravely at the old fellow.

“You are released, milord Ketchum. Retire to your home to recover your health … with our best wishes for God’s restorative blessings.”

Chloe burned with humiliation as she watched the earl being carried out. The horror of it—having the old man swoon publicly and plunge into a fit of illness rather than wed her!

She could feel the eyes of the crowd turning on her with reactions from amusement to confusion to outrage. Could they be persuaded so easily that she was a monster … a virago … a harridan with unnatural proclivities? She turned on Hugh with her eyes stinging with the threat of tears.

How could he do this to her? He knew her as no one else did, yet he described her in such a way that her virtues all sounded like hideous vices. He had cast her in such a vile light that she would probably be tainted and infamous—
unmarriageable
—forevermore!

“Well”—the king broke into her agonized thoughts—“that was certainly unexpected. It seems you no longer have a husband, Lady Chloe.” He looked her up and down, clearly reconsidering her in the light of all he had just heard. “You
read?
Is this true?”

“It is,” she said, her throat so constricted that it came out a whisper.

“And write in several languages and cipher and create herbal nostrums?”

She could only nod. He made such accomplishments sound freakish.

“What the devil am I to do with you, Lady Chloe?” The king sat down abruptly on his great chair and propped his chin on his fist. “I suppose I shall have to add you to my own household until I can find someone to take you off my hands. I doubt I will find another unmarried noble as rich and exalted as the Earl of Ketchum.”

There were both mutters and laughter in the throng behind her, and she wished the earth would open and swallow her whole.

“Saints—who would take on such a woman?” He tilted his head from side to side, studying her with a dubious expression. “It would have to be a man of great wisdom and learning … and uncompromising standards and prodigious virtue … with the patience of Job, the inner strength of a saint, and the stamina of a warhorse … not to mention a curious indifference to hunting and wagering.”

With each requirement, both his shoulders and her prospects for matrimony sank a bit lower.

“Wait!” He suddenly sat straighter and broke into a broadening smile. “Educated, uncompromising, virtuous, strong … I believe I have just described Sir Hugh of Sennet!”

More laughter rippled through the hall as the king looked to Hugh with thinly disguised determination.

“Sir Hugh, as it happens, is unmarried and in need of an heir.” What came next caused the hall to erupt with excitement. “By all the saints—why not? It is my decree that Sir Hugh of Sennet shall marry Lady Chloe of Avalon. I know, Sir Hugh, that you have long aspired to the religious life. But Heaven seldom consults us in making its plans. It seems you’ve just been chosen for something far more difficult than a life of prayer and fasting … being a
husband.”

Edward turned immediately to his chamberlain and privy councillors.

“Send riders out to locate Norwich and Avalon and tell them to hurry. And rouse the bishop. Tell him I want these nuptials solemnized the moment the duke gets here.” He rose and dusted his hands together with an air of finality. “Thank Heaven that’s done … I have a child being birthed upstairs.”

Chloe watched in disbelief as the king strode for the steps that led to the queen’s chambers and Sir Hugh strode for the doors that led to anywhere his future wife wasn’t. Her emotions, her thoughts, her entire being were in turmoil. Sir High-and-Mighty had wrecked her marriage to the old earl only to be snared into marrying her himself. And while the thought of marrying old Ketchum had filled her with sadness and despair, the prospect of being forced to contend with an irate Hugh of Sennet for the rest of her days filled her with terror.

He was adamantly opposed to marriage and he openly disliked women. Including her. Especially her. And despite the fact that he had sealed his own fate with his outrageous descriptions of her, he would undoubtedly find a way to blame her for it. A husband could find a thousand ways to punish an unwanted wife for being unwanted.

Her sisters hugged her, and Lady Marcella, who was a bit bewildered by the drastic turn of events, embraced her and wished her the best. When they retreated to their chamber to prepare for the vows, her sisters came one by one to thank her for seeing into their hearts and making their wishes come true. She smiled and nodded numbly as Lisette added with an admiring wink:

“What a clever thing you are. However did you persuade Sir Hugh to talk you out of a marriage to the old earl and into a marriage with himself?”

As shocking and tumultuous as the morning had been, the afternoon proved just as eventful. When the time arrived for the vows, the bishop sent for the maidens. Freshened and fortified, they descended to the great hall and were greeted there by a portly man in costly armor, with graying hair, lively eyes, and an air of authority that rivaled the king’s.

“These are my daughters?” he said, his face lighting as his gaze flew from one comely face to another. “But of course they are.
Bon Dieu
—are they not a garden of earthly delights?”

As they were introduced, he embraced them with great dignity and a sense of ceremony, kissing them on both cheeks. He seemed generally pleased and parental until he came to the last maid.

“Chloe?”
His face lost all trace of amusement, his hands tightened on hers, and he drew her closer to search her face with an unsettling intensity. “Where are you from,
fille?
How did you come to the convent?”

“I was brought as an infant, Your Grace. I have been there all my life.”

“And your mother?” The pressure of his hands on hers grew alarming.

“I never knew her. I think she must have died.”

“Her name?” The duke seemed quite affected by something about her.

“I do not know, Your Grace.” Chloe felt something happening that she didn’t understand. But something made her repeat what had become for her the new foundation of her identity. “All I was told was that there was a scrap of hide in my basket bearing the name Gilbert.”

She sensed that there were many eyes watching their exchange and thought it best to add: “It was only of late that I learned you were my father.”

He looked as if she had slapped him and abruptly released her hands. He stared at her with barely contained emotion for a moment longer, then turned and stalked away. She was too stunned and embarrassed to react at first. For the second time that day she’d been publicly rejected … first by a husband, then by a father.

Her sisters crowded around her, comforting her and speculating on what had caused the duke’s reaction. It couldn’t have been her claim of kinship, they reasoned, otherwise he would have responded that way to all of them.

They had no time to dwell on it. The bishop and the priests of the king’s chapel quickly called for them to present themselves in chapel for the vows. Each of the maids was claimed by her intended husband … all but Lisette and Chloe. They looked around nervously for Sir Hugh and Sir Graham, but the pair were nowhere to be found. Then, just as they decided to go on to the chapel in hopes of locating their husbands, Sir Hugh and Sir Graham came striding up with wet hair and freshly battered faces. Grimly they seized their brides’ arms and ushered them without ceremony into the rear of the crowded church.

The duke stood in the midst of the couples, his fists clenched and his face like a thundercloud. As the bishop began to ask the appointed questions and direct the exchange of vows and the placing of rings, the duke’s gaze kept returning to Chloe. But each time it did so, it seemed that some of the heat and intensity left his stare. By the time the bishop came to Hugh and Chloe, she was so thoroughly rattled that she could scarcely mind her words or recall what she was supposed to do.

Sir Hugh took her left hand in his, looked down into her eyes, and in tones clipped with annoyance, promised to love, honor, and cherish her, to live peacefully with her all the days of his life, and to protect and provide for her. With some prompting, she promised to love, honor, and obey him, to live peacefully with him all the days of her life, and to bear his children as God saw fit to grant them. When it came time for the ring, he waved the bishop on, saying there had been no time for such things.

“I have a ring.” The congregation parted reluctantly to allow the speaker to approach the couple. The well-dressed man was a bit shorter than Hugh and some years older, but aside from the graying temples and a bit of thickness around the middle, the two could have been twins. “It belonged to my sons’ mother.”

He held it out to Hugh on the palm of his hand, and after a long, tense moment, Hugh picked it up and slid it over the tip of the first and second fingers of Chloe’s left hand before bringing it to rest at the base of her third finger. When instructed to give his wife a “kiss of peace,” Sir Hugh glared at the bishop until the cleric simply cleared his throat and declared them husband and wife.

Chloe managed to stay upright through the mass that followed and to exit the chapel under her own power. She endured a seemingly endless round of blessings and good wishes, and managed to return similar sentiments to her newly wedded sisters. Then, when they reentered the hall and the duke gave each of his daughters a benedictive kiss on the forehead, he again gripped Chloe’s shoulders tightly and stared into her eyes with a turbulent expression.

What had she done to deserve such wretched treatment from an adoptive father who only adopted her in order to use her to pay his ransom? How much of a disappointment could she possibly be?

Thoroughly dispirited, she sat at the king’s linen-draped table, suffering endless toasts to the felicity and harmony of her marriage and feeling like an impostor at her own wedding feast. Sir Hugh had abandoned her the moment they were seated, and she was certain that everyone in the hall had taken notice. It was only when an uncannily familiar face and frame loomed up before her with an elegant bow that her reluctant husband reappeared at her side.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Hugh demanded in a combative tone.

“Good to see you, too,” the Earl of Sennet said with defiant geniality. “And in better company than usual. Not a tonsure in sight.”

“This”—Hugh gestured to Chloe and then the feast beginning around them—“changes nothing.”

“This”—the earl extended his hand for Chloe’s and, when she yielded it to him, brushed it with a gallant kiss—“changes everything.”

“How did you know I was to wed?” Hugh demanded. “I was only commanded to do so this morning.”

“The king sent for me three days ago.” The earl gave him a superior sort of smile that taunted Hugh with the idea that certain things had been withheld from him. Hugh stiffened and shot a resentful look toward the king.

“Damn his devious hide.”

“I fear I shall have to welcome you properly to the family at a later time, my lady,” the Earl of Sennet said, giving her a dazzling smile that made her wonder if that was how Sir Hugh would look if he was ever moved to a true expression of joy or pleasure.

“Things are never so bad that they can’t get a bit worse,” Hugh muttered, unaware that he’d spoken aloud until he sat down again and found himself caught in a searching gaze.