The Widow's Kiss

by Jane Feather

  Owen drummed a finger on the glass. The religious differences between the fanatically Protestant King Edward and his equally fanatical Catholic half sister Mary were of little interest to him except where they impinged upon his work. He was much more concerned with the lady who was to be his quarry.

  “Exactly how intimate are the lady and her stepbrother?” He turned back to his companion.

  Noailles offered a very Gallic shrug. “I’ve heard no whispers of scandal, but they are very close. And Lord Robin at the ripe age of twenty-eight has never married.”

  “And the lady. What's her situation?”

  “The Lady Pen has been a widow close to three years now. Her marriage to Philip, the earl of Bryanston, was promoted by the king and Princess Mary, and to all intents and purposes seemed happy. But Philip died and she gave birth some months later to a stillborn child. Her brother-in-law inherited the earldom and is ruled, it's generally believed, by his mother. He's something of a dolt.” The ambassador's lip curled. “Like most inhabitants of this nasty island.”

  Owen smiled slightly. The Frenchman was not happy in his present diplomatic position and made no secret of it to his intimates.

  Noailles drank wine and then continued. “The Bryanstons have little or nothing to do with Philip's widow. She lays no claim to any part of her husband's estate. She doesn’t even take the title of dowager countess, leaving that to the sole use of her mother-in-law. ’Tis clear there's no love lost there.”

  Owen nodded. He ran a hand over his clean-shaven chin. “Is the lady ripe for plucking?”

  “When have you ever failed to persuade the fruit to fall from the tree?” Noailles smiled.

  Owen did not return the smile. “In the interests of business,” he said somewhat curtly.

  “Oh, of course, only in the interests of business,” the ambassador agreed hastily. Owen d’Arcy's private life was a closed book, or had been since that unfortunate business with his wife. As far as Noailles knew, the man lived the life of a monk except when seduction suited his purposes. And then he was a true artist.

  “Is she pleasing, this Lady Pen?” A frown crossed Owen's black eyes. “A strange name. Is that truly how she's called?”

  “Penelope … but I’ve never heard her called anything but Pen, even by the princess. ’Tis a family name and she's very close to her family. I think you’ll find her pleasing. She's not strikingly beautiful but has a certain sweetness of countenance. She's of middle height, neither fat nor thin.”

  “She sounds singularly unexciting,” Owen observed aridly. “Do you have any views on her temperament?”

  Noailles pulled at his neat dark beard. “She is somewhat reserved,” he said finally.

  Owen gave a sharp crack of laughter. “I had hoped at the very least that you would tell me this nondescript creature would exhibit some passion once in a while.”

  The ambassador opened his hands in a gesture of resignation. “ ’Tis said she took the deaths of her husband and child very hard.”

  Owen shook his head and picked up his gloves from the table. He drew them on and strode to the door, where hung his thick hooded cloak. He slung it around his shoulders, observing, “It seems you’ve set me quite a task, Noailles. I hope I’ll be equal to it.” The door banged shut on his departure.

  “Oh, you’ll be equal to it, my friend,” murmured the ambassador as he took up his chalice again. He went to the window, peering down through the driving snow at the street below.

  After a minute the black-clad figure of Owen d’Arcy emerged from the house, a page at his heels. He paused for a second, casting a quick glance up and down the street in a manner quite familiar to the watcher above. The master of intrigue never took a step without first assessing his surroundings. Then he walked off quickly in the direction of the Savoy Palace, and was immediately lost in the swirling white.

  Antoine de Noailles smiled to himself at the absurd idea that Owen d’Arcy would not succeed in bedding Pen Bryanston. Her confidences behind the bedcurtains would keep the French ambassador informed not only of Princess Mary's schemes with her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, but also of whatever intrigue was plotted in the two great ducal houses of Northumberland and Suffolk.

  The great hall of the Bryanstons’ London residence on the banks of the Thames at Westminster was thronged. Pen stood in the gallery looking down on the hall, where jewels glittered and sparkled against rich velvets, damasks, satins under the great wheels of candles suspended from the ceiling. From above, the mass of people seemed like a gigantic brilliantly colored wave that ebbed and swelled. Voices were indistinguishable, the sound was a featureless rumble that occasionally became a roar which drowned the sweetness emanating from the minstrels’ gallery.

  It was hot in the gallery. The heat from the massive fireplaces, the many candles flaring in sconces high on the walls, the press of heavily clad bodies, rose to envelop Pen, and she dabbed at her forehead with an embroidered handkerchief.

  It was hot but it was also secluded and afforded her the best view of her mother-in-law. The dowager countess of Bryanston was at the far side of the hall among the ladies surrounding Princess Mary. She was unlikely to leave that circle and her royal guest for some time, but even if she did she would have no reason to come up to the gallery.

  And even if she did have a reason, it would take her at least fifteen minutes to push her way through the throng and make for the stairs to the place where Pen stood.

  She had at least fifteen minutes, Pen decided. Her eyes searched the throng for the earl of Bryanston and his lady. They shouldn’t pose a threat but Pen would feel safer if she could locate them. She leaned forward slightly to get a better look and was suddenly blinded as a pair of hands came over her shoulders to cover her eyes.

  Even as she started she knew to whom they belonged, and a delighted cry broke from her as she wrenched the hands away and spun around. “Robin! You scared me!”

  “No, I didn’t. Of course you knew it was me.” Her stepbrother grinned at her, his brilliant blue eyes alight with pleasure at seeing her. He was a stocky man, square built, with a shock of springy nut-brown curls on which his velvet cap perched somewhat insecurely. His dress was rich and yet somehow awry. Pen automatically reached to brush a piece of fluff from his doublet, and while she was about it resituated the jeweled brooch he wore in the lace at his throat.

  “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in weeks,” she asked, kissing him soundly.

  “Oh, out and about,” he responded. “Out of town, anyway.”

  Pen regarded him shrewdly. Robin would never disclose whatever it was that took him away for these long absences but she had a fair idea. Her own years in the devious world of the court had taught her that very little was as it seemed. “On the duke's business?” she asked in neutral tones.

  He shrugged and changed the subject. “What are you doing all alone up here?” He peered over the gallery rail to look down at the scene below.

  Pen's eyes followed his. Her mother-in-law was still at the princess's side, and now she saw Miles Bryanston and his wife at a card table at the far side of the hall, their large faces glistening in the heat. They would be occupied all evening.

  “I felt the need for some quiet,” she said. “It's so noisy down there and so hot.”

  “It's hot up here,” Robin pointed out, looking at her closely.

  Pen shrugged. “I’ll go down again in a minute. I have need of a privy and, as I recall, there's a commode behind the arras in the passage behind the gallery. You go down and I’ll find you. I want to hear all your news.”

  She smiled, hoping to convince him, trying not to think about precious time wasting, trying not to look down to check on her mother-in-law's whereabouts. Robin, in company with the rest of her family, worried about her obsession, and if he thought she was following its impulses again he would certainly try to prevent her.

  Robin hesitated. They had known each other for sixteen years. When they had fir
st met they had been smitten with each other, caught in the pangs of first love. Then their parents had married and in the hurly-burly of family life that first love had become a deep abiding and loving friendship. And Robin thought he knew his stepsister better than anyone, better even than her mother or her younger sister, Pippa.

  And he knew she was not being honest with him.

  “What's the matter?” Pen demanded. “Why would a need for the privy cause you to look at me like that?” She laughed at him.

  Robin shook his head. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He turned to walk away, and Pen set off in the opposite direction. As soon as she had disappeared at the end of the gallery Robin followed her, soft-footed despite his stocky build. He turned into the narrow corridor behind the gallery and saw her ahead of him, hurrying as she might well do if she were in genuine need of the commode. Halfway along she twitched aside an arras and disappeared.

  He frowned, pulling at his unruly beard. Perhaps he’d been wrong and she had been telling the truth. He turned and retraced his steps down to the great hall.

  From behind the arras, Pen watched him depart. She’d been certain he’d follow to check up on her. She knew Robin at least as well as he knew her. When the coast was clear, she slipped out into the now-deserted corridor and hurried towards the chamber that served the Bryanston family as both office and library. The only member of the family who had delighted in stocking the library had been Philip. Pen's derisive grimace was automatic and unconscious. The present earl of Bryanston was barely literate and she’d never seen him open a book. Even his mother, for all her sharpness, couldn’t add two and two or do more than scrawl her name, and now that Philip was gone, relied on a chamberlain to manage the family's affairs.

  She entered the chamber, glancing over her shoulder as she did so. There was no one around to see her. The servants were all busy with the revels below.

  She closed the door softly and stood with her back to it, looking around the room where she and Philip had spent so much companionable time. She was not the scholar he had been, but she had grown up in the care of a mother who was as learned as any man, and Pen knew well the pleasures of a still and silent companionship disturbed only by the rustle of turning pages or the scratch of quill on parchment. She could almost hear those quiet sounds now, almost see Philip at the big oak table, his fair head bent over the tablets he always carried with him in case the muse struck unexpectedly.

  Suddenly she was hit by a wave of grief. It was a familiar occurrence although it happened less often now, three years after Philip's death. But it was as sharp, as piercing, as ever. Dry-eyed she waited for it to pass, for the tightness in her chest to ease, the great ball of unshed tears to dissipate in her throat.

  If only she had his child, the child they had conceived in so much love …

  Her expression cleared, her mouth set, her hazel eyes focused. There were no more shadows in the chamber, no more memories. Only purpose. The hard-edged driving force of her existence. A child had been born. Somewhere in this room among ledgers and Bibles there would be some record of that birth. Even a still-born had to have its place in family records.

  She had been so ill after the dreadful labor, her body racked with fever and pain, her spirit with inconsolable grief. Her mother and stepfather had arrived and removed her instantly from the Bryanston home in High Wycombe. It had taken close to twelve months under their loving care for Pen to overcome her illness and to put her grief aside, although she knew it would always be a presence in the deepest recesses of her soul. This evening marked the first occasion she had been under a Bryanston roof since the birth. This evening provided her with the first real opportunity to look for some record of her son's birth. The Bryanstons behaved as if it had never happened, her mother and stepfather encouraged her not to think of it, to put it behind her. But Pen could not accept that the child who had grown inside her, who had kicked and hiccuped and been a physical part of her, a child she had labored so sorely to deliver could be so utterly dismissed from the world.

  And neither did she believe that the child had been born dead. She had heard him cry.

  This was her obsession. This was what drove her as she returned to the princess's household and the life she had known before her marriage. To all intents and purposes Pen was her old self, but below the surface raged the conviction that somewhere her child lived.

  Her eye fell on the great family Bible on the lectern in the window embrasure. Births, deaths, marriages were all recorded there. She stepped quickly across the chamber, hurrying to the lectern. The Bible was open at the Book of Psalms and her fingers feverishly turned the wafer thin pages to the front of the volume. The pages stuck to her fingers that had grown damp in her haste and eagerness. She wiped them on the gray damask of her skirt before continuing. The front of the Bible carried no record of the stillbirth of her son on July 7th, 1550. The date itself was not inscribed. She looked down the long list of marriages, births, deaths. Her own marriage to Philip was there. Philip's death was there. Miles's accession to the earldom was there. In bold letters, bigger it seemed than any other entry. But, of course, Miles was the favorite son. The son his mother was convinced should have been her firstborn and always treated as such.

  Pen's eyes swept the chamber. How much time did she have left? Where else could she look? She went to the cabinet where she knew the estate papers were kept. How often she had watched Philip working on them. The key was in the lock. She opened the cabinet and began sorting through the ledgers.

  The door opened behind her. The door she had forgotten, in her eager haste, to lock.

  Her heart raced, her scalp contracted. Slowly she turned. At best it would be Robin, at worst her mother-in-law.

  But it was neither. For a moment speechless she stared at the stranger, her first thought that he was a servant. But it was a fleeting thought instantly dismissed. No servant was ever this elegant, or ever bore himself with such cool arrogance. Was he an intimate of the Bryanston family? If so, not one she knew.

  Black eyes beneath a broad brow and prominent but shapely eyebrows assessed her in the pregnant silence, and Pen returned the scrutiny with a slight lift of her chin. He had a long straight nose, a pointed chin, and a calm mouth. He held himself very still and yet she could feel a surge of energy around him. She couldn’t guess at his age. He was certainly older than Robin.

  She found her voice at last. “The revels are in the great hall, sir. You seem to have lost your way.”

  He bowed. “Owen d’Arcy at your service, madam.” His voice was musical, rich and soft, and Pen puzzled over the curious lilt. It wasn’t quite a foreign accent and yet like his dark complexion it was not purely English either.

  “I have no need of any service, sir,” Pen observed tartly. She felt on her mettle, somehow. A prickle of irritation mingled with something else as he continued to regard her with a glimmer of amused speculation. It was as if he knew something that she did not.

  Everything about him unsettled Pen. His clothes were curiously exotic, like his voice and his complexion. He wore doublet and hose of black satin worked with threads of Venetian gold, his shirt was black silk, the collar fastened with black enameled clasps. A short cloak of black velvet lined with crimson silk hung from slender shoulders. He carried a rapier and a dagger in black velvet sheaths at his waist. It was immediately obvious that he knew how to use such weapons. Pen had the absolute conviction that he was dangerous.

  “You seemed to be looking for something,” he said pleasantly, as if she had not spoken. “Perhaps I can help.”

  “I cannot imagine why you should think so.” Reluctantly Pen closed the cabinet and turned the key. She could not continue her search in this company, or indeed any company, and she was filled with resentment at the stranger's intrusion. There was no knowing when she would have such an opportunity again.

  “Are you closely connected to the Bryanston family, sir? Familiar with their affairs, perhaps?” She swung back to him,
her expression as challenging as her tone.

  There was more to her than met the eye, Owen thought. At first sight she was as Noailles had said, fairly nondescript with her brown hair, regular features, and undistinguished figure. But her eyes. Now they were something else altogether. Very large, very clear, and a wonderful mixture of green and brown shot through with gold. They reminded him of sunlight on a forest pool. Noailles had been wrong about the temperament, too, he decided. There was a distinct flash of spirit there. For the first time, Owen felt a stirring of interest in this task.

  “I must confess total ignorance of all things Bryanston,” he said with a smile. “But I find myself very interested in you, madam. I couldn’t help but follow you when you left the hall.” He bowed and gave her his most winning, inviting smile.

  Pen looked at him incredulously, her annoyance vanquished by this absurdity. “Are you attempting to flirt with me, sir?” She gave a peal of laughter. “You have the wrong sister, I’m afraid. My sister Pippa is an incorrigible flirt and will repay your efforts much more than I. I’d be happy to introduce you.” Still laughing, she swept past him to the door, her skirts brushing against him.

  Owen was rarely disconcerted, and chagrin was a most unusual visitor. However, he was aware of both as he followed Pen from the chamber, and something had to be done about it.

  “Lady Pen,” he called softly but with a degree of urgency.

  She stopped in the passage, glanced interrogatively over her shoulder at him, wondering how he knew her name. They had definitely not been introduced. He stepped up to her. He caught her turned chin in the palm of his hand and swiftly before she had any idea of his intention pressed his lips lightly against hers.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “But I have been wanting to do that all evening.”

  “How extraordinary!” Pen declared. “Why on earth should you?”

  He had expected shock, maidenly horror, indignation, fluster at the very least. Instead he received only this blank astonishment, this implication that he must have lost his senses. Surprise usually had a good effect in Owen d’Arcy's experience. But not in this case, it seemed.