Being at court was easily the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Georgiana. She hoped to make new friends, and she had made some effort towards that goal, but her family always came first. Although she knew Phillip had responsibilities, she didn’t want to let him get too lost in those, so she had created a plan.
Her plans never failed. She always knew exactly what tactic to take with her brothers, which was just to be herself. They had never been able to say no to her.
Shown in to see him, she swung the basket she’d had made up for her. “We’re going on a picnic.” She declared, looking at her eldest brother with affection. “Just you and I, unless the children would like to join us.” She adored her niece and nephew, she loved them even more than she loved her brothers.
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––– The garden beginning to bloom just beyond the Warwick’s courtly apartments called her by name, pleading for a woman’s touch of attentiveness as she cloaked her slight frame in a robe, hardly expecting visitors, and padded outdoors. Bitterly cold temperatures gripped at Joanna, although as March dawned upon the isle the sensation was swiftly set aside as the sun shone gaily upon her gilded locks of hair. She lowered to her knees to admire a bouquet of doggedly-surviving hyacinths, inhaling the sweetly fragranced bulbs – carefully attended to by the palace’s variety of gardeners. For a moment in time, Joanna felt at peace. She uncloaked the worries of her children and the pain her husband’s absence had caused; his forays into the political machinations of court inadvertently driving a distance between them. He slipped between the sheets of their bed long after she fell asleep and left long before she awoke, was scarcely present at supper, and could not be drawn from his study in the afternoon; embedded in a plague of ambition driven exertion. As a tall shadow loomed against the garden, however, Joanna was struck surprised as she craned her neck and glimpsed upon her husband. Rising quickly, she stumbled slightly and lost her footing on the hem of her robe; falling face-forward into his chest and releasing an audible oof as she did so. “Oh – Phillip. What on earth are you doing here? Your chamberlain said you would be breaking your fast with the Howards.”
On the morning of 14 February, hours before the Masquerade Ball is set to begin, a letter is delivered to the Duke of Warwick’s freshly made bed. It rests neatly upon his pillow where the sun shines upon it, accompanied by a silver ring – inscribed with the motto of House Mountbatten and the date of the duke’s marriage. The duchess, who had momentarily escaped the company of her ladies whilst they worked tirelessly to make any finishing adjustments to her apparel, went undetected in leaving the note there; its recipient the only soul privy to its contents.
My, dearest Lord Warwick,
The morning chill has beckoned me from sleep this morning to find you absent from the sheets that bear your fragrance and the silhouette of your figure. Although I mourn your absence most ardently, it has granted me a rare opportunity to put my thoughts to a quill and parchment to postman without the threat of having my husband peering over my shoulder nosily. As you ride out to the Thames to receive an ambassador of my native Burgundy, I imagine that at your side the Duke of Clarence shall no doubt taunt you for the welts I inadvertently left upon your skin in the midst of our trysts this previous night. I heartily look forward to soothing such wounds upon your swift return, but I am nevertheless compelled on this day in particular to relay to you my most humble of gratitude for the regard and love you have always borne toward me, paid me when I was no more a stranger encroaching on your bachelorhood, and as a result extended to our children: the savvy Elizabeth, Caroline full of mischief, and little Phillip who I am told favors your likeness more and more each day, all but rejecting the Yorkist blood I have given them and in turn fully embracing the greatness of their patrilineal house. I cannot begrudge them such, for without the aegis of your noble family I would be no more than a renegade to the crown, or perhaps the wife of my father’s cupbearer and made to bear his scions.
Our children, whom I love and adore more than life itself, are both the consequences and the living proof of the love that flourishes between us. Our blood runs between them and in their every mannerism I see traces of you and glimpses of myself that remind me of the promises we made to one another that glorious November morning, promises that have elapsed both great hardships and great peace – promises that were made with little notion of the weight indentured to them at the time of their creation. As the child of a most incongruous match myself, I do not take lightly the pride that swells in my heart in the ability to rear children who recognize the love that exists in their parents. They look with hope to their own nuptials, and though I am certain you would rather beg for bread than hear word of little Lizzy or Caro’s future betrothals, I cannot tell you how much it means to me that we have raised hopeful, passionate, kind children. They are my pride and joy and I am so deeply proud of what we have accomplished in the short span of our union – through months of uncertainty and dread, succeeded and overwritten by years upon years of joyous matrimony and parenthood. That our children bear your nose and my mouth, and that upon their sweet faces we shall be united forevermore, is the greatest consolation a woman such as myself could ever receive for the pangs of childbirth. You have risen me to be a great lady, a duchess of the realm, and for this I thank you – but I love you for making me a mother, a wife, a sister. You are my consolation in a world of greed and neglect. You are my heart and soul, Phillip, and I bid you never forget the love your little wife has borne you in the days of her youth.
It bewilders me, too, that in the years of our marriage – now nearly a decade – I have never once enquired of you if you gave credence to the thought of ‘soul-mates’. I understand that some gentlemen of court would like to think the concept asinine, or devised by women and poets to ensnare a man into matrimony. Regardless of your thoughts, I shall continue to believe, as long as I live as your consort and firm advocate, that we are meant to be. I believe it with all of my heart and always shall. Whatever hellish waters should attempt to part us we will wade, whatever folly should come between us we will triumph, whatever obstacles should try to sever us we will mend. I will always believe that you were mine long before we ever laid eyes upon one another and that I was yours before my life was ever conceived, before my lungs were ever given breath. I cannot simplify what I feel toward you anymore than this simple phrase: I love you. I don’t ever wish to live without you; you have changed my life and its course wholly and completely. My every trust lies in you and in the future we are building together.
I have now resigned myself to my ladies’ will as they prod and pinch me with pins and laces. There is much I still wish to say, but all of it I trust you know – you have always known. I must put an end to my writings here and allow them to spin me about, string me up like a doll, and wrap me in the fine silks you have granted me. I hope I shall please you this eventide to cause you desire to undo all they have faithfully done, and strip me of each pin and lace between your deft fingertips, or teeth.
Yours, most affectionately,
Joanna.
P.S. It dawned on me that this last Valentine’s Day I was with child. Our Phillip will soon be a year old. I am certain that when the time comes he will be a very gifted elder-brother.
According to legend, the woman embossed upon the glossy exterior of his playing card was that of his grandmother, Elizabeth of York. So beloved by her husband and king that upon her precipitous death he chose to immortalize her lively spirit, and a love of gambling, within a deck of fifty two cards ––––– appearing eight times in every pack distributed throughout London. Where she was once the queen consort of England she was now deified as the Queen of Hearts, her enigmatic eyes and indecipherable smirk burning through the stack. Henry Fitzroy settled this card upon the ornate table separating himself and his opponent, lifting his gaze to Phillip Warwick’s disconcertingly sharp glare. A duke who wielded immense power and through marriage had integrated himself into the thread of the royal family, Fitzroy had reason to temper himself in his presence; to boot, he was a cousin to Henry by virtue of his marriage to Joanna Plantagenet. “I am relieved, my lord, that our quarantine was not a gambit to win a hand of cards, yet I am of a mind that this subterfuge has gone on long enough. Surely whatever there is to be done, has been executed by now.”
Something had caught her attention –––––––– as she treaded into Phillip’s study with the intent of retrieving the cloak she’d left there the morning previously, a glinting within the stack of leaflets piled upon his escritoire halted her in her tracks and rid her of all rational thought, a guiding light of reason she was meant to be stirred by but had lost touch with upon the birth of a third child. She recalled, then, the recent correspondence between Phillip and his noble confreres –––––– mundane business, no doubt, and although women were oft discouraged from taking an interest in their husband’s pursuits Joanna could not inhibit hers; she’d always been fascinated by the legality of courtly intrigue and were it not for the disadvantage of her sex, she is certain she would have pursued it with the same carnivorous passion her husband exuded. That aside, there was something that Phillip had mentioned that was well within her purview of expertise –––– the delicate matter of Owen Mountbatten’s bachelorhood augmented by the day and she wondered, by some stroke of fate, if the answer to her mounting curiosity lay within that pinnacle of letters. Had he come to court at last?
Joanna craned her slender neck to the door, swept toward it, and stopped once more. Instead of crossing the threshold into the hallway as she ought to have, she peered down its candle-lit depths, and ensured there were no maids or butlers scuttling by ––––––– more pivotally, that Phillip hadn’t returned from his privy council engagements. She ratiocinated with herself for only the briefest of moments before dashing behind his desk and stepped in front of his chair; an ornate, brocade-adorned seat that oozed power, emanated command. With nimble fingertips she sorted through his letters, blue eyes searching for keywords, phrases and addresses of importance that might lead her in the right direction. What she was looking for she could not be sure (and therefore rationalized her snooping as anything but) –––––– Owen’s letter, a missive from their children’s nanny, a note from the Duke of Somerset? Courtly secrets? Legal proceedings, impending executions, upcoming trials? Oh, how her heart raced, and how profoundly she wished to be apart of this world that was just beyond her reach and yet Phillip enjoyed an open passport to. As she mined through his correspondence, she almost missed the sound of his boots thudding against the hardwood floors, a stream of sound that led directly toward the office. She released an oath under her breath and made neat her skirts as she moved toward the door, greeting Phillip with a fabricated, nervous grin; wondering if he’d caught her red-handed before she realised his presence.
“Phillip!” She cried, her voice a lilt below a screeching murmur ––––– “You’re home earlier than expected. Is something amiss, my love? Please, sit. I’ll summon tea. Are you famished? I’ll go––-sit.” Words tumbled from her mouth quicker than her mind could form rational thought as she swept toward him.
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