i b8cff8977b3b1bd2 by Unknown

or spinning . . . but let that be. You will have to learn those skills when you are a wife - the wife of Edward Howes.”
    His voice ended on a much sharper note, for still he was not sure of her obedience, and his knee had begun to throb again. There was a swimming in his head that always came with anger. “Enough of this!” he cried, pounding his fist on the chair arm. “Have you no regard for me? Do you not care that I am ill and weak, and that your obduracy increases my sufferings?”
    “Yes, Father,” she said dully. “Forgive me.” What’s the use? she thought. What else is there for me to do, and Edward’s naught so bad, he loves me ... and Jack himself wanted me to marry him. “But one thing I ask, Father . . , give me a few more months . . . let not the marriage be till summer.”
    Thomas slumped back in his chair. “There, there, Bess. I knew you’d be a good lass. No doubt the wedding may wait a bit. Now I want you to go to the Downings and inquire for your Uncle Winthrop’s health. Mr. Howes can escort you. Take your uncle the Purple Electuary. It may cure him. And send your mother to me. And ask cook for a warming pan well filled with coals, the bed was damp yesterday.”
    “Yes, Father.” Elizabeth lingered a moment, wondering if he would offer to kiss her in reward for her submission, longing for more of the affection he had shown her so briefly. But she saw that he had sunk back into his own preoccupations.

    Elizabeth and Edward walked down the Old Bailey, turned west down Ludgate Hill, then mounted the Fleet Bridge. She walked very fast, wishing to ward off her capitulation and ignoring Edward’s tentative clearings of the throat as he shambled beside her. But on the bridge, the mud-spattering passage of a nobleman’s coach forced them into one of the jutting safety nooks for pedestrians, and Edward seized her arm.
    “Wait, Bess! I never see you alone, and I must know. Did your father speak to you of me?” His urgent clutch hurt her arm; she moved away from him, pulling her fur-lined cloak tight around her. She leaned on the stone parapet, so that her hood concealed her face, and gazing on the frozen canal below, she said, “Aye. He told me of your offer. He is in favour of it.”
    “And you, Bess - are you in favour? Will you not look at me?” She had raised her eyes and was staring at the huge gloomy pile of the Fleet prison, where there was a man’s hand clenched from inside on one of the thick iron window-bars.
    She turned slowly but did not look at the anxious face beside her. “I will marry you, Edward, because you wish it, and my father and uncles wish it, but I do not love you.”
    “You will, my sweet,” he cried. “In time you will. ‘Amor gignit amorem,’ Plutarch has said it, and Seneca too, ‘Ut amaris, ama! Love begets love.”
    “Let us hope so,” said Elizabeth with a small laugh. She was suddenly sorry for him with his long storklike body, his myopic eyes, and the stock of quotations with which he bolstered his speech, fearful that it would not stand alone.
    “Will you please to kiss me, Bess?” he begged. “I’ll not hurry you or do anything you don’t like, I vow it.”
    Dear Lord, what a wooing, she thought, with a contempt she could not help. Tentative, humble, fearful of rebuff . . . there might be women would be won by this approach, but - She raised her face and offered him her cheek; as he kissed it furtively she felt him tremble, and her eyes went back to that clutching prisoner’s hand on the window bar.
    “So,” she said briskly. “ Tis getting cold now the sun’s gone, let’s hurry to the Downing’s.” They walked off the bridge.
    “We’ll tell them, Bess? Tell them our news?” He was discouraged by the coolness she showed him, and yet so inexperienced with women that he wondered if she were simply being modest. “We’ll tell them now?” he asked again, hoping that public affirmation would bring the triumph he had hoped to