Constant Heart (7 page)

“She has . . .”

“In truth, my lord, she has been born beautiful to a wealthy father whose fortune you happened to need
and
she’s had the misfortune to follow behind Elinor.”

That was not what I had been thinking! “You make me out to be a blackguard.”

“Then, please, my lord, prove my suspicions to be unfounded.”

Later, the earl sent word to me, through the steward, that we were needed at the palace for a banquet.

“I will not go.”

Joan glanced at the door behind which the steward had disappeared. It was closed. “You have to go.”

“There must be something good about being a countess. Why cannot my wish be also my command?”

“Because you would be making a grave mistake in not attending.”

“In not giving them more reasons to laugh at me?”

“If you do not go, whatever they imagined they could laugh at will only become proven in their eyes. If you do not go, they will laugh at you forever. Was there no one there who was kind to you?”

“Not one.”

“Then you must make them be kind to you. You are a countess.

If they will not like you, they must at least respect you.”

They did not have to be kind to me, neither were they required to respect me. But Joan had not been present at my introduction, and she had no way of knowing what it had been like to be chewed up and spit out by those glittering nobles. Before I left I bid Joan find the betrothal ring and the bracelets the earl had given me. Though he was the least of my friends, it was he who provided my title, the reason for my being there. And tonight, it seemed, I had need to belong to someone.

When I appeared as requested and joined the earl in the hall, he made no comment on my change in garment. Indeed, he made no comment at all.

As we rode back to Whitehall, I gathered my courage for the evening ahead. Joan was right. To have absented myself from court would have been to admit defeat, to have sacrificed everything my father had worked to gain. To have forgone my duty would have made an admission that the earl had made a grave mistake in taking me to wife. It would have announced to all present that he would have done better with no wife at all.

Though the earl sat beside me at the table, I was isolated from those around me by a barricade of silence. To him, at least, our tablemates were polite. After sliding surreptitious glances toward the Queen, they leaned toward him in conversations of quickly whispered words. It only succeeded in confirming my suspicions: the trouble with our coupling was me.

But the indifference of others leant me invisibility. With no partner to talk to, my thoughts floated back to my introduction to the Queen. Before she had looked into my eyes, she had looked at my gown. Was it for that she had despised me?

It had been styled in the latest fashion so that I would not cause the earl shame. Indeed, it had proclaimed his wealth and his royal favor with its decorations of the finest pearls. Its colors and materials were well within my right, as a countess, to wear. I had not tried to climb above my station, to be batted at like a common fly.

My French hood? The veil that covered the back of my head?

Glancing down the table, I saw other women wearing the same.

Both those seated above me and those seated below me.

My glance passed the table once more, and I found one thing of note: of all the august woman at the table, only
my
face lacked white ceruse paint. Only
my
hairs were not orange. Surely they could not all be related to the Queen? Surely they did not all come by the Tudor hairs naturally. Was mine the only skin unmarred by disease? Mine the only hairs not hidden beneath a wig?

I turned my attentions to my plate and ate of stewed oysters. I lifted my eyes again, reluctant to confine my gaze to food when around me nobles wore a veritable treasure chest of gems and jewels. I had never before seen such a vast exhibit of wealth.

As I glanced down the table, the earl’s eyes trapped my gaze. His dark eyes were devoid of warmth, his thoughts unreadable.

Breaking from his look, I lifted a nutmeat to my lips. But as I ate, realization dawned that to a person, every noblewoman was eating only custard or jelly. So I left the remainder on my plate.

In the following days, I vowed I would be more careful to match my actions to those among whom I moved. I had no need to paint myself, nor did I wish to wear a wig, but my best hope was for Her Majesty to forget that she had known me. To blot the memory of me from her mind. Until I could return the earl to her good graces, I would try not to remember myself to her at all.

6

I
dressed with great care the next morning as I thought about claiming my place among Her Majesty’s nobility. That place was mine to claim, by right of marriage, unless the earl indicated otherwise. But if the previous day’s experiences were any guide, I could only assume that place would not be given unless I asserted my right to have it. It was imperative that I show my presence. To remain at Lytham House would be to relinquish my position, to forfeit any hope I had of being useful to the earl. For how else could I determine which ladies were most influential and whom I must befriend? Whom I must invite to supper and whom I must avoid? It was at court that my talents for singing and for dancing could be best displayed.

Since I longed to be part of what I had been trained for, I wanted neither to be the first in fashion nor to be among those wearing the previous year’s styles. I wanted to look like all the other courtiers’ wives.

A chambermaid helped me put on my shift, corset, and silk stockings. Then Joan motioned me to stand on a stool, and together she and the maid raised the farthingale hoops above me so I could push my head through them.

I took some bread as the maid fastened the farthingale to the bodice. That done, there was the question of the kirtle. Since I would wear a French gown with the front of the skirt cut away, the front of the kirtle would be revealed. “I want the gold gown, I think, and so the cloth of gold kirtle.” But after it had been taken to the sempstress, I changed my mind. It would seem dull to wear too much gold. “Could I . . . I think the cloth of gold forepart should be replaced with the carnation.”

As I sipped at wine, Joan found the sempstress and told her to detach the remainder of the cloth of gold forepart from the front of the kirtle and join the carnation forepart to it instead. The forepart replaced, she brought it back to my chambers. The chambermaid aided me into the gown and arranged it over my farthingale.

But I stopped her. “Leave me think a moment.” Instinctively, I had chosen to wear my gold gown, the only gown I could see in the dim light. But it would be the first gown any would notice in the bright-lit Presence Chamber, and that would not do.

I could wear the indigo once more. Or the one my mother had ordered made in gray. The gray gown was wretched, the color of ashes. But it symbolized repentance. At my mother’s insistence, a gray gown of satin had been part of my dowry. She had advised that a proper wife should always have a gray gown in which to mourn a death or beg forgiveness from a husband.

Perhaps gray; I could play the penitent. Surely that would please the Queen.

“I shall need this gown replaced by the gray.”

Joan cast a long look at me before she gestured the maid to pull the gown from me.

“And with it, not the carnation forepart, but the cloth of silver in its stead.” If I was to make myself humble, at least I could do it in a gown worthy of my new station.

The maid removed the gown and then the kirtle I had just put on, handing it to Joan.

Joan disappeared, no doubt to take it to the sempstress once more. I felt bad that the woman would have to unpick the stitches that had just been sewn.

I took more bread while I waited for Joan’s appearance.

When she returned with the forepart replaced, I lifted my arms to be dressed once more.

“Sleeves, my lady?” The chambermaid curtsied as she asked.

“The gray.” Much as I would have liked the silver which matched the forepart, I chose for the Queen’s pleasure, not my own.

The maid laced the sleeves to my gown. I stood straight as she laced the gown up the back.

“A hat, my lady?”

I preferred my tall hat for its gaiety but had chosen a more traditional French hood for my introduction the day before. I settled, finally, on a caul. It needed but a simple arrangement of hairs, and the netted cord that would gather my tresses in back was dotted with pearls.

A second chambermaid parted my hairs in the middle as I sat on a stool. She twisted them away from my brow and then captured them in the net. After she finished, she curtsied. But before she left my presence, I stopped her.

“This morning, I will want vermillion.”

“My lady.”

Joan found the casket and lifted the lid for the maid as she painted my lips and dabbed at my cheeks. After she had finished, Joan held a mirror for my viewing.

I surveyed the results and was pleased. I looked sober. The vermillion paint had made my skin seem paler. No one would accuse me of being a gypsy.

I was ready for whatever the day might hold.

Upon leaving my chambers and asking for the earl, I was told he had already left for the palace and had taken Nicholas with him. Unsure of what I was to do, I stood there at length until Joan made the decision for me.

“My lady will want a horse to take her to the palace and twenty of the earl’s men to ride with her.”

I would? I turned toward her, brows raised. Had she gone mad?

She smiled. When I said nothing in response, she inclined her head ever so slightly toward the front hall. And then, when still I had not moved, she curtsied before me, straightened, tucked her hand around my arm, and dragged me forth.

“What have you done?” I was furious with her. What did I know of commanding twenty men? And what was I to do with them once I reached the palace?

“I have done nothing but asked for an honor due someone of your rank.”

“And what am I to do with them?”

“Whatever you please.”

Whatever I pleased. I contemplated that thought as we waited for my horse to appear. I could probably have saddled her faster myself. I began to wish of a sudden that I had not been so set on upholding my position at court. For surely no one cared whether I made an appearance. No one but the earl, of course. And perhaps then not even him. I sighed. “What is the earl to say?”

“Whatever it is, certain I am that he will not be so hasty in leaving you behind next time.”

I frowned at her.

She crossed her eyes at me.

An unseemly giggle threatened to bubble from my throat, but at that instant we heard the sound of a great thundering of hooves.

The earl’s men rode into the courtyard in formation, a vision of azure and red, wrapped in dust. The man in the lead was holding the reins of my horse.

None of the men looked overly happy at having been summoned from whatever it was they had been doing.

“I wish . . . Could you not accompany me?”

“ ’Tis not my place. ’Tis yours. And you had best be about the taking of it.” Joan raised her chin and looked toward the men. “They await your order.” She nudged me forward with an elbow.

I descended the steps and walked to my horse. The man holding on to her reins dismounted, and I allowed him to help me mount.

“My lady.” He bowed deep in gracious homage.

I looked one last time at Joan, wishing for all the world that I might stay by her side.

She frowned.

I cleared my throat to find my voice. “I would go to the palace.”

The man made no move.

Was there some secret word? Some special phrase that would make them do my bidding?

“You would go to . . . Whitehall, my lady? Or to Greenwich?”

I looked at him sharply to discern if he was making sport of me.

But he was not. He only wished to fulfill my command.

“To Whitehall.”

“My lady goes to Whitehall!”

The men rode their horses round the courtyard and waited in formation in front of the gate. But what were they waiting for?

The man who had helped me mount gestured that I should go first. “My Lady Lytham.”

I felt a blush spread across my cheeks. They were waiting for me. But I did not remember how I was to get there. “I should be quite . . . grateful . . . if I did not have to think too hard upon where it is that I am going.”

“Perhaps you would allow us the honor of seeing to your protection. You could, my lady, ride perfectly at ease if you rode in the middle.”

And so I rode forth, in their center, in relative ease, for the pace was not too fast. Neither was it too slow. But upon our approach to the palace, I began once more to worry. What was I to order them to do? It would not have been correct for me to return to Lytham House on my own. But neither did I think it prudent to have the men wait for me, since I could not know how long I would be at court.

I hoped it would become evident once we had reached the palace. Perhaps I would see companies of other men in livery.