This time he had to laugh a little. ‘I could have been a barrister, you know.’
Elizabeth turned her face to him and looked disbelieving, the Castle looming behind her shoulder.
‘It’s true. Father suggested it to me; he said he’d pay for me to go to one of the Inns of Court if I wanted and he would find me a good pupil-master. After that I would be on my own, naturally.’
‘They say it’s a good way to office at court,’ Elizabeth said neutrally.
‘Besides,’ added Elizabeth, ‘put you in Westminster with some jowelly lawyer insinuating that you must be either insane or lying, while his father-in-law the judge agrees with him, and your sword would be out in a moment.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Carey, quite offended. ‘I can orate, if I must. It’s the studying law that would have been hopeless. The only Latin I ever learned was Catullus and that was because my brother told me what it meant. Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus...’
‘Good Lord,’ said Elizabeth, curiously. ‘Are you trying to impress me with Latin poetry? I’m not the Queen, I know hardly any Latin.’
‘Yes,’ said Carey truculently. ‘Why not? I even remember what it means. “Let us live and love, my... Elizabeth... And judge the jealous rumours of old men worth but a penny”.’
That was a little too apposite, given the age of Sir Henry Widdrington. Elizabeth turned away and sniffed briefly. Carey touched her hand with his to draw her attention, and went on insistently. Damn it, the beatings his tutor had inflicted in his youth to try and drive at least one declension into his head must be good for something! Besides, this was a crib he had learned by heart for some much-feared lesson long ago, and miraculously it had stuck, perhaps because it was scandalous. And God knew he was no hand at making up stuff like that for himself; he had learned not to embarrass himself that way before he was twenty. Other men’s plumage would do for him. He smiled and recited softly, like the very gentlest passage of a madrigal.
‘“The sun may set and return again, but when our brief light is doused, we sleep in endless night. So give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred more, and a thousand yet again, and a further hundred, and then when we have kissed so many thousand times, let us tumble them together, that neither we nor evil jealousy may ever tell, how very many were our kisses”.’
She was watching him steadily with those clear grey eyes, and as they walked, Carey leaned over and down a little, and kissed her lips.
‘One,’ he said and smiled for sheer delight at the taste of her, for all it had been quite a decorous kiss. Her chin trembled for a moment before she set it firmly.
‘Did the Queen’s maids-in-waiting find your Latin impressive?’ she asked. The harshness of the words was a little tempered by the softness in her voice. He couldn’t take offence; why should he? He wanted her in his bed that night, he was determined on it and she knew it.
‘Of course not,’ he laughed. ‘There are far better Latinists than me about the Queen. Hundreds of them. I expect her laundress knows more than I do.’
‘Card-players?’
‘No. There, I’m the best.’
Again the dubious snort. He found it charming. But, as he had to admit, he found everything about her unreasonably charming.
‘Why did you leave?’
‘To be closer to you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Elizabeth Widdrington with that same hard grey stare. ‘I think you were bored.’
He gestured with his free hand. ‘That too, of course. But I could have gone back to the Netherlands. I could have gone to Ireland...’
‘What?’
‘Well, no; perhaps not Ireland—but France. I could have wangled a place with the King of Navarre. I know the man and he likes me.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Robin. This is all very flattering, but you’re here on the Border because it’s closer to the King of Scots, and you know Burghley and his son want King James on the Queen’s throne when she dies.’
For a moment he examined her face quite seriously. As a younger man he might have been annoyed at her unwomanly astuteness; now he thought how refreshing she was after the greedy empty-headed girls of the Court.
They had passed the orchards and the sweet smell of the Castle’s physic garden, and had come, very unhelpfully, to the postern in the main gate which Scrope was trying to unlock. Young Henry Widdrington took his leave of them and ambled off to his lodgings. Carey drew Elizabeth aside a little.
‘Are you offended with me, my heart?’ he asked softly. ‘There’s no need to try and create a quarrel. I love you. If you don’t love me, say so now, and I will leave you in peace.’
Elizabeth frowned and looked down. ‘I am... I am only offended because... I’m married.’
‘To an old bully with the gout.’
‘It’s easy to despise the old when you’re young and healthy.’
‘I’m not that young and I...’
‘Robin, even if I were a widow you would be mad to marry me.’ Her voice had taken a metallic tinge as she cut across his words. ‘No friend of yours would let you. I’ve no more than four hundred pounds in jointure; Young Henry gets the land and houses when his father dies. You should marry some rich lady of the Court and settle your fortunes properly.’
It would have hurt less if she had slapped him. They were the last to go through the postern gate, so Carey shut and locked it and threw the keys to Lord Scrope, who dropped them.
‘I’m sorry you think so little of me,’ Carey managed to say to Elizabeth, without sounding as bad as he felt.
‘Be sensible. I think very well of you, too well to think you’d let yourself be carried away by romantic nonsense.’ She hadn’t been looking at him, but now she did. ‘How much do you owe?’ He didn’t answer because he wasn’t quite sure himself. ‘Thousands, I’ll be bound. You’re neither rich enough nor poor enough to marry for love, and it’s a very fickle foundation for a proper marriage anyway. You’ve been at Court listening to silly poets vapouring about their goddesses for too long.’
Now they were facing each other, suddenly turned to adversaries, wasting a still summer night designed for dalliance. Elizabeth no longer had her arm in his.
For a moment Carey couldn’t think of anything to say, since she was completely right about his finances, and what she said was no more than what all his friends and his father had told him often. He didn’t care.
‘You haven’t told me you don’t love me,’ he said stubbornly.
‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ she said. ‘I’m married. Not to you, but to a... a rightful husband called Sir Henry Widdrington. That’s the beginning and end of it.’
She turned away, to follow the Scropes up to the Keep. Carey thought of his bed, with its musty curtains and its expanse of emptiness, and put his hand on her arm to hold her, turn her to him and kiss her until he relit the passion in her... She slapped his hand away and hissed, ‘Will you stop?’
