by Anne O'Brien
“Ah. The fickleness of women.” The challenge in her delighted him. What a splendid future he would have with this quicksilver woman. He pushed himself up against the pillows, stretched to smooth her lips with the pad of his thumb. “No. That was never my fear. If you were willing to send the swan across half the country when every brigand and robber was afoot, with law and order stretched to near destruction, I knew that you must still be of the same heart and mind. My lovely Beatrice …”
Now his fingers slid around her nape to draw her closer. She did not resist the seduction of his words but leaned in to kiss him, her lips as soft and inviting as he had ever remembered them. So he kissed her again, increasing the pressure, increasing the heat. “I waited more than six months. I had to be sure in my own mind that I could come to you without guilt. And if there was to be any objection to my formal request, six months of your wearing widow’s garb was an acceptable time for your family.” Watching her, taking in every detail of her face, he asked the question that had been in his mind since the brooch and letter had been delivered. “Will you wed me, Beatrice? I think your brother will not oppose it.”
The sudden glow in her eyes was unmistakable but her answer was solemn and typically Beatrice. “No. He will not. Ned will wish us happy. But you should know—if it had been your wish to take a wealthy widow as your bride.” She watched him from beneath dark lashes.
Richard smiled at her concern. “What is it that I should know? Will you be penniless? If so, I must most assuredly cast you off.”
But there was no humor in her reply. “William’s influence carries far beyond the grave. He left me a rich widow. But if I remarry, my legacy becomes no more than a bed, a table and the paltry sum of forty pounds!”
“So wily Somerton would tie you to widowhood with money, just as he acquired you as his wife!”
“Yes. Richard—dear Richard—would you want a poor bride?” He saw anxiety there. And a strange insecurity. It surprised him and touched his heart.
“I did not come here to negotiate money with you, Beatrice,” he replied simply. “I came to claim you as my wife.”
“I shall lose this house.”
“Then, of course, you will live with me at Elton’s Marsh.” He had no intention of allowing any other situation. He cared not for the ownership of Great Houghton as long as he had Beatrice Hatton.
“I shall lose the estate and its income.”
“Then I must pay for your jewels and extravagant clothes, lady.”
“I can be very extravagant.” Beatrice laughed, a suddenly lighthearted, joyous sound in the quiet room.
“Beatrice?” Now all that was needed was the formality of the thing, Richard pushed her a little away so that he might look at her, watch her response as he spoke and she answered. “Listen to me.” His fingers closed harder because her reply meant more to him than he would ever have believed. “I want you, Beatrice Hatton. With or without an inheritance. Will you grant me your hand in marriage? Will you come and live with me at Elton’s Marsh where I might love you? Will you carry my heirs and live with me until death?”
For a long moment she looked at him, at the much beloved features, acknowledged the splendor of his generous soul, marveling that he was now hers. William’s hold over them was finally loosened, the wounds of the past cleansed and healed.
“Well, Beatrice?” There was an edge to his patience. But there was no need to fear.
“Yes, Richard Stafford.” She reached to touch her fingers to his lips. “Yes. I will do all of those things. With my whole heart.”
Read on for a sneak preview of
Anne O’Brien’s new novel
DEVIL’S CONSORT.
CHAPTER ONE
July, 1137:
The Ombrière Palace, Bordeaux.
‘WELL, he’s come. Or at least his entourage has—I can’t see the royal banners. Aren’t you excited? What do you hope for?’
Aelith, my sister, younger than I by two years and still with the enthusiasms of a child beneath her newly developing curves, battered at me with comment and questions.
‘What I hope for is irrelevant.’ I studied the busy scene.
I had got Louis Capet whether I liked it or not.
I had thought about nothing else since my father’s deathbed decision to place me under the hand of Fat Louis—the King of France, no less—had settled my future beyond dispute. I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. Anxiety at the choice vied with a strange excitement. Queen of France? It had a weighty feel to it. I was not averse to it, although Aquitaine was far more influential than that upstart northern kingdom. I would be Duchess of Aquitaine and Queen of France. I need not inform my newly espoused husband which of the two I considered to be the more important. Although why not? Perhaps I would. I would not be disregarded in this marriage.
I was Eleanor, daughter and heir to William, the tenth Duke of Aquitaine, the eldest of my father’s children, although not born to rule. Not that I, a woman, was barred by law from the honour, unlike in the barbaric kingdom of the Franks to the north, but once I had had a younger brother who had been destined to wear the ducal coronet. He, William—every first–born son was called William—was carried off by a nameless fever, the same as relieved my mother Aenor of her timorous hold on life. Leaving me. In the seven years since then I had grown used to the idea. It was my right to rule.
But I was nervous. I did not think I had ever been nervous before: I had had no need, as my father’s heir. My lands were vast, wealthy, well governed. I had been brought up to know luxury, sophistication, the delights of music and art. I was powerful and—so they said—beautiful. As if reading my mind, my troubadour Bernart began to sing a popular verse.
He who sees her lead the dance, sees her body twist and twirl,
Can see that, in all the world, for beauty there’s no equal
Of the Queen of Joy.
I smiled. The Queen of Joy indeed. My looking glass confirmed what could be mere flattery, the greasy, self–seeking compliments of a penniless minstrel towards his patroness. But I was not ingenuous. Alone, unprotected, unwed, there would be a limit to my powers. I needed a husband with a strong sword arm, and powerful loins to get an heir on me—for him and for myself. A puissant lord who would stand with me and secure the future for Aquitaine, a man who could lead men and demand the obedience of the power–hungry lords who would snatch what was mine. A man who would be a fit mate for such as I.
Ah, but would Prince Louis fit this mould?
‘Well?’ Aelith nudged me.
‘What do I hope for? A prince, of course,’ I replied.
‘That’s no answer.’
‘A man after my own heart.’
‘Self–important?’ Leaning against the carved window ledge, Aelith ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Opinionated? Arrogant?’
But I sidestepped my sister’s chuckling malice and answered seriously enough. ‘Why not? He will rule my lands. He must do it well. He’ll not do it if he has neither the backbone nor the spirit for it. Better a man with arrogance than one who’d sell himself short to make friends. My vassals need a firm hand.’
We were standing in my bedchamber, Aelith, my women and I, high in the old keep, a spacious, graceful room with large windows to catch the light and any breath of air on this day of impossible heat. A room that I loved, full of my own possessions, and from where I could look out across the Garonne to observe the whole scene unfold hour by hour. It was July, hot as the gates of hell, and I was restless with impatience as Aelith and I observed the settlement grow. Tents, pavilions, sprouting like mushrooms, covered the open meadows, transforming them into a town in its own right. A vivid, richly–coloured Capetian town on Aquitaine soil. A foreign presence, and above it all the fleurs de lys of France. A portent for the future, I acknowledged, a French symbol of ownership over the mighty Duchy of Aquitaine. Before me, horses and armed men swarmed. Farriers and wheelwrights set up their booths and a market was soon under way. Small bo
ats plied back and forth with Frankish noblemen or mounds of cabbages. My vassals, I was well aware, would question the relative importance of the two. It would not be a popular marriage but we would all have to live with it.
‘He must be handsome, of course,’ Aelith announced. She was already precociously aware of the male sex.
‘Of course.’ I had no thought of a husband who was less than pleasing to the eye.
‘Like Raymond.’ Aelith sighed a little.
Raymond of Poitiers, my father’s young brother, now ruling as Prince of Antioch in distant Outremer.
‘Yes. Like Raymond,’ I agreed. My only meeting with Raymond had been of the briefest, four years ago now and for a mere few weeks, but my memory of his golden beauty had not faded with time. Raymond was to my mind the epitome of the perfect knight. ‘If the French prince is in any measure like Raymond, I shall be everlastingly grateful.’ My attention was caught by a flurry of movement across the river. ‘Look! That’s the royal standard!’ I pointed. Aelith leaned to see the blue pennants with the gold lilies of France. ‘So Prince Louis is here at last.’
‘As long as he’s prettier than Fat Louis,’ she remarked.
‘I’ll give you my gold circlet if he’s not. Fat Louis is naught but a mountain of lard ridden with dysentery.’
But I knew better than to underestimate King Louis. His body might be corrupt but his mind was still keen. He might be too corpulent to rise from his bed, too obese to mount either a horse or a woman, so rumour said, but he had seen me as a gift dropped from heaven into his enormous lap.
We watched as another pavilion was erected, larger than all the rest. The Capetian banner was planted beside it to hang limply in the windless air. A group of horsemen drew up and dismounted. Impossible to make out one figure from the next at this distance.
‘They won’t like it, you know.’ I spoke softly. ‘My vassals will detest it.’
‘But they have no choice.’ Aelith pursed her lips. ‘And if the Prince keeps the brigands from our doors, they’ve no right to complain.’
True in essence, but far too simplistic.
Was this, this Frankish marriage, what the Duke my father had intended when he had placed me into King Louis’s keeping? Arrange a marriage for my daughter, he had left instructions for Louis as his life drained from him on the pilgrim’s road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. And do it fast, before rebellion can take hold. Until that time, I give her and Aquitaine into French safe hands.
What was my father, Duke William the Tenth of Aquitaine, thinking? Surely he’d understood that King Louis would never allow me to escape from his fat fingers. It would be like expecting a fox to show goodwill by keeping out of the hen coop even though the door was left invitingly open, and the King of France was no kindly fox. Arrange a fast marriage for me? By God, he had. Between the vomit and the bloody flux that tied him to his bed, Fat Louis had moved heaven and earth to secure me for his son before anyone could voice a protest.
And there had been plenty. My father’s vassals may have sworn an oath of homage to me in his lifetime, but our lands were torn by unrest. The Count of Angoulême, a vassal lord of Aquitaine, was vicious in his condemnation and was not alone. They would have accepted someone like Raymond, one of their own. They would have just about tolerated a noble lord of the south who might win my hand. But not this Capetian interloper, this foreign northerner from some insignificant Frankish tribe. I knew what they would be thinking as they too watched this impressive arrival. They would see Louis Capet as a foreign power who would drain us to further his own ambitions. My father may have insisted with his final breath that Aquitaine remain independent from France, ruled separately, to be inherited in some distant future by the heir of my own body; he might have insisted that Aquitaine must not be absorbed into French territory, but how many of my vassals would remember that, when faced with this invasion of unveiled power?
‘It might have been more politic—’ I spoke my thoughts ‘—if my father had not thrown us into the hands of a Frank.’
And I marvelled at my father’s unwarranted stupidity in drinking water fouled by a horde of pilgrims, all of whom had doubtless washed and spat and pissed in its shallows. Did he not see, scooping up the bad fish, gulping the rank water, his mind taken up with the successful culmination of his pilgrimage? All he got was a night of fever, of vomiting and flux, rapidly followed by a pain–racked death before Saint James’s altar.
An excess of piety can make us all stupid.
‘Perhaps the vomiting addled his brain,’ remarked Aelith dryly.
And perhaps the outcome would be civil war. It might be like setting a brand to dry timber, insurrection sweeping through Aquitaine and Poitou before we had finished dancing at my marriage feast.
A quick wash of fear replaced the nerves and the anticipation.
Behind me the troubadour, obviously listening in, struck a strident note on a lute so that I turned to look, seeing the lifting of his brow in my direction. When I smiled in appreciation of his intent, Bernart began to sing a popular if scurrilous verse in a soft growl.
Your Frank shows mercy, just to those who can pay him,
There’s no other argument ever can sway him …
He hesitated, breath held, fingers lifted from the strings, to assess my reaction, and even though I knew what would come next, I waved him on. Bernart struck another heavy chord.
He lives in abundance, his table’s a feast, But you mark my words, he’s a treacherous beast.
My women joined in with relish in the last line. The Franks were not well loved. A coarse, aggressive, unpolished people, compared with our Roman sophistication in Aquitaine.
‘Enough!’ I moved into their midst. ‘We’ll not be discourteous.’
‘No, lady.’ Bernart bowed over his beloved lute. ‘We’ll make our own judgement when the Prince becomes Duke of Aquitaine.’
I frowned at the smooth cynicism but could find no fault with so obvious a statement.
‘It’s an honour that he should come to you.’ Aelith still leaned her arms along the sill, unwilling to abandon the entertainment without. ‘Travelling all this way from Paris, in this heat. They say he travelled at night.’
It was true. Everything had been settled with such speed, as if the King of France had the hounds of hell baying at his heels, although what Prince Louis thought of it I had no idea. Perhaps he would have preferred a Frankish bride. I lifted my chin. I too could be cynical.
‘The Prince only came to me because his father the King instructed him to do so. Fat Louis and my guardian the Archbishop feared that if I set foot outside this palace I would be abducted by some scruffy knight with an eye to a rich wife. I’m far too valuable to be allowed to travel the breadth of the country.’ Impatience tightened its grip, now that the Prince was in my sights. ‘How long do I have to wait before I can see him?’
Aelith laughed, a pert toss of her head. ‘At least he’s old enough to play the man and not so old as to be near his grave.’
‘He’s two years older than I.’
‘Old enough to keep you in line?’
‘No.’ I didn’t like this line of humour. ‘I’ll not be a vessel merely to bequeath my royal Aquitaine blood to my children. I am no brood mare, without opinion or wit, to slave and carry at the behest of a husband. I’ll rule my own lands. The Prince must accept that.’
© Anne O’Brien 2011
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2011.
MIRA Books, Eton House, 18–24 Paradise Road,
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© Anne O’Brien 2011
ISBN 978-1-408-93759-4
