Prisoner of the Queen (Tales From the Tudor Court) (45 page)

“There is no one here, my lady wife
. You needn’t be so formal.” He gripped my hand in his and pressed a kiss to the knuckles, which had me fairly swooning. How I had missed him!

I smiled up into his joyful face, my excitement to see him finally breaking free and bubbling to the surface. I threw my arms around his neck, and pressed my lips to his. His hands came swiftly around my back to pull me closer.

My head swirled, my knees weak. The world seemed to spin, at once both heavenly and dangerously. Ned kissed me with a passion we had not shared in our previous joinings, as if he would melt everything he felt, all the kisses we’d missed, into this one press of lips on lips.

“Oh, Kat, my love,” he whispered, his lips pressing against my forehead as his fingers
stroked the length of my neck. “How I missed you!”

His voice crackled with emotion, and I pressed my hands to his cheeks, forcing our gazes to connect.

“Ned, I missed you so much! I am…” My emotions swirled through me like the tide crashing up the sides of a mountain. It was hard to express exactly what it was I felt. “I felt as though I’d died inside, and when Cecil approached about it being possible for us to be together… I did not think it true, and yet here we are!”

“How is our son?” He looked around
, eyes settling on our baby’s cradle.

“He is good, healthy, strong.” I smiled with pride, watching Ned approach the child we’d created.

He stared down into the cradle for several minutes before turning eyes prickled with tears on me. “He is beautiful.”

I pressed my lips together to keep from letting my emotions flow out.

Ned reached inside, lifting out a squirming bundle and holding it close to his breast. Awkward for but a moment, he quickly curled his arms around our baby and cooed softly. A natural.

“Have you been a good babe for your mother?”

“The very best,” I said, coming up behind him and placing my hand on his back. I peered over his shoulder.

Little Eddie was gazing blissfully up at his father.
After they’d had some time together, I asked the nurse to take the baby for a stroll in the courtyard so Ned and I could be alone.

A wicked glint entered
Ned’s eyes when the door was closed leaving us alone, and I felt heat rush to my cheeks in torrents.

I smiled shyly. “It has been
such a long time since we were alone.”

“
’Tis my greatest wish, the one thing that has kept me sane over these last months.”

I pressed my hands to his shoulders and then patted down his arms and over his ribs, examining him. “Have they kept you well?”

“Aye, wife, I am kept well, and I have paid dearly for it, too.”

My brows shot up and then wrinkled together with concern as I imagined the
jailers prodding him and tormenting him. “How have they made you pay?”

Ned reached out and stroked the back of his hand over my cheeks. “
’Tis not as bad as what you imagine. Ever the one to let your fancies get away with you. I meant only that I am literally paying for it. ’Tis expensive to keep a family of nobles within a comfortable means, and all this”—his hand swept out, indicating my rooms, the food, the wine, the fabrics—“I give coin from our coffers to keep us well placed.”

“I had no idea
. I simply thought the queen was being kind.”

Ned laughed quite loudly at that. “Elizabeth is intelligent, cunning, but kind is not something I
’ve heard said of her other than from the poor to whom she tosses alms. Ruthless, she is. She will stop at nothing to see that she reigns until her hair is bleached white with age and more lines appear on her craggy cheeks than the maps in Cecil’s study.”

I giggled at the image he painted. “Surely there are more than just the poor who consider her kind.”

“What of you, my lady?” He walked toward the table laden with wine, cheese, fruits, pasties and crusted bread. He popped a grape into his mouth and then poured two goblets of wine, bringing one to me. “Do you consider her kind for forcing you to live in the Tower, for not recognizing your marriage? For allowing you to give birth while imprisoned and then calling your son a bastard?”

I took a sip of the wine, letting its tangy essence rest on my tongue before swallowing. The wine carved a warm path down my throat into my belly. “I try not to dwell too much on the path that has been given me. I am happy to be your wife and know in truth that I am, that God knows we are, and on Judgment Day, the queen will, too.”

I walked toward a window, staring out the
diamond-shape paned glass. “I spent many days, weeks, months wishing for change when my sister was imprisoned. Wishing for our monarch—Queen Mary, God rest her soul—to see the truth. To know that Jane meant her no harm, but ’twas all for naught. I refuse to wish and dwell on things I know very well I cannot change.”

Ned came to stand beside me, his hand pressed to the small of my back. “You know you do not have to keep all the burdens to yourself. We may not be allowed to live together daily as husband and wife, but with Cecil behind us we shall see each other more and make some
what of a life out of what the queen has given us.”

I gazed up at Ned, knowing my deepest fears showed on my face. “What of our Eddie?”

“She will not harm him, Kat. I swear, he is protected.”

“How can you swear when you are imprisoned yourself?”

“My coin pays not only for our comforts, my love, but for our safety, too.”

“Oh, Ned!” I buried my face against his chest, unable to bear the thought that we had to pay for prot
ection inside these Tower walls. That even now, if Ned hadn’t seen to paying off the guards, we would be in danger, our child’s life in danger.

Ned pressed his lips to my forehead, pulled my headdress off and tossed it somewhere, before I felt his chin rest on top of my head. It felt good to be in his arms, safe. Pain sliced through my heart
, knowing our time was limited this afternoon and that soon he would be taken back to his own Tower prison chambers. But I refused to let it upset me now. I could not dwell on the time when he was not with me, when my arms at that very moment were wrapped tightly around him. I had to soak in every moment, for I had not a clue when he would be returned to me. Cecil had promised that we would see each other more often, but had not specified a schedule. Would it be once a month, longer? Or, dear Lord, could it be that we’d see each other even more often? I squeezed my eyes shut, my stomach doing a flip of excitement at the thought of seeing Ned on at least a weekly basis.

“Do you think she will ever let us out?” I asked.

Atop my head, I felt Ned’s chin move back and forth. “No.” His tone was resolute and quick.

“You answered
too fast.”

“I am sure of it, my love.”

“Why? You do not think she will have a change of heart?”

“Not unless she marries and bears herself two or three princes, and even then perhaps not. But
, alas, such fancies are merely that, since she appears to have no interest in a husband.”

“But why? Why must she leave us to languish?”
Tears of frustration and grief prickled the backs of my eyes.

Ned sighed deeply, his arms pulling me tighter against him. “Because
, Kat, you are the next in line to the throne, as said by her father and her brother, and our own Eddie at this moment in time could be crowned king. We are a threat to her. A dangerous and deadly threat. She will keep us contained for as long as she can.”

I imagined then the two little
princes in the Tower so long ago, who’d been a similar threat to then-monarch Richard III. Did Elizabeth intend for the world to forget about us if she left us in here long enough? She’d certainly said as much. But I hadn’t believed her.

I
envisioned her cool dark eyes. Calculating eyes. The way she’d spoken to me, the way she grasped her throne to herself and held on tight. She was scared. She was alone, and everywhere she looked traitors lurked.

The
fact that she would never let us out solidified in my mind with a sense of foreboding.

I must live for every moment
, then. I reached up and traced the outline of Ned’s face. Loving the noble angular lines, the straight nose, his full lips. He was a beautifully made man. I pressed my lips to his, my shyness forgotten and a new bold woman coming forth in the heat of the moment.

At first, our kiss was tender, as if we wanted only to remember this moment, to soak each other in, to express our love and sorrow at the hand fate and the Queen of England had
given us. But with one subtle swipe of Ned’s tongue, all thoughts of tenderness escaped.

Ned
’s hard physique pressed to mine, had my own body reacting violently, and I wanted nothing more than for him to make love to me right then and there. As if in answer to my silent call, Ned scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the down bed that my maids had fluffed and sprinkled with rose water just that morning, in preparation for Ned’s visit.

When w
e’d divested ourselves of clothes, he lay beside me, a lazy, gentle finger tracing circles around my navel. He whispered, “I love you. From the moment I first saw you, and until the day I breathe my last, you are mine, a part of my very being.”

My heart squeezed tight in my chest. A tear wove its way down my cheek, and Ned smiled at me tenderly as he brushed it away with the pad of his thumb.

My throat constricted, and I felt as if the words would not come out, but I had to speak them, had to tell him how much he meant to me. “We are one soul, one body, one heart. No matter how far apart they may place us, you will always remain here.” I placed his hand to my heart, let him feel the deep flutter within.

Never had the words meant more to me. I pulled him closer so that we might once again lay claim to that which was ours.

Sir Edward Warner,
our warden, let Ned and I meet nearly one time a week for several months, each time under the cover of darkness, so that no one would be the wiser. Ned joined me in my room, and after we’d made love, we held each other. He visited with our son, Eddie, loving his beautiful boy. Sometimes we’d hold the babe between us in the bed, stroking his wiggling body, his flexed toes and fisted hands. It was a wonder we were able to find a sense of peace between us, being that we were imprisoned. I was grateful to the lieutenant, for without him, we would have been lost, but together I felt whole again.

I
’d even had a portrait commissioned of Eddie and me. I was quite proud of how it turned out. We both looked well and happy. You would not have known we were imprisoned from looking upon its grace. For the sitting, I wore around my neck a portrait of Ned on a length of corded silk. It was plainly visible in the painting, so all who looked upon it would know that this child was ours. My little boy with his jaunty cap of black velvet and pearls. I had much hope for his future and prayed he did not remember these stone walls.

For as long as we lived here, we’d make a life. The warden might yet let me plant an herb garden, and with the romps in the yard, my life was not all that different than when I was
essentially imprisoned at court. Yes, indeed, we would make a life here. As good a life as we could. At least we were all beneath the same roof.

C
hapter Twenty-Two