Georgette Heyer Read Online Free PDF Page A

princess – rarely accompanied her lord on his progresses. She lived mostly at Leicester, and was very pious: quite unlike her younger sister, who was married to the Duke of York, and of whom some merry tales were told. No one could feel surprise that M. de Guyenne had looked beyond the marriage-bed, for he was one who liked a lady to be witty and well-visaged, and the Duchess, poor soul, was as dull as she was dish-faced. His first wife, the heiress of Lancaster, had been one of the loveliest of the Court dames: my lord Harry was said to resemble her.
    Riding beside M. de Guyenne, on one of the strange ladies’ saddles brought into England by King Richard’s good Bohemian Queen, was a lady of great beauty, at sight of whom the Countess’s heart sank. One would never wish to speak despitously of one’s lord’s own sister, but it was impossible to forbear the thought that if Bess had not been M. de Guyenne’s daughter she must have hidden her head in a nunnery, seven years ago, instead of marrying the King’s half-brother, and riding about the country in a mantle lined with ermine, and a wired coif of such preposterous dimensions that her hood would not cover it, and was allowed to hang carelessly down her back. Handfast to the Earl of Pembroke she had been, and had played him false with Sir John Holland, half-brother of the King. She had been found to be with child by Sir John, and M. de Guyenne had had to delay his departure for Spain to settle the affair. So well had he done it that although everyone knew she was divorced from Pembroke very few people knew just what had happened to bring about this sad state of affairs. The infant had not survived; and the marriage to Sir John was celebrated with as much pomp as if it had been a decently arranged contract instead of the hasty union which it really was. King Richard had created his half-brother Earl of Huntingdon, so that it seemed as though it was true that the wicked flourished like bay trees.
    There was no doubt that the Earl of Huntingdon was a wicked man. Besides being a spouse-breaker, he had certainly one murder to his discredit, and probably two; and no one could doubt that it was her desperate attempt to induce King Richard to pardon him the death of young Stafford which had killed their mother, the Dowager Princess of Wales. To make matters worse, he claimed kinship to my lady of Derby, his elder brother having married one of her Fitzalan aunts. This gentleman, the Earl of Kent, although not, as far as anyone knew, a murderer, was generally held to be as great a cumberworld as Huntingdon. A bad, upsprung family, the Hollands: the Countess hoped that Bess had not brought her husband with her to Kenilworth.
    She would have been startled had she guessed that her sons’ eyes were just as swiftly searching the cavalcade for signs of Huntingdon as her own; and shocked to have known that he figured in their minds as an ogre whom it was a terror and a delight to see. They knew quite as much as she did about his plunging his sword into Hugh Stafford’s heart, and riding off with the echo of his own fiercely uttered name still quivering on the night air; for they had had it all from Wilkin.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said old Wilkin, ‘that was what slew the Princess of Wales, dead as a stone, for she was a corpulent dame, look you, and all that running about to save Sir John from having his head took off was what killed her, poor soul! Ay, I remember her when they named her the Fair Maid of Kent, so lovesome she was, and her middle no thicker than two hands might span! But so it goes! Three ells of cloth it took to make her a gown at the latter end! Ah, well! God assoil her! She lies in her grave now, and King Richard for very grief gave Sir John his life, more’s the pity, for mark me if he does not work a greater mischief yet!’
    The lordings knew not whether to be glad or sorry that the Earl had not accompanied Aunt Bess to Kenilworth. They accepted their aunt’s