The Claiming of Lady Jane

by Sullivan Clarke

Chapter One

Winter, 1609

The maidservant lifted the white linen gown and held it out, tentatively, as if making some sort of offer to an unjust god.

“What of this one, milady? It’s lovely, and you can wear it with the new ribbons your da bought you back from France.”

The girl, only twelve years old, fixed the servant with a petulant glare for a moment before softening her expression as she regarded the dress. When the child reached out to gently touch the dress, the servant breathed a sigh of relief. Serving Lady Jane Willoughby was testing every ounce of resolve, and at the end of each day she felt far more tired than a young woman of nineteen should feel.

But her relief was short-lived. In one brisk movement, Lady Jane snatched the gown from the servant and began to whip it back and forth, striking the older girl about the head and chest.

“I told you. I do NOT want to wear this one! I want to wear the blue silk gown!”

The servant stood and tried to move out of the way, only to fall backwards to the floor.

Attempting to shield herself from the blows, the servant tried to reason with the angry Lady Jane.

“Mercy, milady!” she cried. “I care not what you wear but your mother clearly instructed me to reserve the blue dress for the upcoming ball!”

The girl continued to whip the servant with the dress. “She’s not my mother, you fool! What’s more, she is old and sick and in an other hard winter she’ll be dead and I will be lady here! My father won’t remarry again. I’ll see to that. And when I am in command the likes of you will be put out for your defiance!”

She punctuated the last statement with an extra hard swing of the dress, and this time when it came down a pearl button caught the servant close to the eye socket, eliciting a scream of rage. Suddenly the servant was on her feet to do the unthinkable. Without thinking, she snatched the dress back from a shocked Jane and slapped the child – hard - across the face.

The room fell into a sudden and surreal silence. Then that silence was broken as Lady Jane issued an ear-splitting scream.

The servant blanched. “Oh, milady,” she said quietly, bringing a hand to her mouth from the shock of what she’d done. “Beg pardon.”

But it was too late. The sound of footsteps could be heard in the hallway and the door to the room was flung open by Lord Charles Willoughby. He was flanked by two servants and her visiting distant cousin, twenty year old Wulfric Bellford.

“Father!” Lady Jane transformed her face into that of a completely traumatized waif and rushed to take refuge in his comforting arms.

“There, there, my pet. What on earth happened?”

“Please My Lord..” the servant began, but was silenced by a look from the master of the house.

“Oh, father. I caught her going through my jewelry. She was going to take mama’s locket! When I confronted her she struck me!”

The girl burst into a hail of tears and Lord Willoughby looked at the servant, his face thunderous with indignation.

“Were I a cruel man I’d have you lashed and thrown out into the cold.” He clenched his fists as he addressed the cowering servant.

“Cousin…” Wulfric had stepped forward to place his hand on the older man’s arm. “If I may, things are not as they seem here…”

“Silence.” Lord Willoughby raised his large hand, indicating that he wasn’t in the mood to do anything but pronounce sentence. He pointed at the servant, who was now trembling in fear.

“You will escape being put out, for I would not starve you even for this, out of respect for your mother who was a good and faithful servant to my wife. But you will not escape the lash.”

He turned to the two male servants beside him. “Seize her!”

The servant cried out as the two male attendants grabbed her, one by each arm and drug her over to a trunk at the foot of Lady Jane’s bed. The servant begged for mercy as she was drug over it and wailed in humiliation as her skirts were raised to reveal her bare bottom. One of the servants briefly left the room and upon returning produced a heavy leather strap. Just the sight of it produced a flood of tearful pleas from the still-restrained servant.

“Charles!” Again Wulfric tried to get his cousin’s attention, walking between him and his target. And again he was rebuffed.

“Out of my way, Wulfric,” he boomed. “Perhaps if your own father had been blessed with my sense of justice he would still have his fortune. Disloyalty is not to be borne, and those who perpetuate it must pay and pay dearly.”

Wulfric shook his head as he stepped aside. His reluctance was obvious, but he was in another man’s house and did not make the rules within its walls. Lord Willoughby did, and even now he stood armed with the strap behind the terrified, bare-bottomed servant.

It did not escape Wulfric’s notice that his cousin Jane had moved to the front of the bed and was looking with satisfied bemusement at the servant’s tear-streaked face. When the strap whistled down and slammed into the older girl’s broad white bottom, the younger lass put her hand across her mouth to hide a mean smile.

Wulfric felt his blood boil at the scene. He’d heard everything just moments before Lord Willoughby and his two men had charged into the room. It infuriated him that this girl was being punished for something she didn’t do, and he glared at his younger cousin. But she just smirked as the strap fell again and the sounds of a second cry of pain filled the room.

The helpless servant bucked against the punishment, but Lord Willoughby did not give even a measure of mercy to his victim. The strap rose and fell and rose and fell again, causing red swath after red swath to bloom across the previously alabaster skin. And he didn’t stop, even when the twin globes of her bottom were bearing his scarlet stripes. Instead he moved his attentions lower, targeting her plump upper thighs, until they too were similarly marked.

When he did stop and the servants let her go, the girl lay across the trunk limply, too shaken and pained to worry about the view afforded all in attendance. For her part, Lady Jane took advantage of the girl’s predicament to twist the knife further.

“Father, make her cover herself. Is it not enough that I’ve been physically assaulted that I must now endure such crass immodesty?”

“My daughter’s right!” Lord Willougby nudged the girl with his toe. “You heard her. Cover yourself and begone. And tell all who ask of what you’ve done, and the price you paid, that you might serve as an example..”

The girl rose on unsteady legs and pulled her dress down as she limped from the room, sobbing pitifully as she went. Wulfric wanted to follow her, to offer some comfort, but thought the better of it. But he wasn’t about to let the matter lie without taking some action.

Lord Willoughby and his men exited the room, and Wulfric pretended to follow for a moment but did not. Instead he turned back and went into the room.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” He shook his head at his pretty cousin, indicating his disgust. “I heard everything. How could you do something like that, Jane?”

The girl shrugged and laughed. “It was easy,” she said. “I simply cried out for Papa in my time of need.”

“You lie and get a girl punished, and having possibly ruined her reputation in the household have the heartlessness to laugh it off!” He stepped towards her. “It was you who deserved the lashing, Jane. Not that poor servant.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “How typical of a Bellford, to sympathize with the rabble.” She crossed her arms and smirked. “My papa said it is a defect of the blood on his sister’s side of the family that they are too soft-hearted. He says it is the inability to take command that led to the misfortune the Bellfords now face. Which is why you’re here, living off of the Willoughby largesse.”

Wulfric took a step towards her. “My family estate still makes a fair living,” he said. “And while it is true that we are not as prosperous as your father, Jane, there are some things riches can’t procure. Like a sense of fairness and justice.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “I’d be insulted if I cared even a bit about those things,” she said. “But alas, I don’t.” Jane walked past him and picked up the blue silk dress from the bed. Turning her back to him she held the garment up against herself and addressed his reflection from where he stood behind her.

“In the end, Wulfric, all that matters is wealth and position. It gives one the means to do as one wishes. In this my position as daughter of a rich man has given me the opportunity to have this fine gown.” She glanced over her shoulder and smirked again. “And the chance to wear it whenever I choose.”

She turned back to assess her reflection anew. “Now get out of my chamber, Wulfric, before I scream again and call my father in to hear the story of how you tried to ravage me.”

Wulfric felt his face flame red with rage, and his hands itched to turn the arrogant, trouble-making chit of a cousin over his lap and spank her until she screamed for his mercy.

But he knew he could not. Not now at least. So Wulfric Bellford stood straight, offered a mock bow and turned to walk from the room. As he did he vowed that one day, somehow, he would make his cousin pay for what she had done.

Spring, 1617

“Jane, be reasonable!” Lord Willoughby put his hands on his balding head in a sign of frustration as he paced the floor. From the sides of the room, the servants cast dismayed glances in his directions as the bellicose who ruled the household struggled to reason with his daughter.

And if the years had been unkind to Lord Willoughby, a two-time widower with less hair than paunch, then they had been kind to his daughter. Lady Jane had grown into an extraordinary beauty, with a mane of long, dark blonde hair that cascaded past slim shoulders and firm breasts to fall past slender hips that swelled nicely into perfectly rounded hips.

Her beauty had not gone unnoticed, and more than one man was willing to overlook her legendary temper to ask her father to consider them suitable prospective husbands.

Few made the cut, and among the fortunate few who had, the Albert Thurston, the First Duke of Creedmoor was deemed by Lord Willoughby to be the most advantageous match for his daughter’s hand. The Duke, a kind man in his fortieth year, was also a man of considerable wealth and such was capable of providing the spoiled Lady Jane with enough trinkets to keep her out of mischief.

But Lady Jane had other ideas. Another suitor, the dashing young Earl of Trent did not have the same rank that so impressed her father, but the inheritance he stood to claim would – she knew – more than make up for it. And he was dashing – so dashing, in fact, that every eligible female in the kingdom went weak-kneed with delight at the slightest nod in their direction from his leonine blonde head. For Lady Jane, capturing such a man would not only give her wealth, but make her even more of an envy among her peers. And now, at the pinnacle of girlish arrogance, that meant as much to her as anything else.

“I will not marry a man I do not love,” she said to her father. “I shall kill myself first. And then you will have to visit me in the churchyard when you bring flowers to mama’s grave.”

Her words were a punch in the gut to her father, whose worst fear lay in losing his only child. He loved Jane, even if she didn’t deserve it. What’s more, he needed her to continue his bloodline, albeit indirectly. Was it so much to ask, he wondered of late, to have some say in what man would plant the seed to continue the family legacy to spring from Jane’s womb?

Apparently so, for no amount of cajoling could convince the headstrong young woman to accept the man he preferred her to marry.

But Lord Willoughby, while a cajoling father, had his limits. He would not give in on this. Not completely, anyway.

“Very well,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I shall not decide for you, Jane. You probably know that both men have come seeking your hand. And since I cannot choose for you I will not choose at all.”

She rushed to embrace him with a look of happiness on her pretty face but he held up his hand to stop her.

“You will not choose either,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Jane stopped and shot her father an apprehensive look.

“Both of these men would make suitable husbands, although I believe a man like the Earl of Trent would eventually break your heart by proving himself a philanderer like his father was.”

Jane snorted derisively at this comment, indicating that he’d never cheat on someone as beautiful as she, but her father ignored her and continued.

“They will settle this. On the jousting field.”

Jane stood speechless for a moment, considering this. She’d seen both men joust before, after all, and knew that Albert Thurston, a champion jouster in his day, was quite good. But he was older now, and the Earl of Trent had the advantage of youth as well as something else her father wasn’t aware of – a new and impressive horse imported just for the purpose. It was a magnificent beast, as black as night, with heavy feathering on the end of its massive legs. The idea of the handsome Earl battling for her hand aboard that magnificent beast - and all within sight of the other envious ladies – thrilled Jane more than she’d ever admit.

“Very well,” she said, making sure to inject more disappointment into her voice than she felt.

Lord Willoughby studied his daughter, unconvinced by her tone. It was not like her to accept anything other than completely getting her way, and for a moment he wondered if he’d made the right decision. Perhaps he should reverse himself and for once take the upper hand with Jane.

But when he looked at her in profile from where she’d walked to stand by the window he knew he could not do it. She was his one weakness, the darker shadow of her mother, the woman who had been his first and only true love. All he really wanted was her happiness, and had devoted himself to assuring that she’d never have to want for anything in her life. He worried that this Earl, while wealthy, would use the marriage to plunder his holdings and leave her when the ravages of time did what he knew Jane believed it would not – rob her of the beauty she now took for granted.

Had she been a son, he knew, she’d have been a fearsome thing capable of crushing resolve with little more than sheer force of will. Had she been male, he would not have to worry. But she’d been born a girl, and as such would be at the mercy of whoever received the gift of her innocent, silly hand.

The joust was the best he could do. The way he looked at it, the Duke of Creedmoor had an advantage, even if it was a slight one. And that gave him better than half a chance to place his daughter in the hands of a man he knew would love and protect her forever, which was all that really mattered.

He turned and called to his personal secretary. “Send word,” he said when the man trotted over. “In a fortnight there will be a jousting duel for the hand of Lady Jane Willoughby between the Lucien Hornsby, Earl of Trent and Albert Thurston, First Duke of Creedmor. All who wish to witness this event are invited to attend.”

The man bowed and turned to make off for the study to prepare the message.

“Are you sure you won’t reconsider?” The tone was that of a defeated man. “Please, Jane. I’ve asked for so little from you in your short life. Can I not be trusted to choose a suitable mate without involving the possibility of bloodshed?”

“Father, this is my life you’re speaking of,” Jane replied impatiently. But when she saw how grieved her father looked she felt a rare twinge of guilt and walked over to wrap her slim arms around his rotund middle. “Besides, no one will get hurt. You know as well as I that jousts look far worse than they actually are.”

“Do you think?” Lord Willoughby wasn’t so sure and felt a sudden chill as a black raven alighted in the rose bush outside the window. He was a superstitious who believed in portents and omens. A raven among the thorns was not a comforting sight. Not at all.

“I know.” Jane looked up at her father with an expression as light as the bird was dark and for a moment, Charles Willoughby let himself think all really would be well just as she said it would be.

But when she walked away, the sense of foreboding returned and he feared he’d made a decision that would doom her unless he found some way to reverse it.