The Scandalous Duchess

‘A book?’ The irritation was overlaid with bafflement. ‘A missal? Come then, if that is your wish. And perhaps you could practise not calling me my lord with every breath. My name is John.’

‘As I know, my lord.’

With an appreciative laugh, opening the door, we left the angels in no way the wiser as the Duke escorted me to his library, leaving me there to make my choice. For a moment he stood, watching as I lit a candle from a wall-torch.

‘Katherine?’

I looked back at him where he stood by the open door. How had I never realised the caress of his voice on my name, even when the mischief had vanished. The Duke was very serious as he bowed deeply.

‘How you intrigue me. You kisses are sensuous yet you are governed with stark piety. Promise me that you will not allow fear of what the world will say to guide your choice. Promise that you will not give power to past sorrows and present fears to chain you to your bleak widowhood. I swear there is more for you in this life than what you are today. And I should tell you: for me it is no mere attraction. It is an overwhelming desire.’

‘I promise, my lord.’

Briefly I read naked desire in his face, before courtesy returned and he strode back across the room to kiss my fingers with typical flamboyance.

‘When you smile, you are so very beautiful. Don’t look so baffled. Sleep well, my dearest one. I would give you happiness and fulfilment, not anguished soul-searching.’

And with a final salute to my fingers he left me to my search.

The decision I was about to make was hazardous indeed: to follow the hard and narrow but entirely respectable path dictated by morality and virtue, or to step aside to snatch at that bright happiness the Duke offered me. I knew full well what I ought to do. My conscience was a lively creature, prompting me into the way of godly righteousness, for how should I live with so great a sin on my soul?

I swore the Duke of Lancaster stood at my shoulder as I selected my book. My mind was all chaos.

I discovered the Duke in his library, where he would be engaged in business affairs after early Mass and breaking his fast. Quietly, only half-opening the door, I paused. Then, entirely certain of what I must do, I pushed it open, the well-greased hinges failing to announce my presence. There, his back to me, the Duke poured over a large expanse of vellum on which I could see was drawn a map of England and France and the northern reaches of Castile.

I stood, watching him as he worked, unaware of his audience, his finger tracing what I thought was a route to Aquitaine, continuing south to Castile, the object of his new ambitions. The success or failure of this new expedition would rest on his shoulders.

I moved inadvertently, my shoe scuffing along the tiles, but he did not respond, probably did not even hear.

‘My lord.’

‘Leave it over there.’

The Duke was not the only one to be mistaken for a servant.

‘I would rather—’

‘Go away.’ He was more abstracted than I had thought. ‘Come back later.’

With a grunt of exasperation he scrubbed his fist along the edge of his chin, much as young Henry had done earlier in the day when reprimanded for cleaning his inky fingers on the front of his tunic, so that I smiled at the similarity.

I was so sure, my decision clear in my mind. So sure that I walked softly forward and placed my hand on his shoulder.

‘I will return if it pleases you. I thought you wanted an answer from me. I am here to give it.’

‘Ah…have you come to refuse me?’ he asked, staring ahead.

Every muscle in that shoulder was tensed beneath my palm as he anticipated my ultimate rejection. His hands clenched into fists on the map.

‘So you pre-empt me,’ I replied evenly.

‘Why not? You would not be the first virtuous woman to find lechery too painful to contemplate,’ he replied, his voice harsh, his observation grating against my senses. ‘Perhaps you have not the courage to seize what you desire.’

Here was a man who never questioned his own courage, but he would question mine. I lifted my palm and stepped back. Did he think it would not take courage to refuse him?

‘I am here to give you my reply,’ I said with a calmness that belied by leaping heart. ‘Whether I have courage, it is for you to judge.’

Standing, stretching to his full height, quite carefully the Duke placed the pen beside the document, and turned. I remained motionless. I did not say a word: I did not have to. I watched as a smile began, slowly at first, then growing to illuminate his face, enhancing his beauty as he saw what I had done. Fisting his hands on his hips, he tilted his head in contemplation, making me smile again for it was as if he was appreciating some new object in his collection. I remained perfectly still and let him look.

‘What have you got behind your back?’ he asked softly when, as I knew he would, he had taken in every aspect of my appearance.

With one hand I produced the book I had borrowed, like a wise-woman revealing some mystical source of magic. ‘I have this to return.’ I placed it on the table next to the map.

‘The missal you borrowed to direct your actions into righteous pathways.’

‘No missal,’ I replied solemnly, for it was not a book of prayer that I had sought for my night of contemplation, with the Duke’s kiss still hot on my lips.

The Duke opened the cover page, and looked up quizzically. ‘I would not have expected this.’

‘Why not?’ Its depictions of Love in all its forms in the Roman de la Rose had occupied my hours, while the sensuous illustrations had seduced my senses.

‘Did it help?’ The Duke closed the page, his gaze holding mine. ‘Did it persuade you that Divine Love was your ultimate goal in this life?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Platonic love, then. Is that what you seek between us?’

‘No, my lord.’

He knew I did not. His eyes glittered with a sense of victory, as if he had just overcome an enemy of great power. How could he not know? He knew my answer, as I had intended, without a word being exchanged between us, as he had taken in my appearance from the little round buckram hat that fixed my gold-edged veil, to my gilded slippers. For what had I done? Rejecting the respectable widow for ever, I was dressed as if for a bridal in green and gold, my bodice gleamingly patterned, my oversleeves trimmed with a full meadow of embroidered flowers. As far from my mourning robes as I could make them. And at my belt hung the coral and gold beads of the Duke’s gift.

This was no penitential garb.

The Duke gestured with his chin. ‘And in your other hand?’

‘This is for you.’

Discovered in The Savoy garden almost before dawn, it was a poor apology, frost-bitten and withered, showing the merest tinge of colour within its grey of decomposition.

‘One should never plan to express the state of one’s heart with a rose in winter,’ I said. ‘It will shed its petals within the hour.’

‘I will not hold its imperfections against you.’ He took the sad corpse from me. And in taking it his fingers, at last, closed over mine.

‘I read Jean de Meun’s poem,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice even, for his handclasp stirred my blood to a shiver of delight. ‘How the Lover battled to win the heart of his Beloved. I recognised the enemies he faced. Jealousy. Danger. Shame and fear. I recognised all of those. Do I not see them in my own choices? I see the dangers in what you ask of me, for I am afraid of the shame that others would heap on me. Am I not jealous of every moment you spend with Constanza, away from me?’

His hand wrapped even more strongly round mine, as if to give comfort and strength when my voice caught a little on the emotion of the moment. But I did not need his courage. I had enough of my own. My night had been well spent.

‘But you see,’ I went on to explain, ‘the Lover won his battle, and his tormenters fled. He gained entrance to the walled garden and plucked the precious rosebud for his Love. As I have plucked this for you, from your own garden. My doubts too have fled.’