The Three Crowns: The Story of William a - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,59
Mary.
Eleanor nodded.
“Poor Eleanor. But what will you do?”
“Go right away from here and no one shall ever hear of me again.”
“But where will you go?”
“Do not ask me.”
“But Eleanor, can you look after yourself?”
“I shall be all right.”
“But I must help you.”
“My dear lady Mary, you are so kind and good. I knew you would be. That is why I had to say good-bye to you. But I shall know how to look after myself.”
“You should stay at Court. No one takes much account of these things here.”
“No, I shall go. But I wanted to say good-bye.”
Mary embraced her friend.
“Promise me that if you need help you will come to me?”
“My good sweet lady Mary, I promise.”
Mary told Anne what had happened, and how sorry she was for poor Eleanor.
“Sometimes,” said Mary, “I think I hate men. There is Jemmy who is as gay as ever while poor Eleanor is so unhappy she has to go right away. How different is my love for Aurelia.”
Anne nodded, and taking a sweet from the pocket of her gown, munched it thoughtfully.
Mary went into her closet and sitting at her table wrote that she was taking up her new crow quill to write to her dearest Aurelia.
She told her about the quarrel between that busybody Sarah Jennings and the Duke and Duchess of Monmouth, which was on account of Eleanor Needham. It was sad, wrote Mary, that a woman should be so ill-used. They had both been fond of Eleanor, and now she had left the Court to go, as she said, where no one would hear of her. How Mary longed to escape from the Court where such intrigues were commonplace.
“As for myself, I could live and be content with a cottage in the country and a cow, and a stiff petticoat and waistcoat in summer, and cloth in winter, a little garden where we could live on the fruit and herbs it yields.…”
Little Catherine died in convulsions ten months after her birth.
Mary Beatrice was heartbroken for a long time; Mary did her best to comfort her and for a while James deserted his mistresses and became the devoted husband.
There would be other children, he assured her; she was so young.
The little girl was buried in the vault of Mary Queen of Scots in Westminster Abbey; and after a short period of mourning Mary Beatrice was obliged to take her part in Court functions.
The devotion of her husband and the company of her two stepdaughters did a great deal for her over this unhappy time.
Although Mary mourned her half-sister, life had become too exciting for brooding on what was past. There was the gaiety of the Court, the friendships with the girls, none of which rivaled that with Frances, but Mary had much affection for friends such as Anne Trelawny. Her sister was very dear to her, and although at times she would feign exasperation because of Anne’s imitative ways and her refusal to change her mind once she had made it up, even when as in the case of the man in the park, she was confronted with the truth, the two sisters were inseparable.
Their stepmother was not in the least alarming. A little imperious, sometimes, a little pious often, but as she recovered from the death of her baby, ready to play a game of blindman’s buff, hide-and-seek, or “I love my love with an A.”
Then there was dancing, in which Mary was beginning to excel, and acting which was amusing. Sarah Jennings generally managed to infuse intrigue into the household which made it a lively one.
The years were slipping past and so absorbed was Mary by her own circle—and in particular Frances—that she forgot she was no longer a child: she had little interest in affairs outside her own domestic circle. A crisis occurred when there was a question of a husband being found for Frances.
A husband! But they had no need of men in their Eden.
“No one could ever love you as I do,” wrote Mary. “Marriage is not a happy state. How many faithful husbands are there at the Court, think you? They marry, tire of their wives in a month, and then they turn to others.”
It was alarming to contemplate. It reminded her of what she had seen when she surprised Jemmy and Henrietta Wentworth; it reminded her of the stories she had heard about her father and her uncle.
Unpleasant thoughts which it was best to avoid, but how could she avoid them when there was