“Godspeed, Mother,” Elizabeth said, escorting her mother from the hall. “Tell Logan I send him my love.”
Rosamund hurried to the small room that served as the estate’s place of authority. Seating herself at the oak table, she drew a sheet of parchment from the basket and picked up the quill. She considered her words carefully as she wrote. She was asking a great deal of her beloved cousin Tom, but Rosamund knew that Bessie would not cooperate in this endeavor unless he would agree to help her. Her youngest daughter was a clever young woman. Polite society, however, was not her forte. She would need to go into this adventure with a strong advantage. But Tom Bolton was no longer a young man. He had just turned sixty at the beginning of the month. Elizabeth was a great responsibility with which to saddle him. Still, her cousin’s secretary and companion, William Smythe, was a much younger man. He would go with them. Perhaps together the two men could manage the very independent and stubborn heiress of Friarsgate. Perhaps together they could find a husband suitable for Elizabeth, and suitable for the great estate she possessed. It wasn’t that she didn’t have enough grandchildren, Rosamund thought wryly. It was just that none of them belonged to Friarsgate.
Chapter 1
Thomas Bolton, Lord Cambridge, read over the letter his cousin Rosamund had sent him from Friarsgate prior to her departure back to her own home along the Scots border. He pursed his lips, and his brow wrinkled in thought. “Hmmmm,” he said.
“What is it?” William Smythe asked. “Is all well with your cousin?”
“Do you recall our discussing a little visit to court just a few weeks ago?” Lord Cambridge said. “My darling Rosamund has just offered me the perfect excuse. We shall go in the spring, dear boy! And while we are gone the workmen can complete the new wing of the house. While I adore Banon and her brood, I do not think I can live much longer in such close proximity to them.”
“Her daughters are lively lasses,” William noted dryly.
“Lively? They are five veritable little demons!” Lord Cambridge cried. “While each is prettier than a summer’s morn, not one is blessed with more than a flea’s wit. I shudder to consider poor wee Robert Thomas’s fate with such sisters dancing about him.”
“He will either learn to defend himself early, or become one of those poor lads who is fearful of his own shadow, and ruled by his womenfolk,” William said. “Now, tell me what Rosamund has written, and how is it to take us to court?”
“The Friarsgate heiress needs a husband,” Lord Cambridge said, his amber eyes dancing with glee. “She does not want to go to court. God’s foot, Will! How that reminds me of Rosamund in her youth. But she has consented to go only if I will take her. Rosamund apologizes for imposing what she refers to as an onerous duty upon me. She wanted to send Elizabeth to Philippa.”
“The Countess of Witton?” Will shook his head. “Oh, no, my lord, that would never do, I fear. The two sisters do not get on at all.”
“Precisely what Elizabeth told her mother, and then said she would go only if I escorted her. We shall be at court in May, dear boy! Greenwich! There will be masques, for I hear the king’s little friend, Mistress Boleyn, has introduced such elegant entertainments into the court. It will be heavenly, dear boy! And we must pay a visit to Master Althorp in London, for my poor wardrobe is surely aeons out of fashion. Ahh, Will! What would I do without my darling cousin Rosamund?”
“One wonders indeed, my lord,” William Smythe said with a small smile. Eight years ago Thomas Bolton had lifted him from obscurity, taking him into his service. Being in Lord Cambridge’s service meant being taken into his family as well, and that family had welcomed and accepted him. In his entire lifetime William Smythe had never felt so secure, or so content. “When shall I plan our departure, my lord?” he asked.
“We must leave April first,” Lord Cambridge said. “If we are to be down to Greenwich in time for the May Day celebrations we must go then. Dear Will, there is so much to do, and so little time in which to do it. We must write to Philippa, for she will be our entrée into court for this visit. And you must contact Master Althorp. I will want him at Bolton House in London with my new clothing as soon as we arrive. He will have all the latest gossip for us.” Thomas Bolton chuckled. “But first we will have to pay a visit to Friarsgate. If I know our heiress she will have not a garment suitable for travel, let alone the court. You will have to get her measurements, dear boy, so we may have some decent clothing made for her. So much to do! And barely time in which to do it, Will.”
“We will proceed as we usually do, my lord, in a calm and an orderly manner,” William Smyth assured his master. “I will begin today. Now let me bring you some wine, my lord. You will need all your strength and wits about you, for Elizabeth Meredith will not be an easy girl for whom to find a husband. Her manners, my lord, if you will forgive my mentioning—and she is already considered an old maid by many.”
“Fiddle-faddle!” Lord Cambridge replied. “The king’s little friend is even older, and she is yet unwed. And Mistress Boleyn has not the dower portion that Mistress Elizabeth Meredith has. Who will ever marry her, I wonder?” He sniffed.
“When shall we plan our visit to Friarsgate, my lord?”
“As soon as possible, dear boy,” Thomas Bolton replied. “I have always liked Friarsgate, but more so now than ever. The hall is a peaceful one there these days. And Elizabeth is an excellent hostess. Her table is always well served, and her guests well fed. Go and ask old Ben in the stables what the weather is to be for the next few days. He is always correct in his predictions about such phenomena.”
“At once, my lord!” William Smythe replied, placing a small goblet of wine in his master’s hand. Then, bowing, he hurried from the chamber.
“The weather,” old Ben pronounced, “will be fair for the next few days, particular considering it were January, but February were a terrible month, and not likely to be any different this year, sir.” William Smythe reported back to his master.
“See we are packed for a long stay, my dear Will,” Lord Cambridge said with a wicked chuckle. “If I am to be snowed in then I prefer Friarsgate this year to my own dear Otterly, though I should have never imagined the day I would admit to such. My dear heiress and her mate can handle any emergencies that might arise. After all, Otterly will one day belong to Banon. When I tell her why I must away to Friarsgate she will understand better than any. Of all of Rosamund’s children she is the most reasonable, which is fortunate, for her husband, while still a pretty fellow, is not a man of intellectual strengths. So many of these old northern families interbreed too much, and barely educate their children. They still believe we live in a time when their name alone is all that matters. I chose well when I made Banon my heiress. She is wise beyond her years.”
“Indeed she is, my lord,” the secretary agreed. “Except perhaps where her husband and offspring are concerned. She is most indulgent with them all.”
“She has a kind heart, Will,” Thomas Bolton said with a small smile. When he had purchased Otterly all those years ago he had determined to make Banon, his cousin’s second child, his heiress. Philippa, the eldest of Rosamund’s daughters, was to inherit Friarsgate, and to Elizabeth he had promised a large dower. But Philippa had gone to court at twelve to serve the queen, and had quickly found that no suitable young man wanted a girl, even a great heiress, with a northern estate. So Lord Cambridge had purchased a small estate in Oxfordshire for her, and then found the perfect husband for Philippa. It had elevated her into the ranks of the nobility, and was in the eyes of the court a spectacular match for a girl of Philippa’s background. As Countess of Witton, Philippa had filled her husband’s nursery with three sturdy sons and an infant daughter.
But Philippa had renounced any claim she had on Friarsgate, and her husband had surprisingly agreed with her decision. Most men would have been delighted to gain the great lands of Friarsgate, but Crispin St. Clair believed a man should live on his lands, the better to oversee his own wealth. His estate of Brierewode, along with the matching lands his marriage to Philippa had brought him, were more than enough for him.
And when his cousin Rosamund had despaired of what would become of her beloved Friarsgate, it was her youngest daughter, Elizabeth Meredith, who had spoken up and declared she would have it, for of the three sisters it was Elizabeth who loved Friarsgate the best. So it had been agreed that upon her fourteenth birthday Friarsgate would be turned over to Elizabeth, and it had been. Rosamund, who had spent much of her life caring for, loving, defending, and making Friarsgate prosper, retired to her Scots husband’s home at Claven’s Carn to raise Logan Hepburn’s five sons, four of whom were theirs.
Elizabeth Meredith, like her mother before her, had been born to manage the Friarsgate inheritance. She loved the land. The raising of sheep fascinated her. She tried breeding different kinds of the creatures to see whether the wool they grew was different, or better. She spent two days each week in a chamber set aside for estate business, where she oversaw the export trade her mother and uncle had set up. No one had yet to match the Friarsgate blue wool cloth they sold through their factors in the Netherlands, and Elizabeth had been working for several years now to develop a new and unique color. So far, nothing had satisfied her.
She was a great chatelaine of her lands, and therein lay the problem. Nothing meant more to her than Friarsgate. It was her raison d’être. Elizabeth did not acknowledge the passing of time, or bother to consider a future in which she would play no part. Like all great estates, Friarsgate needed to be assured of a new generation.
Thomas Bolton sighed to himself. Elizabeth Meredith was by far the loveliest of Rosamund’s daughters. But her social skills were practically nonexistent. She had been taught them, but had no use for fine table manners, or the playing of an instrument, which she had once done quite well. Her clothing was that of a country farmer’s wife, and not a young heiress. She spoke directly, and sometimes roughly. All the niceties she had been bred and born to were forgotten in her passion to oversee Friarsgate.
And that in part, along with his desire for a quieter household, was his reason for going to Friarsgate for the rest of the winter months. Before he might introduce Elizabeth into court he would have to reeducate her in the ways of her station. They were going to need Philippa’s aid once they were at Greenwich, and Philippa was unlikely to give it, blood kin or no, if Elizabeth was going to prove an embarrassment to her oldest sister. That would be one of the first things he must work on with Elizabeth, Thomas Bolton decided. He had to convince her before they departed Friarsgate not to deliberately irritate Philippa. Finding a husband for Elizabeth Meredith was going to prove a far greater challenge to him than finding a husband for her two sisters had.
William Smythe was an invaluable servant and companion. By the following morning he had his master prepared to depart Otterly. The cart carrying their baggage had left at first light for Friarsgate. Six Otterly men-at-arms were waiting to escort Lord Cambridge and his secretary. It was a long ride, but if they rode out early enough they would reach Friarsgate shortly after dusk.
