The Lost Duchess
Contents
Emme Fifield has fallen about as far as a gentlewoman can.
Once a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, her only hope of surviving the scandal that threatens to engulf her is to escape England for a fresh start in the New World, where nobody has ever heard of the Duchess of Somerset.
Emme joins Kit Doonan’s rag-tag band of idealists, desperados and misfits bound for Virginia. But such a trip will be far from easy and Emme finds her attraction to the mysterious Doonan inconvenient to say the least.
As for Kit, the handsome mariner has spent years imprisoned by the Spanish, and living as an outlaw with a band of escaped slaves: he has his own inner demons to confront, and his own dark secrets to keep...
Jenny Barden
has a love of history and adventure, and has travelled widely in South and Central America. Much of the inspiration for both her first novel
Mistress of the Sea
and
The Lost Duchess
has come from retracing the steps of early adventurers in the New World.
Jenny has four children and now lives in Dorset with her long suffering husband and an ever increasing assortment of pets.
More about Jenny can be found at
www.jennybarden.com
or follow Jenny on twitter
@jennywilldoit
For my mother,
with love and immense gratitude
‘… Who so desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again:
Redit orbis in orbem
…’
—Sir Walter Raleigh, in The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, Vol 1 (prefixed by Thomas Birch, 1751)
Possession
‘… After thanks given to God for our safe arrival thither, we manned our boats, and went to view the land next adjoining, and to take possession of the same, in the right of the Queen’s most excellent Majesty … Which being performed … we viewed the land about us, being … very sandy and low towards the waterside, but so full of grapes, as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them, of which we found such plenty, as well there as in all place else, both on the sand, and on the green soil on the hills, as in the plains, as well on every little shrub, as also climbing towards the tops of the high cedars, that I think in all the world the like abundance is not to be found …’
—From Arthur Barlowe’s account to Sir Walter Raleigh of the discovery of Virginia in 1584, first published by Richard Hakluyt the younger in
The Principal Navigations
1589
August 1586
‘Come with me.’
Emme Fifield started, looked the length of the gallery, and noticed a few courtiers too far away to be heard speaking. She glanced
behind her and saw only tapestries and a side table draped with a rich Persian carpet. Then the low voice urged her again.
‘In here.’
A door opened at her side, one of the small access doors leading to a spiral staircase that connected the areas of the palace open to visitors with those that were the preserve of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. The door was usually locked.
A man stood in the shadows. He beckoned to her and she noticed his rings and the lace of his cuff before she made out his face in the darkness: arched brows and a long chin with a smile to match the gleam of devilment in his age-hollowed eyes.
‘Lord Hertford!’ She bit back his name, looking round again but seeing no one else. ‘What are you …?’
‘Come!’
He reached out, grasped her arm, and drew her to him. The door closed behind them and the light dimmed to an orange glow from the few candles mounted on the curved turret walls. He spoke over his shoulder as he wound his way up the staircase.
‘I have news for the prettiest maid at court, news for your dainty ear alone, if you will allow me to whisper it close.’
He bent to her and grinned again, running a finger under her chin while her feet teetered on the wedge-shaped steps. He was incorrigible, yet so far above her in rank that she could not gainsay him. Giving her a wink and a look that ran from her eyes to her bosom he turned and ascended with an exaggerated display of tiptoeing upward.
She watched the backs of his short legs, slightly bowed and clad in fancy stockings, and wondered how he had come to be in the sequestered heart of Richmond Palace. The Earl had been
in disgrace since infamously seducing a virgin of the blood royal and twice getting Lady Catherine Grey with child after a marriage declared a sham. She was surprised he had the temerity to venture anywhere out of bounds. Though the Earl had been released after a spell in the Tower, and Lady Grey had died long ago, he was only occasionally seen at court, and surely he should never have been in the private dressing room of Her Majesty’s ladies-in-waiting, the room that he now entered.
Emme’s foremost duty was to protect the Queen, and Lord Hertford’s presence almost directly above the royal bedchamber breached the measures in place to ensure Her Majesty’s safety, therefore she should challenge him. Yet she could not believe that waggish Lord Hertford was any real threat; he was part of the Queen’s larger family, her stepmother’s nephew, one of the foremost noblemen of the land. He would have been England’s last duke if his father, the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector during the short reign of Good King Harry’s son, had not lost power and his head before King Edward’s early death. She was loath to risk offending a gentleman of Lord Hertford’s lineage, and his avuncular manner with her made her even more diffident.
‘If you will forgive me,’ she began hesitantly. ‘But …’
‘Forgive you? Of course I forgive you, Mistress Emmelyne.’ With a flourish he took her hand, kissed and patted it, then smiled at her wickedly. ‘What have you done?’
She drew her hand away.
‘… What are you doing here?’
‘Ah!’ He produced a key from a pocket in his brocaded red and gold Venetian breeches. ‘I have friends,’ he said, tapping his nose and cocking his head, ‘as do you, my dear,’ and with his hand over
his heart plainly meant she should consider him her friend as well. With brazen assurance he proceeded to use the key to lock the doors to the room, and met her look of astonishment with another breezy quip. ‘I have news, and let no one interrupt the telling. I know you will want to hear it,’ he added, and left the prospect dangling while he sat on a stool by the dressing table and calmly crossed his legs.
She watched him pocket the key again. As far as she knew, the only gentleman of rank to have been given such a thing was Sir Walter Raleigh in his capacity as Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners, charged with protecting the Queen’s ladies. How had Lord Hertford got that key? She held back the question, since asking would plainly be fruitless, and she was curious about his news even if reluctant to show it. Busying herself with tidying the muddled pots of unguents and pastes on the dressing table, she tried to appear unconcerned.
‘Well, what is this news that is so secret you must capture me before revealing it?’
‘Sir Francis Drake comes here tomorrow!’
‘I knew it already.’ She cut across him and turned her back, picked up a farthingale petticoat frame, and shook it hard enough to make the whalebone hoops rattle. That news had been the gossip of the court for days.
‘Did you know that he has brought back all of the men sent by Sir Walter to protect his claim to Virginia, every last one?’
‘No …’ Her voice tailed off in thinking about what that meant: England’s first outpost in the New World and now it had been abandoned. She was sorry to hear it.
‘Sir Walter will not be pleased,’ the Earl said, unstoppering a pot of ceruse and dabbing at it idly. Smearing a gob on his cheek, he
began to rub in the lead white with a circular motion of his finger, uttering a small, mock-womanish shriek when it became congealed in his beard.
She caught at his wrist as he picked up a hand mirror. A man old enough to be her father should really have grown out of behaving like a naughty boy. She clicked her tongue and handed him a cloth. ‘Please wipe your fingers, my lord.’
He pulled a wry expression but did as she asked, then tipped his head on one side to offer her his daubed cheek.
‘Do I look regal?’
‘Ceruse is not a plaything,’ she said firmly, then dipped a cloth in vinegar and set about wiping the goo from his beard.
His face contorted into a grimace. ‘The agonies that the Queen must endure to invest her visage with the radiance of light.’
She smiled despite herself.
‘’Tis true. We maids-of-honour have been told not to look full upon her face lest our eyes be blinded as by looking at the sun.’
He glanced at her. ‘Whereas you, sweet maiden, have no need to be painted fairer; your natural complexion is like pure alabaster.’
‘Tush!’ Aware that his gaze had lowered from her eyes to her bosom, she whipped the cloth over the top of his head.
‘Do you have any more news?’ she asked, ignoring his gasp of protest. ‘Why did Sir Walter’s men leave?’
‘I gather the land and its native inhabitants were not quite as hospitable as earlier reports suggested. Storms, savages and hunger seem to have been their chief ordeals.’
‘Does that mean Sir Walter’s efforts were in vain?’
‘It would appear so. In rescuing Sir Walter’s men from Virginia, Sir Francis has effectively deprived him of the exercise of his patent
to settle the region. He has also lost Sir Walter a lot of money, perhaps as much as twenty thousand pounds.’
‘A fortune!’ Emme exhaled with a little gasp. She drew a large cushion closer, spread her voluminous skirts and sat down.
‘What Sir Francis cannot have known,’ Lord Hertford continued with satisfied ease, ‘is that Sir Walter despatched, first, a supply ship.’ He tapped one finger. ‘And, second, Sir Richard Grenville.’ He tapped another finger. ‘… Along with a whole fleet, as well as four hundred soldiers and mariners, to re-provision and strengthen the fort in Virginia some months ago. Sir Richard will probably be on his way back now, having found no one to relieve, and doubtless cursing the man who sent him on such an arduous wild goose chase.’
‘I’faith!’ She clapped her hands and bit her lip to stifle a grin. Sir Walter Raleigh was the darling of the Queen. How would Sir Francis Drake now be received? ‘I wonder whether Sir Walter will be here tomorrow …?’
‘I doubt it, though I’ve heard he is already on his way from his estates in Ireland.’
‘Her Majesty will welcome Sir Francis warmly, I am sure. She admires him much.’
‘Especially when he brings her trophies of conquest, as he will, having trounced the Spaniards soundly from Cartagena to Florida, and sacked Santa Domingo, their pretty jewel of the New World.’
‘To think of such places!’ Emme looked up at Lord Hertford, imagining things she could only guess at: palm trees and rainbow coral, flying fish and white cities.
He reached across and touched her pearl earring then moved his fingers to caress her ear, though she turned to stop him.
‘You like to hear of the world, don’t you? To learn who’s doing what and why. For a young maiden you have a lively curiosity.’
She lowered her eyes and stroked the cushion, then fiddled with the shaft of a tiny feather she could feel pricking her fingers. ‘Sometimes life at court can be dull.’