The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  Nor was it the only uncompleted business. There was also the matter of a lying message in Matthew’s name, and the incarceration in that boathouse. No doubt Matthew had much to say to me, but I in turn had questions to ask of him.

  The tautness in the air grew like a gathering thunderstorm, until I felt that at any moment, lightning would fizzle down from the ceiling of the hall. Ann, sensing the atmosphere and puzzled by it, tried to set things right with ordinary conversation and remarked on Mr. Lenoir’s excellent command of English.

  “You are a Frenchman, but you speak our tongue so well that I wonder if you were brought up in England. You must have spent time here, surely?”

  “My father was French and my mother English,” said Matthew. His eyes were still on my face. “I was brought up in France but I learned English from my mother. After my father’s death, I brought her back to England, but she did not live long and I returned to the Loire valley. I do still have . . . business interests in England and occasionally visit, but not often. I am a supporter of the same religion as yourselves, and perhaps my views are somewhat stronger.”

  “Oh, but surely!” Ann exclaimed. “Is that really a difficulty? We live very happily, in accordance with our own beliefs. No one has persecuted us.”

  “I still feel that England is not the right place for me. I would prefer not to be faced with a direct clash between loyalty to the Queen and loyalty to my faith. A traitor’s death is a very horrible one.”

  That was meant for me, but I had thought about that horror many times, in dread and grief, until I knew for sure that Matthew was safe out of the country. I knew that in coming back to England, he had put himself once more in that danger. Tender pork and fresh bread turned in my mouth to a mass of woolly fleece. I had to force myself to swallow.

  “I saw a man hanged and drawn once,” said Dr. Wilkins conversationally. “The sounds he made . . .”

  I wanted to stop my ears, but as a guest at someone else’s table, I was constrained by good manners. Dr. Wilkins on this subject was as hateful as Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert on the subject of death by fire. It came home to me then, more powerfully than ever before, that not only had I endangered Matthew, but the work I now did for Cecil and the Queen might send many others to the terrible fate which Dr. Wilkins was describing.

  And them, the expected flash of lightning came, but not from the hall ceiling. It sprang from me in a crackle of anger. I interrupted Wilkins. “Would you say that a traitor’s death is worse than a heretic’s?”

  I threw it out as a challenge, but he was unmoved. “It is not the same. Heretics are damned to an eternity of flame unless we see that they pay their debt here on earth. It is for their own sake that they must burn.”

  He spoke with complete assurance, as though he had just had a personal interview with the Almighty, and a guided tour of Hades. It silenced everyone, with the exception of Philip, who exclaimed, “It must be quite a sight to see!”

  “I wouldn’t want to see it. You’re horrible, Philip,” Pen declared.

  “Please!” said Ann. “This is not suitable talk for a mealtime. Both of you will be good enough to be quiet.” On the rare occasions when Ann was decisive, she was very decisive indeed. Philip and Pen subsided at once.

  Leonard Mason changed the subject. “Yes, let us speak of pleasanter matters. I must tell you, Ann, that our friends were most interested in the new gliding engine. I am making good progress, even though Crichton here says his injured thumb won’t let him help me any more!”

  “It’s too painful,” said Crichton. He displayed his right thumb, with its empurpled flesh and blackened nail.

  “I got Thomas to lend a hand instead,” Leonard said. “Now, don’t look like that, my dear.” He shook a reproving head at Ann. “I know that you worry, but believe me, so do I! I’m not sure how to achieve a soft landing. I have decided to make the first attempt at flight with a dummy man in the machine, so you needn’t fear I shall break my neck!”

  “Oh, thank God,” said Ann, and crossed herself in an excess of relief.

  “I shall use a sack of meal, about the same weight as myself. Of course, the sack won’t be able to use the controls, but if there is a steady wind I may be able to get some idea of whether or not the device will work, and how to overcome the problem of the landing. The catapult is finished now, too. Mr. Lenoir, Dr. Wilkins, how long can you stay? If you can remain with us for a few days, you may actually witness the experiment.”

  “Alas, we have business elsewhere,” Wilkins said, “and cannot put it off. I would have been delighted to stay, otherwise, and so would Mark, no doubt.”

  “Yes, that is so,” Matthew agreed, “but we must both ride on tomorrow. Some of the affairs I had in hand in England have not speeded as I wished. They need my attention.”

  And what, I wondered, might those affairs be? Just what was Matthew doing here, in Dr. Wilkins’ company? I finished my supper in a bleak mood.

  Afterwards, we returned to the gallery where Pen and George, who could both play the spinet reasonably well, provided music. The Masons rose to dance, and Matthew came to me, holding out his hand to me, to lead me on to the floor.

  At court, when we first met, I had been in mourning for Gerald and I had not been taking part in dancing. It was Matthew who had persuaded me to begin again and Matthew who was my first partner since Gerald. I had been glad to dance again for I was tired of sitting still: the rhythms of the music constantly got into my feet. With Matthew, I surrendered to them once again, joyously.

  Now, as I paraded down the gallery with my hand in his, my feet moving in time to the melody, those happy days came back to me. I could almost pretend that the intervening months hadn’t happened; that we were still courting, with all our hopes ahead. Memories flooded back, not only of dancing, but of riding with Matthew in Richmond Park, on a hot summer’s day, with the dust blowing up round our horses’ feet; of cheering him proudly on at tennis or tilting; of walking with him in a July garden full of the scent of roses and lavender, and the sleepy sound of bumble bee and dove.

  But this was the first chance we had had to exchange any private words, and those words had to be said.

  “Matthew, what are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to collect my wife, what else?” He made an arch of his arm and I twirled under it, turning at the end of the twirl to face him. “You wrote that you wanted to come to me,” he said, “but when I answered yes, what do I receive but a letter saying you cannot come until May! As it chanced, business with Dr. Wilkins brought me across the Channel, and the next I hear is that he is to visit Lockhill, and that Ursula Blanchard is staying there! I invited myself to Lockhill too. I wanted to see you.”

  We separated, drew apart, came together again, and once more took hands. “What a coincidence!” I said.

  “You haven’t changed a bit, Saltspoon. Yes, it is a coincidence, but a useful one. We must talk properly. Wilkins and I are in the tower suite. Where is your room? I’ll come to you tonight.”

  I was afraid of what lay between us; afraid of waking the past and very afraid indeed of the present. I had longed for him so much, and now I feared to be alone with him.

  Yet I wished for it, too. At my first sight of him, every bone in my body had leaned towards him. I told him where he could fine me.

  “Until tonight,” he said.

  CHAPTER 16

  Love and Danger

  My soothing evening posset quite often failed to encourage sleep, but I didn’t want it that night, all the same. As luck would have it, of course, Dale remembered for me and went to fetch it. Jennet came up with her, carrying my warming pan.

  “I had your drink mixed ready,” Jennet assured me proudly. “I remembered how much cinnamon you like. I’ve a good memory—even Mr. Mason once said so.” As she spoke his name, she went pink and her calf-brown eyes glowed. She was as transparent as air.

  “And I was glad of a chance to come upstairs,” she added confidentially.
“That Thomas is on the prowl. He keeps putting his head into the kitchen. He wants to marry me, but I won’t have him, and that’s that. He’s idle and he’s not kind. I’ve seen him get really rough with the horse sometimes.”

  “It might be as well,” I said to Dale, after Jennet, having taken her time while warming my sheets with the pan, had reluctantly departed, “if Thomas did get married, though obviously not to Jennet. Dale, you can go and sleep in Brockley’s lodging tonight. I . . . shan’t need you here.”

  “Oh, ma’am! I did wonder . . .” Dale’s eyes were warmer than they had been for some time. “I mean, he’s your husband, isn’t he?”

  “You attended the wedding,” I said dryly. “Yes, he is. God knows in what frame of mind he will come here tonight, but I expect him, yes. You go and sleep in your husband’s bed. I expect you’ll find him slipping in with you at daybreak.” As an afterthought I handed her my posset. She was sure to be worrying, and even though she didn’t care for herbal drinks, I said, it just might help her to sleep.

  • • •

  As the house sank into stillness, I waited for Matthew alone, fully dressed, sitting on my window seat, with a single candle, placed so that it would light the room. He was a long time in coming, so that I wondered if he had really meant to come, or whether he meant to leave me sleepless and disappointed. Yes, disappointed. Desire was stronger than fear. Well, if necessary, I would wait the whole night through and then appear in the morning looking as though I had slept well, and cared nothing. I had my pride. If he thought he could hurt me by withholding himself, well, I would disappoint him.

  And then my heart began to hammer, for somewhere a door had opened and closed softly. I strained my ears but I never heard his footsteps and only knew for sure that he was there when the doorlatch lifted and he stepped noiselessly in.

  He, too, was still fully dressed. He closed the door after him and stood with his back to it. The candlelight showed his strong, dark features, his long chin and dramatically slanting eyebrows. His nostrils and eyes were pools of blackness.

  “I’m here,” I said. “On the window seat.”

  He picked up the candle, holding it so that the light could fall on me. “Ursula! I thought for a long time that I’d never see you again, or ever want to. Are you well?”

  “Very well. As you see. Tell me,” I said in social tones, “how do you happen to know Dr. Wilkins?”

  “He used to be a parish priest in Sussex, not far from my house at Withysham. He still visits old acquaintances in that district. I met him at a dinner party last year.”

  “I didn’t know where his parish was,” I said.

  “Does it matter? Why the devil are we talking about Wilkins? When your first letter reached me, Ursula, I did not know what to think or feel. Even now, I’m not sure whether I want to make love to you or throttle you.”

  I sat with my back quite straight. “You wrote to say I could come to you.”

  “And you wrote, saying that the Queen would not release you until May. Do you need her permission to join your own husband? Ursula, why in heaven’s name didn’t you set out for France at once? The weather’s been passable for sailing—I managed it! Our letters crossed the Channel! Why couldn’t you? Why?” As though he had suddenly lost control of his feelings, he strode across the room to stand over me.

  I shrank away. “Matthew, don’t . . .”

  “Why not? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t strike you or strangle you. Do you take me for a plaything?”

  “No, I do not! Never that!”

  “All right. Don’t be afraid of me. I shall do you no harm. Ursula, when I leave for France again, are you coming with me?”

  “I don’t know! I never thought to find you here. Does Wilkins know you are my husband?” I asked.

  “Why do you keep talking about Wilkins? Yes, of course. You are the reason why I wanted to come to Lockhill with him. I ask you again: will you come back with me to France?”

  “That depends,” I said.

  “Depends on what, may I ask?”

  I was rigid with the effort of remaining aloof, of not flinging myself into his arms, crying his name, and swearing to forget the past if he would forget it too, but there was a question which had to be asked.

  “Matthew, there is something I must know. A few weeks ago, did you try to arrange for me to be brought to you from England?”

  “Did I . . . ? What are you talking about?”

  I had the letter with me, the letter which might be a forgery, which had led me to get into that boat with its Charon-like boatman. I took it out and gave it to him. “Did you send me this?”

  He read it, holding the candle so as to see the writing clearly, then he turned to me again. “I did not write this. Someone has imitated my hand. I would not have dreamed of saying that your servants should not come with you. As my wife, you are the lady of the Château Blanchepierre. I would never ask you to travel unescorted. Did you do what this says?” He handed the letter back to me. “What happened?”

  “I got into a boat with a man I didn’t know, who said he was going to take me to you, but wouldn’t even let Brockley come with me to see me safe into your hands. He took me,” I said shortly, “to a lonely boathouse and left me there. He said I would be fetched to you in due course and then he left me there. I had rugs and a few days’ supply of food and water. Fortunately, Brockley had followed us and got me out.”

  “It had nothing to do with me. That I swear.”

  Relief flooded through me. He could not know that Brockley had recognised Wylie. If Matthew had been involved, there was no real reason why he should not say, yes, I did try to have you brought to me, but my wishes were misunderstood, my arrangements went wrong.

  And then I would have known, for sure, that he and Wylie were linked, and therefore, assuredly, that he was involved in this business, whatever it was, that I was trying to investigate. As it was, I could still hope that he was not, that his acquaintanceship with Wilkins was no more than the coincidence it seemed.

  Oh God, I said inside my head. Let it be so!

  “And now?” Matthew said. “I asked you a question. You replied with another, which is hardly an answer. Will you come with me to France? Or,” he added, with bitterness suddenly invading his voice, “does your excessive obedience to the Queen mean that you have had second thoughts about me? Did you come here at her bidding, for some reason?”

  “No! I had been ill.” I held on to the story that the Cecils and I had prepared. “I came here for a rest. The Queen allowed that. She wouldn’t let me sail to France because she thought the seas too dangerous at this time of year.”

  “How am I to trust you? I am a wanted man in this country. I have to travel under an assumed name. Will you send Brockley for the parish constable in the morning? So that I can be committed to the Tower and the scaffold?”

  “No, Matthew, no! When I fled from you last year, I waited a day in London before I reported what I knew, to give you time to realise your danger and make your escape. I gave you a chance, and no one was more thankful than I when I knew you had taken it!”

  “Oh God, Ursula.” Setting the candle down on the window seat, he turned away and leant his forehead on the wall. “Why did you do it? How could you betray me like that?”

  “I had to betray someone; I had no choice. You were part of a plot which would have endangered the Queen and the whole English nation! What else could I do?”

  He straightened and took the candle up again, once more holding it so that he could see my face clearly. “You are so beautiful,” he said wonderingly. “To behold, you are so sweet, so womanly. You wrote so tenderly. But if you loved me, you couldn’t have left me as you did.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “Yes. I do love you. I did then, too.”

  So much so, that from the first day I met Matthew, Gerald had begun to recede over the horizon of the past. After I fled from Matthew, Gerald’s memory had re
vived for a time, for what had been between Gerald and me had never been sullied, and thoughts of my first marriage were therefore balm and comfort. To recall Matthew, on the other hand, meant pain and bitterness. But from the moment that I heard from Matthew, Gerald was once more one of the regretted but buried dead.

  Matthew said nothing, and I spoke again. “What do you imagine I really felt, when I decided that I must leave your side in the name of—in the name of integrity, I suppose? Do you think it wasn’t a struggle? I tell you, I tore my heart out of my body and stamped on it! Do you think I didn’t want—long—yearn—to stay with you?”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “Haven’t I just told you that?”

  “Because you had to put the Queen first? Why? You are a woman. For all that salty tongue of yours—which I loved you for, if you remember, and have missed—you are a woman. Women—wives—follow the lead their men give them. Women are not asked to put the outside world, matters of rulers and realms, before their husbands. No one expects that of them.”

  “It’s expected of them every time their men march away to war!” Brockley had said that, more or less. “Women are more than you think.”

  “You can’t justify what you did and still claim that you loved me.”

  “I can. I do. In memory, I have treasured those few days and nights of our marriage. They are my Eden, from which I was driven by—”

  “Elizabeth with a flaming sword?” said Matthew sardonically. Matthew was essentially kind. That he could sound like that, was a cruel indication of how badly I had hurt him.

  “I suppose you could put it like that,” I said, “but she needs loyalty in her servants.”

  “Does she? She’s an unnatural woman, Ursula. Why does she refuse to marry? When I was at court last year, there were whispers that she wanted to marry Dudley, but there was another set of whispers, too. There were those who said she would never wed anyone: some said she was a faery creature who was too ethereal for the marriage bed, and some said she loved only power and was too cold of heart to love any man. I think that may be true. I also fear that your heart resembles hers; that you have a point of ice at the centre of it.”