The Scandalous Duchess

Chapter Eleven

My dreams were full of blood, of vicious wounds and death, so drenched in it that I awoke with my heart pounding. My days were full of the darkness of loss. The Duke was campaigning, the silence between us heavy with terrible portent in this, my first real experience of the separation of war. Why had terror not struck me to the same measure when I had lived apart from Hugh? This was a grinding, gnawing fear, day after day. My whole existence seemed to be centred on every new rumour that reached us.

‘What is happening in France? Is Castile invaded yet?’

If the Duchess demanded an answer once, she demanded it a dozen times a week.

And we had no reply to give. Not even I. I could have asked it myself, but that was not my way and I hugged my worries close. If I had posed the question, I would have asked: ‘How does the Duke of Lancaster fare? Does he live?’

Yet I knew he lived as I wore out the steps to the turret and wall-walk at Tutbury, as I had once done at Kettlethorpe when the storms kept him pinned in the Channel. The open skies made it seem as if I could reach him if I allowed my mind the freedom to span the distance, for now he was much further away from me. The embarkation had gone according to plan, that much we knew. The Duke, as Captain-General, was in France, marching south with an army of six thousand men. How hard it was to live with any degree of equanimity in those months of not knowing. I longed for news, yet when we were alerted to the approach of a courier, I found myself tempted to hide in the cellars or take refuge with the kitchen maids where they stirred and ladled under the eye of Stephen of the Saucery.

Which would be worse, I pondered, as the weather continued to bless us and the countryside donned summer dress, to know or not know? That was the only thought that lived with me. Hope was better than despair. What would I do, if I were to hear a courier pronounce in heartless exactitude that the Duke was dead, struck down by some stray arrow or caught up in a fatal charge of cavalry?

Commanders were not exempt from death.

‘Don’t leave me,’ I had said at the last moment of his departure when my courage fled.

Stern, severe, wholly the King’s son, seemingly without compassion, his response put me in my place. ‘I must go. You must not ask that of me.’ Even in his newfound love for me he could be harsh when any obstacle appeared in his path, even one presented by me. ‘You must know that you cannot always command my presence.’

He softened the reprimand with a smile and a brief salute: nevertheless it was a lesson I learned quickly, as I had learned so many, that a royal mistress must have the strength to live her own life separate from her lover. I never asked again. It would demean both of us.

But now, with the rumours not good, I found the distance hard to stomach. I did not see the blossoming trees or hear the love-struck birds.

And then the couriers began to arrive, outstripping the rumours. They must, of course, be heard, their news dissected and assessed with due formality and detailed accounting in Constanza’s audience chamber. How far were they from Castile; how long would it take to reach that Holy Grail? Was her despicable uncle Enrique of Trastamara still alive, still claiming her crown?

Only then could I take the hard-travelled rider aside into any quiet space I could find, to badger him with question after question as he consumed bread and ale before his return.

I cared little for the progress of the war, for the destructive march of the grande chevauchée, with its plunder, looting and killing. It mattered not to me how far the Duke might be from Castile, or whether Enrique could be driven out of his ill-gotten gains. England’s victory might touch momentarily on my conscience and my interest, but it was the Duke who consumed my thoughts for I received no personal communication from him. How could I? I could not be his primary interest. I did not expect it. All I wanted was to see his return.

Not so the Duchess.

‘That is good,’ stated Constanza to every description of the march south by the English army and its final arrival at Bordeaux. ‘Nothing will stop him now. He will destroy Enrique before the end of the year.’ A smile lit her face. The Duchess did not often smile. I noticed how pale and thin she grew.

I did not smile at all.

‘Is the Duke in good health?’ I asked as the courier gulped his ale and crammed bread into his mouth. ‘And the army. Does the winter affect them? Do they suffer?’ Because if the army suffered, so would the Duke.

His face set as he finished chewing. Constanza had not even asked.

‘Badly, mistress.’ He wiped the crumbs from his chin with his sleeve. ‘Half the army dead for one reason or another. Floods and cold and ambush. They’re starving…The Duke tries to remain in good heart. He’ll not be in Castile this side of the grave,’ he growled. ‘She’ll not see it—but so it is if you want my opinion.’

‘And the Duke?’

‘As hard-ridden as the next man. He’s not eating either. Looks as if his belly’s clapped to his spine.’

Which only served to double my fears. I gave him coin for his trouble.

‘She’s not bothered, is she?’ he grunted as he rescued his gloves and satchel.

‘She has other concerns,’ I tried to make the excuse.

Nine months of separation. I lived through those days without him, anxiety treading in my footsteps, while Constanza bloomed at the prospect of her beloved Castile being restored to her. She closed her mind to the rumours that were increasingly hard to bear.

I did not.

Until the day that the Duke returned to England.

‘Un desastre! All he promised me. All lost in futility.’

Constanza stormed from one end of the audience chamber to the other, cheeks no longer pale but flushed with heat. ‘Why did he not engage in battle? What of England’s reputation now? Trampled in the mire of failure!’ She glared at the carrier of bad news. ‘I do not wish to see your face. Leave me!’

I stood silently. The courier—a different one, a young man but with features imprinted with a similar brand of near-exhaustion—bowed himself discreetly out. I sensed that an eruption was imminent. Constanza could no longer pretend that the rumours of English failure were anything but the truth. So preoccupied was she that she failed to notice me, but I supposed eventually that she would. I wished I could join the suffering courier in the kitchen.

‘He promised me he would force Enrique to surrender and hand over Castile. He promised me!’ She tore the document—was it a letter from the Duke?—into two pieces. ‘And what has he achieved? Nothing. An English army on its knees, begging for its bread. And now he has abandoned them.’

‘Not abandoned, my lady.’ Lady Alice attempted to distract with wise words.

‘He is not there to lead them on, is he? Should he not be planning a new campaign? The days are lengthening.’ It was April into the new year. ‘Soon it will be May when the days are long and the campaigning is good. That I know. And where is he now? Come home to England to lick his wounds while I mourn the loss of my true inheritance.’

Tears streaked Constanza’s cheeks as she turned on me, eyes fierce.

‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

‘I do not know, my lady.’ I had not even known that he was back in England. The letter passed to me by the young courier lay flattened against my skirts, still unread.

‘I suppose it matters not to you whether he wins Castile or not.’

Constanza, unconscious of all dignity in her frustrated grief, fell to her knees, arms clutched around her belly as if struck down with intense pain. Her howl of nothing less than agony echoed from the walls. Surely her slight figure could not support such excess of humours. We leaped to her, to lift her, to comfort her, but Lady Alice waved me aside.

‘Go,’ she ordered. ‘You’ll do no good here. She’ll not listen to reason. She will never listen to reason when Castile is the issue, and you won’t help matters.’

I retreated, my relief at the Duke’s return heady, only to be replaced by another, different grief. In the quiet of the schoolroom, where Philippa and Elizabeth, having read their catechism now wallowed in the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, murmuring to each other, I unfolded the letter from the Duke with care as if the contents might snap and bite.

I am at The Savoy and have no plans as yet to travel further. Come here to me. I find I have need of you. The knowledge of your love has sustained me through some of the worst weeks of my life.

The words caught at my heart, brief as they were. Brief and—despairing? Was that it? Although I tried to fathom the quality of his mind, despair was the only word that came to me from that bleak request. I could not imagine his being so low in spirits, his pride so smeared by the defeat. I had never seen desolation lie so heavily on him, unless it was after Blanche’s death when black mourning had stalked him.

I think England will not forgive me this setback. The King will not. I have undone all that he had achieved in his glorious lifetime. And yet what more was there to be done?

I will talk to you when you come.

I sat and stared at it, with only one thought in my head. I must go. As I had known I must since the courier’s news, if the Duke asked me to go to him, because he had a need of me, then I must obey, for his sake as well as mine. How scathing must the criticism be, to hack away at the Duke’s self-worth in this manner?

I must go to The Savoy.

‘Is the letter from my father?’ Philippa of Lancaster asked, her eyes, abandoning the tragic romance of Lancelot, now fixed on me with a degree of speculation.

I returned her regard. At fourteen years she was almost a woman, grown and aware that her own days as an unmarried girl were numbered. I should have known, from my own experience, how fast girls grew up at court.

‘What does he say?’ Elizabeth immediately asked, pushing aside the book and standing. ‘Does he ask about us?’

‘No,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Your father is at The Savoy. His thoughts are involved with matters of war.’

‘Then why does he write to you, Lady Katherine?’ Elizabeth’s fair brows creased.

‘He wants you to go to him, doesn’t he?’ Philippa said.

A statement that took me aback, and I found myself seeking wildly for a suitable reply, a reply that would cast neither their magistra nor their father into a contentious light. But before I could, Philippa was standing, curtsying, for there was Duchess Constanza in the doorway. She walked regally across the room, ignoring me, to see what it was that they were reading.

I waited, hands folded. I knew right well that the Duchess was not here to interest herself in the education of her stepdaughters.

‘Read me that,’ the Duchess commanded, as if needing proof that they were learning anything of value under my care.

After a few lines, when both girls read with their usual fluency, she stopped it with a sharp gesture of her hand.

‘Have you said your prayers today?’

‘Yes, my lady,’ Philippa replied, raising her eyes from her book with confidence.

‘And studied your catechism?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘And you too?’

The Duchess directed her question at Elizabeth, but without waiting for an answer, spun round to face me. The tears were dried, her earlier fury contained, her features composed as if she had come to a hard-won decision. She pointed at the open letter that I had carelessly left to lie for all to see on the desk.

‘Is that from him?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ It came to me that to prevent further recrimination I should have disguised it, but I replied without dissimulation because all I could recall was that throughout her intense disappointment, Constanza had not once asked after the Duke’s well-being. I could not forgive her that.

‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

‘At The Savoy.’

‘For how long?’

What did she wish me to say? Was she concerned for him despite her condemnation of his lack of achievement? And then beneath the anger I saw the torment in her face and could only pity her. In spite of everything between us, this woman retained the power to rouse my compassion. All she had ever dreamed of was lost to her, all her plans destroyed: my conscience was touched.

‘If you go to him at The Savoy,’ I found myself saying, ‘my lord will be able to explain what he intends to do.’

‘Go to him? I? And why should I do that?’

‘So that when my lord explains that the campaign will be renewed, your mind could be put at rest.’

Any compassion she had stirred in me was violently rejected. ‘Explain? How can he say more than the facts prove? I will not go.’ Irritably she kicked her skirts aside. ‘You go to him,’ she snapped with excruciating bitterness. ‘Help him to lick his wounds. That’s what he wants, isn’t it? That’s why he wrote to you.’

I hesitated.

‘He wants you with him, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ It was an unequivocal response to an unequivocal question, and I expected an eruption of her fury against me.

‘He wants you, not me!’

The Duchess halted an arm’s length from me. When she stretched out her hand I almost flinched, recalling the affair of the salt cellar, but it was only to pick up the letter, which she allowed to fall before she had read more than one line of it. Her regard had the hardness of flint within it. I expected her refusal, and she knew it.

‘If I refuse to give you permission,’ her voice grated, ‘would you defy me?’

Which cast the decision fairly into my lap. To defy the Duchess so openly would fling her lack of authority over me in her face, and yet I did not hesitate. If Constanza had planned to forbid me, to exhibit my lack of power as the Duke’s mistress compared with her own as his wife, she had failed. I knew where my life lay and I had within me the strength to stand before her without the degradation she had envisaged.

‘Yes, my lady. I would defy you.’

I held her gaze as the air drew taut with tension between us, the girls sitting motionless as if they too were aware of the critical balance of power here. Here was a new layer in our relationship, wife and mistress, and, now certain of the Duke’s love, I would not retreat.

‘Can I stop you?’ Constanza demanded, eyes wide and fathomless, fingers slowly clenching into fists at her side.

‘No, my lady,’ I said softly, my defiance coming readily to my lips. ‘Not unless you resort to chains and a dungeon.’

Her laughter was brief and hard, lacking any humour.

‘So what do I say?’ She swung away from me, then back again, the motion of her skirts wafting the letter from table to floor. She paused, her tongue skimming over her lips. ‘Go to him.’

So this was the decision she had come to. I could barely believe it, my body still tensed against her expected rebuttal.

‘Do you not hear me?’ she repeated. ‘Go to him.’

There was the outcome I had hoped for, and relief swept aside every other emotion, but here was no time for triumph. I knew what it must have cost the Duchess to give me the victory. She had my compassion, even thought she would have despised it, but the only thought in my mind was that I need never fear the extent of her authority again.

‘I am grateful.’ I curtsied. ‘Do I take any message, my lady?’

‘I care not. I will not see him. He has no thought for me.’

Which caused justice to take a hold. ‘But he does, my lady.’

‘How can you say that? When he has banished my damsels to some distant place of confinement? So I am punished!’

I could think of no reply. The Duke had ordered the gossiping damsels to Nuneaton Abbey to learn discretion, but any attempt on my part to defend the Duke was superfluous—the Duchess marched out, leaving a palpable lightness in the air of the schoolroom. I inhaled sharply, pondering what I had achieved in my troubled relationship with Constanza, until I grew aware of Philippa standing quietly beside me.

‘Are you going to see my father?’ Without asking permission, she picked up my discarded letter, and I allowed it, since her tone was not judgemental. I let her be.

‘Yes. I am.’

‘Will you come back to us?’

It was a question that startled me in its maturity. Philippa was old enough to understand the implications of that recent exchange, and condemn me for the choice I had made. She was no longer the little girl who had clung to my skirts when I had left the household after her mother’s death. I must tread carefully here if my authority over her, and our affection, meant anything to me. I did not want to read disdain in her youthful regard, and so I tweaked the soft folds of her coif, raising the glimmer of a smile.

‘Do you want me to?’ I asked lightly.

Philippa did not answer. Instead: ‘My father says here that he has missed you.’ She looked down at the letter that was still in her hand as if she had every right to read it. ‘It does not say that he loves you. I thought he would have written that.’

I stiffened, unable for a heartbeat to dredge up a reply, then decided that she deserved my honesty, and I her disapproval if she chose to give it. Philippa could not be cushioned from what the household knew and she had the right to respond as her growing mind saw fit, even if her disdain hurt me.

‘How do you know that he does?’ I asked.

‘I’ve seen him look at you.’

‘And he gave you a merlin,’ Elizabeth, who had joined her sister, added.

I raised my brows at a logic I could not follow. ‘So he did. The Duke gives many presents. He is a very generous man.’

‘Yes.’ Philippa picked up the point, tapping her sister on her neatly braided head with the letter. ‘He gives costly gifts. When he does not care about the receiver, he gives a silver cup, jewelled and with a cover. But to you he gave a merlin, because he knows you enjoy hunting.’ Then, after reading to the end: ‘My father says he wants you to be with him. Is it a sin, when my father is wed?’

I regarded her steadily. ‘It is not what I would advise for you.’

‘I think I would want a husband of my own,’ Philippa agreed, returning to her seat and the exploits of Lancelot and Guinevere, another adulterous couple. ‘But it must make you very happy. To be so greatly loved.’

Astonished at her calm acceptance of a relationship that might justifiably have stirred her to rank disapproval, I could think of nothing to say other than ‘Yes, it makes me very happy.’

And, oh, it did. Deliriously happy, as it did in that moment. It had the power to stir the flames of the most intense joy that could be imagined when we were together. That it could cast me into a pit of despair when we were parted was a consequence of that love that I must accept.

But I said none of that.

I was packed and gone within the day, stopping only when the other Philippa, my sister—and far less accommodating of my disgraceful lifestyle—made her way to my side in the courtyard.

‘Will this happen often?’

‘When he needs me.’ I was trenchant.

‘And you need him.’ How blistering she could be, in so few words.

‘Yes. When I need him. When will I ever not need him?’ Short of time, risking a rebuff, I stepped forward and hugged her before she could retreat. And since she did not, we kissed, a sisterly reconciliation of sorts.

‘Give him comfort,’ she whispered.

‘I will.’

Constanza’s acquiescence had instilled in me a new power, an assurance that seemed to grow within me with every breath I took, with every mile I covered towards The Savoy.

The Savoy was uncomfortably quiet to my mind, without children’s voices, the servants solemn and soft-footed. As if there was an illness in the house. Or a death. I did not like it.

‘Where is my lord the Duke?’

‘In the library, my lady.’

‘I will announce myself.’

I did not knock, and he did not hear as I opened the door, absorbed as was often the case. He sat at a table where the light fell on his work, but, unusually, it did not seem to me that he saw the documents in front of him or the contents of the coffer to his right. Rather his thoughts were far away, taken up with some planning, some regret perhaps. Some ghastly scene from events in Aquitaine. Always lithe and rangy, I thought he had shed weight that he could ill-afford, but then starvation was no respecter of rank. I walked towards him until I stood at his side as once before. And as on that first time, I placed my hand on his shoulder.

For a long, wordless moment his gaze held mine, in its glitter a great distancing and a wealth of grief and disappointment that wounded my heart. The failed campaign had touched him heavily.

‘John…’ I said. There was nothing else to say.

Then his self-command was back in place, and he smiled as if for me to be there with him was the most natural thing in the world, the most looked-for blessing. As if there were no restrictions on either our movements or our loyalties, and in the face of such a welcome I felt tears gather in my throat, and my heart seemed to be so swollen with love for him that it filled my breast so that I could scarcely breathe.

‘I wanted you to come.’

‘Yes.’ I took the liberty of touching his cheek with my fingertips, the gentlest of caresses. ‘If you recall, you ordered me to do so.’

How sure I felt in my decision. Constanza had given me leave, not just by her dismissal but by her rejection of the Duke’s suffering in her cause. Her lack of compassion, her vicious criticisms of all he had done, her lack of interest in his present state, had presented to me the freedom I needed to leave Tutbury and be openly with him here. None of which I explained. The Duke would not see my need for permission, or even necessarily understand that guilt still had a habit of perching like a hungry raptor on my wrist. Sometimes I was impatient with that wily bird. But Constanza’s condemnation of her husband had ensured that the raptor took wing: I was free of conscience.

The Duke had captured my hand, and was engaged in kissing his way across my knuckles in what could be construed, my fluttering heart announced, as light-hearted seduction.

‘I will listen, if you want to tell me how bad it was,’ I offered, still uncertain of his mood.

‘No.’ How wrong I had been, for there was suddenly no control at all in his face. Nothing at all of light-heartedness. Only rampant desire in the rawness of his voice. ‘This is not the time for exchanging views on English policy.’

Standing abruptly, arms sliding around my waist, he clasped me close, his mouth hot and demanding on mine.

‘You will stay.’ A command.

‘As long as you need me.’

‘For ever.’ He framed my face in his hands. ‘Before God, I want you, Katherine. I want you now.’

I shivered at his expression, at the slide of his fingers against my throat before he all but dragged me to the chamber I used at The Savoy, delighting me with his concern for my comfort in familiar surroundings despite the hot emotion that drove him.

‘When did you last sit at ease and laugh and talk of inconsequential matters?’ I asked, striving to keep the moment free from high drama.

‘Laughter? What’s that?’ He was already loosening his belt, sitting to unlace his boots with urgent fingers.

‘Do you realise how long it is since we were last together?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure you will tell me,’ he replied, actions governed by intense need.

‘Almost a full year.’

‘Then we will celebrate our reunion. We have spent enough time apart. We will spend no more. Stop talking, and come to me.’

Then high drama overtook us, and neither of us was in a mood to deny it as the Duke stripped me to my shift, and then took even that from me, trailing his fingers over the silvered lines of past child-bearing. They were not too disfiguring in the soft glow of costly candles whose flickering hid the worst ravages, and he knew them well anyway. I did not flinch from his appraisal.

It was a reunion of passion, tumbled and heated with no time for soft seduction. I had no need of it, and the Duke was stirred by an inner need to re-own me. It was a statement of love and longing and joy in being together again, a rejection of the failure and despair across the sea. Pain and loss were fast subsumed beneath the fire of lust that used no words, no endearments, nothing but the slide of flesh against flesh, hot kisses on even hotter skin. We feasted on each other, a glorious celebration in the end, to prove that love could conquer all and give relief from anguish.

What was there to say? We were together and our love could burn as brightly as the sun at noon, or as softly as the lapping of a kitten’s tongue.

He made me laugh anyway, and I reciprocated, my lips and fingertips explored anew the ducal skin. He made me sigh too for notwithstanding the driving force, the Duke sought my pleasure as well as his own.

‘Allow me to caress the arches of your delectable feet. I think I have neglected your feet.’

I was devastated by his success. My whole body was light with exultation.

‘You cannot imagine how I have missed you,’ he said, pinning me to the bed.

‘Of course not,’ I agreed. ‘I have been far too occupied to give you a second thought.’

My eyes were wet with tears, which he kissed away with tenderness. He understood all that I would not tell him. He knew how hard it was for women to be left behind and imagine the worst.

‘My love for you knows no end,’ I informed him when we at last took time to draw breath.

‘For which I thank God,’ he replied, and he was smiling at last.

Yet although I slid into some species of exhausted sleep in his arms, I knew that, as unconsciousness claimed me, he lay awake.

I woke to find him gone from the bed, but he had not left me. In shirt and hose he was stretched out on the low window seat, back propped against the stonework, a little pottery bowl in his hand. I thought that he was at ease, until I realised that the scene beyond the window did not take his attention. So I had not dragged his mind from the loss of English life for long, or from whatever it was that had now placed its hand on him. Grief, I would have said, studying the stark lines. I lay and watched him for a little while, shocked to see such torment. He was eating steadily from the bowl, as if the delicacy would assuage his worry as well as his appetite.

Eventually when I could remain apart no longer and the dish was empty—how could I enjoy my own happiness when he was clearly bleeding from some inner wound?—I wrapped one of the linen sheets round me since no other garment came to hand and walked slowly to stand at his side. But there I was even more disturbed, for although he acknowledged me with an arm sliding comfortably around my waist, a mask instantly fell into place to hide the rank despair of minutes ago. The mask was good, the muscles of his face relaxed and I followed his lead, calmly relieving him of the dish, placing it on the floor beside us, because I dare not tap the ugly depths of that distress.

Kneeling beside him, resting my head against his shoulder and feeling the tension there that the mask could do nothing to hide, I changed my mind.

‘Was it very bad?’ I asked. I thought he needed to speak of it after all. He did not resist.

‘It was bad. Our army suffered beyond belief.’ Then: ‘I hear no good of what I did.’ Straight to the point, as ever.

‘No.’ I could not deny it. The loss of men and land had come in for scathing criticism, the Duke’s reputation ravaged.

‘My policy in France has been stripped bare. Once we ruled a mighty Empire stretching from Calais to Bordeaux. And now we hold the towns but no land to connect them. Our Empire is no more and I failed to bring England a victory…’ He looked away towards the window, as if he could absorb the grumbling complaints from the London streets even at this distance. ‘What do you think?’

‘How can I judge?’ I combed my fingers through his hair. Nothing I could say would make matters any better. He would have to face his demons, as the burden demanded by royal blood, but I would stay at his side as he faced them. He would not be alone.

‘I am of a mind…’ He hesitated. ‘I think I was wrong…’

‘And I never thought to hear you admit that.’ I essayed a little humour.

And indeed the faint remnants of a frown were smoothed out by a wry twist of his lips. ‘Do you accuse me of arrogance, Lady Katherine? Many would.’ And then with a lift of a shoulder: ‘What value is there for England in such a war, to hold fast to territories so far away and surrounded by those who would take them from us?’

Such an admission astonished me, and he saw it.

‘Should I not admit to it, when I am coming to believe that it is true? What do we gain, except a drain on our wealth and the death of our soldiery? The Pope is calling for negotiations and a lasting peace. I think we should do it.’

‘It will not be well-received,’ I ventured.

‘I care not. It’s a storm I must weather. I am not popular now, and the losses at Bordeaux will bring more invective down on my head, but who can harm me?’ The Duke’s sardonic smile became even more pronounced. ‘Consider the advantages. Peace will bring an increase in trade, lower taxes. We cannot continue as we are with this vast drain of money and taxation so high that it all but beggars our merchants. The stain on England’s reputation is a wound on my soul.’

‘Parliament will not support peace with France,’ I suggested.

‘God’s Blood! I’ll be damned if I let Parliament dictate my policy.’

Which promised no good for the future when foreign affairs and finance must collide. ‘Will the King agree? To peace-making?’ I asked, to divert into calmer channels.

‘I must persuade him. Since my brother is too ill to hold the reins himself it’s for me to take up the banner of England’s future. I’ll do it readily, with or without Parliament behind me. They’ll follow me if they know what’s good for them.’

And as I felt a single, solid beat of his heart beneath my hand, my presentiment that this was not the full cause of his wretchedness was enforced as the Duke turned his face against my hair and, beneath my hands, in his laboured breathing, I felt the earlier grief rush back in a torrent.

‘John…’ I whispered aghast.

He shook his head but I persisted. When he might have pulled away, I held onto his shoulders so that he must look at me. It was all I could give him. And by some strange female intuition, I realised what it must be to make such pain live in his eyes. The breath continued to shudder in his lungs.

‘It’s the Prince, isn’t it?’

‘He’s dying.’

My heart throbbed with reflected pain. His much-loved older brother, his hero, the perfect prince.

‘I doubt my brother will live to see our father die.’ And then because the pain had spread its tendrils much further: ‘What will England do with a child king? I doubt Richard will be more than ten years when the crown drops into his lap. What then?’

‘I will tell you what then,’ I replied with smooth urgency, fastening my hands tight around his wrists. ‘You will stand at Richard’s side. You will support and guide him until he is of an age to rule in his own right. You will do it for your father and your brother and because it is your duty to your name and to England. That is what will happen.’

I could not reassure him about the Prince’s health, but I could paint a bright picture of the future in which his role would be so very important. I pressed my lips against his brow as I felt at last an infinitesimal softening in his shoulders.

‘You see it very clearly,’ he observed.

‘I see the truth,’ I replied. Here was no place for doubts, and so I lightened my tone. ‘Would you argue the point with me? I don’t advise it.’

And the Duke’s eyes were now clearer, and his mouth curved in a vestige of a smile. ‘My thanks, Lady de Swynford.’

‘My pleasure, my lord,’ I responded archly, still intent on distraction because I could do no other. ‘And I have to say, you have eaten all my sweet pears.’

‘I have?’

I nudged the empty bowl with my toe. ‘What do I demand in reparation? I swear you have as great a sweet tooth as young Henry, and I’ve never seen any boy clear a dish of marchpane as fast as he can.’

He laughed, a little rough at the edges, but still a laugh. It was not from his heart, and I had perforce to accept the limitations on my powers. It was his brother who weighed heavily in his mind, and I had to allow it as I acknowledged that I could do nothing to lift the burden, and yet my heart was steadier, for the Duke had opened a new door for me, one that I had never been allowed to step through before, allowing me the right to trespass in his own emotions and fears. But only as far as he saw fit. All I could do, with gratitude that he gave me freedom to know the thoughts that troubled him, was distract and wrap him around with my love when he needed it. It was my pleasure and my heart’s delight to do so. I knew that he laid that burden down before no one else.

Was it not a precious milestone in the journey that we were travelling together?

‘You should sleep now, John,’ I said.

And he did, deep and dreamless. For the first time, I thought, for many nights. I lay awake to watch over him. Was that not the essence of love? It was for me. Sometimes it was all I could do for him. And was that not another lesson for me to learn? I had had no recognition of the inner strength I would need to draw on as the truth of our relationship was exposed. Now as our love grew, I needed to be strong for him too. For who else was there for him to turn to in grief or despair?

He could turn to me, and I would answer all his needs.

It had its repercussions, our reconciliation at The Savoy. When the Duke left Tutbury, en route to London in August to commemorate the sixth anniversary of Duchess Blanche’s death, he held me close in a final embrace, for I was not to accompany him. His arms were firm, his lips soft, then he raised his head and looked at me. And looked again, trailing the palm of his hand over the panels of my close-cut gown.

I drew in and held my breath, perhaps still a little nervous.

‘Are you breeding?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘At the start of the new year.’

‘Does it please you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It pleases me too.’

He kissed me, lingeringly gentle but with the underlying passion that was now part of my life. I smiled. I would never again need to flee in fear that the Duke would reject me and this new child. Our love would stand firm against everything.