The Scandalous Duchess by Anne O'Brien

exchange and so we settled into gossip, now that we had established our old relationship: Philippa sharp and brittle, critical of the world, I more tolerant. I was the elder by little more than a year, yet it was not always obvious. Philippa sometimes proved to be the more worldly wise.
    I sat and watched her as she told me about the doings of her two children. We were close, neither of us having any memory of our mother, and barely of our father, Sir Gilles de Roet, a knight from Hainault, who had died there when I was three years old, having given us into the tender care of Queen Philippa to whom he owed his service. We had a brother, Walter, taken to soldiering like my father, dying in the retinue of Edward of Woodstock at the battle of Poitiers, and an elder sister, Elizabeth, who, a nun in a monastic house at Mons, had gone from birth to death without my knowing her.
    So, to all intents and purposes alone in the world, Philippaand I owed everything to the kindly and maternal Queen: our raising, our education and our position in the household of Duchess Blanche when we were very young, as nothing more than cradle-rockers to the two tiny daughters. Without parents we had clung to each other, and although our lives had taken different directions, the closeness remained. But that did not mean that I was not careful around my sister’s caustic tongue.
    â€˜Are you happy?’ I asked, interrupting a long list of complaints about Agnes, Geoffrey’s ageing mother, who still occupied the Thames Street house.
    â€˜As much as I ever am. I don’t think it is in my nature to be satisfied. Perhaps if I had wed a handsome knight like you.’ A twist of bitterness curved her lips.
    â€˜Your husband is a man of great worth.’
    â€˜Yes. I know.’
    â€˜His writing brings him great fame.’
    â€˜True.’
    â€˜You have your children.’
    â€˜And they are a blessing. But I’ll have no more.’
    I paused, considering whether to ask why she was so adamant, and decided against it. ‘Geoffrey cares for you,’ I observed instead.
    â€˜Geoffrey is entirely indifferent to me. He has never written a poem to my beauty or my fine eyes. All he does is condemn what he calls the entrapment of marriage.’
    I laughed.
    â€˜Don’t laugh! Do you know? He owns over sixty books. He’d rather spend time with them than with me.’ She chuckled as I continued to laugh at her complaint but there was a sadness there that touched my heart. ‘I am just dissatisfied.It will be better at Hertford.’ She rose and walked to the window to look out over the Thames. ‘What about you, Kate? Do you have an eye to another husband?’
    â€˜I have only been a widow for a matter of months.’
    â€˜A lover then.’
    â€˜Philippa!’
    â€˜You’re too pious for your own good. You had not seen Hugh for—how long before his death?’
    â€˜Sixteen months. And I am not pious.’
    â€˜I know you better than you know yourself. You would have to say a full decade of paternosters before leaping into a lover’s bed.’
    â€˜I would not!’
    But I would, as I knew only too well, as I was thrown into a puddle of doubt. My conscience was a strong force within me, and sin was not something to be lightly cast aside, as I was finding to my cost when all my strictly held tenets of living seemed to be hanging by a thread in the face of the Duke’s campaign. If I took this step to please him, if I went to him when he summoned me, the thread would be cut as cleanly as if I were finishing the edge of a girdle. I could not hold to any pretence that it would not matter. It would. If I stepped, I must accept the guilt and the condemnation.
    â€˜Katherine.’ Philippa nudged me. ‘Where were you?’
    â€˜Nowhere.’ I knew my cheeks were flushed. ‘You were saying?’
    â€˜That I could take a lover…’ Philippa