Free Within the Hollow Crown by Margaret Campbell Barnes Page B

box her ears. But Joan was the soul of good nature and allowed her household far too much licence. And noticing the strained lines round her eyes, he was more concerned for her than with the wiles of a pretty Sussex heiress. So he called for food and wine and coaxed her a little apart from the barrage of questions her women were answering so excitedly.
       "You were really badly frightened, weren't you, my sweet? And only trying to put up a brave show so that those fools shouldn't panic?" he asserted intuitively, unfastening her cloak.
       Joan drooped a little in the comfortable chair Ralph Standish set for her, letting a shower of small possessions slide from her lap and enjoying a brief luxury of self-pity from which all assumption of bravado had vanished. Her other two sons were obtuse and violent, but somehow one could always tell Richard even the silliest things. "They crowded round so. Such a lot of strange, rough faces," she murmured, leaning back gratefully. "I didn't mind so much until they insisted upon climbing on the carriage steps and kissing me… Because I am a Kentish woman, they said…"
       Richard's face flamed as if someone had struck him. "Kissing you! That filthy rabble…How dared they? Oh, how dared they?" h e shouted furiously, unwittingly drawing attention to the indignity she had suffered.
       Joan drank a glass of spiced wine and felt better. "I think they only meant to be friendly," she said, and seeing how profoundly she had shocked the assembled company found herself struggling with an urge to hysterical laughter. She was able to view them objectively. They were all so solemnly blue-blooded, whereas she, although a Plantagenet's granddaughter, had seen other aspects of life and begotten her first batch of children in a commoner's bed.
       "Friendly—with you, madam! One might as well speak of swin e singing to the stars!" reproached Robert de Vere.
       Richard looked round appealingly at his uncle and the lords enjoying his hospitality. "Let's go out now," he urged. "Take every available man-at-arms and clear the heath."
       His arresting young voice rose so confidently above the jumble of horrified questions and exclamations that Joan, anxious for his safety, immediately began to make light of the affair—although actually she need not have bothered, for there was no eager response from the indignant nobles. "They didn't mean any harm, Richard," she hastened to assure him. "In fact, most of them were quite respectful. It was only that they smelled so vile."
       Seeing that he was not yet dissuaded, she sought to create a diversion. "I can still smell their grimy fingers," she complained, shaking out the folds of her dress with fastidious fingers. "Tell them to prepare me a bath, please, Ralph. And Lizbeth, run and get that French perfume the King bought me. Give me an arm, Robert de Vere, you born flatterer!"
       She rose from her chair with all the ruffle of an acknowledged beauty, accepting gloves and purse and herbal nosegay with a smile that made men feel privileged to pick them up. The very austerity of the old stone-walled room warmed to her presence as she paused to stroke the soft texture of milord of Oxford's ringed velvet sleeve. "You must tell me your tailor's name, Robert," she coaxed with laughing envy, "and I'll have him make me a dress in that same becoming shade to replace the one that smells of peasants." She played up to his compliments with affectionate badinage, then yawned and thought she would go to bed; so that Richard was forced to abandon his sensible project and—drawn by her smile— accompany her to her room.
       Once there he lingered of his own free will—as no doubt she had intended. The riot of richly coloured tapestries without which she never moved and the lovely garments her women were unpacking served to divert his interest, and ever since he was small he had loved to watch them brush her hair.
       "Oh, Richard, I forgot