Read The Irish Princess Online
Authors: Karen Harper
Tags: #Ireland, #Clinton, #Historical, #Henry, #Edward Fiennes De, #General, #Literary, #Great Britain - History - Henry VIII, #Great Britain, #Elizabeth Fiennes De, #Historical Fiction, #Princesses, #Fiction, #1509-1547, #Princesses - Ireland, #Elizabeth
The Irish Princess (37 page)
“Because,” I called back over my shoulder, “I wanted you to come back and meet my dear friend for yourself.”
“I could have told him just the opposite,” Edward said below in the dim companionway as he pushed his cabin door ajar. “However beautiful and alluring English maids are, there’s nothing like an Irish rebel lass—if you’re game for high adventure.” His voice was raspy; he seemed suddenly out of breath.
He closed the door to his small captain’s cabin behind us, and I was instantly in his arms, crushed in his embrace, our mouths moving together, drinking each other in. I know not which one of us had moved first to the wild embrace and kisses and explosion from years of longing, our own reunion. I only know it was as inevitable as it was impossible, the Irish Geraldine girl and the English lord, the man I had met the very day I’d left my Ireland.
But now there was no past, almost no future. Only the now as Edward and I leaned against his cabin wall, pressing together. I could not breathe, did not want to breathe apart from him ever again. Linking my arms around his neck while he grappled me to him with hard hands on my waist and bottom, I returned his wild, deep kisses, until his mouth roamed lower, trailing fire down my throat. He pulled the ties of my cape awry and kissed and licked the dark hollows between my breasts, tugging one of my sleeves off my shoulder as if he would undress me there. My skirts flattened out between his body and the wall. As he nipped at my bared shoulder, his knee thrust between my legs nearly lifted me from my feet. If he had claimed me there, standing, I would have welcomed it.
“This—and more—is what I’ve always wanted from you,” he said in a gasp as he looked dazedly into my eyes, my head thrown back against the wall, my hair tumbling loose. “But I want to savor every moment of our first time—in a bed, not in a rush, not when we have guests hovering. We have to . . . to both keep our heads—Damn, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
“I adore you,” was all I could manage in the whirl of my desires.
“That’s all I need to know—for now,” he rasped, still panting, and looking as flushed as I felt.
“For now,” I whispered, reaching out to smooth his hair I had mussed. For the first time in all the years I’d been in England, in a strange way, I almost felt I had come home.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH
E
dward escorted Mabel and me back to Byfleet, for Gerald was to reside in quarters in London that Dudley had arranged for him. I was grieved Gerald was not staying in the palace, where he might have access to the king and his council, but was relieved he was not assigned to Dudley’s household. I also was thrilled to hear that the deed of Maynooth was restored to Gerald, though he was not to go there and did not have his title returned—yet.
dward escorted Mabel and me back to Byfleet, for Gerald was to reside in quarters in London that Dudley had arranged for him. I was grieved Gerald was not staying in the palace, where he might have access to the king and his council, but was relieved he was not assigned to Dudley’s household. I also was thrilled to hear that the deed of Maynooth was restored to Gerald, though he was not to go there and did not have his title returned—yet.
Gerald and I had decided that Magheen and Collum were never to be parted again, so Collum came home with me, though should Gerald be permitted to return to Ireland, they would both go with him. I was happy for the reunion of our two Fitzgerald servants, so faithful all these years. And I was ecstatic to have Edward with me for several days when we had previously had to snatch at minutes and hours.
The two of us dawdled over goblets of wine and a late dinner when everyone else had gone to bed. Never one to go’round Robin’s barn, Edward pulled me onto his lap as we sat near the fire and said, “I hope you agree that, like Magheen and Collum, we need to make plans never to be parted again, that is, when I am not at sea.”
“Is that a proposal, Lord High Admiral?”
“It is, if you can abide a sea captain. I think, my Gera, you will not be jealous of my mistresses, ships and the sea, for you love them too.”
“I do.”
“Then will you say with me ‘I do’ in public?”
“Not at court again.”
“No, not at court. At Sempringham, then to repeat our vows someday at your Maynooth.”
“You have been talking to Gerald to know that name.”
“No, I was at the council meeting where the deed was restored to him and his future heirs. But all the way across the channel, I was questioning Gerald and Collum about your past in Ireland. I did not know all of you had suffered so much. I wager they suspected from the first that my interest in the fair Geraldine was very personal.”
“But there is something I must tell you before we—I—can make plans.”
“Say on, but we cannot live in Ireland, and, I’m afraid, neither can Gerald yet, though we can work on that together—with the Duke of Northumberland, whom you must at least get on with, if not obey.”
I looked down at our hands with fingers intertwined in my lap. His hand rested heavily on the juncture of my thighs through the thickness of my gown. But I must keep my mind on what I would say.
“Gera, what?” he prompted, lifting my chin with his free hand. “Is there some impediment, some arrangement with another? If there is, I’m afraid I will have to kill him.”
“I am barren, Edward. When I lost my second son . . .” My lower lip quivered and tears blinded me. For a moment I could not go on.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he whispered.
“It isn’t! The physician told me he was quite certain I would never bear another child, and you have such fine families. I may be yet of childbearing age, but you need to know I cannot bear you a child.”
He pulled me into his embrace. Always, I felt lost in his arms, and yet there I also seemed to find myself.
“Gera,” he crooned, rocking me a bit, “I did not know, but that’s not really what I want from you. You won’t have my children then, but you will always have my heart. I wed Bessie to please the king and Ursula to please John Dudley. But you please me for myself. I am asking you to be my wife, till death us do part.”
I sat up, lifted my head, and looked at him straight in the eyes. “You want me to wife despite the fact that the people you must yet please surely think I’m a flaming rebel?”
“You are a flaming rebel, my love, and I wouldn’t have you any other way—and I long to have you in every possible way.”
“Is that a lewd offer, my Edward?” I asked, sitting up and smiling through my tears. I wiggled my hips on his lap a bit and saw dark fires light in both his eyes.
“It is, Irish, for I think much deeper relations—foreign affairs, in effect—should be fostered between the Irish and the English, beginning right now—and evermore.”
To that proposal and proposition, I simply said, “Amen!”
I was to wed Sir Edward Fiennes Clinton, Garter Knight and Lord High Admiral, Privy Council member—also governor of the Tower of London, I’m afraid—at his manor of Sempringham in Lincolnshire almost a year after Gerald came to England. We would have married much sooner, but Edward was sent to sea again. Meanwhile, I sold Byfleet and moved with Margaret, Alice, Magheen, and Collum to Sempringham.
I became acquainted with the Clinton children, especially the three youngest: Anne, who was five; Thomas, four; and little Frances, but a toddler. I had them moved from Kyme to Sempringham and spent hours with them each day, also making friends with their caretakers, Edward’s cousins, Lettice and Neville Clinton, who were a good ten years older than I but had no offspring of their own. I vowed to rear Edward’s youngest three when we were in Lincolnshire, where they would live until we found a suitable home in or near London.
Though I longed for Edward at my side the months he was at sea, with a small entourage of servants I rode Kildare about the area, taking small gifts to folk who owed my lord allegiance, something I had learned long ago from watching my parents visit their people. I took some pretty pewter pieces to the shepherd and his wife who had helped us the night we fled King Henry’s great northern progress, and I stood as sponsor to their twins when they were baptized in the church.
I read and reread Edward’s barrage of notes to me, sent by ship and horse as if he were afraid I would forget him or change my mind. I used the purse of money he had given me and my profits from Byfleet to buy manor furnishings from Lincoln and London. As best I could, missing Edward as I did, I enjoyed the wild beauties of the area that reminded me so much of my own home, taking Margaret, Magheen, and Alice to pick fresh flowers and walk the shady lanes. And I waited for my mariner to come home to me.
Finally, on October 1, 1552, we married in the small chapel at the manor, all bedecked in autumn flowers, and had a wedding banquet with Mason Haverhill and Edward’s most important local liege men and all his—now our—children. Through his three daughters by Bessie Blount, Edward was a grandfather, and I had to laugh to be introduced to the little ones as
Grandmother
. I, who had no children of my own and, but for Mabel, whom I missed terribly, had no lasting bonds of affection with Anthony’s brood, was of a sudden not only
Mama
to Edward’s three youngest, but also a grandmother!
Grandmother
. I, who had no children of my own and, but for Mabel, whom I missed terribly, had no lasting bonds of affection with Anthony’s brood, was of a sudden not only
Mama
to Edward’s three youngest, but also a grandmother!
Most important of all, I was Lady Clinton, lost in a whirl of love and laughter. I savored each moment with my husband—a month he had promised me for a honeymoon—and quite forgot, for once, the dangerous demons who lurked in the real world. I even set our table with the etched and gilded Venetian goblets John Dudley sent us for a gift. Gerald, who was avidly courting Mabel in London, had sent us a French tapestry, when I had longed for good stout Irish linen, but then, how would he get that?
Oh, yes, Edward taught me to swim in our fishpond, too, so that, as he said, “The next time you take a dive into the Thames or the Irish Sea, no one will have to fish you out.”
“I have two more gifts for you,” Edward whispered to me in our big bed the morning after the service and celebration. “One of them just arrived this morning—I hope.”
“Mm,” I said, cuddling back against his strong, naked body, never wanting to get up even for more gifts. He had already given me a triple-strand pearl necklace and a new saddle for Kildare, as well as a white satin night robe embroidered with green shamrocks. “Let’s just be slugabeds and stay here all day,” I said, exhausted but utterly sated from our wild night of lovemaking.
“I’m starved,” he said, and tickled me. “But you will like these things, I promise.”
“I like everything you give me,” I said, turning toward him and holding tight.
“Well, perhaps later, then, for the gifts . . .”
He chuckled and began to nibble at me again, his tongue wetting a hot streak down my throat. I had never fathomed wedded love could be like this: mutual, consuming. And then I heard a dog bark.
“Ah,” he said, pulling back, which spilled chill air into our little cocoon of covers, “I believe the gifts are here, one of them, at least. Haverhill rode to meet a ship to fetch them.”
“Oh, a pet dog? Well, I shall need all the company I can get when you go to sea, since you cannot take me with you—or will not.”
“Let’s not have our first argument, love. And yes, it is a pet dog, the kind Magheen said you would like so—”
“A wolf hound? Did she tell you about my dear old boy Wynne?”
“Yes, but this is a female straight from Ireland, one named Erin, I understand, but if you wish to change her na—”
“Oh, Edward, my love!” I leaped from the bed, dragging the top coverlet around my nakedness and rushing to open the bedchamber door. Collum and Magheen stood there, a small wolfhound in Collum’s arms. I shocked myself by bursting into tears as I cuddled the little mite. All those years I had to leave Wynne behind, and then my uncle Leonard brought him to Beaumanoir, perhaps to make up for his betrayal of our family. The night I had to flee Maynooth and leave Wynne behind . . . all I had to leave behind . . .
“Oh, my love, I can never thank you enough,” I cried, turning to hug my husband with one arm as he appeared in the hall wrapped in yet another coverlet.
“Best tell her the other, Collum,” Edward said.
“Ay, milord. Besides this pup, his lordship sent to Dublin for an Irish
namhóag
, much like the one you and Gerald used to row on the Lyreen,” he said as Magheen beamed at his side and I cuddled Erin in my arms. “It’s a big one, though, with a mast and a sail. ’Tis out on dry land in the courtyard, but—”
namhóag
, much like the one you and Gerald used to row on the Lyreen,” he said as Magheen beamed at his side and I cuddled Erin in my arms. “It’s a big one, though, with a mast and a sail. ’Tis out on dry land in the courtyard, but—”
“But we will put it in the river here and go for a sail,” Edward said as he reached in to scratch the puppy behind her ears.
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