He dismissed the Steward when he reached the bottom of the stairway which led into the entrance hall, and pushed Charles into a room which opened off it.
“Now, Charles, what the devil has been going on here? The man I thought was my Comptroller is a blinking idiot, and my lady wife is not only running the household and the estates, but is riding around the countryside dressed like a milkmaid inviting seduction.”
Charles said, choking with laughter, “Your face, Drew, your face when you saw that the nymph you tried to seduce was your own wife! A beauty, though, a very Helen of Troy. Whyever did you tell me that she was plain?” and he began to laugh helplessly.
Drew grasped his cousin by the shoulders and turned him so that they were face to face, eye to eye. Charles was still trying to control his amusement, whilst Drew was as grim as Hercules about to embark on another of his labours—as Charles told him later.
He hissed at his cousin, “If you laugh, Charles, I shall kill you! That is a promise, not a threat!”
Charles rearranged his face, and said, as solemnly as he could, “What, laugh? I laugh? No, no, I merely choked a little—from surprise, you understand. This is a grave matter, a very grave matter, m’lord.”
“And do not m’lord me, either. Damnation and Hell surround me and every devil with a pitchfork is sticking me with it. How in God’s name was I to know that that wanton nymph in the woods yesterday was my wife? And he I thought her brother—in Hell’s name, who was he? Was she wantoning with him in the greenwood? I can believe anything of her after the way in which she taunted me just now.”
“Most strange,” agreed Charles, his face solemn, but his eyes had an evil glint in them as he savoured Drew’s discomfiture. “As I said earlier, repute had it that she was plain, and you did not deny it, on the contrary.”
“Hell’s teeth,” roared Drew who had lost all his usual calm control and the measured speech which went with it. “She resembled naught so much as a monkey ten years agone. What alchemist has she visited to turn herself into such a…such…?” He ran out of words.
“A pearl?” Charles finished for him, still as grave as a parson.
Drew raved on. “I was prepared to be patient with her, and kind, because she was so plain, you understand. But what shall I do with her now that she has caught me trying to seduce a woodland maiden who turned out to be my own wife? She never said a word to enlighten me, into the bargain, but inwardly enjoyed the jest at my expense. And after that, she had the impudence to twit me with her chastity—and my lack of it.”
Charles could not help himself. He began to laugh until the tears ran down his face. “Confess, Drew, what a fine jest you would think this if it were happening to someone else!”
Drew stared at him, and then, as his cousin’s words struck home, he began to laugh himself at the sheer absurdity of it all. Laughter dissipated his rage—it slunk back again into its kennel. When he spoke, his voice showed that he had regained his usual cold command.
“Merriment purges all, Philip Sidney once said. You were right to laugh, Charles, at the spectacle of my High Mightiness brought low by a woman. Now I am myself again, and by my faith, the best way to treat my lady wife will be to behave as though yesterday was a dream—which I did not share. More, I shall sort out her deception over the ruling of Atherington in such a way as will offer her no satisfaction, no chance to enjoy any more secret jests at my expense.”
“Oh, bravo! That is more like yourself, Drew. Come, let us to the feast.”
“Aye, Charles, where I shall behave like a grave and reverend signor who would never attempt to tumble a chance-met wench in the greenwood!”
Chapter Four
“Bess, my dear, I cannot understand how it was that your husband did not know of Sir Braithwaitte’s illness! I distinctly remember that he was informed. You said that he might have forgotten—but how could he forget a matter of such importance? It would be most careless of him, and he does not appear to be a careless person. I was always surprised that he appointed no one in my husband’s place, but allowed you to take over the governance of Atherington!”
Aunt Hamilton had been twittering away to Bess on this undesirable subject ever since Drew and Charles had left them. Walter Hampden, her Chief Comptroller, had also approached her, frowning heavily, as they awaited her husband’s return to the Great Parlour. Bess had silenced him by immediately turning on her heel and ordering Gilbert to arrange for goblets of sack to be brought through to the company, ostensibly to help them while away the time until dinner, but actually to keep them from questioning her.
Even so, Walter, a neglected goblet of wine in his hand, had not taken this none-too-subtle hint, but began immediately to question her, saying, “Madam, I would have a word with you. I remember that we wrote several times to Lord Exford informing him of Sir Braithwaite’s sad mishap, so how was it that he knew nothing of it? Most strange, most strange.” He shook his old head in wonderment as he finished.
He had been Sir Braithwaite’s trusted right-hand man, and had continued as Bess’s after it was plain that Lord Exford, by his silence, seemed happy for matters to continue as they were, without sending his man to oversee Atherington’s affairs.
Atherington, under his and Bess’s guidance, with the help of the Council, had subsequently become so prosperous that after a time Walter had ceased to question this somewhat odd arrangement. As Bess had feared, however, Drew’s apparent ignorance of the truth about Sir Braithwaite’s condition was beginning to trouble him.
“Oh, I am sure that this is but a misunderstanding,” Bess proclaimed feverishly, wishing that Drew would return so that they could repair to the Great Hall and set about the banquet. Her husband could scarcely expect her to begin discussing matters of business whilst they were eating and drinking their way through Atherington’s bounty.
His grim face, however, when he returned from Sir Braithwaite’s tower room, gave her no reason to expect that she was going to receive much mercy from him, either at the banquet—or anywhere else. His cousin Charles, by contrast, had an expression on his face which showed that one person, at least, was deriving some amusement from the situation.
“I am at your service, madam,” Drew announced. “Bid your Steward to escort us to the Hall.”
He held his hand out to take hers as though nothing was amiss, but his mouth, set in a hard straight line, was an indication that their private life, like their public one, was to be as coldly formal as his voice.
Gilbert the Steward, however, was delighted. If he had a complaint about Lady Bess’s rule, it was that she was too easy in her conduct of it. All the heavily manned little ceremonies which Sir Braithwaite had insisted upon had been done away with. And, since they mostly centred around Gilbert’s affairs, he had felt that his station in the Atherington household had been demeaned.
Plainly his new master thought differently, and so they all processed majestically into the Hall, where pages, at Gilbert’s instructions, ran forward with napkins and bowls of water. The napkins were to protect the guests’ fine clothing, and the water was for them to rinse their hands in after they had eaten of the roast beef, the chickens, the pigs’ trotters and all the other delicacies carried in on great platters by another half-score of obedient pages. The napkins then found their further use in drying wet hands, although some still preferred the old custom of waving them in the air. Gilbert was beside himself with joy.
Not so Bess. She hated ceremony, considering it a waste of precious time. For her, informality was all. She wondered what Drew’s preference was. The fact that he was being so correct in his conduct today was not necessarily a guide to his character