Free The Battle of the Queens by Jean Plaidy Page A

asked, ‘no doubt at all. You and I belong together.’
    ‘There is no doubt that we should have married years ago.’
    ‘What is done is done. We are together now.’
    She took his hand and they went into the thicket.
    ‘You must never let me go again, Hugh,’ she said. ‘If you did, you would never have another moment’s peace. I promise you that.’
    ‘I know it.’
    She slipped her arm through his and he kept a tight grip on her hand.
    ‘We will walk through the trees and talk, Hugh. There is much we have to say.’
    ‘There is only this, Isabella,’ he said. ‘I am betrothed to Joan.’
    ‘A child … little more than a baby. And my daughter at that. It was a sad sick joke of John’s to betroth you. It was the sort of thing he enjoyed. He wanted to distress me … for he knew that I loved you. He always knew I loved you. It was the greatest emotion of my life and I could not hide it. You must not think that I shall ever let you go, Hugh. You do not know me if you think that.’
    ‘My dearest Isabella, it is not for us to follow our inclinations.’
    ‘You are wrong. How else should people live? Love should not be denied. Why should it? If you had a wife and I a husband, still I should stay with you. I would defy the world to do so. But you have no wife. I have no husband. You are betrothed to a child who knows nothing of the world … nothing of marriage … nothing of love …’
    ‘She has learned a great deal. She has lived ten winters and is old for her years. She cannot be sent back.’
    ‘Then she shall stay here. She is my daughter. Oh Hugh, I have thought of last night. To be with you thus … it was a wonderful dream come true and so shall it be throughout our lives, for I shall never give you up. There is only one thing for us to do.’
    ‘Nay …’
    ‘Yea, my lord. You shall have your bride. It is no child for whom you have to wait; it is your eager mistress who refuses to wait any longer for you. All these weary years have I yearned for you. I have caught you now, Hugh, and you are mine.’ She stopped and drawing his face down to hers kissed him wildly. ‘You shall never escape me. Never. Never.’
    She watched him. He wanted her. He had never known such love-making. She laughed to herself. Cruel, wicked, ruthless, insatiable John had been a good tutor. Not that she had needed tutoring. Women such as she was were born with such knowledge. She could reduce him to such desire that he would be willing to promise anything. There was an innocence about him which had been completely lacking in John; she loved him for it. For if she was capable of love, she loved Hugh le Brun. There was no self-sacrifice in her kind of loving; a little tenderness now and then, a desire to give pleasure – but perhaps that was because she wanted to be thought supreme; there was a need to satisfy her own desires, a need to be loved and admired as no woman had ever been loved and admired before. In the first months of marriage with John she had believed she had brought him to a state of slavery, for he had given her all she asked in those days when he had shocked his ministers because he stayed in bed with her throughout the day. How wrong she had been! John could love no one but himself and she had quickly learned that it was an overwhelming sensuality in her which matched something similar in him which had made her imagine he was hers to command. It had waned as such feelings must – although he had never entirely escaped from it. Hugh was different. There was innocence and idealism in Hugh. Hugh would be her slave now and for ever.
    Assuredly she was not going to allow him to escape her.
    ‘It is not possible,’ he said desperately.
    ‘My dear Hugh, it is possible if we wish it to be. If you refuse me, I shall know that I was mistaken. All these years when I have thought of you have been a mockery. You did not love me after all. Perhaps it was as well I went to John.’
    ‘You know that to be