His Duty, Her Destiny Read online

  ‘Beware!’ he snarled.

  ‘Ramond…come!’ she called in her brother’s ear. ‘Come! Now!’

  He would have ignored her, but he also was held back by the scruff of his neck and dragged to the door while the uproar continued unabated, and Lord John did nothing to stop them, for he also had recognised Sir Fergus Melrose, the large and intimidating Scot who had claimed that very day to be Lady Nicola Coldyngham’s protector.

  Nicola was bruised from glancing blows, her doublet slashed by someone’s weapon, but Ramond had suffered a nasty cut on his head, and blood was streaming down his face. Just outside the door, he staggered and would have fallen but for Fergus, who supported him as far as the two waiting horses. Between them, he and his man took Ramond into a quiet back alley and there bound his head with strips torn from the sober gown of black, which was probably his best. And while Nicola held the horses and leaned against the wall, she watched how Fergus’s fingers worked tenderly at their task, his concentration, his coolness. She recalled his solid and fearless presence when he was needed most, and could not help comparing him to that abominable man she had called her friend, whose tongue was vile with insults far more grave than any she had recently delivered with far less justification. His words still seethed inside her head, frightening her with their poison.

  Moments later, dazed and shaken, Nicola was being held firmly in the crook of Fergus’s arm upon the great bay stallion while Ramond, led by Fergus’s man, swayed wearily behind them and tried not to fall off. It was very like old times, he was thinking, except for Nicola’s elevated position.

  ‘How did you know?’ she whispered, looking down upon the crowds.

  ‘Know where to find you? I didn’t have to be a genius to work that out,’ Fergus said, speaking into her dishevelled hair. ‘You should have accepted my offer. I could have protected you better.’

  ‘It’s a family affair.’

  ‘It is now. He’ll not let it rest at that, you know.’

  She recalled the look of astonishment that had quickly turned to anger, then to hate, the ugly twist of the mouth. Beware, he had warned her. ‘Is Ramond’s cut deep?’ she said.

  ‘Deep enough, but nothing you and your maids can’t fix.’

  She wished she had not asked, for now there was between them a vivid memory of another wound and its discovery, and the look in his eyes that he had not managed to conceal, any more than Lord John had. She knew she ought to thank him, but she felt nauseous and shivery and the words would not come, no matter how she tried to form them. In their place, Lord John’s venomous insults cut a swathe through all else, hurting her again and again as the horse wove its way back across Tower Bridge. No longer could she maintain that her lifestyle was safe, for now it was glaringly obvious that her bid for independence had gone sadly wrong, that she was as vulnerable as George had warned, that she had indeed attracted the wrong kind of attention. After what had happened just now, and the gossip it would cause, how could she ever again expect anyone to separate the Coldyngham name from the taint of scandal? Especially in the light of Patrick’s latest escapades.

  Patrick! Was that what Fergus had come to tell me, expecting me to be at home? ‘What of Patrick?’ she said, brushing her cheek along his soft leather doublet. ‘Where did you take him? Can I see him?’

  The reply was enigmatic. ‘Not for a while,’ he said.

  ‘Why? He’s not…?’ In a morbid lightning flash, the worst possible fate rushed to mind, adding to her guilt about poor Ramond. Had he suffered a sudden weakness and died?

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, lass,’ said Fergus. ‘He’s well. In fact, he should be well out into the North Sea by now, with a fair westerly.’

  ‘What? The North Sea? What are you talking about?’ She sat up straight, wrenching herself so quickly out of his grasp that she nearly overbalanced.

  His arm tightened. ‘Sit still. I’ve put him on one of my ships. It sailed out on the afternoon tide. Sit still! He was perfectly willing to go with my captain to Flanders instead of trying to hide with Ramond, and he’ll be safer there than anywhere. He’s certainly better off learning something useful than wasting time at Oxford.’

  But this was too much for Nicola to bear. His timely but interfering appearances, his high-handed rescues that only a moment ago had been appreciated, as if they were all a bunch of children who needed parenting. It was so humiliating. ‘You’ve what?’ she screeched at him, turning heads. ‘You’ve put him on a ship? Without letting me see him? How dared you do that? How dared you?’

  ‘Hush,’ said Fergus, gripping her. ‘Save it till we get home.’

  ‘No…get off…let me down! This is too…too…’ Blinded by furious tears and a sudden topsy-turvy confusion of interests and emotions, she tried to beat at him, disregarding the curious stares and grins directed at the bold rider who appeared to be holding a struggling, scolding young man across his saddle.

  Sobs shook her as she slackened in his vice-like grip, her screech of rage merging and muffling into a howl of helplessness smothered by his chest. The combined issues of her two injured brothers, her own animosities and wilfulness, Lord John’s appalling treachery and the unwelcome rekindling of old feelings all welled up and overflowed on to the leather doublet to make dark spreading blotches as Fergus watched.

  ‘What is it?’ called Ramond, weakly.

  ‘Nothing much,’ called Fergus over his shoulder. ‘Just tiredness.’

  ‘We’re very grateful to you, Ferg.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, old friend.’ Fergus smiled, caressing the shaking arm beneath his hand. ‘It’s a pleasure.’

  ‘I think Nick should go and stay with George, Ferg. Don’t you?’

  ‘I certainly do, Ramond. I think we should see to it immediately.’

  This exchange did nothing to stem Nicola’s tears.

  At the Bishops-gate house, there was hardly any need for Fergus to tell Lavender and Rosemary what the problem was as he handed the tear-stained and snuffling Nicola into their care. ‘She needs some sleep,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, but now I’m taking Master Ramond back to Gray’s Inn, so keep all the doors locked and bolted, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they said, watching his feet as he turned. ‘Don’t step on Melrose.’

  ‘Who?’ He looked down at the white hopping bundle of fur.

  ‘Melrose, sir. Until we can think of a better name for him.’

  ‘Seems to be having the same identity problem as his mistress,’ said Fergus. ‘I assumed he was a she.’

  Nicola’s fatigue kept her asleep until almost noon. Having missed the day’s main meal, she sat up in bed with a tray on her lap and the twitching nose of the white rabbit hovering possessively over a pile of pale green lettuce leaves. ‘If Melrose deposits currants on my coverlet,’ she told Rosemary, ‘I shall blame you. Tell me again what Sir Fergus said, and get the kitchen lads to bring up the bathtub, will you?’ Things, thought the maids, were returning to normal, though Nicola doubted that they would ever be the same.

  It was while she was soaking in the half-barrel lined with a white linen sheet that someone at last responded to the steady knocking on the outer courtyard gate that they had been told to keep locked. Moments later, a piece of paper was delivered up to Nicola’s solar, folded neatly and tied like a parcel with the kind of linen thread they used for mending.

  Nicola examined it, then opened it. It was from the prioress of St Helen’s Priory on Bishops-gate. ‘It’s from next door,’ she told the curious maids, sitting up quickly and sloshing water over the side. ‘She wants me to go and see her.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now,’ said Nicola.

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Tch! Just get me out of here and bring me some clothes. And if you two tidy up, you can come and find out for yourselves, can’t you?’ she said.

  Nicola had not lived on Bishops-gate for long before she and the aged prioress had made contact. The church of St Helen�
��s was open to the families of the girls who were educated there, and even Lord Coldyngham had attended whenever he was resident in London. According to the nuns, he had been a welcome visitor and a generous benefactor, and Nicola had assumed that the welcome the nuns extended to her was mostly for his sake.

  Since their first meeting, Prioress Sophie and Nicola had formed an affectionate bond of the kind that Nicola had lacked in the days of her youth, a gentle hand to hold, words of wisdom, concern and a surprisingly worldly humour that had often sent Nicola away chuckling and thinking what a wonderful mother she would have made. Nicola always went round to the main entrance on the roadside, always well dressed, always taking a small gift, usually something sweet and soft to eat, for the old lady was frail. She had visited the prioress only three days ago.

  The gate led directly into a cloister garden that adjoined her own, the roof of the walkway supported on wooden pillars entwined with roses in full bloom. The nun who escorted them beamed with pleasure. ‘Sister Agnes has been tending them,’ she told them.

  ‘Are the young ladies allowed in here?’ Nicola asked, looking for a sign of coloured fabric, of fur such as merchants’ daughters wore. She was rewarded; a well-dressed girl of about fourteen stood in deep conversation with a dark-dressed young cleric and, from Nicola’s glance through the rose-covered column, their talk was straying far from holy matters. The girl giggled, pushing at the cleric’s chest with one hand then, seeing the visitors, she pulled him into the shadows.

  The nun appeared not to notice. ‘Only at certain times,’ she said. ‘They’re embroidering this afternoon.’

  ‘Have you any idea why the Lady Prioress has sent for me?’ said Nicola.

  ‘Not exactly, my lady.’ The nun stopped and turned to her. ‘But be prepared. Mother Sophie is not well. She took to her bed yesterday. I think she feels this may be her last summer, you see.’

  The afternoon went suddenly cold. This was something that had not occurred to Nicola, nor could she make any connection between that poignant comment and the summons she had just received. She had dressed especially well as befitted a nobleman’s daughter invited to meet a high-ranking lady, head of one of London’s wealthiest priories. She would be expected to acknowledge the honour with a show of velvet and brocade, of silk and gold thread, fine veiling and jewels. The wide bands of violet satin across shoulder and breast, wrist and trailing hem was meant to complement the jewelled two-horned head-dress draped with floating gauze that left Nicola’s dark hairline showing around its edges. Her tight sleeves reached as far as her knuckles like fingerless mittens, and the pale bloom of her lovely bosom showed through sheer silk edged with gold and pearls. She had intended to impress; now the prioress would have passed beyond that stage, for sure.

  ‘I pray that the Lady Prioress may be mistaken,’ said Nicola.

  ‘So do we all, my lady,’ the nun replied softly, searching the folds of her black habit for her chatelaine. ‘So do we all.’ The key was produced, a heavy door unlocked and re-locked behind them, and then the world was very still and faintly perfumed with roses and cleanliness.

  But it was not dark. Light bounced off a whitewashed wall on to a life-sized mural where figures strolled through a garden in costumes of the previous century. Ahead of them was a hunting tapestry side by side with painted statues of saints haloed in gold, and now there was no time to gaze, for the nun’s head was inclined towards another door in anticipation of a signal. Apparently, she heard it.

  Lit by the early afternoon sun from a row of narrow windows, the chamber was nothing like the stark cell Nicola and her maids had expected to see. Surrounded by long white curtains that moved in the breeze, the bed was high with feather mattresses, satin-bordered sheets and chequered white-and-grey furs. Huge pillows lined the soft nest where the white-gowned prioress lay and, if it had not been for the shell-pink face and hands, Nicola would have had to look hard to find her in the creaseless array. Swathed in a white wimple, the small head turned to look at the visitors with dark sunken eyes that seemed to fill her face, though the smile was the same as ever.

  A white-robed novice stood up, curtsied, and silently withdrew. The nun had already disappeared. ‘Come, my dear,’ said the prioress. ‘Take Sister Clare’s seat, if you will.’ The voice had once been powerful, though it wavered now at the end of the sentence as if the lungs were shallow.

  ‘My Lady Prioress,’ said Nicola, curtsying. ‘You sent for me.’

  A frail hand rose from the sheet and flopped again, and the eyes smiled at last, softening at some private jest. ‘I’ve wrestled with my conscience like Jacob and the Angel,’ said the prioress.

  ‘And Jacob won?’ said Nicola, sitting beside her.

  They shared the smile. ‘Well, somebody did,’ said the prioress, ‘and I’m not going to dig too deeply now you’re here. You’re so much your father’s daughter. I’m sure you will understand.’ Exactly what there was to understand was left unsaid until Nicola was seated.

  Upon the smooth coverlet, Nicola laid a small linen parcel tied with ribbon that Lavender handed to her. ‘Marchpane,’ she said.

  ‘His kindness, too. Thank you.’

  ‘You knew my father well?’ Nicola glanced at the window where the oak-shingled roof of her own house was just visible over the high cloister wall. Somewhere hidden in the roses was a door that linked their two gardens, overgrown and forgotten, and Nicola sensed that the time had come to talk of hidden things, of former friendships before it was too late.

  The prioress’s eyes followed hers. ‘Yes, I knew him well. He came to worship at our beautiful church when he was in London. The public are not usually allowed access to convent churches, and for a man to enter the precincts of a nunnery is even more unusual, but we met while you were still a babe, and it seemed right for us to extend a welcome to our prestigious neighbour.’

  Nicola thought it strange that her father, in all his widowed years, had never once mentioned attending the priory church.

  The dark, deeply hollowed eyes slid beneath heavy lids that were slow to lift. ‘He came regularly to church as other parents did whose daughters are sent here. There is a separate section for them, you see. We were always glad to see him, and he was extremely generous to us.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ So this was to do with the hope of a legacy, perhaps. Had her father led the nuns to expect that he would leave them the house in which she now lived? If so, they would be disappointed.

  ‘We were broken-hearted when he passed away last April. He was a good man, Lady Nicola. Was he also a good father?’

  ‘I believe so. He cared for us well. The boys think highly of him. I saw him infrequently, but my memories are good ones and I doubt any father could have done more, except…’

  ‘Except…to be there oftener?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicola, relieved not to have had to say it. ‘He obviously found it too painful to stay for long at our Wiltshire home. My brother Daniel runs it for George as he did for my father.’

  ‘And the two other sons?’

  ‘Ramond and Patrick? Fine young men. We’re a close family. Father left me the house next door, knowing that I like to be independent. It suits me well.’

  There was a sigh from the frail immobile figure as if she needed to gather strength for what she was about to say. Then, when she spoke, it was as if she had read Nicola’s thoughts some time ago. ‘And I’m sure it will continue to suit you for as long as you wish. It’s comforting to know that you and I have lived so close to each other, though I wish it could have been for longer. How shockable are you, my lady?’

  ‘Oh, I know that we must all prepare to meet our Maker sooner or later, my Lady Prioress. My own mother went too soon for her to know me well or for me to know her. As for being shockable, well…my twenty-four years have not told me much about the world so far, I’m afraid, but I’m learning. Is your illness incurable? My father knew some good physicians—’

  ‘That’s not the shocking part, my dear,’
said the prioress, gently interrupting. ‘Death is not in the least shocking when you’ve been preparing for it most of your adult life. No, I asked you to visit me again today because I want you to do something for me before I go, and now I find I cannot do it without causing you some pain, which I deeply regret. Causing pain, I mean, not the pain itself. That was always mine, and deservedly so. I can feel it even now.’ A delicate hand followed the other to lay upon her breast, pressing, quelling, silencing some terrible hurt that was quite obviously stronger than the thought of quitting life.

  The prioress’s eyes stayed wide open, holding some ghostly image along with the pain, and though Nicola was still young and innocent, the recognition of the other woman’s harrowing emotion brought her instantly to her side to place a kiss upon the cool silk-skinned forehead. In that moment, they were as equals in the sorrows of womanhood, believing that no man could ever understand or share in them.

  Nicola knelt on the wooden floor by the bedside and took one papery hand in her own. ‘Tell me what you want me to know,’ she whispered. ‘A message, is it? Something of my father’s? I’ll do whatever I can to help.’

  ‘You are free,’ said the prioress, ‘independent, and not without means. Yes, I believe you could do this. But where to start? Many a time I’ve considered where to start if ever I should tell it to one of his family. Shall I go to the beginning when you were still an infant and your father came to London, to Bishops-gate. You would hardly remember it.’

  ‘I do remember. I had a nurse who bade me not to weep so.’

  ‘He came here to ask about a place for you. He said you would need female company, sisters as well as brothers.’

  ‘And you were the prioress then, my lady?’

  ‘No, not then. I was the sub-prioress and still only thirty. Can you imagine what happened, Lady Nicola? Have you experienced it yet, that terrible, instant, overpowering, uncontrollable love for a man? No, of course you haven’t. You are still an innocent. I also was innocent then, and totally unprepared.’