Edmund’s face paled, a little muscle tightening at the side of his mouth. ‘They made it impossible for me to do otherwise,’ he responded curtly. He was angry, but so was I.
‘So they did. Love, it seems, even after such splendid promises of life-long fidelity, appears to be finite, my lord of Mortain.’ I noted that his compressed lips paled further under my blow. ‘Such an honour as the lordship of Mortain could not be thrown away, could it? You would have lost it before you had even set your foot on the territory if you had held out to marry me.’ My mouth curled. ‘I have been put very firmly in my place, have I not?’
And Edmund’s features, once pale as wax, became engulfed in an unflattering tide of red that rose to his hairline, and his response was vicious as he admitted to everything I knew of him.
‘Are you a fool, Kat? You know the terms of the statute. To wed you would cripple me. Would you expect me to give up my land, my titles? My ambitions as a soldier? I am a Beaufort. It is my right to hold office in this realm. Would you really expect me to jettison my ambitions for marriage?’
‘No. What I would expect is that you would have the grace to tell me.’ He shrugged a little. I considered it a crude gesture, and drove on. ‘You have taught me a hard lesson, Edmund, but I have learnt it well: to trust no man who might be forced to choose between power and high politics on the one side and matters of the heart on the other. It is too painful a decision to expect any man to make.’
I tilted my chin as I watched his jaw tighten, my mind suddenly flooded with Madam Joanna’s warnings. Had he indeed used me? Oh, yes, he most definitely had. My naïvety horrified me.
‘Perhaps it was not such a painful decision for you. Perhaps you did not love me at all, except when I might have been your road to glory. Marriage to me would have given you such authority, wouldn’t it, Edmund? There you would have been, standing at the right hand of the Young King. His cousin, his adviser, his counsellor, his superb friend. His father by marriage. Now, that would have been a coup indeed. I expect you thought that I could be tolerated as a wife if I brought you such a heady prize.
‘I’m sorry your plan shattered into pieces at your feet. Gloucester had the right of it when he saw your promotion as no good thing.’ And I hammered home the final nail. ‘I expect he was right to suspect all Beauforts. They seek nothing but their own advancement.’
The flush had receded under my onslaught and Edmund was once more as pale as new-made whey.
‘I did love you.’ I noted the tense. ‘I hurt you.’
‘Yes.’ I put a sneer into my voice without any difficulty. ‘Yes, you hurt me. I think I could even say that you broke my heart. And don’t say you’re sorry for that,’ I said as his mouth opened. ‘I do not want your pity.’
‘Forgive me.’
‘No. I don’t think I will. I am in no mood to forgive.’ I lifted my hands and for a moment I struggled with the clasp of the brooch on my bodice. ‘I would return this to you.’ It tore the material, but I held it out on my palm.
He made no move to take it. ‘I gave it to you as a gift,’ he said stiffly.
‘A gift when you promised to marry me. It’s an elegant thing.’ The portcullis gleamed in the rays of the sun and the eye of the lion glittered, giving it a louche, roguish air. Much like Edmund Beaufort, I decided. ‘Now the promise is broken and the trinket is not mine to have. It is a family piece and should be given to your future wife.’
‘I will not take it back. Keep it, my dear Kat,’ he snapped, his tone bitter, words deliberately chosen to wound. ‘Keep it in memory of my love for you.’
‘Did you ever love me?’
‘Yes. You are a desirable woman.’ But his eyes could not quite keep contact. I did not believe him. ‘No man could deny your beauty. How could I not feel the attraction between us?’
‘Perhaps you did,’ I compromised sadly. ‘But simply not enough.’
‘It was a truly pleasurable dalliance.’
‘A dalliance?’ I clenched my fist around the jewel to prevent me from striking him, dropping into French in my renewed fury. ‘
He stepped back as if I had indeed struck him.
‘I can do no more than plead my cause,’ he responded curtly. ‘It would have been like nailing myself into my coffin before I was twenty years of age. You would ask too much of me.’
