For the future bride and groom a week had never passed so slowly, giving them both time to ponder on their possible future together.
One morning, shortly before the wedding, Kate was busy trying on her wedding gown, which was being made at top speed since her marriage was taking place at such short notice. Alison and another cousin, Avis, a quiet girl, whose gentry family had also arrived to take part in the wedding, and who was to be Kate’s second bridesmaid, watched her turn and twist before a long mirror brought from Venice. When the fitting was over they remained in Kate’s bedroom to talk of this and that.
That turned out to be more interesting than this, when Alison, whose curiosity about everything was famous, began to tell them of her latest exploit.
‘Wonder of wonders,’ she exclaimed, ‘I have discovered a portrait of Lord Hadleigh done when he was fourteen. He was painted standing beside his brother. He didn’t look a bit like John, nor did he resemble a bear. In fact, I thought he was rather handsome.’
Intrigued, Kate asked, ‘Where did you find it? I was told by Lord Bretford that no portraits of him existed.’
For once quiet Avis began to giggle. ‘So he told Alison, but that didn’t stop her from looking for one. You’ll never believe where it was hidden. Tell her what you told me, Alison.’
‘Well, I was talking to the housekeeper, Mistress Cray. I said that it was strange that in a house full of paintings of the Chancellor family, including no less than four of John, there was not one of the new Lord Hadleigh as a boy. She gave me an odd look, and said, “Soon after Master Martin ran away Lord Bretford ordered that all the paintings and drawings in which he appeared were to be destroyed.” Something in the way in which she spoke intrigued me, so I said, “Oh, dear, what a pity. I am sure that not only Lady Kate, but Avis and I would dearly love to have seen what he looked like when he was young.”
‘I seemed so sad, that she said to me, rather impudently I thought, “You are a talkative young lady—but can you keep a secret?”
‘“I’ve kept many,” I told her, which you both know to be the truth.
‘She looked hard at me before remarking, “I hope that you mean what you say. Follow me—if you don’t mind visiting the servants’ quarters and the kitchen, that is.”
‘Of course, I told her that I didn’t, so she took me through a door covered in green baize. From thence she led me across the kitchen into a larder which had a little closet at its far end. You may judge of my surprise when she unlocked the closet door and opened it, to reveal hanging on its wall a dear little painting of two boys. One of them I immediately recognised as Cousin John. The other was obviously Martin. He wasn’t handsome like John, but he was comely in his own right and was much bigger than John. You would never have thought that they were twins. I can assure you that he wasn’t hairy then. Mother always told me that Martin had been ugly, but he wasn’t in the painting. It is perverse of me, I know, but I preferred him to John. John was too smooth.’
Alison fell silent.
Kate said, ‘Martin must have been beardless because he was still a boy, and you thought him comely. I wonder what he looks like now beneath all that hair.’
She began to laugh. ‘And Lord Bretford does not know that this portrait was saved?’
‘No, indeed. Mistress Cray told me that all the servants liked Martin and did not care for John. It would not be untrue to say that they hated him. They believed that his father treated Martin most unfairly and they were sorry when he disappeared.’
Avis spoke at last. ‘We can’t tell anyone of this, Alison, since the promise you made to the housekeeper must bind all of us, too.’
‘Yes, we must all agree on that,’ Kate said. ‘But only consider it strikes at everything we know about the brothers and their father. I was always told that Martin was the wicked, violent and ugly one who ran away—which frightened me before I met him. When I finally did, that story scarcely seemed to fit the man I came to know.’
Avis spoke again. ‘This is all so strange that I have a strong desire not only to see the portrait but also to meet Martin. John I saw little of, so I couldn’t judge him.’
‘I, on the other hand, saw him often,’ Alison said, ‘but I cannot say that I liked him very much. What about you, Kate, what did you think of him?’
‘I only saw John for a short time on the day we were betrothed, so I cannot pass judgement on him—except that I thought that he looked rather ill.’
‘I know that he was unkind to animals,’ offered Alison. ‘I saw him beat one of his dogs cruelly because it did not obey him immediately. I could never be fond of a man who mistreated animals.’
‘Nor I,’ said Kate and Avis together.
Once she was alone Kate began to wonder why the kitchen staff were so determined to keep at least one painting of Martin, despite Lord Bretford’s orders that all of them were to be destroyed.
Well, if Alison had seen the portrait, so might she. She slipped into the easy unceremonial clothing which she wore around Bretford House when no visitors were expected, and ran down the backstairs to the green baize door of which Alison had spoken. She knew that the housekeeper’s room lay on the other side. With the help of a startled kitchen maid she found it. Mistress Cray was inside, eating a late nuncheon, a tankard of ale before her.
She rose to her feet, surprise etched on her face. ‘What may I do for you. m’lady?’
‘You may show me the painting of the Chancellor brothers which you allowed my cousin Alison to see.’
‘I told her not to tell anyone,’ said Mistress Cray reproachfully.
‘She has only informed me, and Mistress Avis Gantry, because we share all our secrets and have learned, quite painfully, never to tell anyone else of them. Besides, I think that I have the right to see a painting of my bridegroom as a very young man.’
‘You will not betray me to Lord Bretford?’
‘No, certainly not. I promise to keep your secret. It is becoming plain to me that Bretford House holds many secrets.’
The housekeeper nodded. ‘That is true,’ she said, but she did not tell Kate of the others to which she was privy. One of them being that she knew where Martin had gone when he had fled the house, what he had done after that, and that if he were not deceiving her, he was deceiving everyone else in Bretford House, including his future wife. Given all that he had suffered, she could not reproach him for that.
‘Come with me.’ And she rose, to take Kate to the locked closet where the little portrait hung.
Alison had been right. Martin had been comely, not handsome like his brother, but there was an air about him which Kate recognised because he still possessed it. She could not describe what the air was, only that it gave him, even at that young age, a look of power.
Mistress Cray then informed Kate of something which she had not told Alison. ‘The painting is unfinished. If you look carefully at it, there is no signature on it, and some of the colour is not complete. M’lord disliked it because it made Master Martin, as he then was, look more…’ she searched for a word and found one ‘…imposing than his brother. He ordered the artist to alter it, but he would not. He said that he had vowed only to paint the truth and not lies. M’lord refused to pay him and sent him away. The painting was hung in a dark corner until it was handed over to the gardener to be burnt. It was then that we saved it—in Master Martin’s memory—for we believed that he would never return to this place where he had been so unhappy.’
‘And have you seen him since he returned here as Lord Hadleigh?’
‘Oh, yes, while he was staying here recently—although his father does not know.’
She was still keeping Martin’s secrets for him. Had he wanted his future bride to know of them he would have told her.
Kate looked carefully at the little painting, trying to imprint it on her memory. Martin looked happy in it. What intrigued her was that the more closely she examined it she could see in the youth he had once been the large and impressive man which he would become. A wave of love for him passed over her. Love for the mistreated boy who had inspired it in the servants of the house, so that in the truest sense there had been a place for him in the kitchens even if he were unwanted elsewhere.
As though she had read her mind, Mistress Cray said, still a little hesitant, ‘I do not know whether I should tell you this, but Martin loved to come to the kitchens when he was left alone in the house, as he often was. Many is the time he ate with us at table—until m’lord found out and he was forbidden to visit us again.’
Another wave of love engulfed Kate, mixed with anger at the loneliness which Martin had suffered. However badly he had behaved, he had not deserved to be so unkindly treated. She leaned forward and took the housekeeper’s hand in hers. ‘Thank you for loving him,’ she said. ‘He must have been leading a most unhappy life.’
‘Indeed, he was. May I say something to you, m’lady, which might sound impertinent? I think that he has been lucky in gaining you for his future wife, and you, too, are lucky. You would not have been happy with his brother, John.’
‘You are not being impertinent if you are telling me the truth. Now I must leave you. Given everything, we must not be seen as conspirators.’
‘Thank you, m’lady. My blessing goes with you.’
Kate’s journey upstairs was a thoughtful one. She felt that, for the moment, she could not rejoin the rest of the company, knowing what she did. For the first time she was beginning to understand what had been the cause of the oddities of Martin’s behaviour.
His father’s behaviour was even odder. Whatever could have possessed him that he should have treated the lively boy whom she had seen in the painting so cruelly? What could Martin have done to deserve it?
Only when Jennie arrived to tell her that her two aunts and her cousins would welcome her company in the withdrawing-room did she allow her maid to dress her a little more finely before she joined them. Even then she was strangely quiet, as Aunt Padworth confided later to Aunt Gantry. Only Alison and Avis guessed at what might be troubling her.
Before she went to bed she told them that she had been to see Martin’s portrait, but she said nothing of her conversation with Mistress Cray, for that had been a confidence freely given to Martin’s future wife and to no one else.
Martin, unaware that Kate had discovered some of his secrets, had called Webster, Rafe and Jacko to a meeting which was as confidential as the one between the three girl cousins.
‘I wish to consult with you,’ he told them, ‘about the mysterious fellow Bevis Frampton, who, I am now almost certain, has been trying to have me slain—for what reason I am still not sure. He is a follower of the Earl of Essex, indeed there is reason to believe that he is rather more than that, since he is one of those who are most busily engaged in encouraging Essex to plan an open rebellion against the Queen. Certainly I gained from Essex’s conversation with me that he is seriously contemplating such a move.’
‘The man’s mad,’ said Rafe.
‘I agree with you. Now although it is certain that Frampton is behind the attacks on me, I have no real evidence which would allow me to move against him. What I would like from the three of you is that you will use your different talents to find out as much about him as you can. You, Webster, know the world of the court, you, Rafe, the middling part of life, and you, Jacko all the rogues and villains who infest London and those who use them for their own wicked ends. All three worlds intermingle, so to some extent you must also work with one another. I also have good friends whom I shall sound out. I want to know about his past as well as his present.’
‘Good friends like Raleigh,’ grinned Rafe.
‘True, and he has already been very helpful to me. You must all be as hard-working and ruthless as the late Sir Francis Walsingham’s agents were—and as careful too. You must bring to me at once anything you find which might prove useful.’
‘And all this while you are getting married,’ murmured Webster ruefully.
‘Oh, life is not divided into convenient segments like an Act of Parliament, as you are beginning to find out,’ was Martin’s cheerful reply to that. ‘I want you all at my wedding, and in your best clothes, and you, Jacko, must enlist Webster’s help in that. He may hand me the bills for anything which might assist you to look a little more respectable.’
Webster closed his eyes, and opened them to see that Jacko was looking as mournful as he felt at the mere idea that he could ever look respectable. But orders were orders, and working for Martin Chancellor was, in many respects, the most rewarding task which he had ever engaged in.
‘So noted,’ he said, at last.
Martin ended the meeting and went to his own room to plan exactly what he intended to do on his wedding day. As usual, he was discovering that the most exciting and arousing thing about it was that he would be getting Kate into his bed when all the ceremonies were over.
Only two days to go now.
‘Do you think that Lord Hadleigh will keep his word and be at St Paul’s today for your wedding?’
Jennie was engaged in the daily ritual of dressing Kate—except that on this particular morning she was preparing her for her wedding. It was greatly daring of her to raise this matter with Kate so bluntly, but everyone in Bretford House—except some of the older servants—had been voicing their worries over the possibility of m’lord disappearing again as he had done once before.
‘My answer must be yes,’ Kate said, trying not to sound worried. ‘He assured me most solemnly that he would be present and that he had no intention of betraying me in such a brutal fashion.’
‘But he did run away once before.’
‘He was only a boy then, and no one seems to know, or rather no one will tell me, why he was driven to such lengths as to leave his home and family and disappear for so many years. It is not a thing about which I can question him, either.’
Ever since she had first met him Kate had wondered why Martin had run away from his home and his life as Bretford’s younger son. Rough and ready he might be, but he had never said or done anything which might lead her to believe that he would play such a scurvy trick on her—or on anyone else. Nevertheless, even after Mistress Cray’s revelations, she could not help but feel anxious.
Perhaps everyone was right, everyone being the Lords Bretford, Clifton and Padworth, and apparently some in the servants’ hall, too—except for Mistress Cray and those few who remembered him as a boy—in believing that he would behave towards her as he had done towards his father and family in the past.
She recalled that in their short meeting John had never spoken of him to her, which was, perhaps, not surprising. Over the years since he had disappeared every reference to him—and there had not been many—had been of someone so unsatisfactory as a person that it must have been a relief to his father and his family that he had run away. There must have been a great deal of gossip about his disappearance at the time, but that had died down and over the years he had been forgotten until Lord Bretford became in desperate need of an heir.
What gave her hope that he would behave honourably was not only Martin himself, but also the boy in the portrait and Mistress Cray’s belief in him. As well as that, there was the evidence of the respect the three men who were his constant companions had for their master. Their devotion to him was plain. Even Thomas Webster, who had joined him only recently, obviously admired him, and Webster was a young man of good family who possessed a great deal of common sense. His and their loyalty to, and open affection for, him could only be given to a good man.
At this point in her musings there was a knock on the door. Aunt Jocasta had arrived to give her approval of her niece’s gown and of her general appearance. Her response at the sight of Kate’s green and silver farthingale, her elegant bodice, her small, cream-coloured ruff and the care with which Jennie had dressed her chestnut tresses, which hung loose in token of her virginity, their only ornament being a circlet of small pearls, was a delighted one.
‘You look as fine in that as I had hoped and expected. Lord Hadleigh will certainly be proud to acquire such a nonpareil for a wife.’
The way in which her aunt had come to accept Martin, after first criticising him every time she met him, was almost comical. Ever since the trip on the river, when Jacko had flattered her so outrageously, she had become the most devoted admirer of the new Lord Hadleigh and his retinue. She would not have a word said against any of them. On several occasions the three lords loudly dooming about him and his followers had evoked from her the most passionate defence.
Grateful for her support—which was such a change from the criticism which her aunt had always ladled over her—even though it made her laugh a little, Kate kissed her impulsively on her faded cheek.
‘So you are not going to croak at me, like everyone else, about the possibility that Lord Hadleigh will not turn up to claim me.’
‘No, indeed. I could see by the look in his eye when he was with you that he could scarce wait for the wedding to take place.’
Kate, for all her brave words to Jennie and her own belief in Martin’s honour, still wished that she was as certain as Aunt Jocasta that he would not fail her. Preceded downstairs by the steward, she found the three Lords, also dressed in their grandest clothing, waiting for her in the entrance hall, together with Alison and Avis, her bridesmaids. They, too, were grandly dressed.
Avis, indeed, had complained that her heavy clothing quite diminished her, but for all that she would not have missed assisting Kate to the altar—the first of the three of them to marry. They both kissed and giggled at her and told her how splendid she looked in her wedding finery.
‘But we shall not be known as the Three Graces from now on,’ lamented Alison.
‘We can be original and call ourselves the Two Graces,’ offered Avis.
‘It will not be the same, though.’
No, thought Kate, and even the Two Graces as a nickname would not have a long life, for both Alison and Avis were sure to marry soon and they would all go their separate ways.
Alison kissed her, and whispered in her ear, ‘You are not to worry. I agree with your Aunt Jocasta that Lord Hadleigh will be there to marry you when you reach St Paul’s. The boy in the portrait will not let you down.’
Kate was not surprised, however, when having approved of her appearance, the three Lords, like Jennie, privately complained to her that Hadleigh had not seen fit to remain at Bretford House, and expressed, yet once more, their doubts that he would have the goodness to turn up at St Paul’s to celebrate his own marriage.
After the wedding party had assembled, they were led out in state to where several coaches and a number of outriders on horses waited to take them, and their attendants, to St Paul’s. They had to make their way through crowded streets, constantly being held up by other coaches, as well as sheep, cows, horses, and carts laden with produce.
Kate could not help remarking, ‘At our present rate of progress I think it most likely that my future husband is wondering whether I shall have the goodness to turn up to be married to him.’
Lord Clifton’s frozen face—he was the only great man to travel on Kate’s coach—told her how little he appreciated her mild attempt at wit.
‘This is not a jesting matter,’ he said reprovingly.
‘Marriage rarely is,’ was Kate’s answer to that. She could not but remember how carelessly he had compelled her to accept Martin as her husband after his brother’s death. Only the knowledge that she and Martin had reached some sort of understanding had enabled her to approach the coming ceremony without too many regrets to trouble her.
Finally St Paul’s, that medieval monstrosity of a cathedral—no one could call it beautiful—came into view. There were no coaches or outriders waiting outside, so it seemed likely that Martin had not yet arrived. Passers-by stared curiously at them when they were assisted by footmen out of the coaches. They were ushered into the cathedral by one of the Canons: Martin and Kate were to be married by the Bishop. A few people sat in the pews at the back. Kate and Lord Clifton were asked to stand and wait some way away from the altar until the bridegroom should arrive.
‘If he arrives,’ was Lord Bretford’s final comment before he took his seat, Lord Clifton nodding his head in agreement.
Time slowly passed. Kate’s agitation grew—until through the open doors came the sound of commotion outside. A churchwarden ran up to the Bishop who walked slowly towards the door.
Martin Chancellor, Lord Hadleigh, had arrived to claim his bride.
To her surprise Kate’s heart gave a great leap of pleasure—not just because she had been right to trust him and others had been wrong—but because for the first time she knew that she really wished to marry him.
The Bishop processed up the aisle, followed by two men who walked just behind him. In their rear were not only Martin’s immediate retinue but a large number of other well-dressed personages, so that Martin’s party greatly outnumbered that of Kate’s entourage, large though it was. They seated themselves in the pews at the left of the altar.
The Bishop stepped forward. The three Lords stood up, and Kate turned to greet the newcomers.
But greet whom?
She, as well as some of the others, knew one of the men by sight. He was Sir Walter Raleigh, whom she had met on several occasions—but who was the man with him—and where was Martin?
The stranger was as tall as Martin, beautifully dressed in scarlet and gold, a costume which showed his powerful body and his long and shapely legs to the greatest advantage. His waving black hair, carefully trimmed, topped the clean-shaven face of the most handsome man Kate had ever seen. Only his bright blue eyes and his strong nose, almost that of an eagle, suddenly told her that it was Martin, divested of most of his hair and his careless seaman’s loose and baggy clothing which had hidden his athletic body!
The Lords Bretford, Clifton and Padworth were equally confounded. They stared at this masculine vision of looks and fashion as though they had never seen such a splendid creature before. Kate’s bridesmaids, standing just behind her gaped at this paragon of male beauty in wonder.
Lord Bretford quavered, ‘Martin?’
At which his son bowed and said, ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Is it indeed you?’
‘Who else? Since I am here to marry the Honourable Lady Katherine Wyville, to whom I am contracted.’ And this time he bowed to Kate. ‘Although I am sure that you are all aware of who my companion is, I must still have the honour to present to you my friend, Sir Walter Raleigh, who will assist me as groomsman in this morning’s enterprise.’
Stunned though they were, everyone bowed and tried to pretend that matters were going according to their preconceived notions of Martin Chancellor’s possible behaviour—to say nothing of his appearance. The bridesmaids, remembering the boy in the portrait, were not so greatly surprised. They curtsied to him, their admiration of him written plain on their faces.
Oh, yes, if this were the bridegroom then Cousin Kate was a very lucky woman!
Suddenly Kate wanted to laugh. She caught an answering gleam in Walter Raleigh’s eye, and knew that he was amused too. Everyone in and around the court knew of Sir Walter’s pranks and jests, and here he was involved in yet another of them.
Lord Bretford quavered again, ‘Sir Walter is your friend?’
It was Sir Walter who answered him, not Martin. ‘For these many years. I first met Lord Hadleigh not long after he sailed against the Armada, and since he chose to mention the word honour in my connection, I must inform you that I am honoured to have him for my friend.’
The Bishop, who had been trying not to stare too hard while he witnessed the confusion which Martin’s arrival—and his unexpected appearance—had caused in the bride’s party, said, ‘You are here to be married.’
It was almost a question.
Kate and Martin said ‘Yes’ together.
‘Excellent,’ said the Bishop, motioning to the organist to start playing again. He had stopped on hearing the commotion created by Martin’s arrival.
After that the service proceeded in the usual orderly fashion. Lord Clifton escorted Kate towards the altar, her bridesmaids behind her: Martin waited some way away down the aisle, an amused Sir Walter by his side, until he strode up the aisle to stand beside her.
Aunt Jocasta, who had been the recipient of a low bow from Jacko before he took his seat, thought that her niece had never looked so beautiful. It was Martin, though, on whom she gazed the most.
She could see some slight resemblance in him to his elder brother, but who would have thought, knowing his previous uncouth appearance, that he could possibly look like the impressively handsome man who now stood by her niece’s side—and to have Sir Walter Raleigh as a friend? Not that Aunt Jocasta altogether approved of Sir Walter. Whatever had possessed Martin Chancellor that he should have dressed and behaved in such a fashion as to make his father believe that he had become a common seaman—and had remained one—after he had fled his home?
That he was rich was plain. The pearl in his ear—which rivalled that of Sir Walter—the gold chain around his neck, and all his apparel served to reveal his wealth, something which Kate, standing by him, had also grasped.
Kate was so consumed by her unsatisfied curiosity on seeing Martin in his new incarnation that the marriage service of which she was a central part passed her by in a highly coloured blur. She scarcely heard her uncle give her away, and only some faint remnant of her usual calm control of life remained to help her to make the right responses at the right time.
A thousand questions were running through her mind—matched only by those which were troubling the three Lords—particularly Martin’s father. He knew now that his son had consistently lied to him ever since he had walked through the doors of Bretford House for the first time in fourteen years.
To what end?
Realisation dawned even as the wedding ceremony reached its conclusion.
To punish him, of course, to trick him and to ensure that he looked a fool. He had even suborned Webster away from his service to make his masquerade complete. What puzzled him, and the other two Lords, was that they had never heard of anyone called Martin Chancellor being wealthy enough to provide the kind of consequence with which his son was surrounded.
Unless, of course, the whole thing was a jest organised by Sir Walter. But that cock would not fight, for even Sir Walter would not have pledged his own honour as to his friendship with Martin. Like Kate, the wedding ceremony passed him by until the ring was on Kate’s finger, she was securely Lady Hadleigh, and the future of the Chancellor name, God willing and Martin permitting, was now secure.
Martin, who had caused the whirling emotions with which he was surrounded, was the only calm person in the cathedral. He had been enjoying himself mightily ever since Kate and the three Lords had clapped eyes on him, and was also happily participating in his second wedding ceremony in the secret knowledge that no one present knew of the first.
He had thought to feel sad, to remember Mary and her eager little face when he had kissed her afterwards, but it was as though, once his decision to marry Kate had taken place, she had begun to sail away from him, across the blue sea on which she had sailed towards him eight years ago.
Even so, Martin was sure that he could never feel for Kate the abiding love which he had felt for his first wife. He told himself that it was only his body which was reacting to her so strongly, not his heart and mind. He had given them away once and for all. He would try to be a good and kind husband, to do his duty by her, but he could never surrender himself to her as he had once done to Mary. He could only hope that Kate would feel the same towards him: that love, the dream of which the poets and playwrights sang, was not, and never would be, part of their life together.
The service over, he gave her his strong arm and escorted her to his coach. Immediately after he had helped her into it, he was approached by his agitated father.
‘Hadleigh, I was not expecting that such a crowd as you have brought along would attend the wedding breakfast and consequently there will not be enough to feed them. What…’
He got no further. Martin put a hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Do not trouble yourself. I have already arranged that a large supply of food and drink would arrive at Bretford House shortly after you had left for St Paul’s. My butler and some of my servants accompanied it in order to help your staff have the feast ready for the guests by the time that we reached home after the service had ended. I have also invited the Bishop and the two Canons to accompany us.’
This answer only served to agitate his father the more. ‘Hadleigh,’ he said, ‘I do not understand you. How can you pay for this? How in the world did Sir Walter Raleigh become your friend?’
Martin’s smile was not kind, even though his action in ensuring that his father had not been shamed by being unable to provide a feast large enough for all his guests had been a generous and thoughtful one.
‘Everything will be revealed,’ he replied, ‘when the guests have gone. Until then you must exercise the kind of patience which I have had to live with for so long. Allow me to leave you now, to rejoin my bride.’
Lord Clifton, who had been listening, asked Lord Bretford anxiously, ‘He did not reveal the truth of his changed appearance to you?’
‘No, indeed. Merely told me to be patient.’
For Lord Bretford the tables had been turned, or, to put it another way, he was now dancing to his younger son’s tune as that son had once been compelled to dance to his.
Kate, seated by Martin, was longing to ask him all the questions which would solve the mystery of how and why he had changed from the man she thought that she had known to the one whom she knew no longer. Delicacy, and a certain measure of fear, kept her quiet. She fiddled with her hair, twisted the ring on her finger, and tried to stop herself from wriggling, for the new Martin was having an even stronger and more disturbing effect on her than the old one had done.
Martin was well aware of what was distracting his bride, and, for once, was not sure what to say to her. He put his large hand over her small, restless one.
‘What is it, wife? I am sure that you are as puzzled as my father and his friends by what has happened here today. I am sorry that I could not tell you of my coming transformation, but I am sure that you will come to understand why I kept quiet.’
For some reason this calm answer infuriated Kate. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t understand why couldn’t tell me what you were about to do, and I don’t understand why you felt it necessary to behave like a character in a bad play—by pretending to be what you are not.’
This outburst surprised no one more than Kate herself. At first she had been amused by Martin’s sudden reappearance, but, now that the wedding ceremony was over, amusement had been followed by curiosity and by anger.
How—and why—could he have deceived them all so greatly? Did he not owe her, the woman who was to be his wife, more than that—in short, the truth? Would she never be able to detect when he was lying to her, as he had done so often in the past, sometimes implicitly, if not explicitly? Had he not deceived her by taking her to the alley off Forge Street and allowing her to assume that the house there was his only home when it so obviously was not?
Now she could quite believe in his bad behaviour, the behaviour which had led him to desert his proper place in life, where, before the present morning’s revelations, she had come to question it because of his kindness to her and even more, the manifest loyalty of his attendants.
Their loyalty was now explained. It was that of dependants towards their rich master. But how had he become so rich? Sir Walter had spoken of him as sailing against the Armada, but that did not reveal how he had acquired his undoubted wealth.
Martin was dismayed by Kate’s change of mood. Later he was to acknowledge how betrayed she must have felt when she recalled his many deceptions, but sitting in the coach, after being so roundly reproached, he could only feel that, once more, he had been rejected, and this time by his new wife.
When they alighted before Bretford House he offered her his arm but, although Kate accepted it, she kept her face resolutely turned away from him. He could almost feel her distress. Her rigid body, her pallor, told him of her disillusionment, of her loss of faith in him.
Over the last fourteen years he thought that he had become so hardened by the harsh treatment which he had suffered in his early life that he no longer cared for the opinion of others. Whether they judged him rightly or wrongly had been nothing to him, but Kate’s turning away from him after their recent happy rapport told him that the hard shell he had created round his heart had been breached by her.
The pain which this was causing him was all the greater because he had the memory of Mary’s unquestioning trust in him—but then he had never deceived her. To her he had always been the simple sailor whom she had met and married before success had transformed him and his life.
What a fool he had been! In his pursuit of some sort of revenge over his unloving father he had sacrificed more than he had intended. Love her or not, he had come to value Kate, to look forward to their married life, and now he had lost her.
No! He would not lose her. One way or another he would regain her confidence, if not her love and if that took time, then he had learned patience in a hard school.
The wedding breakfast was even more splendid than Lord Bretford had intended. Martin’s butler had taken charge: like his master he had overridden all objections. The tables really groaned under the weight of the food and drink on them. The bride and groom sat at the middle of the long one, in the only armchairs in the room. Both of them were careful to hide their true feelings by giving the appearance of a happiness which they did not feel because they knew that they owed a duty to their guests and were determined to fulfil it.
Lord Bretford had wanted the marriage feast to be a rich yet subdued occasion. He had little enthusiasm for parading his unkempt and worthless second son before his family and friends. But Martin’s intervention had turned it into a grand and jolly one.
The bridesmaids, giggling and wriggling harder than ever, found themselves sitting beside Martin’s friends, many of them young, some with wives and some of them members, like Sir Walter, of the Friday Club. Others present included those important folk whom Martin had met in his life as a wealthy captain and merchant—the details of which he had not yet had the opportunity to reveal to his father or his bride.
The three Lords, also sitting in some state, gazed in wonder at the scene around them. Sir Walter, who was nearby, toasted them before saying, ‘M’lord Bretford, your son may always be trusted to ensure that any ceremony for which he is responsible is a happy and successful one.’ It was not an observation which Martin’s father wished to hear!
Lord Bretford therefore found himself unable to speak: he merely nodded his head in apparent agreement. When Sir Walter had subsided and had started to pay attention to Aunt Jocasta, who sat on his left, Lord Clifton leaned over and hissed at his fellow Lord, ‘Are you aware that that uncouth servant of Hadleigh’s has been invited to the feast? Of all things, he is sitting over there beside one of my Clifton nephews!’
‘Jacko! You mean that Jacko is one of the guests?’
‘Aye, and his other servant, too. Rafe something—but at least he looks as though he might be one of the regular guests—while the Jacko fellow looks like what he is.’
Lord Bretford closed his eyes. ‘Is there no end to his deceit and folly?’
Lord Clifton muttered enviously, ‘But, at the least, he seems to have made himself a rich man, if what I have already overheard is true. The future of the Bretford estates is more than ensured even without the addition of my niece’s wealth.’
Lord Bretford grunted. It was beyond him to praise his younger son in any way. He looked across at Martin where he sat in all his splendour, smiling a little each time someone rose to toast the bride and groom. His one regret was that it was not John whom the day was celebrating. The food he tried to eat nearly choked him, and although he raised his goblet every now and then to yet another cry of ‘All happiness to the bride and groom’, the liquid in it did not diminish.
Lord Clifton, on the other hand, was in the process of drinking himself stupid. And no wonder, for had he not married his niece to a man who was already rich, whose wealth was in the here and now, who without it would have needed to wait until his father’s death gave him the Bretford lands. For the moment he would enjoy the almost royal feast which lay before him. In token of his acceptance of him, he toasted Martin with the words, ‘All honour to my niece and her husband.’
Martin and Kate responded immediately. Kate, like Lord Bretford, was finding it difficult to eat, but, unlike him, was finding it easy to drink. Each drop she drank made her feel more and more light-hearted, so much so that she was beginning to forgive Martin for his deceits. Owlishly, she tried to tell him so. Her manner was such that he took the goblet from her.
‘How many of those have you drunk, while not eating anything?’
She blinked at him. ‘I can’t remember.’
Martin snorted and then began to laugh. ‘So that is why you are forgiving me, then. It is but the drink talking. If you wish to walk to our bed, as a bride should, instead of being carried there, you must drink no more, but eat a little instead.’ And he took a piece of pie from his platter and laid it on hers.
‘Come, madam wife, begin to please your husband by obeying his first command to you.’
‘And if I do not—for I think that food would choke, not sustain, me—what then?’
‘Then I shall sue for divorce on the instant, you naughty creature. I did not think that I had taken a toper for a wife.’
Kate thought a moment. There was something which she ought to say to that, but what could it be? Ah, she had it—or had she?
‘Since I have never before drunk more than a gobletful I cannot be called a toper; therefore your action would fail.’
To her surprise she had begun to find talking lucidly very difficult, something which Martin thought ought to be rectified immediately. He picked up the piece of pie from her platter, held it to her mouth and commanded sternly, ‘Eat!’ but his eyes were twinkling.
He looked so handsome, so different from the bear he had been, that she ought to be pleased by his transformation yet, astonishingly, Kate found that she was missing the bear. It had been easy to talk to him, to bait him a little—as one ought to bait a bear—but this sparkling gallant, whom reason said that she ought to admire the more, almost frightened her with his perfection. Nor could she refuse him, for in some indefinable way she found him forbidding.
So much so that, obeying him, she accepted the titbit which—yet another surprise—tasted like manna and revived her appetite immediately.
Perhaps it was time that she gave him an order. ‘More, please,’ she managed, sounding quite haughty, almost like the Queen, whom she had once seen sending her courtiers to and fro, here and there, each word from her a command which they dared not disobey. Despite the haughtiness, she could not prevent herself from smiling at him—it must be the hippocras which was confusing, as well as fuddling her!
Now this was more like the Kate whom Martin had come to know! He picked up her platter and heaped it with slices of beef, of pie, of buttered eggs and of the large cheese from the feast which covered the table, and topped the whole thing off with bread before he laid it before her.
‘Will that do, Lady Hadleigh—or do you wish for more?’
More! Despite her reviving appetite, Kate stared at this mountain of plenty with horror. He had, however, been so obliging, and the smile he was offering her with the food was the one which she had come to know so well, being a marriage between teasing and affection, that she thanked him profusely, saying, ‘I think so, but should I need more, you may provide it.’
It was true, she found, that after she had eaten a large part of it the drink she had taken ceased to confound her—as he had promised. To her surprise she managed to empty the platter completely and when Martin offered her a sugared cake, she discovered that she was able to eat that too.
Time passed all too quickly, though, and the moment which Kate had been dreading, the ceremonial procession of the whole company which would escort them both to the bridal bed, grew nearer and nearer. The bride cake had been brought in, together with baskets of oats with which the guests would shower the newly-weds on their way to bed. Slices of the cake were handed around, particularly large pieces being reverently laid before the newly married pair, after the Bishop had blessed them with a rather lengthy prayer.
Kate thought that she was not the only one who had had too much to drink, for his prayer grew rather muddled towards its end, although the company, all of whom were now extremely merry themselves, did not seem to notice that he had lost his way.
She did notice, however, that Martin drank sparingly, and when she put out a hand to help herself to some more hippocras, he gently lifted it away from its pitcher, and said, ‘I have cured you once, lady wife, I do not wish to have to do so again.’
His voice was kind, though, and looking around the table, where even Aunt Jocasta was behaving in a manner most unlike herself, and which she would deeply regret on the morrow, Kate decided that perhaps sobriety was the best bet. Martin whispered to her when she had reluctantly let go of the pitcher, ‘Now that you have made our guests happy by showing how much you enjoyed the food, you must eat your bride cake, and be ready to demonstrate your pleasure with the rest of the ceremony before we are left alone together.’
Now that was going to be harder, much harder. Aunt Jocasta had told her what would be expected of her, and from the few marriages which Kate had attended, she knew that she had been telling the truth.
‘I wish,’ she began, and then stopped. ‘I wish that we could have been married privately and been spared the bridal feast and the bedding. I do not like public consequence.’
‘I agree with you,’ he told her, suddenly quiet, ‘and I even asked my father and your uncle to allow us to be married quietly at Bretford House—or your country home—with a feast for close members of the family only, but they were adamant that the ceremony should be as public as possible. To celebrate it hugger-mugger, they said, might look as though they were ashamed of the marriage.’
‘No one asked me what I wanted,’ returned Kate mournfully.
‘We are the prisoners of our families,’ Martin said, ‘when it comes to marriage and giving in marriage. What can’t be cured must be endured, I’m afraid. Our only weapon is to look happy and not give them cause to reproach us.’
To Martin’s surprise, Kate began to laugh.
‘What amuses you, wife?’
‘Is that why you arrived this morning looking quite unlike the self which you have shown to us all since you returned to your father’s home? Did you think it would please him, or annoy him, to see such a change in you?’
‘You know full well that I hoped to annoy him.’
‘Because your father prefers to think of you as a poverty-stricken vagabond, it would not make him happy to see you dressed like a fit friend for Sir Walter Raleigh?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Even if he would be likely to reproach you for springing such a surprise on him?’
‘It makes him happy to reproach me. He does not wish to praise me—he never did.’
From all Kate had seen and heard during her stay at Bretford House, that statement was sadly true.
‘Do you not wish to forget the past and be reconciled with him?’
Martin’s smile was a painful one. To reinforce it he shook his head. ‘Alas, so long as he continues to think of me as his worthless son there is no chance of that.’
Kate dare not pursue the matter further, since for all his outward bravado it was plain that Martin was deeply hurt by his father’s behaviour towards him. Nor was a wedding feast the proper place to discuss such unhappy matters. Impulsively she put out her right hand to grasp his left in an attempt to comfort him. He responded by squeezing it gently before releasing it so that she might reply to yet another toast, this time from Jacko, something which displeased Lord Bretford mightily.
Even her worries over what would happen when they were finally alone together in bed could not prevent her from giving a little shiver of pleasure at his touch, something which had been unaccountably absent since he had walked into the cathedral and she had first seen him in his splendid clothes.
‘Thank you, madam wife,’ Martin whispered to her once the toasting was over.
The feast finally reached its end. The boar’s head had almost disappeared under the attentions of the carver, the cold meat pies had disappeared with the rest of the food which had been eagerly snatched up by the guests, the bride cake had been eaten.
The musicians, who were stationed in a corner of the Great Hall, now stopped playing merry songs and began to play a march—the signal that the feasting was over for the time being, plenty of food having been kept in reserve—and that the preliminaries to the bedding of the happy pair were due to start.
Lord Bretford’s chief steward led Martin and Kate forward, the bridesmaids and Aunt Jocasta following, while the entire company, flown with wine and ale, clapped and cheered them. Lord Bretford’s vision of a quiet and decorous ceremony was dead and gone. On the way Kate’s gown was robbed of many of its bows by the guests, taking them both for luck and for souvenirs.
Aunt Jocasta and the bridesmaids led Kate upstairs to the bedroom which had been decorated in readiness for the happy pair and where the covers had been stripped from the bridal bed—a great four-poster which had gilt Viscount’s coronets on top of each of its corners. There they helped her to undress. Her stockings and garters they kept to throw to the guests later.
Once she was in her elaborate nightgown, word was sent to Martin, who had been led by his friends to another bedroom where he, too, was undressed and helped into a linen nightgown with a pie frill around its neck. Kate could hear the cheering and the noise of the jests, many of them explicit, which accompanied this ritual, but fortunately for her she could not distinguish the words.
Next came the part which she had been dreading the most. Martin was brought in, followed first by the Bishop, who intoned yet another prayer, and then by the rest of the guests, who shouted encouragement to them both when Martin at last climbed on to the bed. It was at this point that Kate’s garters, stockings and any remaining bows were thrown to the multitude to scramble for.
Martin’s expression when he looked at his bride’s white face was a rueful one. ‘Courage,’ he whispered to her, ‘it will soon be over.’
‘Kiss her, kiss the bride,’ many of their audience bellowed at him, while others gave him even plainer instructions as to what was expected of him—and of Kate—once they were alone.
He duly did as he was bid. He felt Kate shiver beneath his kiss and did not know whether it was passion or fear which moved her—perhaps it was a mixture of the two. The merriment continued. Someone brought them a posset to drink. Martin handed the cup to Kate, who took a sip or two from it and then handed it back to him. He made sure that he drank the honey-sweet liquid at the place where her lips had touched it—which brought another cheer from the increasingly rowdy assembly.
Rafe came over to collect the cup and to slip a sheet over them. Now that he was near to her he could see that Kate was suffering the attentions of the guests rather than enjoying them. He took the empty cup from Martin, who had valiantly drunk all of its contents, and turning towards the crowd behind him bellowed, ‘It is time to leave our friends to enjoy the marriage bed on their own.’
At which Aunt Jocasta clapped, Lord Bretford nodded a dour agreement, and the whole company streamed downstairs to finish off the remaining food and drink before reeling out into the cold evening.