I smiled at the thought.

‘By the Rood!’ He gathered up my hands in his. ‘Are you going to keep me waiting again, Madame de Swynford?’ And I laughed a little. Not much tolerance here. ‘I seem to have been waiting on your decisions all my life.’

‘No, John,’ I spoke at last. ‘No more waiting. If I had intended to say no to you, I would not have come to your chamber and made myself the gossip of choice of the whole household here at Hertford. Take me to bed, John. Take me to bed, my dear love, and heal all my wounds.’

No, we were not as young as we were, but neither were we old. Less supple perhaps, less beautiful to the eye, so many new wounds and abrasions for John, whereas my hips and waist bore witness to the passing years. But here were so many caresses and responses to revisit, so much to recall and renew to bring us back to the pleasure we had once known in each other’s arms. I had never forgotten how the Duke could make my blood run hot, and I was not disappointed, for there was no reticence between us. How could there be? We were confident and demanding in our passion, devouring each other with infinite and exquisite slowness, before naked desire destroyed all self-control. My lack of breath had nothing to do with age. Nor for him. Until finally lack of stamina dictated that we rest, my head cushioned on his breast.

‘Would you not look for a younger woman in your bed?’ I sighed with happiness, daring him to agree.

‘You are my younger woman.’

Still that last little seed of fear remained. He was not his own man. Would England claim him again and snatch him from me?

‘John—if you regret this, if you turn away from me again, I don’t think I can live with it.’

‘I have no regrets. I will never let you go.’

His kisses made me weep.

‘Must we confess?’ I remembered the heart-wrenching confessions. How could I confess a sin when I would repeat it again within the day?

‘If you wish it.’ He smoothed the tears away. ‘But you are my true love. I cannot believe that God will punish us for this. We harm no one. We love in true spirit.’

I sniffed, and smiled, still disbelieving that we shared the same small space, breathed the same air and would never be parted again.

The Duke leaned forward, and sniffed my hair. ‘It smells of…?’

‘Of ambergris. Joan’s perfume.’ I laughed as I realised. ‘It is an aphrodisiac, so it is said.’

‘Shall we prove it?’

And, oh, it was. It worked its magic on all our senses. Or perhaps we did not really need it. I would have loved him on a bed of straw in my stable at Kettlethorpe.

‘You will be my love. But circumspectly,’ he said when he could. ‘We will not be reckless again. We will not ride through the streets together.’

There was nothing circumspect in our behaviour for the next hour.

We were renewed. Reborn. We gave permission for our minds to touch, to slide, to enmesh one into the other when we were parted, as we gave sanction for our bodies to become one again when time and duty smiled on us. It was a strange moment of transition from estrangement to reconciliation, marked by tentative steps at first.

We had hurt each other. How cruel the wounds we had inflicted on each other. Now we had to learn to step together again, in trust, in renewed loyalty. In harmony, picking out the same notes from the troubadours’ songs of requited love.

‘I regret our time apart with every drop of blood in my body,’ the Duke said.

‘It was a living death,’ I replied. ‘Without hope. Without happiness.’

But now, grasping our permission to bloom, our love would not be gainsaid. Soft as a blessing, fervent as a nun’s prayer, it healed our wounds.

‘You are the music that stirs my heart to weep at the beauty of it,’ he said.

‘And you are the succulent coney that enlivens my winter frumenty.’ I would not allow him to be solemn for long.

‘And there was I thinking that you preferred venison,’ he growled, lips against my throat.

‘Only when I have a rich patron to provide it.’

‘Patron?’ His brows lifted splendidly.

‘Or lover.’

‘So I should hope. Now why is it that you remind me of a plump roast partridge?’ And there was the gleam that I had once thought never to see again.

As his brows winged at my culinary flight of fancy, and his hand slid over my hip, my blood warmed and my heart beat hard. I relented, and gave him kind for kind. ‘You, my dear man, are the sweet verse that awakens my mind to love’s glory.’

Our souls were replete in each other, as smoothly close-knit as the feathers on the breast of a collared dove.




Chapter Nineteen

Fear creeps in to spoil and destroy, like the first ravages of the moth in a fine wool tapestry, impossible to distinguish by the naked eye until the damage is done and the glorious hunting scene is punctured by as many holes as a sieve. So fear crept into my consciousness.