The Edge of Dark by Pamela Hartshorne

Author:Pamela Hartshorne [Hartshorne, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447249566
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter Thirteen

At first it seemed as if it might indeed be so. ‘You are in good looks tonight, wife,’ Robert said, loudly enough for others to hear. He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘Friends, you must let me present my wife to you,’ he said, turning to show her off to four young gentlemen about his own age. He gabbled off their names, so that Jane couldn’t catch them properly. ‘Sir Francis . . .’ he said, waving vaguely,‘. . . Charles . . . Mortimer . . . Sir Thomas Parker. Gentlemen, my wife,’ he said, an undercurrent in his voice that Jane couldn’t quite identify.

Jane sketched a curtsey, uncomfortable beneath their avid gazes. For once she was pleased when Margaret appeared beside her. ‘That colour becomes you,’ she said to Jane, looking her up and down, and even producing a thin smile. ‘Something has put a glow in your cheeks!’

If she was glowing, it was from being in the kitchen all day, but Jane bit back a tart response. Margaret and Robert were making an effort to be pleasant. She should do the same.

‘Come, sit.’ Robert waved his friends to a place at the table, but insisted that Jane sit beside him. This was how she had once imagined marriage to Robert, thought Jane, puzzled but pleased. Sitting next to him, feeling welcomed, and valued.

It didn’t feel quite real.

The great hall was soon ringing with noise and laughter. Jane nodded to Annis, who supervised the bringing out of the first course, and there were murmurs of appreciation as dish after dish was laid on the tables. Other servants moved up and down the room refilling goblets with wine, replenishing finger bowls or replacing crumpled napkins. In the fireplace at the other end of the hall, the Yule log spat and crackled.

The feast was a triumph. Everyone said so. Jane could tell it for herself as the volume rose and the faces along the tables shone with grease and gluttony, and she felt bad for longing for it to be over. She had worked so hard to prepare everything that she was weary now, and self-conscious in her fine new clothes. The ruff around her collar was growing limp in the heat, and the farthingale bunched behind her. Her laces were so tight she hardly dared eat anything.

Catching Annis’s eye, she gestured for the second course to be removed. Soon the sugar surprises would be brought in, and then the tables would be cleared and pushed back; she would just have to get through the dancing and then she would be able to go to bed.

The sugar comfits caused more murmurs of delight. ‘You have done well, wife,’ said Robert to Jane’s surprise, and she turned to see him pouring more wine into her goblet. ‘Come, have some wine and let us drink to our son.’

Another unexpected compliment! Was it possible that this might be the start of a new relationship between them? Jane couldn’t help the flicker of guilt as she accepted the goblet.

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