This letter was only the sixth I had received in as many years since coming to Raglan and I had read each a dozen times before forcing myself to destroy them. Apart from my two little girls they were now the only link between Jasper and me, and with each letter I felt our relationship hanging by an ever-weaker thread but this latest letter and the possibility of a reunion had drawn all my feelings for him back to the surface.

At that moment, lying on the lumpy straw mattress of my truckle bed, I would have given anything to feel his arms around me and to surrender to the soaring sensations that his kisses and caresses had always inspired. In my distress I almost imagined that he was there with me, wiping the tears away and coaxing me into the healing release of mutual passion. I flung myself onto the pillow to stifle my sudden sobs. If I am honest it had always been his ability to stir my blood to fever heat that had nourished our union and fed my love for him. I missed him physically, emotionally and in every way – hardly feelings of a kind I could share with the children or admit to my Yorkist hosts. Swamped with loneliness, I cried out my pain and frustration in smothered anguish. Then I forced myself to hold the crumpled letter to the taper-flame. My latest link with Jasper vanished into ash and smoke, but the faint hope it had inspired would not die.

31

Jane

Raglan Castle

HARRI WAS PERMITTED TO sit beside his mother at the banquet provided to welcome the Countess of Richmond and her husband Sir Henry Stafford to Raglan. Earlier in the day I had watched their arrival in the new Grand Court, where Harri had lined up with all the Herbert children considered old enough for ceremonial. His impatient shifting from one foot to the other was halted by a frown from Lady Anne while Lord Herbert made a long florid speech of welcome. Then the formality of the introductions: Lord Herbert started with his wife and proceeded down the line; Anne, Maud, Cicely, Walter and then finally Harri.

Standing at last in front of her son Lady Margaret solemnly studied him from head to toe. They met as strangers and yet the likeness between them was striking; the same delicate build, the same straight aristocratic nose, the same fine features and proud stance and, until Harri made his growth spurt into manhood, almost the same height, for she remained tiny. The only pronounced difference was in the eyes; whereas Lady Margaret’s were a speckled slate grey, his were deep blue and full of curiosity and empathy; eyes that Jasper maintained were, like his own, inherited from his mother Queen Catherine, Harri’s grandmother.