Kitabı oku: «Red Rose, White Rose», sayfa 3

3

Raby Castle

Cuthbert

My half-brother Hal paced the floor of Countess Joan’s salon, his face displaying anger and fatigue in equal measure. He had ridden through the night from his castle at Penrith to attend this family summit meeting, gathered twenty-four hours after Cicely had vanished off the moor and twelve since the ransom note had been received from Brancepeth.

‘You have indulged the girl too much, my lady mother, and this is the result.’

Only Hal dared to address the majestic Dowager Countess of Westmorland in such an admonitory tone. Her eldest son, the first of the thirteen children she had borne to the late earl, he was the only one to whom she deferred because he had inherited our father’s air of authority, though not his devastating charm or extreme height. Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, was known in the family as Hal for reasons that went back to the establishment of the Lancastrian dynasty at the turn of the century. Having been baptized in honour of King Richard the Second, who had granted my father both the earldom of Westmorland and the marriage to his cousin, Joan Beaufort, the name became an embarrassment when Henry of Lancaster forced King Richard to abdicate in his favour – and so the baby Richard Neville quickly became known as Henry instead, or Hal for short. However, by the time he came of age, the name Richard was no longer out of favour and he used it officially, but within the family Hal had stuck.

Nicknames seemed to haunt Hal though. At court, where he served on the king’s council, I had heard him called Prudence behind his back, because of his strategic and cautious approach to everything. It was my guess that had Hal been at Raby, Cicely would never have been allowed out on the moor to hunt so close to the date of her wedding.

Now his attitude was starkly pragmatic. ‘If Richard of York hears of this he will repudiate the marriage and then Cicely might as well go straight to the nearest convent. She will be damaged goods.’

Seated in her gilded chair beneath a baronial canopy embroidered with the Beaufort portcullis crest, the dowager countess looked weary and distracted, but she retained her composure in the face of her son’s anger. ‘None of our retainers will dare to breathe a word of it, even if they become aware of Cicely’s precarious situation,’ she said. ‘York will never learn of it as long as we can get her back before his harbingers arrive and that cannot be for two more days at least. What is your plan to gain her release, Hal?’

Her son gave an exasperated sigh and let his gaze sweep the assembled company. ‘You let her leave the castle, mother, and Will and Ned let her ride into the arms of reivers. None of you seems to have covered yourself in glory over the matter and now you call me in and expect me to wave a magic wand and sort out the mess. Well, it will not be that easy.’

I suppose I should have been grateful that I was excluded from his list of blame but I knew that did not exempt me from responsibility; rather it indicated that Hal did not recognize my right to be in the room, for Lord Salisbury was a stickler for rank and protocol. I was baseborn and in his eyes a bastard could never be considered of rank, even one who had been accepted into his family household as a child, was reared with his brothers, and had earned the accolade of knighthood during a campaign on the Western March toward Scotland, of which he was Lord Warden. Although we were brothers, Hal Neville and I were not exactly friends.

Anyway I did not escape entirely.

‘It was Cuthbert who told her to ride for Raby.’ This helpful remark came from Ned, the brother closest to Cicely in age and another whom I did not count among my supporters. ‘Otherwise she would not have become separated from the rest of us.’

‘Cuddy was obeying orders,’ Will Neville cut in, the only one of my brothers who used Cicely’s nickname for me, a man on whom I could always rely to take my part. ‘Do not try and blame him for our mistakes. The reivers should never have got so near us. We should have kept scouts out all the time, not called them in when the hunting started.’

‘Dogs cannot flush out birds while scouts are tramping all over the moor,’ protested Ned. ‘There would be nothing there to hunt.’

‘Oh stop bickering!’ cried the countess, fixing Ned with pale-blue eyes narrowed and glittering with unshed tears. ‘The whole world knows that Cuthbert would die for Cicely. He is as distressed as any of us by her perilous position. Nor can we lay all the blame on Sir John Neville because it was he who rescued Cicely from the reivers. Had he not, her fate might have been even worse. No – if we are fixing blame we need look no further than the man who unfortunately bears the title your father worked so hard to achieve.’

Countess Joan used an exquisite lace kerchief to dab her cheek where a single tear had escaped her control.

‘You are right sans doubte, Madame ma mère.’

Young Ned had pretentions of grandeur and often used outdated Anglo-French phrases in order to stress the ancient Neville connection with the conquering Normans who had subdued England four hundred years ago. The rest of us were content to use English, the only language commonly understood and spoken by everyone in the north.

‘The devil twists a body which contains a twisted mind,’ Ned persisted. ‘We should attack Brancepeth with all force before that son of Beelzebub takes it into his warped mind to send a ransom demand to Richard of York. That would ruin Proud Cis’s prospects for certain!’ Despite his call for instant military attrition, Ned also sounded positively gleeful at the idea of Cicely being rejected by her wealthy bridegroom.

Will was indignant. ‘Neville cross swords with Neville? No! That is a recipe for disaster. Besides, Ned, there is no reason why anyone should have a warped mind simply because his body is not perfect, or vice versa. My Jane may be feeble-brained, but she is the most kind and loving of females.’

Will’s wife was Jane Fauconberg who, when she married him at sixteen, had literally been a childlike bride with the mind of a girl of six. Nevertheless she had brought him, an otherwise impecunious and untitled younger son, the extensive Barony of Fauconberg. Those who objected that the marriage was distastefully mercenary and wholly against nature were confounded by the affection and care Will displayed towards his spouse and her clear love for him. Love had been rewarded, and their marriage was confirmed as legal and consummated when she recently became pregnant with their first child at the start of the year. Needless to say, Will was hoping for a healthy boy to inherit the barony, having already proved his own ability to father sons by siring two with his resident mistress.

Ned was scornful. ‘You are as soft in the head as your wife, Will,’ he sneered. ‘Anyway, I say attack is the only option – preferably today.’

I waited to see which way Hal would jump. Surprisingly, for a man of the sword, he sided with Will and his mother. ‘I do not agree,’ he said firmly, turning his back on Ned’s angry glare. ‘We do not have to fear for Cicely’s honour or her safety. Westmorland and his brothers may be thorns in our side but they are not the monsters you paint them. It is our sister’s reputation we must protect. Richard of York will be keenly aware, as I am, that a young girl who has not been permanently under the protection of her mother or some other responsible female can be considered damaged goods. If he perceives Cicely’s abduction as a way to free himself from his obligation to marry her, the king’s council would support him because they are looking to strengthen England’s crucial alliance with Burgundy. A marriage between a scion of Burgundy and an English royal duke would re-point its masonry.’

He moved nearer to the countess’s canopied chair and knelt down before her in the guise of an earnest appellant. ‘We cannot allow that to happen, my lady mother. Although I know you remain sensitive in the matter, I think we should appeal to Eleanor to intervene. She must surely have considerable influence with Lord and Lady Westmorland.’

Lady Joan’s face set in an icy stare and her knuckles grew white on the arms of her chair. Strictly speaking, she was no longer required to wear mourning for her late husband but, by payment of a hefty sum to the royal exchequer, she had obtained permission to remain unmarried and she still favoured widow’s weeds. In her gleaming black minerva-trimmed gown, relieved only by the high neck of her white linen kirtle and veil, she resembled an affronted abbess about to address an offending novice.

‘No, my lord, under no circumstances! Eleanor made her bed with Percy and she must lie in it. I have nothing to say to her.’

Eleanor Neville, the eldest daughter, had eloped at sixteen with one of the Raby henchmen esquires, to be married by a hermit-priest in his cell deep in the Northumbrian borderlands. In a romantic turn of events it transpired that the apparently humble squire was, in fact, Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, who had been living incognito ever since his father and grandfather had forfeited their titles and estates by rebelling against the first Lancastrian king, Henry IV. Young Percy had wooed and won his lady in a fashion which might have thrilled a troubadour but had horrified and offended Lady Joan, who had never forgiven Eleanor, notwithstanding her chosen swain proving to have a status equal to her own. Family pride had induced the countess to intercede with her nephew, the newly crowned King Henry V, to get the young earl reinstated, so that her daughter could at least obtain the rank to which her birth entitled her, but the unforgiving dowager had never again set eyes on her runaway daughter, nor on the seven grandchildren Eleanor had provided her with.

Now she reinforced her objection. ‘Besides, as I understand it there is little love lost between Lord Northumberland and his sister, the present Lady Westmorland. She too disliked the manner of his marriage. I doubt if they communicate.’

Salisbury rose from his knees and stepped back speechless, merely shrugging his shoulders with a sigh.

‘So much for family loyalty,’ commented Ned with a grin. He made a sketchy bow in the direction of his mother’s chair. ‘If that is the best we can do I will take my leave. Cicely had better take her future into her own hands for it is apparent that no one here is going to bend over backwards to help her.’ He tossed a withering glance in my direction. ‘Least of all her much-vaunted champion, Cuthbert.’

I bit back a retort as the countess rose, indicating that as far as she was concerned the meeting was over. ‘At least we can pray. I shall be in the chapel and do not wish to be disturbed unless there is an emergency,’ she said, sweeping her dark skirts around her feet and heading towards her privy door, trailing a drifting fragrance of attar of roses in the air and causing an ornate heraldic banner to billow on the wall. The banner quartered the red rose of Lancaster with the Beaufort portcullis and was bordered in blue and white; her own personal standard.

Lady Joan made a small gesture as she passed me, indicating that I should follow her out but before closing the door behind us I heard Ned remark dryly, ‘Praying is all she will do. There will be no property concessions, that much is certain.’

The private chapel at Raby was a small gem. Intended only for the use of the Neville family and their distinguished guests, it had been built by the old earl’s father, but Ralph Neville himself had commissioned the colourful frescos on the walls which celebrated the family’s rise to power. On an azure sea sailed the three-masted ship from which Admiral de Neuville had commanded the fleet which brought Duke William’s force from Normandy to invade England; beside that a scene of knights and archers in close combat depicted the famous Battle of Neville’s Cross, when the Scottish king had been taken prisoner on the moors outside Durham; and finally there were scenes showing masons working on the soaring walls of Raby castle, confirming the establishment of the Nevilles among the premier barons of England. At the chancel end of the nave stood a beautiful rood screen carved from Ancaster alabaster and adorned with images of local English saints especially revered by the family; St Cuthbert, St Hilda, St Aidan and St Godric.

Lady Joan led me down the nave and paused by the screen. ‘You were named for St Cuthbert,’ she reminded me, ‘but my lord’s favoured saint was this one, Godric the crusader.’ She laid her hand on a fold of the saint’s stone robe. ‘A few weeks before your father died he brought me here and, despite his pain, he managed to kneel before this statue, though his wounded leg stuck out like a broken branch. Then he prayed aloud, asking the saint for guidance but I knew he was really consulting me.

‘“The surgeons want to cut off my leg,” he said. “You fought the devil, Godric. Standing waist high in the waters of the Wear, you battled the Anti-Christ for a day and a night. Tell me, God’s stalwart soldier, what must I do to combat Satan’s demons that fester in my leg?”’

The countess turned away from the screen and addressed me directly. ‘Ralph did not have the strength to continue and I finished the prayer for him. I begged St Godric to allow my lord to remain a true knight, proud and upright and to carry his sword in Christ’s name. Not to let him stand before God a cripple.’

‘Oh, my lady,’ I croaked, shocked to hear that word applied to the father I revered. ‘What did my father say?’

‘He understood. He smiled at me through his pain and said, “So be it. I am sixty-two. I have lived my life. I will go to the Creator as He made me, with every limb intact. It shall be as it shall be. May St Godric give me the strength to bear it.”’

I stared at her, bewildered. ‘You believe that cripples are the devil’s acolytes? That the present Lord Westmorland is a disciple of Satan?’ I asked.

‘Yes. But I believe he can be confounded by a miracle. There was no miracle for my lord Ralph but I will pray for one for Cicely.’

With that Lady Joan went to kneel down at the plush prie Dieu which had been specially placed for her in the chancel beneath an image of Our Lady. I hesitated, wondering why she had required my presence but all became clear when she began to pray aloud. ‘Holy Marie, Mother of God, be with my daughter Cicely in her hours of trial. Show her the way to escape her captors and let there be a strong hand to help her when your miracle has been fulfilled.’

I understood now. Lady Joan did not make specific requests of her vassals because she did not want to be disappointed if they failed to fulfil her wishes, but if they could be made to know those wishes indirectly then neither she nor they could lose face in the event of a failure. I was being given clear instructions to make it my business to act as spy and support for Cicely in any way I could, without involving the others. In other words, I was to perform the task that Lady Joan herself would have done, were she young and a man.

As her prayers dropped to a low murmur, I bowed to her apparently oblivious back and walked out of the chapel as quietly as my hard leather soles would allow. I never wore the soft-soled shoes affected by my brothers in their domestic life. It was part of my vow as a knight-champion that I remained constantly ready for action. To that end I carried a hidden blade, even when carrying arms was not permitted. All I had to do to begin my appointed task was collect my saddle-bags, my short sword, my helmet and my habergeon, the light body armour that protected throat and breast without hampering silent movement through any terrain; and, of course, my horse. I would wear no symbol of affinity but cease being a Neville knight and become an anonymous mercenary soldier of fortune; one that could mix with others of like kind.

However, before any of that I had to seek out one other person. I found her in the inner garth, a small and private walled pleasure garden. It afforded fresh air but there was little grass evident because the sun barely penetrated the high walls of Raby’s inner court, and so it was laid out with gravel paths, small evergreen bushes and painted wooden posts carved into heraldic beasts. At the far end was a sandy square reserved for bowling, where a girl in a green kirtle and a pretty lace-trimmed coif was throwing a stick for a little brown and white terrier.

Hilda Copley was the daughter of a local knight, who had arrived at Raby five years before to be a companion for Lady Cicely. The two girls had shared lessons, leisure activities and even a bed ever since, and I knew how anxious Hilda would be about Cicely’s continued absence. Besides, having taught both of them horsemanship and the rudiments of archery and self-defence, I was as close to Hilda as I was to Cicely, except that I was not Hilda’s half-brother and to me that was a very important difference.

When she saw me at the garth gate she abandoned the dog to his stick and ran towards me, skirts flying, a sight I greeted with a wide, appreciative smile.

‘What are you smiling about, Cuddy?’ she demanded excitedly. ‘Has Cicely returned?’

‘No, I fear not,’ I admitted. ‘Lady Joan wants me to spy out the situation in Brancepeth so I am about to leave.’

Hilda’s dark brows knitted in vexation. Usually I loved it when her pretty face creased in a frown and her brown eyes glinted in challenge but on this occasion I knew she was about to dispute my unquestioning obedience to Lady Joan – not a subject I was prepared to debate with her – so I forestalled her protest.

‘No one else seems to have any idea how to grapple with the problem so I am more than willing to go on a fishing expedition. At least I can travel unrecognized and ask questions in places where the Nevilles would not go. It might just yield results. God knows, something has to.’

The light of battle died in Hilda’s eyes and she became practical. ‘Someone has to,’ she amended, favouring me with faint twitch of the lips, ‘and Cicely can always rely on you.’ She did not add ‘more than the rest of her brothers’ but I could hear the unspoken words in her tone of voice.

She whistled sharply and the terrier came running up and dropped his stick at her feet. ‘Caspar is pining for his mistress,’ she revealed, picking him up and tucking him under her arm. ‘I thought a bit of exercise would cheer him up.’

Caspar was Cicely’s dog, used to following her everywhere except of course to the hunt, when the big alaunt hounds would probably have eaten him for dinner.

‘I expect Cicely is missing him,’ I remarked, falling into step beside Hilda as she walked towards the gate. ‘Are you going to feed him now?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Well, I thought if you were going to beg some scraps from the kitchen for Caspar you might also acquire some supplies to sustain me on my travels.’

I was rewarded with a cuff on the arm. ‘So that is why you came to find me. And I thought it was for a sight of my bonny brown eyes.’

‘So it was,’ I protested, feeling the blood rise in my cheeks. ‘And your way with the kitchen staff.’

Hilda stalked off ahead, affecting indignation. The terrier’s tail wagged dismissively at me from under her arm. ‘Hah! Well, I suppose Caspar might spare you a bit of gristle.’

4

Brancepeth

Cuthbert

I took the moorland route to Brancepeth and rode in bright sunshine, my horse trotting easily over grassy sheep tracks. The dry conditions meant I could let my mind wander, considering the reasons for my unquestioning obedience to Lady Joan; the obedience which the spirited Hilda found so hard to comprehend.

Hilda was not illegitimate. She was the true-born daughter of Sir William Copley, late tenant of one of the closest of Raby’s many manors. Even as a young child, while her father was still alive, she had often been to Raby, making friends, especially Cicely who was nearest to her in age. I had often encountered her when I was a boy, but by the age of eleven I had begun serious training military training and grown scornful of little girls with their dolls and giggles. Now, of course, it was a different matter.

I do not remember precisely when I began to notice that Hilda had grown from a cheeky little girl into a dark-haired temptress, but it must have been during the summer that I started to teach her and Cicely how to shoot an arrow. I found something intensely appealing about the way Hilda tilted her chin before she hauled back on the bowstring, and when she flexed her arm and pulled I felt a blood-rushing response to the thrust of her budding breasts against the fabric of her bodice. She was thirteen and I was not yet twenty. During the three years since then, my teenage lust had turned into something more controlled, but my heart still missed a beat whenever I caught sight of her.

Since then, too, her father had died and her eldest brother Gerald had inherited the manor of Copley. Young Gerald had been one of my fellow henchmen at Raby, sharing the training, both military and social, that was intended to turn us into fierce and faithful Neville knights. As youths we had been quite good friends until I began to receive more senior and responsible posts than he did, a situation he judged to be due to favouritism. That was when he began to cast snide remarks in my hearing about ‘bastard blood’ and ‘bum-licking by-blow’, insults I managed to ignore. But when he got wind of my feelings for his sister his antipathy grew more sinister; there was ample opportunity on the practice ground for knocks and thrusts to result in real wounds inflicted accidentally-on-purpose. I had been much relieved when his inheritance took Gerald back to the manor of Copley, but before he left he made it abundantly clear to me that if any word reached him linking my name to Hilda’s, violent retribution would follow. Our paths had not crossed since but I knew that, apart from when he performed his knight’s service on the Scottish border, he was never far away.

The stain of bastardy was the glue that bound me to Lady Joan; not that she ever used that word. It was the reason I gave instant and unquestioning service to her. Very soon after my arrival at Raby I had been surprised and perturbed to be summoned to the countess’s tower and admitted to her private quarters. In the room she called her salon I was dazzled by the light that streamed through half a dozen diamond-glazed windows and awestruck by the opulence of the furnishings. Until then, I had known only the interior gloom of my family’s fortified farm high up in the dale above Middleham Castle, and its rough-hewn table and benches. Lady Joan’s sumptuous silk hangings and polished-oak chests and chairs were a revelation to me and I needed no nudging from her chamberlain to fall instantly on my knees before her raised and canopied throne. I was convinced I must be kneeling at the feet of a queen.

‘You are welcome to Raby Castle, Cuthbert.’ Her soft, aristocratic tones sent nervous shivers down my spine. ‘You may be surprised that I have sent for you but we have much in common, you and me. Like you I was baseborn and grew up under the shadow of illegitimacy. I know it is not an easy road to walk. I was lucky. My father eventually married my mother and was powerful enough to have her children legitimized. That will not happen to you and yet you too are lucky because you have impressed your father with your strength and intelligence. He will see to it that you receive the training necessary to join the elite force of Westmorland men-at-arms. But because you are his son he has asked me to ensure that you also receive an education and learn good manners, and so you are to join my sons and daughters at the appropriate lessons. I trust you will take advantage of this opportunity and repay our generosity with true loyalty.’

Under her gracious azure gaze I blushed furiously and mumbled some words of gratitude, turning the new homespun hood which my mother had made for me round and round in anxious fingers. At ten years old I needed no urging to pledge my loyalty to this beautiful, fragrant, splendidly jewelled lady. I wanted to prostrate myself before her and let her trample me under her satin-slippered feet but instead I bowed my head and tugged at the fringe of hair on my forehead. ‘Oh yes, my lady, I will,’ I said and, true to my word, I had repaid her over and over again and was even now continuing to do so.

At Brancepeth a posse of Raby men-at-arms was now camped in the shelter of a tree belt, well back from any archers’ arrows fired from the castle walls. Hal had seen to that at least. As I was wearing no insignia that might be recognized from the battlements, I went to speak to the sergeant in command but I took care to remain in the shadow of the trees. He reported no activity at all that day and, with dusk fast approaching, did not expect any. This puzzled me as Brancepeth was not under siege, but my curiosity was met with a shrug from the sergeant; his instructions were to keep out of arrow-range and log any activity. I took myself off to the village where I hoped to find looser tongues.

In the main street I promised a halfpenny to a loitering lad to mind my horse and he directed me to the alehouse, identifiable by a desiccated evergreen bush hung over its door. It was the usual low-roofed, smoke-filled, mud-floored hell-hole; a meeting place for unmarried local villeins with a farthing to spend, thirsty black-faced colliers from the nearby mines and weary travellers from the west who could not quite make it to Durham before curfew. I hoped it would be assumed that I fitted the last category. There was no room near the fire so I took a seat on a corner bench beside a man wearing the Neville bull on his jacket and signalled the pot-boy to bring me a mug of ale.

‘You must be a local resident, sir,’ I said politely, indicating my neighbour’s livery badge. ‘That is the Neville bull, is it not?’

The man’s grin revealed only three or four blackened teeth. ‘Brancepeth Neville, sir. The other lot, with their fancy sailing ship, do not show their faces here.’

I affected ignorance of Neville business. ‘Oh? Why is that?’

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together with a knowing look. ‘Family feud, sir, over land, coin and castles. Rich men’s pickings.’

The pot-boy arrived with my ale in a banded wooden mug and I tossed him a farthing. ‘You seem very knowledgeable about the lord’s affairs,’ I prodded, taking a long gulp of the thin liquid. It was stale but not unpleasant.

He puffed out his chest. ‘Well I should know something since I work at the castle.’

With teeth like his I doubted if he worked in the private apartments but I decided flattery would aid my cause. ‘You must have a senior position, sir, if you can leave after dusk. When I rode past the drawbridge was up and the portcullis well and truly down.’

The man pressed his finger to the side of his nose. ‘There’s more than one way in and out of that place,’ he confided. ‘If you know the guards you can slip out the back. The lord’s brothers went that way very early this morning. I was returning from plucking a nice plump hen last night, if you get my meaning, and I saw them leave.’

I tried hard not to show my surprise at this information. ‘Off hunting vixen, were they?’ I suggested with a smirk.

He pursed up his lips, looking doubtful. ‘I reckon not. They had some skirt with them. There’s been a mystery woman staying and they fired one of the gatehouse canons at a troop from Raby which arrived this afternoon. Something to do with the family rift it seems. I work in the stables and one of the countess’s palfreys was missing from its stall but Lady Westmorland is still in the castle.’

Now the hair rose on the back of my neck. Was it possible that Cicely had been moved from Brancepeth and, if so, where had they taken her? Or had she persuaded her kidnappers to let her go and if so, again, where was she? I downed the rest of my ale hurriedly and stood up, excusing my hasty departure. ‘I need to get back to my horse before the lad I left it with realizes it would fetch more than I’ve promised him. Thanks for your company, my friend.’

‘If you need a bed I know a nice clean widow in the village who would share hers with you for half a groat.’ A big wink and another gap-toothed grin accompanied this offer.

I shook my head. ‘Not tonight, regrettably, I am on a pilgrimage.’ I saw his eyes pop with astonishment as I turned away and fought my way through the smoke and bodies to the door. Outside I smiled to myself and breathed the fresh night air with relief. The boy was still holding my horse and scampered off with glee, biting at the half-moon of silver I had given him. My stomach urged me to eat before following up on the information I had just received, so I set off, leading the horse, to seek a place to let him graze while I raided the saddle-bag supplies Hilda had procured for me.

In a far corner of the Brancepeth churchyard, I hobbled my horse and let him loose, then settled down on a gravestone to enjoy a substantial cheese pastry in the light of the rising moon. The church was dark; not even the flicker of a votive candle showed through the leaded windows of its rounded arches. Either they were shuttered or else the priest was gone for the day.

I could hear my horse munching his way around the graves and the occasional clink of his metal shoes as they struck a stone edge. I wondered what Cicely would be doing at that hour and where she would be laying her head. This would be the second night she had spent away from Raby. If she was no longer at Brancepeth would she even have a bed, or might she be confined in some cave up on the moors, or forced to sleep in a forest hut, hidden from prying eyes? If so, she would be uncomfortable and frightened but the worst aspect for her would be thinking that her family had entirely abandoned her. Cicely was not used to being belittled or ignored. Although she hated her brothers calling her Proud Cis, she was fiercely aware of her lineage and expected the deference due to a potential duchess. I wondered how she would have reacted if her ‘hosts’ had treated her with anger or disrespect. Might her removal from Brancepeth be due to them inflicting some form of retribution or inducement? A sense of the urgency of my mission escalated as I contemplated her position. I did not believe that the present earl would allow any physical harm to come to a female who was, after all, his close relative, but revenge could be achieved in many devious ways, particularly through damage to such a valuable young girl’s honour and reputation.