The Master of Winterbourne

‘There's my good girl. We will forget all that foolishness.’ Mistress Clifford patted her cheek in passing. ‘Just show a pleasant face and all will be well. These megrims are natural at such a time. When you have seen Robert, please oversee the girls in the stillroom, they are finding rosewater for the bedlinen.’ She bustled off importantly with Mary in tow and Henrietta hurried down to the steward's room.

Robert was sitting at his desk, pen in hand, but he dropped it in the pewter standish, shook sand over the wet ink of the document and rose at her entrance. ‘Mistress.’ He cast a swift glance over her shoulder, then pulled the door to behind her.

‘Where's Cobham?’ Henrietta moved to the window and glanced out, but the garden beyond was empty.

‘Summoned by his master. Did you know Sir Matthew was returned?’

Henrietta nodded as she sat down on the long settle against the wall. ‘A day early. Is there news from Oxford yet? Is that why you asked to see me?’

‘No. That is what concerns me. I would send another messenger, but how to explain his absence at this time?’

He was right. Everyone in the household and Home Farm, from steward to potboy, was fully occupied in preparations for the wedding of their master and mistress.

‘But why the delay?’ Henrietta demanded fretfully. ‘I was so sure you were going to say you had word. What if a messenger comes now?’

‘The next few days are perhaps the safest,’ said Robert thoughtfully. ‘The house is so full of people, some of them from outlying farms. One strange face will not look amiss.’

‘Yes, you are right. And so many messengers are coming with letters and gifts from our neighbours… There's still tomorrow.’ If only the messenger would come, take those papers, relieve her of her promise to her brother before she had to make her vows to Matthew, pledges of obedience and loyalty she would break as soon as she made them.

‘Let me know directly there is any news, Robert,’ she was saying as she opened the door and came face to face with Matthew and Cobham, just emerging from the head of the cellar stairs. ‘That mare had such difficulties last time she foaled,’ she added to account for her words.

Matthew's nod of acknowledgement was coolly distant and he continued talking to his clerk. ‘There's enough ale and cider in the cellars to intoxicate the entire village twice over.’

‘They should drink small beer like God-fearing, sober persons,’ Cobham said with a sniff.

‘Even the Apostles drank wine, Nathaniel,’ Matthew answered his clerk's grumbling with a clap on the shoulder. ‘Speaking of which, see if we hav

e wine enough. Master Weldon should know.’

Robert joined them in the corridor. ‘I sent the wagon to Aylesbury yesterday, Sir Matthew. It should return this afternoon.’

Henrietta left the men and slipped quietly down the passage to her right. The stillroom was empty, a row of rosewater jars on one broad slate ledge proof that the girls had obeyed Aunt Susan's instructions to scent the linen before making up the guests' beds.

The light filtered dim through cheesecloth draped across the latticed windows to protect the delicate herbs and spices from the sun. The room was cool and still, redolent with smells, an exotic mingling of flowers and spices with an underlying astringency of medicines and potions. Henrietta gathered a bunch of long-stemmed lavender, then searched through a basket on the work-table for a piece of ribbon to tie it. It was quiet and peaceful, the only sound in the room the steady drip, drip of an infusion straining through a muslin bag. She would make lavender bunches for herself and Aunt Susan to hang among the folds of their best dresses to scent them for the wedding day. It was a task she should have finished the day before, but at least she was doing something useful, not just running away.

Her fingers worked dextrously among the stiff stems, weaving the ribbon into a lattice pattern to hold the bundle firm. It was a skilful art her aunt had taught her young, one she was trying to instil into Letty along with countless others that a lady's maid needed to master.

The door opened behind her and, without turning, her mind on the girl, she said, ‘Letty, take these and hang them in the skirts of my yellow gown. Throw away the old bunches, their savour will be quite gone after all this time. Then come back and I will have finished the bunches for my aunt.’

There was no reply. She turned, expecting to find the girl hesitating on the threshold, but it was not Letty who stood there.

Matthew was looking at her across the wide stone flags. Even in the gloom she saw the watchfulness in his eyes. The blood rose hectically to her cheeks and she made an instinctive backward movement away from him. Whatever he had been about to say died on his lips and they stood in silence for a long moment.

‘What do you want?’

‘Only to say that I shall endeavour to keep apart from you until our wedding day as you seem to find my presence so upsetting. After tomorrow morning I am afraid that, as my wife, you will have to resign yourself to my company.’

Before she could deny that was what she desired, before she could move across the shadowed room to touch him, read his face, he was gone.

Chapter Thirteen

Lawrence Stone stood in the church porch. ‘Come along, my dear Henrietta, your bridegroom awaits you impatiently.’

Henrietta looked up and met his kindly smile. He patted her cold hand as it lay on his forearm and waited while Letty and Alice fussed around, smoothing Henrietta's primrose silk skirts, dusting the faint traces of their slow procession from the house from the silver embroidered petticoat revealed at the front.

‘Ready?’

She took a deep breath and nodded against the weight of unbound hair cascading down her back from a circlet of palest yellow roses. The interior of the church was shadowed and, after the brilliant sunlight and warmth outside, the air struck chill, despite the throng of people lining the side aisles and filling the pews. On Lawyer Stone's arm she walked slowly towards the altar, conscious she was the focus of attention as the congregation turned to watch her pass.