The Deserted Bride. Paula Marshall

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      Chapter One

      He was her husband. He had been her husband for ten years, and all she had ever had of him was the miniature which had arrived that morning.

      And the letter with it, of course.

      The letter which simply, and coldly, said, “My Lady Exford, I am sending you this portrait of myself in small as a token of my respect for you. I am in hopes of paying you a visit before the summer is out. At the moment, alas, I am exceeding busy in the Queen’s interest. Accept my felicitations for your twentieth birthday now, lest I am unable to make them in person. This from your husband, Drew Exford.”

      Elizabeth, Lady Exford, known to all those around her as Lady Bess, crumpled the perfunctory letter in her hand. All that it was fit for was to be thrown into the fire which burned in the hearth of the Great Hall of Atherington House. At the very last moment, though, something stayed her hand. She smoothed the crumpled paper and read it again, the colour in her cheeks rising as her anger at the writer mounted in her.

      About the Queen’s business, forsooth! Had he been about the Queen’s business for the last ten years? Was that why he had never visited her, never come to claim her as his wife, had left her here with her father, a wife and no wife? She very much doubted it. No, indeed. Andrew, Earl of Exford since his father’s death, had stayed away from Leicestershire in order to enjoy his bachelor life in London, unhampered by the presence of a wife and the children she might give him.

      The whole world knew that the Queen liked the handsome young men about her to be unmarried, or, if she grudgingly gave them permission to marry, preferred them not to bring their wives to court. And from what news of him came her way, the Queen had no more faithful subject than her absent husband.

      How should she answer this? Should she write the truth, plain and simple, as, “Sir, I care not if I never see you again?” Or should she, instead, simply reply as an obedient wife ought to, “My lord, I have received your letter. I am yours to command whenever you should visit me.”

      The latter, of course. The former would never do.

      Bess walked to the table where ink, paper and the sand to dry the letter awaited her, and wrote as an obedient wife should, although she had never felt less obedient in her life.

      And as she wrote she thought of the day ten years ago when she had first seen her husband…

      “Come, my darling,” her nurse had said, on that long-gone morning, “your father wishes you to be wearing your finest, your very finest, attire today. The damask robe in grey and pink and silver, your pearls, and the little heart which your sainted mother left you.”