Historical Romance – The Best Of The Year. Кэрол Мортимер

until he went to France and captured a prisoner to be ransomed.’

      She must misremember. She had only been a child.

      But the words reminded him of doubts he had smothered before. Why would a man wait seven years to claim his rightful wife? Why would Joan have even agreed to the marriage with Salisbury if she believed she was already wed?

      Worse, why would Holland live with, even serve the man, day by day, and then watch his own wife go up to bed with him night after night?

      He could not imagine it. No man he knew could tolerate such a thing. Unless...

      Unless he had not been married to her. Unless he only started sleeping with her himself after he came to work for her husband and used the clandestine marriage as an excuse to break a valid marriage and take her himself.

      That explanation looked obvious, now that he faced it. The story about the secret wedding in Flanders, that could be swallowed. But what man in love and in the right, with God on his side would return to find his wife married to another man and after what must count as a truly perfunctory protest, wait years to pursue his claim?

      What husband brings into his household a man who claims to have wed his wife?

      Anne was looking down at her hands, as if she wished they were busy with needle and thread. Could she have known? Had she known all along?

      He tried to tell himself no. Tried to tell himself that she was too young.

      My mother was the witness.

      And Anne had been with Lady Joan ever since.

      He tried to think of another interpretation, but what had been justified as kindness now seemed like coercion.

      And the only way the plan worked was for Anne to know, too. As well as her mother did. Well enough that Lady Joan had to pay her with protection for life.

      Yes, Anne’s mother had good reason to lie before God and man. To provide for a child that would have no place in the world otherwise.

      But now, that child was a liability because she knew the truth of a matter so huge that it would rock the throne of England.

      And now, so did he.

      ‘Anne.’ His very tone commanded that she meet his eyes and when she did, he saw what he should have recognised all along. ‘There was no marriage, was there?’