Page 99 of The Favourite

“It is not Barbier, but his associate that does the beading,” he corrected her absently. “Come here and let me take a closer look.” Jane was so hesitant over her steps, that he was forced to close the distance between them himself. He walked around her in a slow inspection, halting behind her and settling his hands at her waist. “Did you guess, wife, that it would affect me this way?” he whispered in her ear. “Seeing my heraldic beast upon your person?” Jane caught her breath.

He half turned and observed that the maid was watching them avidly as she bustled around, tidying things away. “But how could you have known?” He wondered aloud. “When I had no idea myself?” He let his fingertip travel upward as it traced the sinuous serpentine shape which decorated her bodice in a variety of pretty colored glass beads.

Jane shivered and tipped her head back to look at him. “You approve, though?” she asked with just the faintest hint of anxiety. “What do you think of my wearing the amethysts you gave me at our wedding?” She touched the jeweled collar at her neck. “I thought they looked pretty with the color of the gown. Do you like the effect?”

“Like, is not the word. Now be a good girl and dismiss your maid.”

Jane looked startled at this abrupt demand. “Dismiss—? But I’m not—”

He turned to the agog servant. “Leda,” he said, knowing full well the girl’s name was Marta. “You will kindly go away and return in the morning at”—he considered—“ten o’clock.”

Jane was quick to object. “That is far too late, Alisander. I like to be up betimes, for the Queen has much—” She broke off, doubtless remembering that the Queen seemed to have been managing just fine without her recently.

“Ten o’clock,” he repeated smoothly, filling the awkward gap. “We will undertake your debut as Viscountess Bardulf together my dear,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing her fingers.

That seemed to silence her, and the smiling maid took the opportunity to curtsey and withdraw. “Now I shall have to call Ayleth back in to help me undress,” Jane said with exasperation.

“I shall undress you with the greatest pleasure,” he assured her glibly, steering her back toward the looking glass. “No, leave that on,” he said when she reached for the jeweled collar.

“The amethysts?” She looked back at him quizzically, then seemed to gauge his mood. “Oh. Well, but we have not yet had our supper, my lord,” she reminded him.

“We can have it in here, just the two of us. Would that not be nice?” he coaxed as he removed the circlet from her hair and began unfastening her laces. “I do not feel up to encountering the likes of Anne or Ayleth over the dinner table. Even Wat is proving tiresome today.”

“How so?”

“He’s had an attack of conscience. Most inconvenient.”

“Has he?” Jane looked intrigued. “He and Anne went to see the sights together this afternoon,” she confided as he deftly unfastened her wrists. “Ayleth watched the children while they were gone.”

“Good grief. Did she? That seems rather obliging and most unlike her.”

Jane nodded. “I know, and that is not all. This evening”—she lowered her voice—“I discovered Ayleth in Robert’s room, taking her ease.”

Alisander froze. “Where?”

“Robert’s room,” she repeated. “I thought she had disappeared again and said as much to Anne. I was quite vexed about it. ‘Twas Anne who let me in on the secret. She said that Robert and Ayleth have now become bosom friends after she broke down in tears a couple of evenings ago, and he consoled her.” She hesitated. “Apparently, Ayleth told him everything. All about her grief over Helen, and they sort of bonded over mutual loss. I assume Robert is a widower?”

Alisander resumed easing her gown down over her waist and hips until it dropped to her ankles. “Step out,” he advised her and, when she did so, whisked it efficiently out of the way, draping it over a chair back. “Yes,” he agreed, seeing she was waiting on his answer. “Robert is a widower, but his wife Jeanne, was nothing like Ayleth.” He pulled a face. “No, I can’t see it somehow. My faithful Robert, and your dour Ayleth.”

Jane, now clad only in a thin shift, wrapped her woolen mantel about her shoulders. “Mayhap, she would not be so dour if she had a close friend and companion in life,” she suggested lightly.

The thought was strangely disquieting to him. “Robert, though,” he murmured in objection. “No, I cannot believe it, Jane.” He stripped off his tunic, replacing it with a loosely tied robe. “You and Anne were likely jumping to conclusions.”

Jane lowered herself into a seat by the window. “Maybe Robert thought the same when he heard you were to marry.”

He snorted. “Certainly not, for I told him of that myself. Why are you sitting there? Come and sit here on the bed.” He removed his shoes and stretched out on the mattress, setting his hands behind his head. “Robert has never shown the slightest interest in women,” he asserted, “not since his wife died over a decade ago.”

Jane moved across the room to join him. “Well,” she said reasonably, “when I knocked on the door and looked in on them, she was sat on his bed beside him, drinking a cup of ale. That seemed rather intimate to me, but I suppose it could just be two people who are comfortable with one another.”

“Now, you merely sound naïve, Jane,” he said dampeningly. “That last sentence has convinced me, where your other arguments failed.”

She climbed up onto the mattress. “As it happens,” she said huffily, “I am not someone given to wild conjecture about other people, and I do not think you are fair to Anne by supposing she is either.”

He smirked, catching her about the waist and hauling her on top of him. “Anne is likely the biggest gossip in Aphrany,” he asserted as Jane gave a muffled squeak. “Given half the chance, she’ll even gossip about herself. Go on,” he challenged, “tell me what she said to you upon her return from sight-seeing with Wat.”

“She said she had a very nice time, if that is what you mean,” Jane answered primly.

He rolled her underneath him, and ran his hands up her sides, slipping them under her mantle. “Oh? Is that really all she said?” he enquired, slyly pinching and tickling at her waist.