He kissed my hand with admirably restrained courtesy since we were in my solar under the eagle eye of Beatrice. All my fears were smoothed out, like a length of faultless silk, and I accompanied him down to the main door, where my Master of Household waited with Edmund’s outer garments.
‘Look for me within the week,’ Edmund promised me, shrugging into his coat and drawing on his gloves, before leaping down the steps two at a time to where his groom held his horse.
‘Thank you, Master Owen,’ I said, as Edmund in his hunger to be gone had not.
‘My pleasure, my lady,’ he replied, watching Edmund ride from the courtyard with a jaunty gesture, hat in hand. But Master Tudor’s tone caused me to glance up at him, and the dark reproach—or perhaps even contempt—in the gaze that followed Edmund startled me. Then it was gone, a mere shadow, as the Master bowed to me. ‘Do you require anything, my lady?’
I shook my head. Only that Edmund return soon with a date for our marriage.
‘Are you entirely witless, woman?’
It was not Edmund but Gloucester.
How I wished that Edmund stood beside me. As it was, I was forced to face the battering ram of Gloucester’s wrath alone. He arrived within two days of Edmund’s departure, a virulent tempest, raining invective down on my unprotected head when he marched into my private chamber as if about to do battle. At his side came Bishop Henry in clerical splendour, stolid and smiling despite the uneasy flicker of his eye away from mine when I raised my brows. At least Edmund’s uncle bowed, kissed my hand and asked after my health. All Gloucester could do was glower and fume as he launched his first tirade.
‘Have you not even the sense you were born with?’
I gasped at his discourtesy, standing slowly, letting my embroidery slide to the floor.
‘I won’t ask you if the rumours are true. I’m quite certain they are.’ He gestured at my damsels. ‘Dismiss them!’
So I did, quivering with nerves.
‘All of them!’
‘No. Alice remains.’ I needed some support, and since I was fortunate to have her company I would keep her with me.
‘I suppose I should have expected nothing less from a daughter of Isabeau of France. A woman raised in the dissolute stews of the French court!’ Gloucester’s fury reverberated from the walls, hammering in my head. Never had I heard him address anyone with such ferocity. Usually icily polite in my presence, this was hot temper, and lethally personal. ‘What are you thinking of?’ he continued, flinging out his arms as if to encompass the length and breadth of my sins. ‘To allow yourself to be drawn into this farce—’
‘A farce? I don’t take your meaning, sir.’
My anxiety was swept away by resentment quite as strong as Gloucester’s ire. I walked forward to reduce the space between us, clenching my fists and pressing my lips together against his slight on my birth and my parentage, for I knew it would do no good to rant and return insult for insult. My blood and birth were as good as Gloucester’s. I was Valois, daughter of King Charles VI. I would not bow before this man, however much he might be a royal prince. I would play the Queen Dowager with all the skill I had acquired in recent years.
‘I deplore your accusation, my lord,’ I announced, before Gloucester could tell me exactly what he meant. ‘I think you should consider well how you address me.’ Oh, I was haughty. And Edmund’s love had given me a confidence I had previously lacked. My words were well chosen, my manner a perfection of regal disdain. ‘You have no right to address me in such a manner.’
Not expecting such retaliation, Gloucester’s face became suffused with blood, veins red on his cheeks as if he had been riding for long hours into a high wind. His next words bit hard. ‘Are you really so empty-headed,’ he accused, ‘that you think you’ll be allowed to wed Edmund Beaufort?’
‘I think the choice is entirely my own. If I wish to wed him, I will. I am not under your dominion, my lord.’
‘So it is true. You are considering an alliance with Edmund Beaufort. Ha!’ Gloucester stalked to the coffer and flung his gloves and sword there, so furiously that they slid to the floor, causing my dog to skitter out of his path. For a little while Gloucester stood with his back to me, as if marshalling his plan of campaign, and I waited. I would not conduct an examination of my private life at a distance.
‘Well?’ He swung round and marched to within a sword’s length of me. ‘What have you to say about this mess?’
I refused to retreat, even though he used his height and breadth, and his fury, to intimidate. ‘Edmund has asked me and I have agreed,’ I stated. ‘We plan to marry.’
‘It will not be. You will break any agreement you have made.’
‘Will I?’ I looked towards Bishop Henry. ‘What do you say, my lord? Do I wed your nephew?’
The cleric’s wily eye again slid from mine, under pretext of focusing on his rings. ‘I have to agree that it is a matter of concern, my dear Katherine.’
