The Master of Winterbourne

‘I – ’ Henrietta realised she had no words to explain away the message. The words were too explicit, there was no possible ambiguity in its expression she could find to divert his anger. Surely now he knew, or could swiftly guess everything.

‘I am waiting, Wife.’ The tightly controlled anger clipped his words.

Henrietta gazed back at him, desperately searching for an avenue of escape where none existed.

‘His name. I asked you for his name.’

‘I cannot.’ The note was signed only with an ornate scrawl which might have begun with a T, but even had she known the name her vow to James forbade her to reveal it.

‘Your loyalty is admirable, madam.’ A thin mockery of a smile touched his lips but left his eyes as hard as before. For the first time Henrietta's panic congealed into cold fear as she recognised the depth of Matthew's anger. ‘A pity you do not regard your marriage vows in such a light – they have worn very thin in scant time.’

Henrietta dropped her head into her hands, unable to face the anger, contempt, betrayal in his face. There had been much sadness in her short life but she had never had to confront such bitter fury, such ruthless examination. To be interrogated like this by her husband, by the man she loved, was almost more than she could bear.

‘Oh, no, madam. Pray do not even think about weeping, it will have no effect on me.’ He crossed to the window,

stood with his back to her, rejection in every line of his tense body.

The silence stretched on until she thought she would scream, then he said. ‘I had not thought myself such a fool, so easily gulled by a chit of a girl. I knew you were hiding something from me, yet on the night we were betrothed you denied you loved another. Let me hear your deceitful lips deny it again now I hold the evidence in my hand.’

The rigid façade of his control was cracking, but, thunderstruck, Henrietta was conscious of nothing but the ludicrousness of the accusation. He believed her to have a lover? He thought the letter he held was a love missive from that man? The accusation was so wide of the mark that it made her smile for one fatal second.

Matthew turned and caught it. His fists clenched suddenly at his side. ‘So you find it amusing, madam? Perhaps you would care to share the jest with your husband, for I confess I fail to see the humour in it.’

‘But Matthew…’ Henrietta struggled to come to terms with the accusation. ‘I was a virgin when I came to you in marriage. You know that.’

‘All that I know is that you were too cautious to give yourself to him – then. This letter proves your lover is too compromised politically to come to you openly. You have been skilful, playing the loving wife to me. No wonder my arrival at Winterbourne was so unwelcome to you when you were saving yourself for this traitor.’

Chapter Twenty Two

Matthew screwed up the parchment and threw it to floor. There was no way out of this tangled web without telling him the truth. But to do so would not only break her vow, but would threaten the liberty, the very lives, of everyone involved. Matthew was no lukewarm bystander to ignore this intelligence. He believed in the rightness of the Commonwealth, in the rightness of what he had fought for, for what so many had died for. However moderate his view, in his eyes it was the King who was the traitor for he had betrayed his people by ruling above the law and Parliament.

Cornered, Henrietta resorted to begging. ‘Trust me, Matthew, please, just trust me.’

‘Trust you?’ His laughter was bitter. ‘Let me remind you what your lover promises: to lift the burden of your unwanted marriage from you. Just how do you expect him to achieve this? A knife in my back one dark night? Or perhaps you are too impatient to wait for his arrival. Something more subtle perhaps, brewed in the stillroom by yourself or Mistress Perrott to slip into my ale? Should I sicken and die, eased out of life by your tender ministrations leaving you a rich and grieving widow?’

'How could you say such things?’ Henrietta whispered hoarsely. ‘How could you believe such monstrous things?’ He was accusing her of crimes which were enough to condemn her to the stake. To kill a husband was not just a capital offence, it was petty treason – and the penalty for that for a woman was the fire. Her lips were dry, she could hardly say the words.

‘I believe the evidence of my own eyes.’ He bent to retrieve the message, folded it and tucked it into his jerkin. Henrietta realised through the horror that she was talking to a lawyer, a man trained to probe and disbelieve. ‘You promised to love, honour and obey me. Well, I was fool enough to believe you were growing to love me. No matter, a rational man can do without love. But you have consistently disobeyed me, taken pleasure in defying me with your defence of the Royalist cause. And now I find you have dishonoured me, and that do not forgive, Wife.’

A cold hand closed its fingers round her heart. He was going to leave her. Winterbourne was his, the marriage was consummated. If he chose to live apart from her, not see her from one year's end to the next, that was his right and she could not gainsay it. if he chose to lock her in her room for the rest of her life, he could do that too. She was powerless, more powerless as his wife than she had even been when James and Francis had been alive.

A sudden hope flared. She had not told him about the child. Surely he would not leave her when he realised she was pregnant? Then reality reasserted itself. He would say the child was not his, and how could she ever prove it? Rather than have him reject the baby she would keep it a secret for as long as she could.

‘What will you do?’ she asked, while inside she wept. ‘Where will you go?’ Matthew smiled thinly. ‘Go? I go nowhere, wife. It is not I who should be slinking away ashamed. No, you do not get rid of me that easily, however much you desire it. Winterbourne is mine by law, the only sovereign power in this land, I would remind you, and here I remain while it suits me. And you are still my wife, Henrietta, mine to command. I want sons, Winterbourne needs an heir. The country, thanks to your Royalist friends, needs a new generation to heal its wounds.’

The relief he was staying was so great that she almost swooned. When she opened her eyes again Matthew was shrugging his jerkin from his shoulders.

‘Matthew, what are you doing?’

‘Going to bed, wife, with you, as is my right.’ Matthew watched the blush spread up the column of her throat as she comprehended his meaning. ‘Or will you deny me?’

She knew he was using her passionate response to him as a weapon against the unknown cavalier. Henrietta looked up into the implacable green eyes as he drew her unresisting into his arms. It was like stepping into the embrace of a stranger. Instinct told her that nothing she told him, even the whole truth, would convince him of her fidelity, so jealous was he. All she could do was to show him how much she loved him. And if he would not listen to her words she would show him with her body.

*

Three weeks later Henrietta trudged in her pattens through the wet, rank grass to the Home Farm. The rain had turned to fog, lying eerily in the hollows along the trackway, deadening all sound.

Despite his threats on the night when he had discovered the letter Matthew had not come to her bed again. He had moved to the Spanish chamber and spoke to her only when necessary before the servants. In more optimistic moments Henrietta told herself he would not react like this if he didn't feel something for her. But such moments were rare. As she fought nausea, fear and depression, Henrietta felt the memory of the happiness they had shared fading daily.