Blaze Wyndham (27 page)

“What did you think?” demanded Lady Marlowe as the four couples danced their way off into the gloom.

“It was wonderful!” said Blaze, her face bright with her excitement. “Being in mourning, I feel almost guilty sitting here enjoying it.”

“You have behaved properly,” said Lady Marlowe. “You have not involved yourself, and you will not dance this evening, although from the looks that have been coming your way, I know that many gentlemen will be deeply disappointed.”

“Why would gentlemen look at me?” Blaze said innocently.

Adela Marlowe laughed softly. “Dearest Blaze, I see that Bliss and I shall
really
have to keep an eye on you. For a widow you are most naive. The gentlemen of the court look at you for various and sundry reasons. For one, you are very beautiful. You are also a new face. Then, too, they are for the most part a randy bunch who see any newcomer as fair game.”

Blaze blushed, understanding her new friend quite well. “I do not see the queen,” she said, attempting to change the subject.

“And you will not,” came the reply. “The king has sent her away, for he is angry with her, and the Princess Mary also.” She lowered her voice. “The queen, you see, refuses to be reasonable regarding the king’s great matter.”

“I cannot help but feel sorry for her,” said Blaze.

Adela Marlowe nodded. “She is a good and virtuous woman, but she is too prideful. She puts her own pride and her own interests above those of England, but what could we expect? She is, after all, a foreigner, no matter her many years in England.”

Bliss rejoined them, now regowned in her dress of medium blue velvet with its pearl, silver, and rose-quartz embroidery. “Owen is bringing the king to meet you,” she said excitedly, and then she adjusted Blaze’s headdress. “Ohh, I wish your gown were more festive!”

“I mourn my husband, Bliss,” Blaze reminded her sister. “My gown is quite suitable.”

“Indeed it is,” agreed Lady Marlowe.

“I wore your lovely chain,” Blaze said, trying to cheer Bliss.

“It does help,” she admitted, surveying her elder sister once more. Blaze’s gown of rich black velvet was virtually unadorned but for some pearl-and-gold embroidery on the bodice. Even her underskirt was plain black silk brocade. Only the delicate lace of her cream-colored chemise top and its ruffled cuffs which showed from beneath her gown relieved the severity of her look. Bliss silently mourned that Blaze’s beautiful honey-colored hair was almost totally hidden beneath her charming cap, but at least the cap was heavily adorned with gold and pearls, and its flowing black silk veil shot through with bits of gold thread.

“Here he comes!” hissed Adela Marlowe, and she swept her skirts into a graceful curtsy that was echoed by her two companions.

“Sire,” said Owen FitzHugh, “may I present to you my sister-in-law, Lady Blaze Wyndham, the dowager Countess of Langford.”

Henry Tudor looked down on the three women. Both Bliss and the pretty Lady Marlowe were smiling up at him from their obeisance. Reaching out his big hand, he cupped the face of the third woman and tipped it up so he might see it. “Such beauty, Lady Wyndham, should not be hidden from your king,” he said in a smooth, deep voice.

Blaze’s eyes widened noticeably, the pupils black against the violet blue of her irises. She could not speak for a moment, and beside her Bliss almost groaned aloud. Didn’t her sister realize that the king’s favor was important? Henry continued to stare for a moment longer, and Blaze’s cheeks grew pink with a blush which caused the king to smile.

“You are even prettier with your pink cheeks,” he noted. “It is rare I see so charming and genuinely innocent a blush here at court. Welcome, Blaze Wyndham.”

She finally found her tongue. “Your majesty is most gracious, and I thank you,” she said.

The king raised her up, which allowed the other two women to arise also. “Owen tells me you are newly widowed. I regret that such tragedy should bring you to us, but I cannot be sorry to have such a particularly lovely woman adding luster to my court.”

“My lord was killed in an accident two months ago,” said Blaze softly.

“Then I cannot ask you to dance, my lady, and that saddens me, for I suspect that you dance well. On May Day, however, I shall ask you to dance, for surely by then you will allow yourself that small pleasure.” His blue eyes swept over her assessingly. She was very lovely, he thought. Her skin was so very white against the black velvet of her gown. He contemplated the delights of caressing that skin, which was surely as soft as it looked. As for the pearl which hung down from her chain to nestle between her breasts, he envied it its place. In time, he cautioned himself. He could see that despite her widowhood she was indeed an innocent, but with the experience born of his royalty he hid his lust well.

She spoke once more. “I believe that if your majesty should ask me to dance with him on May Day, I could not refuse. Indeed I should consider it the greatest honor I have ever had.” Then she smiled up at him, and Henry Tudor realized she was not just pretty. She was startlingly beautiful!

He smiled back at her, and then without another word he moved off. So she would consider dancing with him an honor. The king’s smile broadened. He had other, far sweeter honors in store for the beautiful widowed dowager Countess of Langford.

“You have pleased him!” chortled Bliss. “God’s foot, I thought you would disgrace yourself and us too when you were at first so tongue-tied with him.”

“Do not be so openly ambitious for your sister, Bliss,” Lord FitzHugh chided his wife. “The king understands sorrow, for he mourned his mother and his brother, Arthur, deeply. Besides, he does not like bold women. Blaze was perfect.” Perhaps too perfect, the Earl of Marwood worried silently. He had been with the king for many years, and he knew all of Henry’s looks, though the king thought himself a master of deceit. The king was bored for feminine amusement. Bessie Blount was no longer his lover, but rather his good friend. Pretty little Mary Boleyn had slipped into domesticity. She had never been particularly witty and quick for all her bovine charms. No, Henry was bored, and looking for a new conquest. Owen FitzHugh knew his sovereign well. The king was patient when he truly desired something. Time would tell how serious his intentions were regarding Blaze.

The winter passed quietly enough, and with the Lenten season, many of the court took the opportunity to visit their holdings, for Lent at court was dull without all the usual amusements. The Earl and Countess of Marwood and Blaze were among those who remained, however, for the king could not be left devoid of companions. Owen FitzHugh was the king’s favorite tennis opponent, for despite his sovereign’s royal station, the young earl played to win, which pleased the king. Henry did not always triumph in his matches with Owen FitzHugh, but he won more than he lost, and when he won, he knew it was fairly. By mid-February the weather was beginning to grow slightly milder, and the king, when not hunting or shooting at the butts, played tennis.

Evenings were spent quietly talking, playing at word games, and listening to gentle music, for frivolity was forbidden in this penitential season. Lady Wyndham was now, amid the general dearth of pretty women, obvious to all the gentlemen, and her company eagerly sought out. To those who merely desired to repartee with her, or walk with her chatting through the picture gallery, she was charming and amusing. Unfortunately, far too many of the king’s gentlemen, even those with wives, sought more than the pleasure of Blaze’s company, and they found to their surprise that the gentle-looking widowed countess had a fierce temper. More than one gentleman had his face slapped in attempting a kiss, and this gave rise to the rumor by those of the more vindictive and disappointed gentlemen that Lady Wyndham was a coldhearted tease. Some, however, were more graphic in their failure to breach virtue’s walls.

“The little bitch is no more than a cock-tease,” grumbled Thomas Seymour one evening.

“What, Tom, and have you also failed with Lady Wyndham?” mocked Lord Arden. “You are in good company, my lad, for none of us has been able to skirt the lady’s defenses.”

“What you mean, gentlemen,” laughed Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, who was both the king’s brother-in-law and close friend, “is that none of you has been able to
lift the lady’s skirts
!”

“Well punned, brother Charles,” chuckled the king, “but I must reprimand you gentlemen who would seek to impugn a helpless young widow’s honor.”

“You would not think her so helpless had you been slapped by her, sire,” complained Thomas Seymour. “By God, my ears are still ringing with the blow!”

“Cease your chatter, Seymour,” hissed Lord Arden. “Have you not realized by now that the king means to have Lady Wyndham for himself?”

Seymour looked furtively to the king, but Henry Tudor had already turned away and was engaging another friend in conversation.

The weather grew milder until it seemed as if spring had simply burst suddenly upon the land. The court had moved twice over the winter, going into the city to stay first at Baynards Castle, and later moving on to Bridewell, which was but three years old. With Easter coming, however, the court returned to Henry’s favorite home, Greenwich. There the grass was bright green with the season, and the lanes were lined with primroses.

With the coming of Easter, gaiety returned to court along with all those who had earlier left it. The king now took the opportunity to seek Blaze out more and more, insisting that she ride next to him in the hunt; that she walk with him in the picture gallery, where he introduced her to all of his ancestors; that she sit before the fire and play chess with him.

“My God,” said Bliss excitedly to her husband one day as the king escorted Blaze off for a stroll in the palace gardens, “does this mean what I think it does?”

“Pray God it does not!” replied Owen FitzHugh fervently.

“Are you mad?” Bliss demanded of her husband. “Blaze has much more to her character than ever did Bessie Blount or that silly cow Mary Boleyn. She could be a true
maîtresse en titre
, as is the French king’s mistress. If she bore him a child, so much the better, particularly if it were a son. God knows the king has done well by both Lady Tailboys and Mistress Carey. If she could but engage his heart, our fortunes would all be made! It does not hurt to be related to a king’s mistress, as you well know.”

Owen FitzHugh shook his head. “What you are suggesting is not in your sister’s nature. Now you, my darling ambitious Bliss, would indeed do well under your sister’s circumstances. Blaze, however, is not that kind of woman.”

“She cannot refuse the king,” said Bliss.

“No,” said the Earl of Marwood sadly to his wife, “she cannot, but should it come to that, then you and I must give her all the support she will need.”

“Oh, pooh!” exclaimed Bliss. “Even Blaze for all of her naivete cannot fail to realize such a golden opportunity should it be offered to her.”

The king had led Blaze into the middle of a boxwood maze in the gardens and now he teasingly asked, “Shall I leave you here, m’lady, to find your own way out?”

“I do not think I could,” said Blaze with a smile. “Surely you tease me, sire.”

“Knowledge has its price, m’lady, and you seek my knowledge in escaping this fair green prison. What price will you pay me?” He cocked his head, and in doing so rendered the feather in his flat velvet cap to an even jauntier angle.

She paused as if to consider his words. She had been at court long enough to know that the king was playing a game with her. She did not know whether to laugh, or whether to be frightened. Henry Tudor was very powerful. Better never to show fear, she thought, and laughed.

“Very well, my lord, what price would you put upon this great knowledge of yours, which will free me from this labyrinth?”

“An extravagant one, madam. I would have a kiss of you.”

Dangerous ground, yet she could hardly refuse him. “I must pay,” she said with a mock sigh, “but not until we have reached the outside, sire.”

Now it was his turn to laugh. She was a clever little puss for all her virtue and modesty. “Done!” he said with a grin, and reaching out, took her small hand in his rather large paw so he might lead her from the maze. Finally he stopped and said, “Around this corner lies freedom. You must pay your tithe now, but here where we may be private and safe from prying eyes.” Reaching out, he drew her into his arms.

Suddenly Blaze found she was afraid. She placed her hands upon his wide velvet-clad chest to hold him off saying as she did so, “My lord ... please . . . I ...”

“Hush, sweetheart,” said the king gently. “I will not harm you. You have ne’er been kissed except by your late husband, I can see that; but for all your sweet virtue, madam, I mean to have your lips, so cease your useless chatter,” and then the king clamped his mouth firmly over hers.

It was a passionate and demanding kiss, and far from being quickly over, as she had assumed, the king’s lips lingered on hers, moving tenderly over the softness, coaxing a response from her that when it came surprised her so that she moaned low.

Cradling her with one strong arm as she fell back against him, the king loosened her laces with expert fingers and slipped his hand into her bodice to cup a breast. His thumb rubbed quickly and insistently over the sensitive little nipple which hardened beneath his sensual touch.

“No!” she cried, attempting to struggle. “Oh, please, no!”

“Shhhhhh, sweetheart, do not fight me,” he begged her, and his head dipped so he might kiss the soft perfumed flesh of her breasts. “Ahhh, my beauty, you are so lovely. So very, very lovely!”

Using every ounce of her strength, and sobbing with defiant terror, Blaze pulled desperately away from the king, and clutching her open bodice to her heaving bosom, she turned and fled him around the last corner of the maze into the garden proper. Finding a distant spot, she quickly redid her laces as best she could, and then hurried back to Bliss’s apartments. She was relieved to find herself completely alone, and slipping into her room, she sat down upon the bed and wept.