‘I will not take it back. Keep it, my dear Kat,’ he snapped, his tone bitter, words deliberately chosen to wound. ‘Keep it in memory of my love for you.’

‘Did you ever love me?’

‘Yes. You are a desirable woman.’ But his eyes could not quite keep contact. I did not believe him. ‘No man could deny your beauty. How could I not feel the attraction between us?’

‘Perhaps you did,’ I compromised sadly. ‘But simply not enough.’

‘It was a truly pleasurable dalliance.’

‘A dalliance?’ I clenched my fist around the jewel to prevent me from striking him, dropping into French in my renewed fury. ‘Mon Dieu! How dare you dishonour my love, given freely and honestly, with the triviality of a dalliance? I did love you once, when I believed you to be a man of honour. Perhaps I should be thankful to Gloucester after all for sparing me from a disloyal and craven husband. I pity your future wife to the bottom of my heart.’

He stepped back as if I had indeed struck him.

‘I can do no more than plead my cause,’ he responded curtly. ‘It would have been like nailing myself into my coffin before I was twenty years of age. You would ask too much of me.’

‘I know. And that’s the saddest part of the whole affair.’ For it was all true, of course. It would have been cruel to have tied him to me, stripping away all hope of the life to which he had been born and raised. It would have been very wrong of me and, knowing it, I would have stepped aside. ‘Take it.’ I opened my palm again, the colours of the brooch springing to life. When he made no move to do so, merely regarding me with a strange mix of dismay and defiance in his face, I placed it on the stone window ledge at my side.

‘I loved you, Edmund. I understand perfectly. I would have released you from your promises but you did not have the courage to face me. You are a man of straw. I did not realise.’

I walked round him and on, Guille following. I would not look back, even when my heart wept for what I had lost. Would he even now come after me, change his mind, tell me that his love was still strong and could not be denied? For a moment my heart beat loudly in my ears as I waited for his long stride to catch up with me and his command to stop.

Katherine—don’t leave me!

Of course he did not so command me. When, at the door, I looked back—for how could I resist?—he had gone. I let my eye rest on the window ledge where the blue and red and gold should have made a bright smudge in the low sun. It was flat and grey and empty. He had taken the brooch too. Perhaps one day it would grace the bodice of the lady whom he, and the law, deemed suitable for a Beaufort bride.

Perhaps he had loved me. But what was such love if it was too weak to triumph against worldly considerations? Edmund’s cold rejection of me had destroyed all my happiness. In that moment my love for him crumbled into dust beneath my feet. I thought he would not have been so very shallow.

Perhaps, I considered in that moment of blinding revelation, I had not fallen in love at all. Lonely and isolated, lured by the hand of an expert in the arts of love, I had simply fallen into the fatal trap of a glittering infatuation, only to be sacrificed on the altar of Beaufort aggrandisement.

I was infatuated no more.

CHAPTER TEN

I fretted, shaking with anxieties, and with fears that built like a thundercloud. Not knowing where Edmund was, I wasted no time in struggling with a pen but sent a courier to Westminster with a verbal message. I must see him.

The days passed, with no word forthcoming from Gloucester or either of the Beauforts. My courier returned empty handed with no news other than Edmund was not at Westminster. All I could do was wait, and worry, the final clash in my verbal bout with Gloucester resounding in my mind.

You cannot prevent us.

Can I not? We’ll see about that.

And so we would. Caught up in the vicious battle with Bishop Henry for power over the Royal Council, Gloucester was set on bringing the Beauforts down. That much I now saw. Perhaps it had not been politic of me to challenge him with his own salacious dabblings in marriage, but it was a wound too late to remedy. I prayed that the desirable Mistress Cobham, commoner though she might be, would sweeten her lover’s temper.

‘I’ll go to Westminster myself,’ I announced, when I could bear the silence no longer, when my feet had all but worn a path to the high vantage point of the Winchester Tower. Madam Joanna had left Windsor for her favoured residence of Havering-atte-Bower even before Gloucester’s arrival, so there was no solace to be had from her calm view of the world.

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Alice replied gruffly, when I expressed my intention. ‘Keep a low profile and it might all be swept onto the midden.’ And, with luck, Edmund Beaufort too. I could read her unspoken thoughts but refused to respond. But we both knew it would not happen. The conflict between Gloucester and Bishop Henry had gone far beyond tolerance sealed with a handshake, reaching a climax when Beaufort troops had refused Gloucester access to the Tower of London. The outrage of the royal duke knew no bounds.

‘A pity you could not see your way to be enamoured with a man without name or ambition,’ Alice remarked caustically. ‘If you had, the Council might just leave you alone to be happy.’

I knew that to be a falsehood too. ‘If I had demanded to wed a man without consequence, the Council would object that he was not sufficiently well connected,’ I remarked tartly, weary of it all. ‘Marriage to a commoner would damage my integrity as Queen Dowager. They will not allow me to wed a nobody.’ I frowned. ‘Besides, it’s Edmund I love.’

Alice opened her mouth to reply, then shut it.

‘I do,’ I insisted. ‘I love him and he loves me.’

‘As your ladyship says.’

‘I know what you are thinking. Madam Joanna thinks the same,’ I interrupted the unspoken slight on our love. ‘Edmund’s regard for me is genuine. I am convinced of it. He would not ask me to marry him if he did not love me.’

Alice’s lips tightened, as they did when she reprimanded Young Henry for some lack of courtesy. ‘You might ask yourself, my lady, what he would gain from such a union.’

I strode from the room. No one wished me well in this. How could they not see Edmund’s love for me? How could they not appreciate the array of his gifts, of his skills, as bright as jewels, that he tumbled at my feet for my delectation?

I needed to see him. I needed to be reassured.

To my delight, Edmund returned to Windsor before I could sink into a bad humour. My heart lifted and I sprang to my feet, opening my arms to him as he lifted his to enclose me in their warmth. My lips rose to meet his in urgent welcome. For a little while we simply stood and savoured the closeness.

‘Now, there’s a welcome that no man could resist!’ he remarked as he surveyed me at last, his hands caressing my shoulders.

‘I have missed you.’

‘And I you, so I am come. But what’s this?’ His gaze travelled over my face. ‘You look as if you have been beset,’ he observed, running a finger over my brow. ‘What’s happened to make you frown? Nothing must be allowed to distress my love.’

‘Gloucester has been here. And your uncle,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he growled. ‘You don’t need to tell me about it. I’ve had an earful from Gloucester already.’ He strode away from me to pour two cups of ale. He presented one to me then downed his own in one gulp, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘The great lord was brutal in his choice of words.’

‘He says we cannot wed. He says they will stop us.’

‘And he has a whole fistful of arguments why we cannot,’ Edmund agreed. ‘Chief amongst them the one he didn’t see fit to list on his power-grabbing fingers, but the one that everyone sees, signalling like a beacon on a hilltop. That Gloucester would abandon his claim to the throne before he’d acknowledge any more power for the Beauforts. Except that he wouldn’t do that, would he? How he wishes the crown was his!’

He glowered, the expression marring features that were made for laughter. ‘He’ll not let me near the Young King, certainly not as your husband, for fear I lead him into the worst habits. Or try to influence his decisions to benefit the Beauforts as he grows.’

‘Edmund—’ I tried to draw his attention.

‘Let me think,’ he interrupted. ‘I can’t quite see my way around this.’

Edmund frowned into the middle distance, thoughts busy, tossing the empty cup in his hand. Fingering the little brooch pinned to the inner fold of my bodice, his introspection brought me close to despair. I had seen Edmund as my strength. Pray God that he and his uncle would be a match for Gloucester.

‘Have you seen Bishop Henry?’ I asked.

Edmund grimaced. ‘No. He’s sent for me—so I can’t put it off. I don’t see what he can do.’

‘I thought Bishop Henry was not entirely unsympathetic to us,’ I suggested. And when that merited no reply, ‘Can the Council truly stop us?’

‘I have no idea. Gloucester says so—so why not? They can always consign you to a convent and force you to take the veil. That would solve the problem of a marriageable royal widow for good. And they could send me to join Bedford in France. That would settle the issue.’ His quick grin might be feral, but his eyes were bleak. ‘Particularly if I happened to be cut down in battle. That would give Gloucester something to crow about.’

His tone was violent, the picture he painted monstrous, but not, I knew, without veracity. I did not know how to deal with this. I did not know what to say, so I stood and waited, all dreams for the future fading before my eyes. If Edmund saw no way forward, what was left for us but to obey Gloucester’s commands?