Chapter 18
Leaving Daniel, Agnes found Eleanor Longley in the nursery, engrossed in a game of spillikins with a boy of about seven.
A younger boy of Henry’s age, still in skirts, seemed to be hell-bent on disturbing the game, while the nursery maid was singularly failing in the task of quieting a small girl of a similar age to the younger boy.
Agnes took the unhappy child in her arms.
‘Now then, little maid, what ails you?’
‘Teeth,’ said the harassed nursery maid.
‘Ah, teeth are nothing but a trial from the very beginning. Now, what is your name?’
The child stopped crying long enough to gulp out, ‘Clare.’
‘Clare, show me where it hurts.’
Clare opened wide and Agnes could see the red, swollen gum. She inserted her finger and rubbed the sore spot, swaying in the instinctive dance of all mothers. Clare’s sobs reduced to gulps and she snuggled against Agnes, two pudgy fingers in her mouth.
‘You have a good way with children.’ Lady Longley rose to her feet.
‘I love children.’ Agnes looked down at the fair head against her shoulder and brushed the silken strands out of the child’s eyes.
‘This is my son, Charles,’ Lady Longley put her hand on the shoulder of the older boy. ‘Charles, this is Mistress Fletcher.’
The boy swept her a courtly bow.
‘These two,’ Lady Longley indicated the two younger children, ‘are twins. Richard and Clare. They are Jon and Kate’s children. You have met Tabitha, Jon’s daughter, and Thomas, Kate’s son by her first marriage, and my eldest child, Ann.’
Agnes smiled and shook her head. ‘This is a very complicated family.’
Lady Longley nodded. ‘Both Jonathan and Kate had other lives before they met. Kate’s first husband, Tom’s father, died at Marston Moor, and Jonathan only discovered Tabitha a few years ago. She is his natural child.’
A child of passion born out of wedlock? Agnes wondered and her gaze rested on Richard. ‘My sister’s child, Henry, is Richard’s age. I cared for him since he was born.’
‘You must miss him.’
Every moment of every day, with a pain that threatens to break my heart.
‘Very much. And you, Lady Longley?’
Her companion pulled a face. ‘Please, call me Nell. No one calls me Lady Longley. What about me? My home is in the possession of a poxy Roundhead. My husband, Giles, is with the King in the Low Country, where he has been for twelve years now with only occasional fleeting visits.’ Lady Longley’s face saddened.
‘I have not seen him in eight years, but by all accounts, he does not want for company.’
Agnes caught her meaning in the sad twist of her mouth. She glanced down at Charles, who had turned to spin a top for his younger cousins.
‘So he’s not met his son?’
Nell shook her head. ‘I had hoped Giles, like Jon, would make his peace and return before this, but I think he prefers his life on the Continent to that of domesticity with a wife and children.’
Agnes looked at Lord Longley’s handsome wife and fine little boy and wondered how Longley could not want hearth and home.
‘But enough of such gloomy domestic talk,’ Nell said with a smile. ‘Your friend Master Lovell is acquainted with Jonathan from the days of Worcester, I believe.’
‘So he says. It is his brother, Kit Lovell, who was Sir Jonathan’s friend.’
A smile lifted Nell’s face. ‘Oh, of course, Kit Lovell. I remember him. If I had not been so besotted with Giles, I could have fallen in love with Kit. He was half-French, I recall, with all the charm of Frenchman.’ She frowned. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘Daniel told me he was hanged a few years ago for some part in a plot to kill Cromwell.’
Nell nodded. ‘Oh yes, I remember Jon reading about it in a London newssheet. But what about this brother, Daniel?’
The child Agnes held had grown heavy, her head lolling against her shoulder. ‘I think someone is ready for bed,’ she said, handing the drowsy child to the nursemaid.
‘You too, Master Richard,’ the nursemaid said.
The boy stuck out his lower lip. ‘But I want to play wiv Charles,’ he said.
‘Charles is going to bed too. Kiss Mama,’ Nell said, rising to her feet. She stooped and the boy threw his arms around his mother’s neck, planting a large, sloppy kiss on her cheek.
Agnes’s heart broke just a little more.
‘They are such a joy for Kate and me,’ Nell said, a fond smile on her lips as the door closed. ‘Come, Agnes. I may call you Agnes? It is time for supper.’
As they left the room, Nell slipped her arm into Agnes’ and leaned into her. ‘Now tell me, Agnes. You and the handsome Daniel Lovell. Is it true, are you just friends?
‘Hardly even that,’ Agnes responded a little too quickly. ‘Is he handsome?’
Nell’s mouth quirked. ‘Oh yes, he has some of the looks of his brother, but rather less … French. I warrant that out of the sick bed, he is a fine-looking man.’
Agnes swallowed. ‘I am no judge of these matters,’ she mumbled. ‘I know very little about him.’
Nell frowned. ‘So, how do you come to be in his company?”
How strange it would sound to this woman if Agnes were to even try to explain that her relationship to Daniel came only from a mutual acquaintance with a man they both hated!
‘As I told you last night, I was abandoned in London without the means to support myself and Daniel came to my aid.’
‘A knight errant,’ Nell held up her hand. ‘But I won’t ask anything more of you. I have learned that in this day and age it is best not to know too much.’
They had reached the door to the dining chamber and Nell pushed it open. The rest of the family was already seated. Agnes slipped into her now-familiar place at the Thornton table, and after answering Kate’s question about how Daniel fared that evening, she let the family gossip wash around her.