Queen Without a Crown Read Free Page A

short while. She still writes to me. She had a son not long ago.’ I had been glad to hear news of Pen. I was fond of her, but there was no denying that as a girl she had been both highly intelligent and emotionally unsteady. I was most relieved when she took the sensible, strong-minded Clem Moss as her husband. Taking the settle opposite Master Easton, I said: ‘I hope you aren’t bringing bad news. She and the baby – are they all right?’
    ‘Indeed, yes, mistress. The baby’s as bonny a little fellow as ever I saw. He’s been named Leonard after his grandfather. No, this concerns a young lady called Jane Mason – sister to Mistress Pen Moss. You’ll have heard of her?’
    ‘I remember her as a child, when I had occasion to visit the Masons,’ I said. ‘She was about nine, then. I stayed with them for a while and taught the girls embroidery.’
    I had also disrupted the household by discovering treason in it. The original Leonard Mason, now deceased, had taken a dislike to me after that, and only his death had made it possible for his wife Ann and myself to become friends.
    ‘Jane is eighteen now,’ said Mark Easton. He put his tankard down, and his handsome young face took on an anxious look. ‘I met her when I was travelling for Lord Sussex, in Yorkshire, and the Moss household put me up for a few days. Jane Mason was sent to live with her sister some months ago; it seems that the idea is for Mistress Moss to find a husband for her.’
    I nodded. I had done the same for Pen. Ann Mason had thought me better placed than herself to launch her daughter into the world and arrange a marriage for her, and an onerous task it had proved to be.
    ‘Jane is . . . a joy,’ said Mark. ‘I fell in love with her and she with me and there shouldn’t be any impediment, not really. I’m not Catholic, as she is, but I wouldn’t interfere with her private observances. I’m willing to promise that. I have a good house I can take her to. A steward runs it for me now because I want to make my way in public life; that’s why I’m in the service of Lord Sussex. A man needs achievements as well as legacies if he is to amount to anything. My home is in Derbyshire, and I also have a property in Devon. But . . .’
    ‘But?’ I said. ‘There is a difficulty? Jane’s family feel that for some reason the match isn’t suitable?’
    ‘They’ve nothing against me personally,’ said Easton. ‘But Mistress Penelope wrote to their mother and their elder brother George in Berkshire, asking their opinion, and when the answer came back it was no, and Mistress Penelope said she agreed, and her husband nodded and said that so did he. I begged time off from Lord Sussex to visit Berkshire, to explain things in person. But—’
    ‘What things would those be? You haven’t explained,’ said Hugh.
    Easton looked at us unhappily. He was clearly a young man of means, and he was in a position of responsibility in the service of Lord Sussex. He should have been full of self-assurance. Instead, he now seemed vulnerable, almost desperate.
    ‘They say,’ he told us carefully, ‘that is, the Masons say, and the Mosses agree with them, that they are sorry for me, and they don’t hold me to blame in any way, but there it is. They can’t sanction the marriage of the second Mason daughter, my lovely Jane, to the son of a poisoner.’
    Dale dropped a poker into the hearth with a clatter. Her protuberant blue eyes were bulging, and the pockmarks of a long-ago attack of smallpox stood out as they always did when she was tired or ill or disturbed.
    Even Roger Brockley, who had gone back to stand beside her, let his eyebrows rise, wrinkling his high forehead with its dusting of gold freckles. Which was remarkable, for it took a great deal to shake Brockley. Mark had achieved the rare feat of startling him. He had startled us all. Gladys was gaping; Sybil looked appalled. Hugh had visibly stiffened.
    ‘A poisoner?’ he asked. ‘Er . . . which