‘I know. And that’s the saddest part of the whole affair.’ For it was all true, of course. It would have been cruel to have tied him to me, stripping away all hope of the life to which he had been born and raised. It would have been very wrong of me and, knowing it, I would have stepped aside. ‘Take it.’ I opened my palm again, the colours of the brooch springing to life. When he made no move to do so, merely regarding me with a strange mix of dismay and defiance in his face, I placed it on the stone window ledge at my side.
‘I loved you, Edmund. I understand perfectly. I would have released you from your promises but you did not have the courage to face me. You are a man of straw. I did not realise.’
I walked round him and on, Guille following. I would not look back, even when my heart wept for what I had lost. Would he even now come after me, change his mind, tell me that his love was still strong and could not be denied? For a moment my heart beat loudly in my ears as I waited for his long stride to catch up with me and his command to stop.
Of course he did not so command me. When, at the door, I looked back—for how could I resist?—he had gone. I let my eye rest on the window ledge where the blue and red and gold should have made a bright smudge in the low sun. It was flat and grey and empty. He had taken the brooch too. Perhaps one day it would grace the bodice of the lady whom he, and the law, deemed suitable for a Beaufort bride.
Perhaps he had loved me. But what was such love if it was too weak to triumph against worldly considerations? Edmund’s cold rejection of me had destroyed all my happiness. In that moment my love for him crumbled into dust beneath my feet. I thought he would not have been so very shallow.
Perhaps, I considered in that moment of blinding revelation, I had not fallen in love at all. Lonely and isolated, lured by the hand of an expert in the arts of love, I had simply fallen into the fatal trap of a glittering infatuation, only to be sacrificed on the altar of Beaufort aggrandisement.
I was infatuated no more.
CHAPTER TEN
I fretted, shaking with anxieties, and with fears that built like a thundercloud. Not knowing where Edmund was, I wasted no time in struggling with a pen but sent a courier to Westminster with a verbal message. I must see him.
The days passed, with no word forthcoming from Gloucester or either of the Beauforts. My courier returned empty handed with no news other than Edmund was not at Westminster. All I could do was wait, and worry, the final clash in my verbal bout with Gloucester resounding in my mind.
And so we would. Caught up in the vicious battle with Bishop Henry for power over the Royal Council, Gloucester was set on bringing the Beauforts down. That much I now saw. Perhaps it had not been politic of me to challenge him with his own salacious dabblings in marriage, but it was a wound too late to remedy. I prayed that the desirable Mistress Cobham, commoner though she might be, would sweeten her lover’s temper.
‘I’ll go to Westminster myself,’ I announced, when I could bear the silence no longer, when my feet had all but worn a path to the high vantage point of the Winchester Tower. Madam Joanna had left Windsor for her favoured residence of Havering-atte-Bower even before Gloucester’s arrival, so there was no solace to be had from her calm view of the world.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Alice replied gruffly, when I expressed my intention. ‘Keep a low profile and it might all be swept onto the midden.’
‘A pity you could not see your way to be enamoured with a man without name or ambition,’ Alice remarked caustically. ‘If you had, the Council might just leave you alone to be happy.’
I knew that to be a falsehood too. ‘If I had demanded to wed a man without consequence, the Council would object that he was not sufficiently well connected,’ I remarked tartly, weary of it all. ‘Marriage to a commoner would damage my integrity as Queen Dowager. They will not allow me to wed a nobody.’ I frowned. ‘Besides, it’s Edmund I love.’
Alice opened her mouth to reply, then shut it.
‘I do,’ I insisted. ‘I love him and he loves me.’
‘As your ladyship says.’
‘I know what you are thinking. Madam Joanna thinks the same,’ I interrupted the unspoken slight on our love. ‘Edmund’s regard for me is genuine. I am convinced of it. He would not ask me to marry him if he did not love me.’
