The First Princess of Wales (27 page)

Now she was at the head of the writhing, weaving line facing all those heading in, and she tried desperately to concentrate on the little running steps. The king’s strides were fully as long as the prince’s, only he took the floor at a faster pace since they had no one to run into directly ahead.

“Ravishing tonight,
ma petite
,” he whispered, apparently not a whit out of breath. “Ravishing. My son cannot seem to resist seeking you out, by the rood, and frankly, sweet Jeannette, neither can I.”

“Your Grace is as smooth with words as with his feet,” she said breathily. Surely, it was time for them to stop so they could all shift partners again on their outward pattern. She was too warm with all this bounding and hurrying, and the rampant glow of all these torches on them at the very center of everyone’s attention made her feel as if she were in a furnace furiously fueled by burning eyes.

To her dismay, she felt a garter on her thigh loosen and slip. Her white stockings were tied by four garters each to mold them to her legs, but she missed a step and almost stumbled as she tried to keep this one from sliding down. The king’s eyes were hot on her; yet he looked somehow amused as they turned in place, their hands held high. In the blazing torchlight she saw the blue silk garter with its single winking jewel under the king’s slippered feet the moment he did. He halted. The surrounding dancers hushed at once believing another exchange of partners was imminent. Two couples back, Joan’s eye caught Prince Edward’s as he stood there holding hands with the flame-haired Constantia Bourchier.

Joan prayed no one else would notice the garter, but the king bent and retrieved the dark blue ribbon of embroidered silk to the surprise, then amusement, of the surrounding courtiers.

“By the Virgin, Jeannette,” Isabella’s musical voice called out, “mayhap to establish this new fashion we wore just one too many. I shall send my partner Sir John back to scour the floor for one of mine.”

“And if I can lay my hands on one stray garter anywhere I deserve at least a kiss—or mayhap to put it back on the pretty thigh where it belongs,” Sir John laughed, and everyone roared with laughter.

The musicians in the gallery overhead had stopped at the sight of the dancing coil dissolving into one swelling circle around the king.

“There must be more where that sweet garter came from!” a deep male voice in the growing crowd called out.

“Shall we deem that another trophy from a well-waged battle, our warrior king?” some other voice added, and the pressing audience shouted their approval again.

Joan blushed scarlet and did not even pretend to laugh now. Under the ornate curls of her coif her earlobes burned with embarrassment, and she could feel the blood course through her veins. Other titters and murmurs rose and fell in those few suspended moments the King of England stood there with her jeweled blue garter dripping through his raised fingers.

How dare they all smirk and jest, they and their king who had let her father die, she fumed silently. Now was the time to scream out her challenge, her accusations at him while she stood rooted to this little square of floor like an entrapped coward. She had opened her mouth to shout something when the king quieted them all with his booming words.

“Cease! Cease, all of you,” His Grace ordered, his voice commanding despite his guilty smile at Joan. “Evil to him who evil thinks,” he warned holding the blue garter aloft as if it were a sword or chalice. “The time shall shortly come when you shall attribute much honor unto such a garter! Our order of chivalry shall be a new fashion, so ’tis apropos it be named for the court’s other fine new fashion. Chivalry and glory and the blue garter. The Order of the Garter! God wills it! For England and St. George!”

“For England and St. George!” the room echoed, drowning all thoughts of Joan’s protest. “For England and St. George!”

Dazedly, Joan extended her fingers for the garter. “No, my sweet lady,” the king’s voice said almost roughly, “’tis the king’s and history’s now. But,” he added more quietly as his eyes swept over her, “I shall make it all up to you and soon. A reward—you shall see.”

As the music began again and the lines re-formed, the king placed Joan’s hand in that of a hovering Lord Salisbury and returned to the queen for the rest of the dance. A dark form moving along the wall near where Joan and William completed the dance caught her eye: the feeble, old astrologer Morcar was slowly making his way out of the Great Hall through the chattering, festive crowd. He reminded her suddenly of some dark-cloaked harbinger come up from the netherworld to chant his predictions of doom.

“Jeannette, are you quite all right? You know, you looked furious out there when the king displayed and proclaimed that garter before them all,” William said, his voice as tense as his earnest, young face. “I thought, perhaps, you were thinking on what I told you about his attempt to seduce my lady mother, and you see him now in another light. If so, dearest, I am heartily glad for it.”

“Your mother? Aye, Will, I do see His Grace in another light, but then I have for a long while—ever since my mother died.”

“Your mother? Then he hurt her too and tried—”

“Please, I just do not want to speak of it now. This dreadful headdress is pulling on my hair coils and giving me a raging head pain. At least a fashion like garters seemed harmless enough until now. Look, Will, if you just wish to stand about and gawk, I shall seek out Thomas. I just want to dance, get rid of this vile thing on my head, and retire as soon as we can.”

His green eyes lit as the broad familiar grin split his face. “
We,
lady? But whatever will Her Grace say? After all, I am merely your lawful husband whom fate has cursed to only look on his wife and not touch. Saints’ blood, that is not even as much as some upstanding courtiers do with other men’s wives around these hallowed halls!”

“So bitter, my lord, and on the festal day of your investiture as Round Table knight?” she teased, amused by his quicksilver mood changes. She realized suddenly that she knew this man, supposedly her husband, not at all. She knew no one of the court well, indeed, not anyone but the frivolous, flighty Isabella. Even the prince—saints, best not to ponder the entanglement of those feelings.

They danced, whirling and bowing, in the circle of couples on the floor. Joan concentrated on her steps, on balancing the headdress, even on William’s avid face to shut everything else out. She knew people pointed and whispered, now because of the garter she did not have rather than the ones she did. Isabella wiggled her fingers in a funny little wave when their paths crossed once, so at least she thought it all still perpetually amusing. And Queen Philippa, sitting now on the dais and merely watching, was all smiles at last.

Despite herself, Joan craned her slender neck at the next turn to find out why. Directly in the queen’s line of vision, very near William and herself, the Prince of Wales was still dancing with the ravishing, red-haired Constantia Bourchier.

Joan sucked in her breath and foolishly missed a side step. Constantia was in brightest green and dancing so close to the prince, gazing up bewitchingly into his eyes. Worse, Joan thought before she could catch herself to vow she did not care, his crystalline blue eyes had been avidly studying Constantia’s catlike face and the lush white bosom swelling over the furred oval top of her low-cut neckline. All this in one glance: all the Plantagenets were happy tonight on a rolling crest of their glory and power. She had done—had gained—nothing on them; she had sullied and shamed the vow of vengeance she had given her mother on her deathbed.

“I wish to go upstairs now, my lord,” she said and simply halted in the middle of an elaborate twirl. She felt suddenly wooden, ungainly, as she tugged her hand away from his.

“I shall escort you up then. The king has been gone a quarter-hour anyway and others have been starting to drift off to bed.” He walked quickly at her side to keep up. “I wish it could be so for us, my dearest.”

“Speaking of that, it is best you do not escort me up, my lord. Marta is waiting and the queen or Thomas or someone might misconstrue.”

His face fell as though she had just beaten him at stickball or backgammon. “We must play the game out to the end, you know, Will,” she said. “Dancing with you tonight was very nice—really, and I shall see you on the morrow.”

“Will you? And without Thomas Holland hanging about your skirts? By the rood, if his leg still did not pain him to dance, we would never have had a moment’s respite tonight from his company, I warrant.”

She stood on tiptoe a moment to brush her lips gently against his cheek. He was tall, but so much smaller than the prince, she thought erratically, before she silently cursed herself for allowing those haunting memories to crowd in on her again. Saints, let that snippy, big-breasted Constantia Bourchier have the prince if it pleased his dear mother so much!

Feeling more tender toward poor William than she had for a long while, she pivoted a little way up the broad central staircase to wave at him. Just as she turned the bend in the stairs, she noted the clever watchdog Thomas Holland had joined him, and she went up even faster. The two of them could compare comments or argue if they wished without her there to listen to their possessive, bothersome carping. She prayed the pope never answered them. No pope, nor queen, nor astrologer, nor husband would control her fortunes no matter what befell!

The hall connecting her little chamber to Isabella’s rooms was quite well lighted, for the linkboys who had passed out the torches at the dance earlier had distributed the flambeaux throughout the castle after that ceremony had ended. A man stood a little way down the hall leaning back, just watching her approach now, a man she recognized but could not place. Marta would probably be asleep when she came in, but the minute she heard her, she would jump up to help her disrobe. By the rood, she could anticipate already how wonderful it would feel to be rid of this towering thing, to be rid of this whole night!

“Lady Joan of Kent.”

She stopped, her hand to her door latch. The man down the hall had spoken her name so softly that—

“Milady, I mean not to startle or alarm you. His Grace requests—he beseeches you will join him for a brief interview.”

His Grace! Then Prince Edward did mean to see her and that flaunting of Constantia had been for mere show. But if he thought she would bend to his will so easily at the mere snap of his royal fingers like a hunt dog—and then lie with him at his bidding in some pile of straw or little hut anytime he chose—he had a bloody fine lesson to learn!

“I am so sorry, sir. Tell His Grace I must decline. I am exhausted and my head hurts. Also, I have a great aversion to surprises.”

The man moved closer and frowned. He had a rather square face, close-cropped hair about his ears and wide-set eyes. Her heart leapt. This man belonged not to the prince’s retinue but was the king’s chief falconer! The king—it was Edward the King who had sent for her at this late hour and unchaperoned.

“The king will be most grief-stricken and most downcast, Lady Joan,” he pursued. “I am certain he expected you to comply.”

“Then I shall accompany you straightaway,” she said levelly, pretending to ignore his obvious shock at her quick acquiescence. He nodded, lifted a torch from a wall sconce, and motioned for her to follow.

She grinned at his back as they went down the hall. Whatever His Grace said or did tonight, she would best him somehow, and he would feel her wrath for his cowardly deeds against her parents. Aye, now, after he had publicly linked her leg garter to his precious, new order of chivalry, was the ripe time to strike.

She was grateful the steps in the York Tower that connected this wing to the long walk to the king’s section of Windsor were deserted. But to her surprise, they went up winding steps in the Tower instead of down.

Her guide’s voice echoed hollowly to her as they wound up and around the old, uneven stone steps worn by generations of feet. “Only two more floors up here, milady. Our sovereign lord has not yet returned to his own suite this even, and this chamber is quite comfortable.”

She lagged back as her guide put a hand to the latch of a narrow oak door with its threshold directly on the curve of stairs. His torch cast sharp, shifting shadows. Everything was silent. It could be a trap; no one knew where she had gone. For one second she almost longed to see the prince’s face, taunting, arrogant, but familiarly so at the door.

“Do not fear, milady. I only serve His Grace here. He promises you no one will know. Here, within.” He knocked once and pushed the door inward. A crooked shaft of light jumped out upon the stone steps at their feet. She moved up another stair while the man backed off evidently prepared to wait patiently.

She caught a quick glimpse of tapestry on a far wall, the end of a heavy oak table and a massive candle within.

“The Lady Joan of Kent as you requested, Your Grace,” her guide announced in a hushed tone, but her insides leapt at his voice. Then the door creaked fully open to admit her, and she took one step in.

CHAPTER TWELVE

K
ing Edward of England rose on the far side of the narrow oak table. He wore a black velvet robe edged with royal ermine and was bareheaded. No fireplace lit the round-ceilinged, slant-walled little chamber, but the room glowed with candlelight. Joan’s eyes darted past the king to examine it in one swift glance: two chairs at the big table, a deep gold carpet underfoot, the stone walls completely covered with crimson-backed tapestries of a dashing hunt scene, a narrow bed, and the only window set ajar to air the irregularly shaped chamber with an April evening breeze. Really, an exquisite little room dwarfed by the size and impact of the man coming around the polished table to greet her.

The door behind snapped quietly shut as King Edward took her hands in his big warm ones. “So—sweet Jeannette, just fresh come from dancing, I wager, breathless and blushing still. Your king is so grateful you would come, my sweet. Some wine? I wish to thank you personally and in private for your beauty and poise in all that excitement tonight. By the holy rood, I had thought long and hard of needing a symbol for the Order of Chivalry and then, thanks to petite Jeannette, there it was—a gift from heaven sparkling at my feet.”

“More like a gift from the Princess Isabella to me, Your Grace. Your bow and garter maker housed at the Tower in London sells such fine ones—”

“Of course,” he interrupted refusing to let her tug her hands free, “but time is precious and I meant not to speak of the garter itself, sweet. Here, sit. Have some wine, let me look at you and thank you more appropriately for all you do to cheer me even under some trying circumstances. I do realize that, of course.”

She sat where he bid, relieved the two chairs were not close together and that he had to loose her hands to let her sit. “The most trying of circumstances, Your Grace, you cannot know,” she agreed and leveled a steady gaze at him realizing he could not possibly guess what things she intended to accuse him of. It gave her a sharp sense of power he could not be forewarned or forearmed about her true opinion of him and his family. The way she had led him on these months, he must have no conception she knew of his cruel desertion of her parents in their hour of need.

She took a slow sip from her wine goblet staring at him over its fluted rim. Two can play at this cat-mouse game, she told herself, and fought to calm her pounding heart. She would listen for a time to see what he would say or ask of her; when the moment was ripe, she would declare her hatred, her contempt, and then—flee to her room or mayhap clear home to Liddell to let all of them rot in their vile stew of power and pride.

“Jeannette, my precious, are you listening? You looked all far away, so dreamy-eyed for a moment. Of course, I realize you must be ready for bed.” He leaned far forward in his chair and his size and reach devoured the space between them as he covered the hand on her knee with his own jeweled fingers.

“I assure you, I am listening, Your Grace.” His fingers curled possessively about hers and casually stroked her knee through the white silk of her kirtle. She felt herself tense but she did not flinch away.

“Well then, my lovely maid, allow your king to give you the first of my tokens of appreciation, a mere bauble.” His blue eyes strong on her, he reached back on the table to grope behind one of the squat brass candlesticks for a flat, velvet-covered box. He scooted his chair much closer as he presented the gift to her, and when she did not take it, he removed her goblet from her hand and placed the box on her lap far up her thighs. “Open it, my sweet, or shall I do it for you? So shy of a sudden? Here, Jeannette.”

“Please, my lord king, no gift for the clever use of a lost garter,” she protested. “We must talk. There is much I must say before this goes further. I will take no gifts from you!”

He frowned at her rising tone, and his big hands held her wrists firmly. “Nonsense, sweet. Relax and just listen. This is not so much for a mere garter, but a token of my great admiration for your beauty and charm here about my court.”

He released her wrists and opened the flat box. Within, in a rippled bed of crimson silk, nestled a necklace of rectangular-cut emeralds and oval sapphires linked by diamonds set in gold. Despite her desire to coldly reject him and his ploys, she gasped.

“Lovely, like you, Jeannette. Here, let me fasten it for you.”

“No, Your Grace, I could not possibly.”

“You take gifts from Isabella, do you not? And, I wager, from the Prince of Wales. Perhaps you wished to speak with me on that.”

She forced herself to sit back rather than rise to dart behind the chair as she wished. She met the flinty blue gaze of Plantagenet eyes. In the lean face with the golden beard and mustache, the king’s eyes glittered as coldly as these jewels.

“No, my lord king, I have no desire to discuss either the Princess Isabella nor Prince Edward unless you brought me here for that.”

He chuckled at her reply. “Alas, no, my pet. Let me fasten this then. I thought perhaps you would appreciate other bestowments too—perhaps a title, some lands, since your brother Edmund holds your family’s manor lands, other little things could come in time to you now that we are agreed to be dear friends.”

He stood behind and lowered the necklace before her face to fasten it. Despite her knowledge of this king’s reputation, despite William’s warning story tonight about his own mother, despite her long-tended distrust of the Plantagenets, the impact at the king’s intent struck her fully, coldly, only now. He could not possibly know of her liaison with the prince; the queen must not have told him of their secret tryst in Calais. Because—because, he surely meant to make her his mistress, too—marriage, wardship, and pious chivalry vows be damned. The thought was perversely amusing, except in it she grasped a way at last to certain revenge.

He slyly slid the heavy necklace low, down beneath her neckline so that its gold links skimmed the tops of her firm breasts in a chill, metallic caress. Then he pulled it back up and his fingers lightly stroked the nape of her neck under the draped scarves of her tall headdress. The necklace settled in place. She realized then that the pain in her head had disappeared; her mind was cleared for this battle.

“Let me remove this vile, stylish headdress, Your Grace,” she said quietly and rose to step away from his hands and untie the strands of ribbon beneath her hair coils which secured it. “There, the thing has given me a pain all evening. A fashion I detest, I fear.”

He grinned broadly at her and held his ground at the back of her vacated chair obviously entranced by the swift change in her demeanor. If he sensed a trap, he looked every bit a man willing to step wide-eyed into it. “Such lovely curly hair,” he began on a new tack. “But then you are so lovely—everywhere, I warrant. I thought—I had hoped for the little gift and others I have in mind, you might have a little trinket for me, sweet Jeannette.”

She almost giggled in his face at that opening ploy, for she had seen far smoother tactics from even young Salisbury, but he needed to commit himself more before she could spring her trap. “Such as what, Your Grace?”

She thought he would beg a kiss, but she was wrong. “I thought, mayhap, sweet, you would let your king take one or two other blue garters from where the last one came—a token of all we can be to each other.”

“But, my lord king, it did not just fall from among these on the kirtle skirt, you see,” she parried. A mere child’s game, she thought, to fence with this suddenly nervous man.

“I know full well from where it came, Jeannette.” He moved around the chair so quickly, she could not dart back. He was almost as tall as the prince. Saints, she must never let the prince know all this, but she meant to shame this man so thoroughly he would never tell his son and she could work the same sort of revenge on him later.

King Edward’s hands went to her waist; then he took a second step she had not foreseen. He lifted her easily to sit on the long table between the two big candlesticks at either end. His face looked almost ruddy this close in the candle glow. His breath came quickly between parted lips. She needed a little more distance, now, before her counterattack began.

“Please, Your Grace, put me down.”

“Just a garter or two, Jeannette.” One quick hand ruffled her garter-studded skirt up over her knees. “Here, such slender ankles, how lovely, how fair you are, sweet maid. Let me just untie one or two for knight’s tokens.” A big hand clasped her knee and slid up her thigh to pull at the blue silk tie of a garter. It loosened easily and slid off.

“No, Your Grace. Stop, please. I have to talk to you.”

As if she had not spoken, he tipped her farther back across the hard tabletop, one big black velvet arm around her shoulders, the other tugging a second garter free.

“No. Loose me,” she cried and tried to shove him off, to kick out.

“Jeannette, my wild little maid, lie still,” he ordered breathily and leaned his big upper torso harder into her. “All these months I have curried you and shown you royal favor, it was to woo you, sweet. All is well. No one will know and even if they did, ’tis great honor to be desired by your king.”

His mouth rained kisses on her throat arched back over his arm, and his mustache and beard tickled. In blatant assault, his warm hand peeled one loosed white stocking down a smooth leg to her knee and returned to stroke her warm flesh. With great dexterity, a velvet-covered thigh separated her knees along the table edge. She squirmed and tried to shove him off, but his weight was tremendous. Saints, he meant to take her right here spread across this table like some waiting banquet! Her free hand groped for a candlestick to hit him with but she misjudged and it only slid heavily out of reach. She heard her headdress roll and fall to hit the floor. His eyes were closed and he breathed heavily against her as his tongue traced jagged patterns down her throat to the heavy necklace and lower. His hand darted to her neckline and she heard the silk rip. His tongue slid lower to wet the valley between her firm breasts. William’s mother—her own mother on her deathbed—a table for a bed.

“Get off me! I deny you,” she grated out.

“Your eyes, your sweet, young body, your hair—”

“My hair is the color of my beloved father’s, my king. And my body came from his own loins and that of my wretched lady mother’s. Do you never think on them when you look on me and wish you had not let them both be treated so vilely?”

He froze against her and lifted his face glazed with passion. From the single window a cool night breeze caressed her bare thigh. “Your parents?” he said, evidently floundering for words. His eyes focused on her calm features, her narrowed, glittering stare. “I spoke not of your parents, Jeannette. I ask you now, in all love and respect, only to please your king.”

“And if I do not submit here, at your whim on this hard tabletop, will you allow some headsman to behead me too as you let them do to my father?”

“By hell’s gates, woman, you have no right to speak of this—and now!” The fierce lightning of Plantagenet temper flashed across his handsome, arrogant face but was swift gone like a summer storm. “Look here, my sweet, I meant not to let my ardor so get the best of me like this, but I find you totally unresistible. Let us move to the little bed here and then—”

“I have every right to speak of my father, Your Grace. The miracle is, you never said aught of him who was your loyal uncle, loyal to your father, our second King Edward, and whom you allowed—aye abetted, I do now know—that whoreson Mortimer and his lackey de Maltravers to murder while you were off just—”

The king uttered a low, guttural cry and yanked her by her shoulders up off the table to her unsteady feet. He shook her once, hard like a linen doll, then merely stared aghast at her a moment before he spoke. “You had best watch that pretty little mouth, Jeannette, for you bespeak treason. I do not know who has poisoned your mind against me or put those wretched lies in your head, but you had best listen well to me and learn the truth you hear. You must have been so young when that all happened, of course, and you know not what you say.”

“My mother told me the truth, all of it, on her very deathbed before she took the final rites of the holy church. She would not have lied for the peril to her immortal soul. All those years she shut herself up at Liddell when everyone said she was insane—a recluse trapped by a curse of lunacy. She was ruined by it all, mourning my father and that she failed to help him. You would not even see her when she sought to beg for Edmund of Kent’s life here at Windsor. Oh no, you gave her to that beast de Maltravers and sent her away—de Maltravers, a man who even now does your work for you and profits from his Flemish exile! You cannot deny it! I saw him there!”

“Lower your voice, woman, or I swear I shall tie and gag you until you do listen. All of this is vile lies and I am grieved to see a lovely maid so taken in by it all. I had no idea. My, my, how clever you have been, but since you have tipped your hand now, by the rood, we must deal with it.”

He pushed her back into the chair where he had once sat and perched on the edge of the other one, covering his golden, hair-flecked leg exposed when he sat. Contempt etched her face, he saw, at the certain knowledge he had been naked under the robe and had surely meant to have her. He beat back his rising wrath at the little chit who had surely led him on these last five months, then had thrown in his face at a most vulnerable moment this terrible mess from the past he had hoped was buried forever. Aye, he had misjudged the wild little filly, and badly, in his foolish desire for her. He had to admit for once he should have listened to Philippa: the maid was willful, a potential troublemaker; and to protect the prince who obviously favored her, to protect them all, she should be given to one of her suitors and sent away. And that meant whoever ended up with her had to promise to live at his distant lands—Salisbury far to the north along the Scottish border at old Wark Castle or Holland at that moated Normandy mansion he had earned in the last French campaign.

“I am awaiting your words, Your Grace,” she challenged. “But I know my mother spoke true and neither necklaces, lands, titles, or your own affections can ever change that.”