Betrayed, Betrothed and Bedded. Juliet Landon

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      ‘Well, perhaps he’d already got her pregnant when Father made his offer. Perhaps her parents insisted on a marriage. By the way the women at court flutter their eyelashes at him, it wouldn’t surprise me.’

      ‘You should not say such things. If they think him a good catch, that may be as much to do with the wealth he acquired at his marriage.’

      ‘Of which I obviously had so little to offer that I was not even worth looking at.’

      Lady Agnes reached out both hands and took Ginny’s in her own, layering them for warmth. ‘Dear girl, that’s not so. If he’d been able, he’d have accepted your father’s offer without hesitation. You’d been away up north for over four years at the Nortons’ home, remember, and you came back all polished and womanly and well mannered and, best of all, a beauty. Father would have got you a place at court, but you didn’t want that, did you? That, and the business of marriage offers, were the few times he let you have your own way. But it cannot last, Ginny, dear.’

      Ginny smiled. ‘Is it difficult being married to Father?’ she said.

      ‘No. As long as I fall in with all his wishes, it’s easy enough. If I ever want to go and let off steam, I go to see your sister Maeve, when she’s at home. She brings me back to reality faster than anyone.’ A gentle hand came up to rearrange Ginny’s long ash-blonde hair that fell like water over her shoulders. ‘So lovely,’ she whispered. ‘I am blessed with lovely daughters and handsome sons and a successful husband. And now I must send for Maeve and George to come over from Reedacre Manor while the king is here. You know how they love a good feast.’ Lady Agnes did not mention that her daughter Maeve had also once caught the king’s eye with her hair like pale golden honey. But Sir George Betterton had stepped in smartly, too smartly for the king’s timetable, made her pregnant and married her before Henry could deepen their friendship. It had not been thought a good idea to tell Ginny of the reasons for the hasty marriage, and the child’s earlier-than-expected arrival had caused little comment at home.

      ‘Still,’ Ginny said, ‘I don’t like the idea of being married to a man I despise simply so the king can have the pleasure of my company without it being thought he wishes to marry me. I admire Queen Anna. I want to make her happy and fulfilled, and for her to find out how to make him happy, too. Being on the receiving end of Henry’s attentions does not please me the way it does some of the other women. They see it as a way into his bed, but I don’t, and I would do nothing to hurt such a dear lady. I don’t want his silly notes and jewels. I want her to have them, not me.’

      ‘He sends you notes? And jewels? Show me.’

      ‘I’ve returned them. It makes no sense.’

      ‘It did to dear Jane Seymour. It got her the throne.’

      ‘Yes, stringing him along. She knew exactly what he was about and she was certainly not doing anything to spare Anne Boleyn’s feelings, was she? Pious, mousy, unscrupulous Jane, enticing a married man to please her family. Well, I shall not do it, Mother. I’m sorry, but I draw the line at that.’

      ‘You must do it, dear. Would you deny King Henry the pleasure of talking to a well bred and beautiful young woman? Because that is what you are.’

      ‘If he put more effort into his new marriage, he could easily do that with the queen. She is anxious to please him in any way she can, if only he’d see it.’

      ‘Mmm, well, coming here without her isn’t going to do much to help, is it? Now come and take a look at these gowns and let’s see what’s to be done.’

      It was not hard to understand where Ginny had acquired her style and elegance. Even though she chose not to be a courtier, Lady Agnes D’Arvall was a keen needlewoman for whom sewing was never a chore as long as she had a team of the best tailors and seamstresses, and a husband to send her bolts of fine fabrics from the London merchants. Her eldest daughter Maeve, now Lady Betterton, spent some of her time in the London house at Westminster near her husband, who was employed in the king’s Great Wardrobe. Consequently, the Bettertons and D’Arvalls were amongst the best-dressed families known to the royals, and ostensibly it was this flair that the king had intended to exploit when he’d sent for Ginny to advise his new German wife on the latest English fashions.

      Ginny’s thoughts, however, were far from the rich heap of velvets, damasks, satins, and silks on the bed and, as soon as her mother had left the room, she returned once more to the window seat, hoping that the stillness of the darkening landscape would help to clear her mind. It did not. Having come home expecting a rest from the empty flattery doled out by the king and his courtiers, she now found herself in a situation where she would have to suffer more of it rather than less.

      Even worse was the king’s intention to marry her to a man who wanted her only for the rewards he would be granted, a man who’d been told to make himself known to her, for why else would he have appeared beside her father, pretending assistance? She had asked herself this same question all the way home. Now she knew. After four weeks of noticeable indifference and stand-offishness, it had taken the king’s command, offer, bribery, call it what you will, to force him to speak, then to make an absurd attempt at flattery by telling her he would not have confused her with another. ‘The manners will come,’ he’d said patronisingly. As if he could teach her anything.

      With all the painful sensitivity of a very young woman, Ginny had been baffled and hurt when, after being assured by her parents that finding her a husband would not be difficult, their eligible neighbour had declined Sir Walter’s offer in favour of the beautiful heiress Magdalen Osborn. That had been the cruellest part of all, and Ginny was sure he must have known it.

      At court, once the shock of seeing him again had abated, she had done her best to convince both herself and him that he was the very last man she would have chosen as a husband, giving him not the smallest opportunity to revise the decision. Unable to separate sexual attraction from the lingering pain of rejection, it had seemed to Ginny that the natural antidote was to avoid him at all costs and to show that she had always been quite beyond his reach. Even if he had not been the handsomest man at court.

      At the royal court for much of the three years since his first marriage, Sir Jon’s connection with his neighbours had been brief. When the king had visited D’Arvall Hall last year, Sir Jon had been on a mission for his friend Sir Thomas Cromwell, the King’s principal secretary, who occasionally employed him. Not understanding the workings of the royal rota, Ginny had naturally put a different construction on his absence that heaped yet more fuel on her resentments.

      ‘Why?’ she whispered angrily. ‘Why him, of all men, when he must want this as little as I do? It’s so degrading. Bad enough to be pushed into marriage for the convenience of others, but to marry a man who must be commanded, after making it clear he doesn’t have a mind to it, is shaming. All the court will know of it, for they’ve seen how things are between us. And now I shall be obliged to face down all the stares and pretend all is well. As for the rest...ugh! It hardly bears thinking about.’ Wrapping herself warmly against the icy passageways and open spaces of the courtyard, she crossed over to the stillroom near the kitchen door where Mistress Molly had already begun the task of pounding lumps of sugar in a mortar with a pestle as big as her arm. ‘The king loves his marchpane,’ she puffed, as Ginny entered.

      ‘Done the almonds yet?’ Ginny said, looking round at the benches lined with jars and parchment-lidded pots. ‘It might be best to let them blanch while you do that. I’ll do them, if you like. For a favour.’

      Mistress Molly had been taught the art of sugarwork and simpling by her aunt who, despite being thought a witch, had died peacefully in her bed. There was СКАЧАТЬ