Epitaph for Three Women by Jean Plaidy

eyes and thick dark hair; her cheeks were highly coloured and Humphrey thought of her as luscious. Her figure was voluptuous in the extreme, small waisted, large bosomed and ample hipped. The belt she wore at her waist accentuated this.
    ‘Ah,’ she said saucily, ‘I too will make a declaration. It is Duke Humphrey.’
    ‘And you are pleased to see him, mayhap?’ he murmured.
    ‘My lord, is there any reason why I should not be pleased?’
    ‘Indeed no. There is every reason why you should be pleased. I will tell you this. I find you are a very pretty woman.’
    ‘Ah.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Then you have not come to tell me that you are displeased with me and would dismiss me from the Lady Jacqueline’s household.’
    ‘Nay, nay, I have come to tell you that I would wish to take you into mine.’
    ‘My lord jests,’ she began but got no further because he had put his arms about her and his mouth was pressing on hers.
    She was warm in her response as he had known she would be. He had had his eyes on her for days … and he knew well enough that she had been aware of it and was cordially inviting him to proceed.
    ‘You’re a witch,’ he said. ‘You’ve bewitched me.’
    ‘Mayhap. But it is not my occult powers that have done it.’
    ‘Well, what shall we do about it, eh? What should you say?’
    ‘I should say that you must remember your good wife, the Lady Jacqueline. But it might be that I will not say what I should.’
    ‘Then what will you say?’
    She drew away from him and put out her tongue provocatively. ‘I shall say this, my lord. You are a man … and men do what they will … when they will, how they will. What does a poor woman do?’
    ‘You mean …’ he said.
    ‘I mean nothing, fair sir. Yet I could mean anything.’
    He approached her again. He seized her. ‘I want you,’ he said. ‘You know it.’
    She opened her wide languorous eyes and said, ‘When? Here?’
    ‘Why not?’ he said.
    ‘You are a bold man.’
    ‘You’ll find me as bold as you wish me to be.’
    She pushed him from her. ‘Here? … when my lady might come at any moment?’
    ‘She is studying the accounts. I sent her to do so.’
    ‘That you might come and see me?’
    ‘You know I’ve had my eyes on you for days.’
    ‘I saw the lust in them.’
    ‘ ’Tis not the first time you’ve seen such looks I’ll warrant. Nor satisfied them either,’ he added.
    ‘My lord you are offensive.’
    ‘You arouse a madness in me.’
    ‘Never mind. Soon you will be overseas. Just curb yourself till then.’
    ‘You will come with us. You must.’
    An alert look came into her eyes.
    ‘Shall I be there then?’ She came to him and put her arms about his neck. ‘I should not wish,’ she went on, ‘to find a man to my taste and then to lose him to the Dutch or the Zealanders or the folk of Hainault.’
    ‘Is that what you want? To come with us?’
    She put her head on one side. ‘I’d have to try you first to see if I wanted that.’
    She dragged him through a door. They were in a small closet. ‘My sleeping apartment,’ she explained. ‘Small but it will suffice, I think, for at such a moment as this even the mighty Duke of Gloucester has other things to think of than his surroundings.’
    ‘My God,’ he said. And he laughed in triumph. He was in a fever of excitement such as he had rarely known before. His delight was increased when he realised that his eagerness was matched by hers.
    He was convinced he had never before enjoyed such an encounter.
    For a woman like this one he could forget not only Jacqueline but Hainault, Holland and Zealand.

    Preparations for departure were proceeding rapidly and there were frantic messages arriving from Bedford.
    ‘For God’s sake,’ wrote Bedford to his brother, ‘do nothing rash. Burgundy is incensed. This could lose us his friendship.’
    Humphrey laughed and bombastically declared to Eleanor that it amused him to see old John in such a panic. It might