Jeanette wiped her lips on her napkin and murmured to Katerine that she had to visit the latrine.
Katerine looked heavenwards. ‘Can it not wait?’
Jeanette shook her head and clutched her stomach. ‘I fear not, my lady mother.’
‘Well, make haste,’ Katerine said irritably. ‘It is not seemly, but I do not know what else I should expect.’
Jeanette curtseyed to her mother-in-law and fled the table. Otto raised his brows at her but she ignored him and hurried out.
There was no sign of Thomas, but she saw John de la Salle and, blank-faced, he directed her to the stables where she cameupon him standing with Noir, his head pressed into the stallion’s neck, his body shuddering.
‘Thomas?’
He spun round, and she gasped at the sight of his eye patch and the scar running into it.
‘Go away,’ he snarled. ‘Have you not done enough to me?’
‘It is not what it seems,’ she whispered. Her heart flooding with love and pain, she held out an imploring hand.
‘Is it not when you wear another man’s ring?’
‘I swear so, on my life! I had no choice. You weren’t here, although I prayed and prayed for you to come. I tried to stop the marriage. I told my mother and my uncle that we were already wed, but they wouldn’t listen. Everyone said it was no solid marriage, but a foolish lust – that I had been duped and seduced out of my maidenhead. My mother ripped up my contract and burned it in front of my face, and she took my ring.’ Her eyes blazed with tears. ‘They showed me a letter that said you were dead and told me if I did not wed William Montagu they would put me in a convent. What was I to do? The King is close friends with Lord and Lady Montagu and would not have listened. Everyone was determined the wedding should happen. I fought it until I could fight no more. You must believe me.’
Deep creases engraved his cheeks, and he turned his head away.
‘Why don’t you look at me?’ she asked with hurt bewilderment.
After a long pause he did turn round, but his expression was inscrutable. ‘I do not know what to believe.’
‘I am telling you the truth, Thomas. I was forced into this marriage that is no marriage at all. I am still wedded to you. I shall live my life in a place of nothing because I do not have you.’ She grasped his arm and felt its rigidity. ‘Help me out of this bind, I beg you.’
‘Why do you think I am more able than you to do so?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Who will listen? And if they do listen, what do you think will happen? You had better go – your husband will be wondering where you are.’
Her anger rose, and her frustration at his obtuseness. ‘He is not here, and he is no more my husband than is a sheep in a field. You are my true husband in God’s eyes, and in mine – and I shall love you until the end of my life, I swear it on my soul.’
He looked at her, a muscle flickering on one cheek.
‘When they said you were dead, I believed them – everyone did. I only discovered you were still alive after my marriage to William Montagu – your sister told me, and she likes me not.’
She reached up to stroke the damaged side of his face with a feather-touch, and he drew back, but not all the way, and she continued her tracery. He closed his good eye and his throat worked.
Jeanette took away her hand, opened her alms pouch, and brought out the rough-cut ruby. ‘You gave me this in token of your heart, and I kept it, and it became mine. Now I return it to you as a changed thing – as my own heart.’ She placed it in the centre of his palm. ‘Do with it as you choose, for it is yours and always will be. I ask you to help me annul this marriage. I have two lives and I am living the wrong one – and I do not believe either of us can bear it.’
She turned and walked away from him, not knowing how she managed to put one foot in front of the other but making the steps anyway in the certainty that she had to do it before they were discovered, and before the enormity of the moment went beyond bearing.
Back in the great hall, her mother-in-law was waiting to pounce, her eyes sharp. ‘You were gone a long time.’
‘I am not well, madam,’ Jeanette answered. ‘I beg leave to retire.’
Katerine eyed her narrowly, but gestured for her servant, Mary, to accompany her with Hawise.
Once in her chamber, Jeanette sat down on her bed and stared at the wall. She did not know if Thomas would fight for their marriage or let it go. If he broached the subject to the King and Queen, he would be putting himself in terrible danger. With the Montagus so high in royal favour, he could do nothing. That was the depressing reality.
‘Thomas is back,’ she told Hawise, ‘and so is John. Go and find him – seek your own joy.’
‘My lady . . .’ Hawise’s face lit with a mingling of pleasure and doubt.
‘I do not know how long they will be here. Go.’ Jeanette waved her hand. ‘Make haste.’
