Darkwitch Rising (20 page)

“Patently,” said Bedford, “to have so lost your virtue to him!
Who
?”

Noah kept her eyes steady on the earl, but she said nothing.

“John Thornton,” said the countess. “It must be. He and Noah have ever had an affection for each—”

“No,” said Noah. “The father of this child is not John Thornton.”

“You have dallied with
another
?” Lady Anne said.

Noah lowered her face again.

There came the sound of a horse’s hooves outside, although no one in the gallery paid it the least mind.

“You cannot stay here,” said Lady Anne. “My daughters…”

“I have not in the least harmed them,” said Noah. Now, when she raised her face to look Lady Anne directly in the eye, there were two visible patches of colour in her cheeks. “It is not as if I have poisoned them with this pregnancy.”

The earl opened his mouth to speak but was prevented by the arrival of a footman, carrying in his hand a sealed letter.

“My lord,” the footman said, bowing. “This has just arrived. The courier said it was most urgent.”

“It can wait,” said Lady Anne, but the earl, who by this point had the letter in his hand, and had seen the handwriting, waved her to silence.

“No,” he said, “it can’t.” He nodded the footman a dismissal, waited until the man had left the room, then looked at first his wife, then Noah.

His wife’s face was a muddle of confusion and hurt, but the earl was shocked at what he saw on Noah’s face. She was staring at the letter, and there was both wild hope and joy in that face.

A man I love very much
, she had said, and the earl felt his chest tighten at the logical connection of that remark and her expression at the sight of this letter in his hand.

But the pregnancy…how? How?

“It comes from Hoogstraeten,” the earl said slowly. “From the king.”

And how much
more
the king, eh? A bare week ago Cromwell had caught a fever, and died within the day. A bare week ago the earl might have been able to dismiss this letter. Not now.

Never now.

His hands trembling very slightly, Lord Bedford broke the seal and read the contents of the letter slowly.

Twice, to make sure he understood it.

Then he looked back at Noah. “It seems you have a very powerful protector,” he said.

“Husband?” said Lady Anne. “What is it? What does the king wish of us? And what does this have to do with Noah?”

“Charles has a request of us,” he said. “A small one, he says. Two dear friends of his, the Mademoiselles Marguerite Carteret and Catherine Pegge, as well as what children cling to their skirts, are returning to England within the week. They wish to stay in Woburn village—they do not wish to impose on us at the Abbey—and Charles asks that we provide them with a comfortable house. He says the ladies have the means by which to pay us for the privilege.”

“Carteret? And Catherine Pegge?” Lady Anne said. “Aren’t they among—” She broke off suddenly, colouring.

“Among the king’s many and varied mistresses?” Lord Bedford said. “Yes. And the children they bring undoubtedly the king’s many and varied bastards. What these women—” he said that word with a disdainful twist of his lips “—could possibly want to do with Woburn I have little idea save,” again he looked at Noah, “the ladies wish that Mistress Noah Banks stay with them as their companion.”

Noah’s face broke into a broad smile, and in all the years he’d known her, the earl thought he’d never seen her look so joyous.

“Charles writes,” Lord Bedford continued, his words very measured, his eyes never leaving Noah’s face, “that Marguerite and his Kate, as well as Mistress Noah, are highly important to him.” His eyes dropped to the letter, and he read a section of it: “’I would you do this favour for me, my Lord of Bedford, which I shall greatly remember, and much favourably, when circumstances allow’.”

Lady Anne stared at her husband. “He hadn’t heard of Cromwell’s death when he wrote this.”

Bedford checked the date. “No. This predates Cromwell’s death by several days.” Whatever power lay behind any directive Charles asked for before Cromwell’s death was ten times as potent after Cromwell’s death. Charles had not yet been proclaimed king in this land, but Bedford had every expectation that he would be before very much time had passed. The Protectorship had passed to Cromwell’s son Richard, but he was nothing more than a weak seedling grown in the shadow of his father’s strong stem. Richard Cromwell would never be able to hold England together.

Everyone who had any interests at all to protect in England would now be aligning themselves very quietly with the exiled king.

“What is Charles to you, Noah?” Bedford asked.

“A most loved lord and king,” she replied.

“And this…Marguerite Carteret? And Kate Pegge?”

“Women who I love as sisters.”

“Who is the father of your child, Noah? Charles?”

“How can this be, my lord? My king is in exile, many miles distant, and I have never left Woburn in all my years here.”

“Save for accompanying me to Hampstead,” said Lady Anne. “How far gone are you?”

“Three months, my lady.”

“Then that child was conceived at Hampstead!” said Lady Anne.

“But not by our lord king,” said Bedford, “unless he has powers of trickery we are unaware of.”

Noah’s face stayed perfectly expressionless.

Bedford sighed. “I cannot see how we can deny Charles, my sweet,” he said to Lady Anne, “and it does solve a dilemma for us.”

“The house two from the village church stands vacant,” said Lady Anne. She looked at Noah. “You may remove yourself there as soon as these ‘ladies’ Carteret and Pegge arrive.”

The stone hall had vanished, and the girl led the two imps through a bewildering maze of alleys and laneways. Houses and warehouses reared to either side, blocking out the sun, and the three had to pick their way through piles of refuse and worse, the girl delicately holding her nose against the stench
.

“
Where is this?” asked one of the imps
.

“
Your new home,” said the girl. “Eventually
.”

The imps glanced at each other. “We like it better where we are,” one said
.

“
You’ll not stay there,” said the girl. “You’ll get your freedom, soon enough. Then…this awaits you
.”

“
There’s no freedom. You’ve won us,” said an imp
.

“
True enough,” said the girl. “But what if, besides your loyalty, I earned your love?
”

“
How
?”

“
By giving you true freedom,” said the girl. “Now, pay attention. Do you know who I am yet
?”

“
Our enemy,” said one of the imps, and the girl laughed
.

“
Oh yes, your enemy indeed. But your liberator as well. I have the power both to trap you and to free you. I have done the first. Do you want the second
?”

“
T
hey arrived late last night, and have sent word this morning they shall come to collect you in the hour before noon.”

Lady Anne, standing with Noah in the great entrance hall of the abbey, wondered at the sheer joy the woman didn’t even attempt to disguise at this news. Had she no shame? Carrying a bastard child herself, Noah was
happy
to house with two of the most notorious women of English gossip? A product of a strict disciplinarian upbringing herself, the countess simply could not understand why Noah had thrown away everything she could have had—John Thornton, for instance—for some light, immoral tumble.

“I find no sin and no shame in this child,” Noah said, one hand on her still-flat belly and her eyes steady on those of the countess.

Lady Anne’s jaw tightened. “You are packed?”

“Yes. I take little with me. My lady, may I farewell your children? They have meant much to—”

“No. I forbid you to have contact with them.”

“I am no danger to them!”

Lady Anne did not reply to that. Not verbally, but the anger and distress in her eyes was response enough.

Noah sighed, then she turned away and walked up the great staircase towards her chamber.

Within moments, one of the servants announced that a coach approached down the long road through Woburn Park, and the countess, still greatly disturbed by her exchange with Noah, settled herself on a chair near the fire in the gallery and requested that her husband join her to greet the arrivals.

I will meet with them this once
, she thought,
and then dismiss them from my mind
.

There came the faint flurry of noises and voices from the entrance to the abbey, which intensified as the footman showed the arrivals into the front hall. Just then the earl came into the gallery, taking a chair next to his wife.

Lady Anne felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. They would face these shameful women, she and her husband, with the combined weight of their aristocracy and their virtue. King Charles be damned, if he thought they would grovel to
these
women!

“I shall both be glad and sorry for Noah’s departure,” the earl said softly as footsteps sounded up the stairs towards the gallery. “She has been a delightful companion to both of us, and our children, over the past years.”

The countess made no reply, a little ashamed of her earlier treatment of Noah—after all, what her husband said was true enough. As the far double doors opened she stiffened a little, and raised her chin.

A footman bowed, then two women swept past him.

They were both pretty enough, Lady Anne conceded, although doubtless that prettiness had caused their fall from grace into immorality, and they bore themselves well, which bearing they had undoubtedly observed at whatever manner of court Charles had managed to gather about him in exile. The older of the women had dark blonde hair, worn simply enough in a twist at the crown of her head, a
figure somewhat thickened at the waist by childbearing, yet still graceful and supple. The younger woman was darker, much slimmer (although the thickness at
her
waist suggested to the countess that she had recently risen from childbed) and more vivacious with bright eyes and a ready smile.

The women reached the earl and his countess, and both curtsied demurely enough.

The earl and countess inclined their heads.

“My lord, lady,” said the older woman, Marguerite Carteret. “My companion and I are much obliged by your generosity in permitting us to lease such a well-equipped house within Woburn village.”

“Our king required it of us,” said the earl.

“In our current sad climate,” said Marguerite, “you were not obliged to King Charles in any manner. Yet you acquiesced to his request. That was well done of you.”

“We will take up no more of your time,” said the younger woman, Kate Pegge, “but ask only that we may make re-acquaintance with our friend, Noah Banks—”

Re-acquaintance
? The countess frowned.

“—for we have left our children waiting below in the carriage, and we would return to them speedily.”

A carriageful of Stuart bastards
, Lady Anne thought bemusedly,
at our front door
. “Then you may collect Noah and—” she began, but just then there came a step from the doorway, and both Marguerite Carteret and Kate Pegge spun about, their faces alive with joy.

The countess and the earl looked at each other. What
was
Noah to these two?

Noah had entered through the far door and, abandoning any pretension to decorum, she picked up her heavy skirts, and ran forward.

The three women met in a flurry of skirts and kisses and embraces halfway between where the Bedfords sat and the door. After their initial greeting, Marguerite Carteret and Kate Pegge further stunned and bewildered the earl and countess by stepping back from Noah, then sinking into such deep curtsies before her that anyone might have thought her the most ancient and venerable of empresses.

“For the Lord’s sake,” the earl whispered to his wife, “has Charles somehow managed to wed Noah in secret that these two make obeisance to her as if she
were
queen?”

Lady Anne had a sudden and appalling vision of Charles restored, and she visiting court to be forced to curtsey before Noah.

“Surely not,” she said.

Noah came to stand before the earl and his wife.

“Lady Anne, Lord Bedford…I am most sorry that I must leave you in this manner. You have been good to me, and Woburn the best of homes. I—”

Lady Anne sighed, and rubbed a little at her eyes as if she were distracted. “I wish you well, Noah, but I wish you had done better.” She hesitated, then reached out and gave Noah’s hand a brief squeeze.

The earl rose, and kissed Noah’s cheek. “Go with our blessing, Noah. I pray that your life shall be a good one.”

The gestures of both Bedfords plainly touched Noah, for her cheeks coloured, and she smiled tremulously, as if close to tears.

She nodded, curtsied to both the earl and his wife, then turned away.

Just before she reached the door, Lady Anne spoke once more. “The children are playing in the vestibule, Noah. Say goodbye if you wish.”

Noah stopped, turned, and looked at the countess with shining eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

Once Noah had said her farewells to the Bedford children, and had kissed each one in turn, she, Marguerite and Kate went outside. There was a driver and a coach drawn by two horses waiting near the steps leading to the entrance of Woburn Abbey. Two children, one a boy of about ten years, another a girl of some six years, were sitting inside with a well-wrapped baby secured between them.

“My children,” said Marguerite proudly, introducing the boy and girl to Noah. “You may call her madam,” Marguerite said to the children, “and treat her as if she were your queen.”

“They have their father’s look about them,” said Noah, kissing each child gently on the cheek. Then, leaning into the carriage, she picked up the baby and cradled it in her arms. “Yours, Kate?” she said.