Lord Greville's Captive
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Muna was touching her sleeve. ‘Did you meet Lord Greville, Nan?’ she whispered. A tiny, slender creature with huge dark eyes, Muna looked as though she would crumble at the first unkind breeze, but she was stronger than she looked. The illegitimate daughter of the Earl’s younger brother, Muna had been taken into the Grafton household when her father had died and had been educated alongside Anne. Anne had never had any siblings and valued her cousin’s friendship highly.
Now she smiled at her, a little sadly. ‘I did meet him, Muna. I told him that his brother is alive.’ She hesitated. ‘He was mightily relieved to hear the news.’
Muna gave a small sigh. ‘And what manner of man is he these days, Nan? Is he like Sir Henry?’ She blushed a little as she spoke Henry’s name and Edwina caught Anne’s gaze and rolled her eyes indulgently. The sweet, passionless courtship of Muna and Henry Greville had consisted of nothing more than love poetry and hand holding, which, Anne maintained, was exactly as it should be. Edwina, a more earthy soul, snorted at the sonnets and laughed aloud at the bad poetry Henry penned. But Anne, with the memory of Simon Greville’s caresses still in her mind, reflected it was a good job that his brother had been badly injured. If Henry’s courtship was normally as direct as Simon’s, then Muna’s virtue would have been under dire threat.
Both Muna and Edwina were watching her with curiosity in their eyes. Anne sat down on the wooden settle with a heartfelt sigh.
‘Lord Greville is very like Sir Henry, only more—’ She stopped, aware of her audience’s round-eyed interest. ‘More forceful,’ she finished carefully, anxious not to give too much of her feelings away.
‘Lord have mercy!’ Edwina said drily. ‘Like Sir Henry, but more forceful!’ She looked closely at her former charge. ‘You are very pink in the face, my lady. I seem to remember that you had a great regard for this Lord Greville when he came a-courting here at Grafton.’
There was the scrape of wood on stone as the door opened and John re-entered the chamber. Anne gratefully accepted the cup of warm milk that he pressed into her hands, wrapping her cold fingers about it and using the time it gave her to fend off Edwina’s enquiries.
‘It was many years ago that Simon Greville came here, Edwina,’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten that we are on different sides now?’
Edwina made a humphing sound. The loyalty of Anne’s close servants was absolute, but they had a simpler view than she of allegiance to the King or the Parliament. To them such civil strife caused nothing but trouble, took food from the mouths of the poor, split brother from brother and took sons from their mothers. They supported the King mainly because the Earl was the King’s man and they held fast to their fealty to him and to his daughter. And now Anne realized, with a sinking heart, that she had to tell them she had failed them.
‘Lord Greville will not call off the assault on the Manor,’ she said baldly. ‘I asked him and he refused.’
She looked at them over the rim of the cup. There was a moment of stillness when she could see her own horror and misery etched clear on the faces of them all. They had thought that she would save them.
Then John cleared his throat.
‘You did your best, milady,’ he said gruffly. ‘It was far more than that miserable cur Malvoisier would do for us. Don’t you go feeling bad about that.’
Muna gripped her hand hard. ‘He would not even do it to save Sir Henry? Oh, Nan…’
Anne shook her head tiredly. ‘I am sorry, Muna. I did my best. Truly I did. But Lord Greville believes that Sir Henry’s best chance of safety is for him to take the Manor and so…’ She let the sentence fade away.
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