The Master of Winterbourne Read online

  ‘Your face when you spoke of her, the pain in your eyes when you recollected her death. You spoke of her so often,’ she whispered.

  ‘Henrietta, look at me.’ He tugged her hands and she met his eyes reluctantly, still ashamed of her jealousy. ‘Listen to me. I loved Sarah, we grew up together knowing we would eventually marry. It was our fathers' wish for us. We were friends first, lovers second, she and I. She was gentle and meek and obedient, not at all like you, Henrietta.’ She gasped indignantly, then saw the smile in his eyes.

  ‘I loved you the first time I saw you, so proud and haughty, so passionate inside. Sarah and I never crossed words; ours was a steady marriage. But until you I never understood what passion between a man and a woman truly was.’

  ‘You made me feel so wanton. .so unmaidenly,’ she confessed, blushing still deeper.

  His grin was almost like the old Matthew. ‘You make me very eager to be well and strong again, Wife!’ He tipped up her chin and gazed long and lovingly into her eyes. ‘Kiss me.’

  Henrietta let her lips rest gently against his, her arms round his neck, their hearts beating together. The long, tranquil moment stretched on as she wondered hazily how it was possible to be so happy, so at peace.

  But there was still her secret lying between them. She must face it. To be true to Matthew she must be untrue to her brother, break her oath of secrecy and trust in Matthew's moderation that what she told him would not hazard the safety of Robert, Alice and the others. At least she had kept the casket safe while it was in her care, she had discharged her promise.

  ‘Matthew, there is something I must tell you. I know you have been suspicious that I have not been open with you, that I have kept a secret from you. And there was the letter… Now we have found each other there can be no secrets between us – ’

  ‘Do not tell me.’ He broke across her confession. ‘I know that you love me and no other. I trust you, Henrietta.’

  ‘But I must tell you,’ she implored. ‘I would have told you sooner but I had sworn an oath.’

  ‘No. Enough. You must not break an oath for my sake.’

  The door crashed open behind them, startling Henrietta so much that she almost fell from the bed. Nathaniel Cobham stood on the threshold, hair and clothes awry, face wan from four days' enforced seclusion. ‘Master Matthew! Thank the Lord you are alive.’

  Matthew's brows shot up. ‘Nathaniel? Do not distress yourself so, I am much restored, thank you. Come in and shut the door.’

  ‘Have you drunk anything that witch has prepared for you?’ Cobham demanded, white lipped. ‘Pray God I am not too late.’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses, man?’ Matthew demanded, struggling to raise himself in the bed. ‘How dare you address your mistress in those terms?’

  ‘Ask her why she has kept me prisoner these past four days,’ the clerk demanded. ‘I was dragged from your side by her louts, thrown into my room… I would be there still if it were not for the stupidity of the dolt guarding me.’

  ‘Henrietta, is this true? Have you ordered Nathaniel incarcerated?’ Matthew looked at her, clearly uncertain whether to believe the clerk's ravings or not.

  ‘He accused Mistress Perrott of witchcraft when she came to help look after you. Matthew. He acted like a man demented. The servants were terrified, I had no choice.’

  ‘She lies!’ Cobham blazed, one bony finger raised in accusation.

  ‘Nathaniel, I will become seriously displeased if you continue like this. It should be obvious to the dullest wit that I am mending and that is due to my dear wife's care.’

  ‘Your dear wife? That Royalist whore – ’

  ‘Henrietta, ring for John. You are right, his brain is turned.’

  ‘Hear me out. Ask your dear wife about the man whom I found meeting her in the yard in the dead of night while you were away.’ Matthew shot Henrietta a puzzled glance, his eyes narrowing as he saw the colour drain from her face. ‘She met him in her nightrobe, was conducting him to her chamber when I discovered them. She and that old crow Lady Willoughby hatched some pretence of a groom and a servant wench, but he was no groom. I saw his clothes, his sword. He was a gentleman.’

  ‘Henrietta? Tell me he lies.’

  ‘I cannot. There was a man here, but he was not, is not, my lover.’

  ‘Then he did not come to meet you?’

  ‘Yes. No… Matthew, believe me, I have done nothing to harm you.’

  The silence in the room was palpable as Matthew's eyes moved from his clerk's features to his wife's and back to Cobham again. Henrietta felt a welling black despair enfolding her. All their new-found love was being poisoned by the clerk's suspicions.

  'I know of this already. You tell me nothing new, Cobham.’ Matthew's calm pronouncement was so unexpected that both Henrietta and Cobham gasped. ‘You are overwrought by worry for me. For that reason, and that reason only, I forgive your wild accusations about my wife. When you are calmer you must apologise to your mistress yourself. Now go to your chamber and compose yourself.’

  Stunned into silence, Cobham shuffled from the room, a shabby, diminished figure in rusty black. ‘Matthew, I thank you for your trust,’ Henrietta began, stumbling over the words. ‘But he was telling only the truth. There was a man, I was trying to tell you.’

  ‘And I told you, wife, that I do not ask you to break your secret, but it is best I do not know.’ He lay back against the pillows, his face suddenly grey with fatigue.

  ‘We will talk of it later.’ Henrietta was too concerned for his health to persist. ‘Cobham must go. I will not have him carrying on so, he sets the entire household on its heels. He was threatening to bring the witch finder in to search the whole village. I wonder you tolerate him.’

  ‘He was not always so, but there has been much tragedy in his life. His family were all killed in a fire and his sorrow only served to increase a narrowness which was always part of his character and beliefs. But he had been a loyal servant to both my father and myself. Could you bring yourself to disown Alice if she too became difficult with age?’

  ‘No, of course I could not. Sleep now, my love, and I will sit by you.’

  ‘You too are fatigued. Go to your own chamber and rest, Henrietta. There is the child to think of and you are too precious to me to risk your health.’

  *

  When Henrietta woke the house was quiet and the shadows were long in her room despite the brilliant white of snow outside. The realisation of her happiness sent her almost running down the corridor in her haste to return to Matthew, to be in his arms again, to share more confidences, more words of love.

  The bed was empty, his clothes gone from the press, his boots from beside the chair. Henrietta stared, horrified. Where had he gone, why had he gone? Had he had second thoughts in the hours they had been apart? Had Cobham come back and filled his mind with poison? Henrietta ran down the stairs calling for Letty, for her aunt.

  John emerged from the kitchen corridor, a mug of ale in one hand. ‘Mistress, what is wrong?’

  ‘John. Have you seen your master? He is gone from his room.’ She was too distraught to beat about the bush.

  ‘Why, yes, Mistress. He asked for a horse to be saddled a good hour since.’

  ‘You let him go out in this cold? John, it could be the death of him.’

  ‘He seemed well enough, Mistress, and he was dressed for riding.’ The groom's normally civil tone held a touch of indignation.

  ‘I'm sorry, John, of course you could not have stopped him. But where has he gone?’

  ‘North, up the green lane. The short cut to the Oxford road by Home Farm, I supposed.’

  Henrietta dragged her cloak from the chest, thrusting her slippered feet into wooden pattens. ‘I must find him, he is too weak to ride far.’ She almost pushed past John in her hurry and ran across the slush of the yard towards the bridge.

  The hoofmarks were clear in the untrodden snow beyond the moat. After a few yards Henrietta had to stop to knock th
e packed snow from her pattens and as she straightened again she heard the muffled, plodding step of an approaching horse.

  He must have fallen and the horse was returning without him. Her heart knotted with fear that Matthew he could be lying in a snowdrift, the life's heat seeping from his body. Henrietta broke into an unsteady run as the grey horse rounded the corner of the lane. Even in the gathering gloom she could see the figure in the saddle.

  ‘Matthew!’ At her cry he looked up and straightened. 'What are you about?' She snatched the reins above the bit and tugged the horse towards the house.

  He tried to speak but managed only a painful cough. At that moment John reached them and swung up into the saddle behind his master, kicking the horse into trot.

  By the time Henrietta had reached the hall Matthew was wrapped in blankets in the big chair before the fire, recovered enough to wave away offers of broth and hot bricks.

  She sent the servants out and knelt in front of him. ‘Matthew, why were you leaving me?’

  ‘Leaving you?’ He was taken aback by the question ‘I was not leaving you.’

  ‘But you were on the road to Oxford.’

  ‘I was at Home Farm, speaking with Robert and Alice. They sent me a message.’

  ‘Home Farm?’ All her worried and doubts vanished in a surge of relieved anger. ‘You should not be from your bed, let alone riding in this cold to the risk of your very life! What message could be worth that?’

  He held up both hands to fend off her attack. ‘Peace, Henrietta. I had not taken you for a nagging wife.’ There were dark shadows of fatigue under his eyes, but his face was softened by laughter.

  ‘Nagging? Matthew, I believed you had left me, that you had thought again on what Cobham had told you.’

  ‘My poor darling.’ He touched her cheek, catching a tear as it escaped from the corner of her eye. ‘I was wrong to tease you, and thoughtless to leave without letting you know. In truth, I am weaker than I knew. I had hoped to be back before you woke.’

  ‘But why did you go?’

  ‘Letty had told Alice of Cobham's accusations. She is still confined, but she was determined I should know the truth. As she told me, she was bound by no oath as you were and has revealed all she knew of the casket and the messenger and your promise to your brother.’

  ‘She dared do so?’ Henrietta knew the risk Alice and Robert had taken. One word from Matthew in the right quarter and their lives would have been forfeit.

  ‘They dared because of their loyalty to your family and their love for you. And, like me, Robert wants to put the past aside and build a new future for our children. Forgive me, my love, for ever having doubted you.’ He took her hands in both of his.

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. And I was breaking my marriage vows in deceiving you.’ She met his eyes and found such warmth in their green depths that she was shaken to her heart.

  ‘You have had so much to bear. How could you stay so strong when you stood to lose everything – our love, Winterbourne, your people?’

  ‘I had no choice. I love you, I could not lie to you, so I chose silence. I thought once the papers were safe away and I was quit of my bond I could find a way to explain to you without involving Robert, Alice and the others.’

  ‘Loyalty must be in the air at Winterbourne. I will try and be worthy of it. Only say you forgive me, my love.’

  ‘Of course I forgive you,’ Henrietta stammered, unable to believe it was all coming right at last. ‘But you will not be angry with Robert and Alice for helping me?’

  ‘Never, for such loyalty. We all want the same thing, my love – peace and a future for our children.’ He stretched out an arm and caught her to him, holding her so fiercely that she wondered where he had found the strength.

  She drew back so that she could look into his face. ‘I am at peace with you, Matthew. And you, my love, are you at peace with me?’

  Matthew's eyes smiled into hers. ‘Now and for always. Nothing will ever part me from you, Henrietta, my own true love. I have come home here to you and Winterbourne and it will take greater powers than Kings and Parliaments to part us again.’

  About the Author

  Louise Allen lives on the North Norfolk coast close to the 18th century seaside town of Cromer. She is a passionate collector of late Georgian and Regency ephemera and prints and is the author of over fifty historical romances and non-fiction works, mainly set in the Georgian and Regency period.

  Full details of all her books, including extracts and buy-links, can be found at www.louiseallenregency.com

  Louise also blogs about Georgian life at http://janeaustenslondon.com/

  The Lords of Disgrace series

  His Housekeeper's Christmas Wish

  His Christmas Countess

  The Many Sins of Cris De Feaux

  The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone

  Compromised Lady

  Seduced by Love

  Historical Non-Fiction titles

  Walking Jane Austen's London

  Walks Through Regency London

  Stagecoach Travel

  Following the Great North Road

  To the Field of Waterloo: the first battlefield tourists 1815-1816