The Defiant Mistress. Claire Thornton
‘What?’ Athena’s eyes jerked to Samuel’s face.
‘Your faithless former bridegroom. He never turned up for the wedding, you know. I had him watched. If you’d failed to keep our little bargain, I would have had him arrested. But he doesn’t even know you jilted him because he never went to the church! He never meant to marry you!’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Athena could not—would not—believe Samuel’s cruel claim. Gabriel loved her. She knew he did.
Samuel laughed. ‘Did you really think you meant more to him than a pleasant interlude? He sailed in one of Parfitt’s ships for Turkey two days ago.’
‘Turkey?’ Athena whispered. She knew that Sir Thomas Parfitt’s trading interests extended to the Turkish empire and perhaps beyond. Gabriel had often talked about how much he’d enjoyed his years in Italy. Could it be true…?
‘You said he was plotting against Cromwell.’ She tried to make sense of how the letter incriminating Gabriel in the plot against the parliamentarian leader fitted with the news that he had sailed for Turkey.
‘Fickle noblemen. They treat everything as a game.’ Samuel dismissed Athena’s comment with a disdainful gesture. ‘You’re lucky I found you in time. Otherwise you’d have been left standing alone at the church. The whole world would have known you for a foolish maid, easily duped by a faithless cavalier. Come to bed, wife.’
Athena did not protest. Since their wedding day Samuel had required no more from her in bed than her passive acceptance of him, and it was over quicker that way.
Later she lay on her side, listening to him snore behind her, silent tears running down her cheeks. Until tonight she had still preserved a glimmer of hope that Gabriel might be looking for her. That somehow there was a way out of the nightmare her life had become. Of course such hopes were not logical. If Gabriel found her, it would put him at risk and her sacrifice on his behalf might end up being for nothing. But still she’d hoped for a miracle: that her love for Gabriel and his for her would triumph over Samuel’s obsessive desire to possess her.
But Gabriel had gone to Turkey. Despite her longing to believe otherwise, she was already half-certain Samuel’s story was true. She knew Sir Thomas Parfitt traded there. Gabriel was adventurous and ambitious. He would surely see this new venture as an exciting opportunity to improve his fortune. Besides, it had been Gabriel’s presence in England, his vulnerability to arrest by Cromwell’s agents, that had given Samuel his hold over her. Why would Samuel tell her Gabriel had left, and thus willingly relinquish his power over her if it wasn’t true?
Athena swallowed an anguished sob. All her efforts to protect Gabriel had been meaningless. By now he must be beyond Cromwell’s retribution. And he hadn’t even gone to the church to marry her. She had pictured him so many times waiting for her, worrying about her, trying to find her—and now it seemed he didn’t even know or care that she hadn’t turned up.
Her throat burned with stifled grief. It had all been for nothing. And now she no longer had the thought of Gabriel’s safety to sustain her in her nightmarish marriage. She had nothing at all. She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness at the bleak future ahead of her. Soon Samuel would destroy her spirit. She could already feel her self-confidence seeping away day by day. Soon she would be so browbeaten she would no longer have the will to resist.
She could not let that happen. Slowly her despair hardened into cold determination. Gabriel had left England. It made no difference to his safety whether she stayed with Samuel or not. She had run away before, she could do it again. And this time she would make sure Samuel never found her.
But…but…
A small doubt slipped into her mind. What if Gabriel came back to England after she’d left? Would Samuel inform on him just for spite? She bit her lip—no matter how inconstant Gabriel had proved, she couldn’t bear the thought he might hang. Before she left she would find and destroy the fragment of letter Samuel had shown her that proved Gabriel’s complicity in the plot against Cromwell. Then she would disappear.
And she would never again be any man’s dupe.
Chapter One
English Convent, Bruges, April 1666
‘W hat do you mean—she’s not here?’ the Duke of Kilverdale’s voice rose in angry disbelief.
‘Exactly what I said, your Grace,’ the Abbess replied. ‘I am afraid your cousin is no longer here at the convent.’
The Duke’s black eyebrows snapped together. ‘For the past seven years my mother has made generous contributions to your order,’ he said. ‘With the clear understanding that Athena would be free to live here peacefully under your protection. Why did you send her away?’
‘I did not send her away,’ the Abbess replied. ‘She chose to leave on an errand of mercy.’
‘To go where?’
‘Venice—’
‘What!’ Kilverdale leapt to his feet. At six feet tall he towered over the seated Abbess. He was dressed in the height of fashion in silk brocade and a magnificent black periwig, but his costly garments could not disguise the underlying power in his lean body. Nor could the profusion of black curls, which framed his face and tumbled about his shoulders, soften the somewhat predatory appearance of his hawkish features. The Abbess considered him a dangerous man and a far from suitable visitor to her convent, but in the circumstances she could hardly refuse to speak with him.
The Duke’s mother and Athena’s mother were sisters. Seven years ago the widowed Duchess of Kilverdale and her son had been living in exile in France. When Athena ran away from Samuel, she had made the perilous journey to France to beg for her aunt’s protection. In early 1659 the Duchess had brought her niece to Bruges, to live as a guest within the English convent. A year later Charles II regained his throne. The Kilverdales had returned to England, but the Duchess had continued to give generous donations to the convent and the Duke had come to Bruges at irregular intervals to meet with his cousin.
‘Kindly allow me to finish,’ the Abbess said, before Kilverdale could say any more. She disliked his obvious intention to intimidate her in her own quarters. ‘Mrs Quenell left here of her own free will as, indeed, she first arrived here.’
Kilverdale raised a sardonic eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.
The Abbess strove for patience and continued. ‘Several weeks ago the wife of one of the undersecretaries to the English Ambassador in Venice arrived in Bruges. The young woman was brought to us in great distress. We discovered she was urgently seeking to join her husband in Venice—apparently she had not been kindly treated by her husband’s kinfolk in his absence. Mrs Quenell was much moved by her plight and offered to accompany her to Venice as her companion and guide—’
‘Guide?’ Kilverdale exploded. ‘You allowed my cousin, who has not been outside the security of these walls for seven years, to go gallivanting across Europe with only a foolish wench for company—and you say she’s a guide! Where were your wits, madam?’
‘They are accompanied by the manservant the young woman brought with her from England and Mrs Quenell’s own maid. In addition, they are being escorted by a local gentleman of good family who is on his way to study at the university of Padua,’ the Abbess snapped, out of all patience with her noble visitor.
The Duke’s muttered response was barely audible, but supremely uncomplimentary.
‘Your cousin is a woman of great resource and common sense and I have every confidence she will reach her destination unharmed and without difficulty,’ the Abbess retorted. ‘Don’t forget she managed to make her way safely all the way from England to find your mother in France when she was only seventeen.’
‘She cut off her hair, dyed it brown, and pretended to be a boy!’
‘A sensible precaution for a woman travelling alone. She came