“You’re quiet today, Drew,” Charles observed as he drew level with his cousin who had ridden ahead of his small procession. “Thinking of your bride, no doubt, who probably does not resemble the Arcadian shepherdess of yestermorn very much.”
This was too near to the bone for Drew to stomach. He put spurs to his horse and left Charles and the rest behind, and stayed ahead of them until Atherington House was reached.
And a noble pile it was. Square and built of red brick, a small tower had been added on each corner to remind the commonalty that although a castle no longer stood on high to menace them, power and might in this part of Leicestershire still belonged to the Turvilles.
There was a formal garden on one side of the house, and stables at the back. It had been built around a central quadrangle filled with a lawn which was bordered by beds of herbs and simples. An arcaded walk had been added to one wall. A small chapel stood at a little distance from the main building.
But all this was yet to be discovered by the visitors. Drew waited for his people to catch him up, whereupon he sent the most senior of his pages before him as a herald to inform Atherington that its master had arrived. But even before the page reached the main entrance with its double doors of the stoutest oak, they were flung open and a crowd of servants appeared, opening up an avenue for Drew and his gentlemen to walk through when they had dismounted. A burly Steward, carrying a white staff of office, came forward to meet them.
He bowed low to Drew and his company. “My mistress, your good lady, bids me greet you, my noble lord. Knowing that your journey from London has been both long and hard, she has arranged to meet you, m’lord, and your gentlemen, in the Great Parlour, after you have had the ordering of yourselves. I most humbly beg you to follow me to your quarters.” He bowed again.
Drew heard Charles give a stifled laugh. Himself, he wanted to fling the man on one side and demand to be taken immediately to his wife. His self-control and temper hung in the balance—and, what was more, Charles and the others knew it. Self-control won. After all, what matter it that he met his wife early or late, when as soon as they did meet he would make it his purpose to show her that he was the master at Atherington.
“I thought,” murmured Charles in his ear, “that you told me that your wife’s uncle was Regent here for you. But yon popinjay made no mention of him. Would you wish me to remind him of who rules at Atherington?”
Charles was merely saying aloud what Drew was thinking. Nevertheless he shook his head. “No, I do not wish my own rule to begin in dissension and unpleasantness. Later we will arrange things to my liking. For the present we go with the tide.”
Again, easy to say, but hard to do.
It was, therefore, some little time before Drew and his gentlemen were escorted by the same Steward from their quarters in one of the towers down the winding staircase towards the entrance hall and the double doors which led first to the Great Hall. From thence they processed to the Great Parlour—the room where the owners of Atherington took their private leisure. These days the Great Hall was reserved for more formal functions.
Drew had dressed himself magnificently in cloth of the deepest silver with a hint of cerulean blue in it. The colours emphasised—as they were intended to do—his blonde beauty. His doublet had the new peasecod belly. His breeches were padded with horsehair, and his long stockings of the palest cream were visible until just above his knee where they were supported by garters made of fine blue and silver brocade.
His ruff was also of the newest fashion, being oval in shape, rather than round, and was narrow, not deep. It was held up behind his head by an invisible fine wire frame. His leather shoes had long tongues and small cork heels. A sapphire ring decorated one shapely hand; a small gold locket hung around his neck, its case adorned by a large diamond.
Charles and his other gentlemen were similarly dressed, but not so richly. They formed the most exquisitely presented bevy of young male beauty such as Atherington had not seen for many a long year.
They marched in solemn procession through the Great Hall, already laid out for a formal banquet, and then through an oak door richly carved with the Tree of Life, and into the Great Parlour, a large splendidly furnished room, whose leaded windows looked out on to the central quadrangle.
Facing them was a group of people as richly dressed as themselves, although not quite in the latest fashion. All but two of them were men. In front of them, with another, and older woman, standing a little behind her, stood a young woman of middle height as richly and fashionably dressed as he was, in a gown whose deep colours of burnt sienna, rich gold and emerald green were in marked contrast to the pastel hues of Drew and his train.
As though she were the Queen she made no effort to walk towards him, but stood there, waiting for him to approach her, her head held high, her face concealed by a large fan, so that all that Drew could see of her was her rich dark hair, dressed high on her head, and a single pearl resting on her forehead above the fan’s fluted edge.
At last, reluctantly, he moved forward, bowing, as did his followers. Straightening up, he found that he had no wish to see the face which was hidden behind the fan. He had a form of words ready for her, which would contain no reference to what had passed between them ten years ago, or to her looks—for that might be tactless.
“Madam,” he began—and then paused for a brief moment before he spoke the words which flowed from him almost against his will. “We meet at last, m’lady Exford.”
On hearing this, his wife slowly lowered the fan to show him her face for the first time.
Drew stood there paralysed. For the face before him was that of the beautiful nymph whom he had lusted after—and had offered to seduce—in Charnwood Forest on the previous day.
But the nymph had worn rough clothing and had moved and spoken with the wild freedom of a creature of the woods. This woman was a lovely icon, standing stiff and proud in her formal clothing. But, oh, her face was the perfect oval he remembered, the lips as crimson, shapely and tender, the eyes as dark, and her complexion, yes, her complexion, was of the purest and smoothest ivory, with the faintest rose blush to enhance its loveliness. And beneath her stiff clothing her body was surely as luscious and inviting.
Drew, standing there, dumbstruck, all his usual rather cold command quite gone, heard his cousin Charles give a stifled groan—turning it into something between a cough and a laugh as he, too, recognised the woodland nymph. The sound brought him back to life again, even as he wondered what in the world had happened to the dark monkey-like child of ten years ago.
Had his wits been wandering then? Or were they wandering now?
Had it been a changeling he had seen? Or was this woman the changeling? Without conscious thought, courtier-like, as though greeting his Queen, Elizabeth herself, he went down on one knee before her and took into his own hand that of his wife’s which was not holding the fan.
Turning it over, he kissed, not the back but the palm of the hand—a long and lingering kiss—and thought that he detected a faint quiver in it. But as he looked up there was no sign of emotion in the cold, aloof face of the woman before him.
Why did she not speak? As though she had picked his thought out of the air, she said at last in the wood nymph’s honeyed tones, “As the old adage has it, better late than never, m’lord. Permit me to introduce you to my good counsellors—and yours—who have served you well these many years.”
She had looked him in the eye for one fleeting moment before she began to name the men around her. Her manner reminded him again of that of his Queen. But that Elizabeth was a ruler, and this woman ruled nothing. He waited, as she introduced them one by one, for her to name the Master of her Household, Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, but although she introduced his wife to him, his name did not pass her lips, and he was not one of the men around her, either.
He murmured his acknowledgments, as did those gentlemen