Prologue
THEFRIARSGATEINHERITANCE
CUMBRIA 1492–1495
PROLOGUE
The first time Rosamund Bolton was widowed she was six years old. The second time she was not quite thirteen, and still a virgin. She was beginning to wish she wasn’t a virgin, but the idea of being free of a husband for a year’s term of mourning was very enticing. She had been married for all but three years of her short life.
Perhaps if her parents had lived it would have been different. If her brother, Edward, had not died in the same epidemic of plague that took their parents it certainly would have been otherwise. But they had all perished in that rainy summer of fourteen ninety-two, and when they had, Rosamund Bolton had suddenly found herself the heiress of Friarsgate, a vast tract of land with its great open flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. She was barely three years old.
Her paternal uncle Henry Bolton had come to Friarsgate with his wife, Agnes, and their son. Had Rosamund succumbed when her family had, it would have been Henry Bolton who inherited Friarsgate, for he was now his sire’s sole legitimate heir. But Rosamund had not died. Indeed, she appeared to be an inordinately healthy child. Henry was a practical man. He did not need to be the lord of Friarsgate in order to control it, but control it he would nonetheless. Without waiting for a dispensation from the church, he married off his five-year-old son, John, to Rosamund. The dispensation would come eventually, and at the right price.
But two years later, the newly arrived dispensation finally locked away in the strongbox beneath his bed, Henry Bolton stood in danger of losing Friarsgate once again. A spotting sickness had infected both children. While Rosamund easily survived, seven-year-old John did not. His wife had given him no other living children. Henry now berated her fiercely for it. Were they to lose Friarsgate to strangers because of her inability to give him another son? Desperately Henry Bolton cast about for a way to protect his interests in the estate. To his relief he found the perfect solution in the person of his wife’s much older cousin, Hugh Cabot.
For a good deal of his adult life Hugh Cabot had served as the steward in the household of Agnes Bolton’s brother, Robert Lindsay. But now Lindsay needed to provide a place in life for his own second son, so Hugh was to lose his position. Agnes had become privy to this information, as her sister-in-law was a gossip. In an effort to cool her husband’s anger she offered Henry her knowledge, thus regaining her husband’s favor once more as Henry Bolton saw the simple solution that his wife had so neatly provided to his problem.
Hugh Cabot was sent for, and when he had come and had spoken with Henry Bolton, an arrangement was made. Hugh would wed the six-year-old Rosamund, and oversee Friarsgate. In exchange he would have a home and would be comfortable for the remainder of his days. Hugh saw what Henry Bolton was about, but having little choice, he agreed. He did not like his reluctant benefactor at all, but neither was he a doddering fool, as Henry obviously thought him to be. If he lived long enough, Hugh decided, he just might be able to influence his child-wife to protect her own interests against her grasping uncle.
Agnes Bolton found herself miraculously with child again. Unlike her many previous pregnancies it appeared she would carry this baby to term as she had John. Henry made immediate arrangements to return home to Otterly Court, which was his wife’s dower portion. Elated, he was certain the child his wife now carried was the longed-for son. When Hugh Cabot finally died, Henry decided, he planned on wedding this son with Rosamund. The Friarsgate inheritance would once again be in his firm grasp.
Henry and his wife were at last packed and ready to depart. The wedding day arrived. The bridegroom was a tall, painfully thin man, his slender stature and a shock of snow-white hair giving the impression of frailty. But Hugh was not frail, as anyone looking carefully into the bright blue eyes beneath his sandy-gray bushy eyebrows could see. He signed the marriage papers, his elegant hand quivering slightly for effect, his broad shoulders stooped, never quite meeting Henry Bolton’s eyes. Henry did not notice. All that mattered to him was that Rosamund could not be snatched up in marriage by strangers. He was confident that Friarsgate was still firmly within his control.
The bride wore a simple, tight-fitting gown of grass-green jersey with a long waist. Her long auburn hair was loose about her narrow shoulders. The amber eyes in her small face were curious, but cautious. She was dainty, like a fairy child, Hugh thought as he took the tiny hand in his to repeat his vows before the elderly priest. The girl piped her vows in singsong fashion, having obviously learned them by heart.
Henry Bolton stood smiling broadly, and perhaps a trifle smugly, as he and Agnes witnessed Rosamund’s second marriage. Afterward he said to Hugh, “You are not to tamper with the wench even if she is now your wife. I’ll want her a virgin for her next marriage.”
For a brief moment Hugh felt a black anger filling his soul, but he hid his distaste of this crude and greedy man, saying quietly, “She is a child, Henry Bolton. Besides, I am past such emotions as passion.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Henry said, now jovial. “She’s usually a meek girl, but you can beat her if she isn’t. That right is yours, and I will not take it from you.”
Then Henry Bolton took his leave of Friarsgate, riding over the hills that separated Otterly Court from his niece’s rich holding.
Part One
THEHEIRESS OFFRIARSGATE
ENGLAND 1495–1503
Chapter 1
On the day she had married Hugh Cabot, the child, Rosamund Bolton, watched silently as her uncle and his wife had ridden away. Finally she turned to her new husband and asked, “Are they gone for good, sir? My uncle always behaved as if this were his house,but it is mine.”
“So you understand that, do you?” Hugh replied, amused. What else did she understand? He wondered to himself. Poor lambkin. Her life to date had surely not been easy.
“I am the heiress to Friarsgate,” she answered him simply yet proudly. “Edmund says I am a rich prize. That is why my uncle Henry seeks to control me. Will my uncle return?”
“He is gone for now,” Hugh answered the child. “I am certain he will return to see how you fare.”
“He will return to cast his eye on my lands and see how they prosper,” Rosamund responded astutely.
He took her hand in his. “Let us go inside, Rosamund. The wind is chill and hints of the winter to come, lass.”
Together they reentered the house, settling themselves in the little hall by the warm fire.
Sitting opposite him, her child’s face grave, she said, “So, now you are my husband.” Her slippered feet did not touch the floor.
“I am,” he agreed, his blue eyes twinkling as he considered where this conversation could possibly be going.
