Blaze Wyndham

Table of Contents

New American Library
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Copyright © Bertrice Small, 1988 All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

ISBN : 978-1-101-54967-4

Small, Bertrice.
Blaze Wyndham.

I. Title.
PS3569.M28B’.54 88-1659

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Sir Robert
—the lord of the manor
Lady Rosemary
—his wife

Blaze
—the eldest
Bliss and Blythe
—the eldest set of twins
Delight
—the next eldest
Larke and Linnette
—the second set of twins
Vanora
—the seventh daughter
Gavin and Glenna
—the third set of twins
Henry and Thomas
—the fourth set of twins

Lord Edmund Wyndham
—the third Earl of Langford, and family head
Lady Dorothy Wyndham
—his elder half-sister
Sir Richard Wyndham—
her husband, and distant cousin
Anthony Wyndham
—Edmund’s heir, his half-sister’s son
Henriette Wyndham
—a cousin, half-French

Old Ada
—the Morgan family’s nursemaid
Heartha
—Blaze’s tiring woman
Owen FitzHugh
—the Earl of Marwood, a friend of the Wyndhams’
Lord Nicholas Kingsley
—a friend of the Wyndhams’
Cormac O’Brian
—the Lord of Killaloe

Henry VIII
—King of England, reigned 1509—1547
Catherine of Aragon
—his wife
Cardinal Wolsey
—the primate of England
Mistress Anne Boleyn
—a daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn
Mistress Jane Seymour
—of Wolf Hall
Princess Mary
—the king’s only legitimate child
Sir John Marlowe
—a gentleman of the court
Lady Adela Marlowe
—his wife
Will Somers
—the king’s fool
Father Jorge de Atheca
—the queen’s confessor

“
T
here is no way,” said Lord Morgan hopelessly. “There is simply no way in which I can dower eight daughters. What can the future possibly hold for them under such circumstances? God curse the day my sweet darlings ever saw the light!” His shoulders slumped with despair.

“Oh, my love, say it not!” protested his wife, and catching his hands in hers she looked up into his face with tear-filled blue-gray eyes. “It is all my fault, Robert! If
only
Gavin had been born first instead of last we should not have this problem. Yet I would not wish our girls away! Surely we can find the means to dower one, and then perhaps she may help her sisters to obtain husbands. We may be poor, but our daughters are beautiful. I know that counts for something with men!”

Robert Morgan sighed sadly. Then he put a comforting arm about his pretty wife. How could he explain to her that it would take a miracle to scrape together enough to dower their eldest? That whatever dowry he might manage to assemble would not be enough to gain them an available great name? That most great names were betrothed in the cradle to other great names? That
only
a daughter successfully placed at court would have the opportunity to help her sisters fish for their own husbands? That those men must be so captivated by the beauty of each of the Morgan sisters as to render their lack of a dowry meaningless? How could he explain all of this to his sweet wife? How could he tell her that their daughters’ great beauty was as much a liability as a blessing? Only their poverty and the remoteness of his hall had kept his girls innocent; had kept them from being tempted into a less-than-honorable place in the world.

His dear Rosemary would know naught of such things. A rural squire’s daughter, she had been born and bred in the country. Indeed in her whole lifetime she had never traveled any farther than the nearby town of Hereford. She was a good wife, a good mother, a good chatelaine, a good woman. Her only real fault had been the abundance of daughters that she had produced. Yet in the sixteen years she had been his wife she had never lost a child, nor had she ceased trying to give him an heir, nor did she complain unreasonably. He considered himself fortunate in his marriage.

Bending down, he kissed the top of his wife’s ash-blond head. “I must think more on this, sweeting. Leave me to myself now,” he said, and Rosemary Morgan, with a cheerful little smile, dutifully departed her husband’s presence convinced that he would make it all right, as he always did.

Lord Morgan gazed out through the leaded-paned windows of his small library. Ashby was a beautiful estate. It was rich in fertile land, but the land must be kept whole for his five-year-old son and heir, Gavin. There had been Morgans on this land since before King William, and it was unthinkable that any of it be sold. Still, he might not have that choice if he were to successfully marry off his daughters. No matter if a woman wed God or man, she must have some portion to bring to the marriage.

Once there had been great flocks of woolly sheep grazing upon Ashby’s pastureland. It had been from those sheep that the family had earned its small wealth. They had never been a powerful family, but they had been comfortable. They dowered their daughters respectably, sent well-equipped sons to fight England’s wars, had even produced a bishop for the church, and they paid their taxes.

Twelve years ago, however, an epidemic had wiped out their flocks. Two years afterward the smaller, newly reestablished flocks had suffered a similar fate. Every bit of the modest family fortune had gone into that second flock, and it too had been lost. There had been no time to rebuild their former prosperity.

Since then Lord Morgan had waged a never-ending battle to earn enough monies to pay his taxes, to feed his family and his people. That he was successful was a tribute to his stubborn determination that he should not lose his lands. Now as he looked out over his rolling fields, he seriously considered the possibility of selling, or at least giving, some acreage to each of his daughters as a dowry. Then he shook his head. What suitor of worth would accept such a pittance, for he could not give away too much of his son’s inheritance. Still, he could not let his girls go to men of lesser birth; yet, would they be better off husbandless under the circumstances? The whole situation was utterly hopeless, and he felt as caught as an animal in a poacher’s trap.