The Fugitive's Sword, page 18
part #1 of Lord's Learning Series
“I have land in several counties,” Kate said carefully. “Mostly they were my mother’s portion and not of great extent as she was the youngest daughter of my grandfather the duke. When my father died, they came to me with his unentailed English lands, whilst the earldom and lands in Ireland went to a very distant cousin.”
“They seem substantial enough to keep you quite finely,” the countess retorted.
Kate refused to be riled.
“They are well managed,” she said simply.
“And how do you manage the administration of your lands here in England when you are living abroad? It must be very trying for your tenants and without a man to see to the duties and responsibilities that come with such land. It must be most burdensome to you as well.”
Thinking now that she saw where this was heading, Kate mentally gritted her teeth.
“I am most fortunate in having the services of someone who has long experience of managing the lands. Mr Peter Walters was appointed to the task by Lord and Lady Harington when I became their ward fifteen years ago and he has been the most honest and diligent steward of my estate ever since. I take a strong interest in all that he does, and he sends me frequent and detailed accounting of how things are.” She paused and let her eyes go wide with guileless innocence. “Isn’t that how everyone runs their estates? Or do you oversee the daily minutiae of everything to do with your lands yourself, my lady?”
Mary Beaumont’s eyebrows lowered, and her lips became a tight line.
“Impertinence sits ill with youth,” she snapped. Then the lines of her face softened a little. “But perhaps it is because you were given too much latitude in your upbringing. After all the first duty one has to a ward is to ensure a good marriage and you were denied that.”
Kate saw Lucy stiffen in her seat and knew the same bite of anger at the way Lord and Lady Harington were being disparaged. But she was not given the opportunity to retort because the countess ploughed on instantly.
“It is a shame but something that can still be remedied.” She turned to her son. “George, did you not say you had in mind someone who would be willing to take on Lady Catherine, regardless of her impediments?”
Unfortunately for the countess, that was too much for the Duke of Brunswick who stepped forward to place himself very firmly at Kate’s side.
“Surely Lady Catherine’s future is in her own hands.” he said, and Kate saw Buckingham’s eyes widen slightly as he assessed how the land lay. The Duke of Brunswick went on regardless. “I think she is of an age to decide for herself where to bestow her hand.” And he would have taken one of Kate’s hands in his own to underline the point had she not anticipated such and carefully gripped both together behind her back.
“My dear mother is simply most concerned to ensure the welfare of Lady Catherine,” Buckingham said smoothly, making a filial half-bow in his mother’s direction as he spoke. “As are we all. I shall most certainly take a very close and personal interest in her future. Since she has no father or brother to do so, I would be honoured to step into that breach.” He smiled graciously at Kate and offered her a similar bow, as a brother might to a sister.
Kate felt her flesh creep.
“You do me too much honour, your grace,” she said quickly and hoped the heat in her face would seem more of a blush of delighted embarrassment than the ill-contained anger that was piling up in her heart.
“Not at all,” he said and this time his gaze lingered on her to the point that Kate lowered her own. “Such an English rose deserves the protection of any true Englishman.”
Beside her, the Duke of Brunswick stirred and shifted his weight, but he remained silent. Thwarting the will of George Villiers was pragmatically much the same as thwarting the combined wills of the king and Prince Charles. And at that moment the Duke of Brunswick was in no place to take such a risk when he was here, cap in hand, seeking support for his army.
Kate knew that. Knew she should be glad that he had the sense to say nothing. But still a small part of her, the part that had whispered that marriage to the duke with the blessing of her queen was not so bad a fate for the daughter of an earl—that part withered away and vanished without a trace.
“Did you not say there was a baron who was hopeful that he might seek Lady Catherine as his wife?” the countess said, sweetly.
Buckingham smiled and for a moment it was as if his mother’s visage had settled upon his face.
“Yes indeed.” Then he lifted one hand and gave a little laugh. “Well, he is the son of a baron. Sadly, his parents were not wed at the time he was born so he did not inherit the barony, but he has been fully legitimised now. Mountjoy Blount. A very good friend of mine.”
Mountjoy Blount. Kate searched her memory of the names and faces she had been introduced to over the last weeks. And there he was. A man who looked like one of the queen’s spaniels and had about as much in his head. A man who had no title and no real standing of his own, being dependent on his relatives, and who would no doubt see in her lands the foundation of his future career at court.
And that was when Kate realised what this was about.
You’ll likely not know this, but my George wanted you for his brother Kit. I was to keep you from leaving England when you came last…
The king had tried to warn her. He had thwarted the will of Buckingham—or rather from what Kate could see the will of Buckingham’s mother—and this was the Villier’s revenge. The fact that as far as they knew she had no idea of the previous plans made no difference to them. A spiteful riposte to the king at being denied their will, whilst assisting someone they wished to favour. She was irrelevant except to be traded like a counting token.
Lucy came to the rescue. She gave a sudden shriek and leapt to her feet, one hand pressed against her breasts, the other pointing to the corner of the room.
“What is that?” she demanded in a shaky voice.
Everyone turned to look.
“No. No. It ran off,” Lucy said, bringing her hands to her face in horror. “It was a rat or a mouse. I am terrified of those monsters. They move so fast, and they bite.” Lucy turned to Kate and almost threw herself in her arms.
Which of course led to all the gentlemen gallantly going on a rodent hunt whilst Kate and the other two ladies tried to comfort an apparently distraught Lucy, who seemed inconsolable. In the end the Duke of Brunswick offered his personal escort to take Lucy and Kate home and they were able to escape.
Only once the coach was leaving Whitehall, past Scotland Yard, and heading to Charing Cross with a flotilla of outriders worthy of a duchess, did Lucy lift her head from her hands and sigh heavily.
“That was a very near thing,” she said, completely restored to herself. “We need to think how to prevent this going any further. Marrying you off to some baron’s by-blow, indeed! The very thought of it. And yes, I know Blount is well connected and has been legitimised but that is all he has to recommend him.”
“I need to leave England,” Kate said, ruefully. “I have petitioned the king for permission to leave and am waiting only on that before I go.” Which was a slight untruth but not enough that Lucy would notice.
“You seem to be missing the point. This will go on until you are married. You have land and you are young and female.” Lucy sighed again. “I know you are not enamoured of the notion, but you could look with favour on the Duke of Brunswick. He clearly admires you and he is a man of much reputation with Queen Elizabeth. He is a considerably better prospect than the bastard son of a baron. Even if he has lost an arm, the rest of him is most handsome. You should consider him.”
Unable to offer her real reasons, Kate fell back on excuses.
“He is also in love with someone else—someone else who happens to be my queen and I am sure I could never compete.”
“What has love got to do with it?” Lucy retorted. “Surely you are woman enough to know that by now?” She treated Kate to a look of fond exasperation. “But I will hold my peace.”
For a few minutes they drove on in silence apart from the clatter of hooves and rattle of wheels on cobbles. Kate was caught up in her thoughts. Was this, she wondered, what the Countess of Montgomery had meant? What had she said? Go back to Holland, Lady Catherine, as soon as you can, or you may find your freedom to do so curtailed. A marriage to Mountjoy Blount would certainly achieve that. Was this more, then, than just a Villiers’ plan? A disturbing notion. Then she realised she had forgotten something important and recalled herself from reflecting on her own problems. She leaned over to Lucy and kissed her on the cheek.
“What is that about?” Lucy asked, clearly surprised.
“Thank you,” Kate said simply.
Lucy glared at her from her one good eye and tilted her head.
“What on earth for?”
“For making a spectacle of yourself in front of the most powerful man in the country just to save me from being pushed into a corner.”
For a moment Lucy looked as if she had no idea what Kate was talking about, but then her self-control crumbled, and she laughed before leaning over to give Kate a hug.
“You have no need to thank me. I’m too old and too well established to be much in line for the Villiers’ venom. Besides, I think they believed it. They will probably have a rat catcher in the place right now, desperate to try and remove my imaginary mouse before his highness returns.” The thought of that was enough to make them both laugh.
Once they were safely back at Harington House, Kate retreated to the sanctuary of her room, dropped her mantle on a chair and pulled the letter from Queen Elizabeth out of her sleeve. It took a little work to open it so that the text within was correctly revealed and then a little more to decipher it.
It told her in a few brief, bald sentences that neither Xenie nor Jan had as yet arrived in The Hague, and that there was no news of the ship Kate said they had sailed on either. The queen assured her that she had put everything in train to try and find out what had happened but in the meantime, Kate could trust a ciphered message with whatever news she had wished to send, by the hand of the Duke of Brunswick.
The news left Kate with a hollow pit in her stomach. She quickly dispatched one of Lucy’s men to see if there was any word of the ship to be found in London and tried hard not to think of what this meant for her two loyal servants. Ships were lost at sea, especially when travelling in the winter when storms could blow up quickly and ferociously, but it was possible the ship had needed to put in at another port. She refused to despair until there was definite cause to do so.
She carefully composed a reply to the queen telling her what Lord Brooke had said. Kate was tempted to add she now also carried a message from King James which she was charged to deliver in person so could not send with the duke. But she hesitated to do so since it would serve no end to tell the queen until she delivered the message. Instead, she wrote that she only awaited leave to travel, which she had been promised would be forthcoming, in order to return. Having folded and sealed the note, she set it aside to pass on to the duke at the earliest opportunity.
There was not long to wait.
The following day began a week in which it seemed she was pushed together with the Duke of Brunswick every time she set foot outside the house. She and Lucy were invited to visit such men as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Keeper, who by chance were also entertaining Herzog Christian von Braunschweig-Lüneburg at the same time.
Unsurprisingly, though, they were excluded from the guest list of the Duchess of Richmond when the duke paid a visit to her grace. By then rumours had slipped all around the court linking his name tentatively with Kate’s. Those other ladies who might have an ambition to secure him for themselves or for their daughters were not likely to want the presence of a woman now seen as their major competitor.
Kate wished she could reassure them to the contrary, but the more she thought about it the more she realised that unless she took shelter in his shadow, machinations were already in progress to tie her to Mountjoy Blount and, by consequence, to the Villiers.
In the meantime, she took the opportunity to send a letter to the king formally requesting permission to leave. It seemed improbable that he would have forgotten, but it was the only course of action left to her. That or flight, trusting that the king would understand her pressing need to see through what he asked of her and pardon her for it after the event.
It was not something she wished to contemplate, but under the cover of continuing investigations into what had happened to the ship that carried Xenie and Jan, she put out feelers to find out if there was a Dutch vessel that might be willing to take her, for a sufficient sum of course. Asking an English ship to do so was out of the question as it would place the master at risk for helping her to leave and it was even possible her enquiries might be reported.
The first of January was the day set for the duke’s departure. He could not leave without participating in the ritual of gift giving that belonged to that day and the court celebrated in lavish style. Kate was not too surprised to find herself and Lucy invited to attend the farewell gathering.
It was held in Whitehall and a select proportion of the court was in attendance to honour the duke. Kate was glad to keep herself in the background whilst the duke, wearing his newly bestowed Order of the Garter with its diamond studded ribbon and heavy gold medal, was feted and praised.
The king was absent, but word spread that in addition to the Garter he had granted the duke a sizable pension. Prince Charles gave a short but stirring speech about his sister’s champion and announced his personal gift of three thousand pounds. After that there seemed to Kate to be a flurry reminiscent of an auction at which various nobles pledged sums to the duke’s support.
Of course, Buckingham was there with his duchess and his mother, but Kate kept an eye on them and ensured she was always inaccessible at any moment when one of them might have tried to speak with her. She knew that would be no defence against a specific request to attend upon them, so she devoted herself to conversation with the least controversial of the ladies present and tried hard to avoid notice.
Near the end of the event, Kate was congratulating herself on navigating through the shoals successfully and looking for Lucy so they would be ready for the final formalities, when she found her path barred by a young man with a high forehead, plump cheeks and long wavy hair which hung on each side of his face.
Mountjoy Blount.
“Lady Catherine, it is as if you have descended from the clouds. Such beauty.”
Kate had been wearing a polite smile throughout and now it froze in place.
Blount seemed not to notice any change in her and grasped her hand making a bow over it whilst bringing the fingers to his lips.
“His grace the Duke of Buckingham,” he went on as he straightened up, “sent me to escort you to him.”
One might want to scream and pull away. One might want to run, pushing through the thicket of velvet and taffeta clad bodies. One might want to simply refuse. But one could not, of course.
Kate drew a steadying breath and allowed herself to be drawn across the room, aware that most there marked their passage with speculation. Her eyes briefly found Lucy and their gazes locked before Kate was swept past.
Blount led her away from the main gathering and into a side chamber, where Buckingham stood in the secluded and exclusive company of Prince Charles, the Earls of Essex and Warwick and three other gentlemen who Kate supposed were also related to Mountjoy Blount. The Duchess of Buckingham and her mother-in-law sat together away to one side.
Focusing on the prince, Kate offered as deep and gracious a curtsy as she could achieve. Beside her, still holding her arm, Blount offered as deep an obeisance.
From somewhere to one side Kate heard a voice which she recognised as belonging to Buckingham’s mother.
“Oh, they do look so good together, do you not think?”
As Kate rose from her curtsy it was Prince Charles who spoke, not Buckingham. His doe like eyes held her gaze and he smiled almost shyly.
“L-Lady Catherine, it has been brought to my attention that you have been left without the support of a husband in the management of your lands and I would not see you forced to such straits for any longer than is necessary. I know you have given many years of devoted service to my dear sister, but I am sure she would not grudge you the comfort of your own home, your own husband and your own family.”
As he spoke Kate’s throat closed up and she knew there would be nothing she could do to stop the colour draining from her face. She could not have uttered a word in that moment had her life depended upon it.
Buckingham was wearing a supercilious smile and nodding as the prince spoke.
“Highness,” he said swiftly, “I would recommend our good friend Mountjoy Blount, the son of the late Baron Mountjoy, who is most willing to take up the care and responsibility of Lady Catherine and her lands.”
Kate’s thoughts were beating as rapidly as her heart. The prince had no power to compel this, only the king could do that and surely he would not allow— Then she stopped and into her mind came the number of occasions the king was known to have been bent from his chosen course by Buckingham. More and more often in recent times.
“Is that so?” the prince asked Blount, who bowed his head in response.
“It would be my honour, my privilege and my delight, highness” Blount said.
At least, a little mocking voice in the corner of Kate’s mind whispered, he is not lying about that.
“And do you consent to this, Lady Catherine?” the prince asked.
“Of course she does, highness,” Buckingham said smoothly. “Lady Catherine is an intelligent young woman. She knows what is in her best interests.” His gaze shifted to Kate, and she shivered.
He had placed her in an impossible position. The only escape routes open to her were lined with social condemnation, royal opprobrium and the risk of drawing both onto Lucy, not to mention severely damaging the cause that mattered most to them both.
