She struggled not to melt in a complete puddle. ‘I hope that too,’ she said.
He took her hands. ‘You will always have my respect and honour and I will do nothing deliberate to shame you, and that is my vow.’
Tears filled Joanna’s eyes for she had never expected this kind of consideration in a marriage. To be courted with fair words and gestures was a gift beyond measure, but still she clung to caution. Fair words and gestures could be like attractive silk ribbons that you might covet until they wound around your limbs and tied you in knots. This had to go much deeper than words before she yielded. She needed to know him beneath the mask of the courtier and suitor he projected so well. She needed to discover his measure and find out how steadfast he truly was.
‘I will hold you to it,’ she said. ‘And I mean it.’
‘So do I.’ He kissed her again. ‘Come, we should eat.’
The young cat mewed and twined around his legs. Joanna put some meat on a small platter and set it on the floor. William looked at her askance. ‘Should you be encouraging it?’ he asked dubiously.
‘His name is Weazel.’ She gave him a look. ‘He was a personal gift from the lord Edward. A good mouser is worth his weight in gold and I am very fond of him.’
‘Then I suppose he should stay,’ he said, although without enthusiasm.
‘You will come to love him, for my sake if nothing else,’ she answered with a smile.
He made a wry gesture. ‘I shall apply myself, although I make no promises.’
They sat down to eat. Weazel finished his breakfast and went to wash his paws in a pool of sunshine.
Joanna and William spent the morning together planning their future. They examined their estates in more detail and discussed prospective employees – lawyers and stewards, scribes and clerks and chaplains, cooks and foresters. Not everything would be accomplished in a day or even a week, but they made a start. William’s serious application to the task impressed Joanna; she had expected him to lose interest, but he remained sharply focused and clear. He continued to insist that most of his administrators should be men of native birth. ‘They know the business of the land and they speak the language easily,’ he said. ‘If I am to dwell here, I should employ such people.’
At the noonday meal, Joanna and William continued to be feted as newly-weds and were given the place of honour at the high table beside the King and Queen.
Alienor touched Joanna’s hand in a solicitous gesture. ‘Are you well, my dear?’ she asked gently.
Joanna blushed at the Queen’s veiled but intimate question. ‘Quite well, madam,’ she replied. ‘Truly.’
‘I am glad.’ Alienor gave Joanna a meaningful look. ‘You know I am here if you have need.’
‘Thank you, madam, you are very kind.’
‘You are a lady of my household, and that means you are mine to me.’ Alienor kept her hand over Joanna’s. ‘And by your marriage you are my dear sister too.’ She turned to William and spoke in a firm voice. ‘Treat your wife well, my lord, or you shall answer to me.’
William bowed to her. ‘Madam, I have been blessed many times over in crossing the Narrow Sea to England, but my wife is my greatest treasure, and you will find me diligent in caring for her wellbeing.’ Taking Joanna’s hand, he raised it to his lips.
‘I am pleased to hear it.’ Alienor relaxed, although she continued to watch William and Joanna with a keen but indulgent eye.
Following the meal, William took Joanna for an afternoon on the river in a boat so that they could be away from everyone. Joanna watched the clouds of midges swirl above the slow-moving water, listened to the lazy plash against the boat’s sides, and her happiness overflowed, making her want to weep, for surely nothing would be this perfect ever again. William lay with his head in her lap and she ran her hands through his hair, loving the feel of it under her fingers and the way she could leave wavy tracks like the ripples in the water. Perhaps last night they had conceived a child who would have that hair, and she blushed a little. She took in his eyebrows, the fine line of his nose, the glint of stubble on his jaw.
‘The Queen seems very solicitous of your welfare,’ he murmured with eyes closed. ‘It seemed to me she wanted to know everything about last night.’
‘I have been in her household since childhood, and she is concerned for me,’ Joanna said, feeling uncomfortable.
‘Yes, but you have nothing to remark upon to others if you do not wish to do so. What is between us, is for us alone. You may be one of the Queen’s ladies, but now you are a married woman and that changes matters.’
Joanna frowned. She did not want to evade the Queen but neither did she want her prying into her intimate life with William. She had a new loyalty now, to her husband, but at the same time she still owed her full duty and service to the Crown, and felt torn.
William had brought some little balls of marchpane wrapped up in a cloth, and they shared them companionably. Snack in one hand, Joanna continued to run the other one through his hair.
‘Do you think we will have children?’ she asked after a moment, her mind on the night before and her body languorous with the pleasure of touching him and of having this intimate moment to themselves.
‘If God is good, I see no reason why not.’
‘Do you think they will look like you or like me?’
His lips parted in a smile. ‘Me if they are boys, but of course you if they are girls.’
