Wolf Hall, Northumberland, England
Late September 1542
“You come none too soon, Mark.” The bed ropes creaked as Sir Brandon Cavendish shifted his weight. He did not bother to mask his grimace of pain from his former squire.
Sir Mark Hayward, lately returned from Ireland after a fruitless seven years seeking riches and honor in His Majesty’s service, offered his arm to his bedridden mentor. “Your message smacked of urgency, my lord. I rode posthaste from London. Thank God the roads were dry.” He eased Brandon nearer to the bedside table. “Am I to avenge you against the blackguard who broke your hip?” he asked with a grin.
Brandon lay back against a flock of bolsters and closed his eyes for a moment. “Belle’s in trouble,” he announced without a preamble. “At least, methinks she is.”
Mark groaned inwardly. He had known Brandon’s natural daughter ever since the little minx first appeared at Wolf Hall dressed in a ragged infant’s gown. LaBelle Marie Cavendish attracted disasters like honey drew bears.
“Tis an old tale twice-told, my lord,” he muttered. He sipped his mulled cider to steady his nerves. “Methought Belle was married a few years ago. Her troubles should be her husband’s now.”Poor sot!
Opening his eyes, Brandon leveled an icy blue glare at the younger man. “She was. The boy’s dead. Thereby hangs the reason for her present distress.”
Mark squelched his impulse to ask if Belle had driven her late spouse into his early grave. Instead he took another drink of cider while his heart beat faster.
Brandon emptied his own mug before he continued. “Cuthbert Fletcher was never my idea of a husband for Belle. The boy was a weakling, though pretty in his features. Belle took one look at that milksop—God rest his soul—and declared that she must have him as a husband or else she would die. Nearly drove me stark mad with her artful wheedling.”
Mark snorted in his cup. Comes from spoiling her rotten since the age of two. “But you allowed the match,” he observed aloud.
When Mark had heard of Belle’s nuptials four months after the event, he had toasted the health of her luckless bridegroom in Irish whiskey. He had never gotten so drunk in his life as he did on that rainy night.
Brandon gave him a meaningful look. “Because Cuthbert would take her, despite her…background.” He cleared his throat. “None of the young noblemen looked twice at my Belle once they learned she was born of a French commoner on the wrong side of my blanket. Belle was the fairest maid at Great Harry’s court when we took her there two years ago, yet not one of those strutting peacocks would stoop to woo her—except that whey-faced Cuthbert—the son of a wool-merchant.”