The Other Countess (2 page)

Will turned to glance up at the picture of his father hanging
over the fireplace in his study.
This is your fault
, he thought.
If you had paid more attention to your estate and your family, we would not now be in the mire
.

Everyone expected him to step easily into the role of earl, but more often than not, Will felt like Atlas, carrying the weight of crushing responsibilities. In his case, the duties were summed up in the title ‘Earl of Dorset’; this splendid sounding noble strutted around keeping up appearances while he, the real Will, staggered underneath the burden, trying to keep his footing. He knew he wasn’t up to the task, but had to go on acting the part as so many depended on him. He’d begun to hate this Dorset fellow, whoever he was, and dreamt of casting him off like a snake sheds old skin.

Did you feel like that?
he asked the portrait.
Was that why you hid in your laboratory and let everything slide?

‘Well, my dear,’ the countess said, pushing the ledger aside, ‘there is only one avenue still open to us. You must go to court and repair our fortunes. Either you must win the Queen’s favour or marry an extremely rich young lady.’

Amused, Will quirked an eyebrow. ‘Simple as that?’

‘Oh my, that does sound rather mercenary, doesn’t it?’ admitted the countess. ‘I meant that you should do your duty by our beloved sovereign and aspire to win the heart of some worthy …’

‘I know what you meant, Mother.’ Will leant against the casement, crossing his arms and ankles, trying to ignore the fact that his hose were darned at the knee. ‘But I doubt I can afford to make an appearance that would not have our family dismissed in disgrace.’ He gestured to his outmoded velvet
doublet, inherited from his father’s wardrobe. ‘Not exactly the glass of fashion, am I?’

His mother smiled proudly. ‘My dear, what you lack in clothes you more than make up for in personal attraction, even if I do say so myself.’

‘And mothers are known for their impartiality?’

‘Of course.’ She rose and went to the iron-bound coffer that stood against one wall. Taking a key from the chain at her waist, she opened the lid and took out a satin pouch.

Will, already guessing what she intended, held his hand out to stop her. ‘No, Mother, you can’t.’

‘I can. My ruby set; part of my dowry. This should raise at least a thousand pounds – enough to equip England’s most handsome lord with enough clothes and staff for his season at court.’

A bleak sadness settled like a cloak on his shoulders. ‘If you sell that, then we really will have nothing left. I thought you wanted Sarah to have it when she gets married.’

‘I did, but the rubies will be scant comfort to us when we contemplate their beauty and starve this winter with the house falling about our ears.’

Will approached her and took the jewels. Leaning down, he kissed her brow.

‘I don’t deserve you.’

She poked his ribs playfully. ‘No, you don’t, you scoundrel. Now, go sell those and woo us a pleasant, wealthy girl, someone whom I won’t want to strangle within a week of sharing the house with her.’

‘I’ll do my best, Mother,’ Will vowed. ‘I’ll get us out of this, I promise.’

*

A particularly graphic curse shattered Ellie’s concentration. Muttering a mild rejoinder as the word she’d been hunting for floated out of reach, Ellie looked out of her chamber window tucked away in an obscure corner of Windsor Castle. Below, the carpenters were preparing the lists for the Queen’s jousting competition, the highlight of the St George’s holiday after the ceremony bestowing the Order of the Garter on the sovereign’s most trusted men. Sawing, hammering and swearing filled the air, distracting Ellie from the manuscript she was translating for her father. She chewed on the end of her quill as she watched one broad-shouldered labourer strip off his shirt, revealing a torso to rival a Greek god.

‘Don’t wander, Ellie,’ she chided herself, while sneaking a second look.

The work had been going on like this for the past few days. The Queen and her retinue would be arriving within the week; hundreds of extra people to cram into the castle. The young bucks would be expected to display themselves to advantage on the field of chivalry; the girls to dazzle their suitors with their superior beauty and fine apparel. Youth was in fashion in the court of the ageing monarch. Elizabeth’s old favourite, the Earl of Leicester had taken the unforgivable step of marrying; the situation vacant, all the young men were buzzing to court like bees to the honeypot.

Ellie yawned and rubbed her nose, not realizing she was leaving an inky streak across her cheek. It was all so tedious because she was on the outside of the excitement. To enter into the select group of gilded youth you had to have money, or the appearance of it, and influence. A scholar’s daughter with a suspect Spanish inheritance
was stuck somewhere between the kitchen and the great hall, belonging to neither.

Tearing off a crust from her manchet, Ellie tapped the crumbs so none fell on the page she was painstakingly inscribing. She took pride in her penmanship – very few women could read fluently, let alone write. The Queen could, of course, and Ellie admired her for it, mirroring herself on the monarch’s accomplishment of translating one text into three languages while still in the schoolroom. Her own mother, the Lady Marta Rodriguez, Countess of San Jaime, had been a noted poet at the Spanish court – that was what had first brought her to Sir Arthur Hutton’s attention and led to their marriage. Her father hoped that the fame of his erudite daughter would sweeten the Queen towards his own pursuits. He had urged her to complete her translation of a work by his favourite alchemist, Paracelsus, before the court arrived so he could make a gift of it to Elizabeth. Ellie found the task of translating the old Swiss windbag monumentally boring and she still had five pages to go. Worse still, she suspected that the Queen would be far less impressed than her father anticipated. Favour was given out for calculated political reasons, not from an overflow of heart.

‘Plague upon Paracelsus,’ she grumbled, picking up her pen again. ‘May his quill shrivel.’ Pleased with the mildly obscene curse, she returned to her labours.

At noon, the maid came to straighten the room Ellie shared with three other girls attached to Lord Mountjoy’s household. Ellie decided it was time to take a turn about the grounds and blow away the cobwebs from her overworked brain.
Locking her work in her little trunk at the end of her bed, she ran down the stairs. It would do no harm to go past the lists surely? The sun was climbing and there was a good chance that there would be other torsos to admire – in a purely abstract way, of course. The scholar’s appreciation of a healthy example of God’s creation, she promised herself.

Chuckling, Ellie jumped the last few steps and burst out into the sunshine, humming a snatch of song. Her mother’s favourite tune came naturally to her lips when, after the cramped hours in her cold chamber, she was swamped with the wonder of being alive. Blessings had finally found her. She was young, had been well fed for the last few months; she even had a new gown, a cast-off from a noble lady, all thanks to the patronage of Lord Mountjoy, who shared her father’s obsession with alchemy.

It hadn’t been like this for so long. The years after being run out of Lacey Hall had been miserable ones. They’d taken refuge with a fellow scholar in Northampton, living on his charity and a few tutoring jobs he had passed over to Sir Arthur. That was until Ellie had bloomed sufficiently to attract a much less welcome attention from their host. She’d lived in fear for a few months that her father would insist that she marry his friend in payment for the years they had lodged there. The suggestion had been in the air until Sir Arthur fell out with his colleague over the best catalyst to use in the conversion of base metals. Ellie and her father had been out on their ear in the middle of the night as a result, their few belongings thrown after them, while the scholar shouted:

‘A preparation of sulphur, you fool!’

He banged the door closed on them – and on any prospect of marriage.

Saved by sulphur
, thought Ellie gratefully, walking slowly down a path bordered by yew hedges, taking full advantage of the unobstructed view of the lists in each opening.

It had been no paradise that they had left in Northampton, but nothing had prepared her for the months of wandering that followed. They had descended to a level little better than beggars until Lord Mountjoy had taken them in. The experience had left its mark on Ellie. Her youthful belief in her father, already dying, had finally withered leaving only the husk of dutiful companionship behind. He would never find gold: she had accepted this truth. She could only pray that he too would wake up from the delusion before it was too late.

She headed to the herb garden, thinking the scents would be a pleasant change from the stuffy confines of her room. In Lord Mountjoy’s household she had been able to consult the limner’s drawings of the plants; perhaps there would be some new ones for her to see in the Queen’s well-stocked borders? One of her dreams was to have her own patch of earth one day where she could experiment with growing different herbs for medicine and cooking. English food never tasted quite as well as what she remembered of her mother’s recipes. She crumbled a rosemary twig in her fingers, breathing in the heady scent.

The crunch of footsteps on the gravel alerted her that she was not alone in this part of the garden. Looking behind, she saw three young nobles approaching swiftly from the direction of the stables, deep in talk. Three brothers or close kin, she guessed, from the resemblance between them. She increased her pace. Court politics were treacherous and deadly. Better not to be suspected of overhearing anything. But her much
shorter legs could not outpace the three giants coming towards her. She chose instead to turn aside from the yew walk and sit in an arbour until they had passed. The scrap of dutiful sewing she kept in her pocket for such occasions provided her with excuse enough for being there.

‘As much as I love you, Will, I really would rather not be dancing attendance on you,’ said the tallest of the three, tugging uncomfortably at the tight ruff scratching his neck. He was an imposing-looking young man with a mane of shoulder-length brown hair, his gait soldierly as he strode along. ‘How long do you think this mummery will be necessary?’

With a sick dread, Ellie recognized the golden-haired one referred to as Will, last seen ordering her out of his house four years ago. Knowing her luck, she must have summoned him like a bad faerie by thinking about what had happened at Lacey Hall. She stabbed the cloth with her needle, yanking the thread through, humiliation boiling in her veins.

‘I’m sorry, Jamie, but I must have a retinue. I cannot present myself to our sovereign with fewer men than a minor baron.’ The Earl of Dorset’s voice was deeper now, at eighteen having lost all trace of the boy.

The tall one snorted. ‘Bloody foolish enterprise, if you ask me.’

‘Maybe, but we’ve run out of choices.’

Bored with the sober talk, the youngest of the three, dark like his taller sibling, jumped up and tugged James’s cap from his head. Ellie guessed he must be thirteen or fourteen, sprouting like a beanstalk, but with none of his brothers’ bulk as yet. ‘Stop grumbling, Jamie! You sound like a boring old fart. There’s going to be a joust – surely that must be better than
staying in Cambridge?’ He skimmed the cap up the path. It flopped on top of the hedge. Hooting with laughter, he raced after it, leapt to snatch it back and repeated the game.

‘Idiot,’ muttered James. ‘Tobias, give that back!’

‘Catch me if you can!’ The boy sprinted away, the cap crushed in his fist.

‘You’ll ruin it!’ James ran after him. ‘I’m going to beat you within an inch of your life, you Devil-spawned nuisance!’

‘Like to see you try!’ jeered Tobias, disappearing round a corner.

‘Thieving magpie!’ James put on an extra spurt of speed, determined to save his cap.

Will shook his head and stooped to pick up the feather than had fallen from his brother’s hat in the tussle. It was then he realized they had not been without a witness. He bowed.

‘Good day, little mistress.’

Ellie stood up and curtsied. ‘My lord.’ She smoothed her forest green tabbinet skirt, thankful that she at least looked worthy of a lord’s bow.

He gestured in the direction of the vanished Laceys. ‘My brothers.’ The earl left that hanging as sufficient explanation.

‘So I saw.’ She kept her eyes on her embroidery, relieved he had not recognized her. But why was he not leaving?

He tucked the feather in an eyelet of his doublet. ‘I am interrupting your employment.’

‘Oh, it is nothing.’ She shoved the cloth behind her.

The defensive reaction provoked his interest rather than dampened it. ‘May I see?’

Reluctantly, she held her sewing out. It was a wretched
piece, not improved by the scarlet cross stitch she had just inflicted on it.

‘A sampler?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

He twitched it from her fingers and flattened it. ‘I fear it is somewhat stained on this corner.’ He lifted his eyes to her face. ‘As is the maker.’ He touched her cheek.

Could there be anything more mortifying than to be caught out by the Earl of Dorset of all people? Ellie put her hand to her cheek trying to hide the ink smudge.

‘Here, let me.’ He drew a square of linen from his pocket and dipped it in the fountain playing beside the arbour. Holding her gaze with his, he bent down and rubbed the mark away. ‘All gone.’

Ellie couldn’t breathe. He was standing so close she could smell the hint of cloves in his breath and feel the heat of his touch on her face. Could he be flirting with her? The idea was preposterous. Yet his blue eyes were speculative, smiling but still with a hint of hardness that she expected from him.

‘May I ask your name, mistress?’

‘Lady Eleanor Rodriguez, Countess of San Jaime.’ Her voice sounded strangely husky.

His smile dimmed. ‘A Spaniard?’

‘My mother was from Madrid but has been dead these ten years. My father is English.’