Susan's comments (member since Jul 05, 2009)

Susan's comments from the Book Excerpts group.

Thanks for starting the group, Anne!

“I don’t wish to marry him. I do not like him.”

“Like him, Bess? You’ve never met him.” Her father smiled tolerantly.

“I could not like a man from such a horrid family.”

She had expected more help on this score from her mother, but Katharine, whatever her opinions might be in private, was a woman to stand publicly with her husband. “It is not for you to refuse this match, Elizabeth. You will marry him. You are a widow, after all; it is most suitable that you remarry.”

“Why can’t Joan marry him? Her father was beheaded too. They would have much more to talk about.”

William’s lip twitched upward, but he still managed to say testily, “Hugh asked for your hand, not Joan’s. In any case, he would have asked in vain, because we have decided that Joan will marry your brother Will, quite soon as a matter of fact.”

So now he can stare at her breasts all he likes, Bess thought, then remembered the matter at hand. “I don’t want to marry him, Papa.” She looked up into her father’s face and gazed at him sadly with her large brown eyes, a trick that up to now had never missed with her father, though Bess to her credit had used it sparingly. “Please don’t make me.”

“I must, child. I cannot have you dictating to me whom you shall marry. I would not marry you to a man I did not esteem; you should know that. His father did disgrace his family’s name, but Sir Hugh has done much to restore it. But I will allow you to sit with us when he comes to visit tomorrow or the next day. You will see for yourself that he will make a good husband for you, and you will get a chance to come to know him.”

“And Hugh is a rich man,” added Katharine. “You will be Lady of Glamorgan, and have many castles, you know. It won’t be bad, I promise.”

Nor, thought Bess, had she promised that it would be good.