Brazen (22 page)

“R
UMOR
HAS
IT
YOU
WERE
CAUGHT
IN
A
COMPROMISING
POSITION
,” Madge says, plunking herself down beside me in the queen’s rooms a week later.

I pinch the sewing in my lap between my fingers. Force myself not to look up.

“Rumors are more relentless than the rain,” I manage to say.

I haven’t seen Fitz since that afternoon. His father has needed him by his side. Needed him on the hunt. Needed him in London to open Parliament.

The queen and her ladies are left behind in Greenwich. It is like prison.

“That’s certainly true.” Madge pulls the sewing from my hands and studies the shirt collar critically. She doesn’t turn her head to whisper out of the corner of her mouth. “Did you hear that the baby was deformed?”

“I heard it was a demon,” I tell her, snatching the shirt back. “I heard its heart was outside its body. I heard it had six fingers on its right hand.” I look her in the eye. “But I’ve heard that about the queen as well, and we know that isn’t true.”

For a moment, neither of us speak.

Then Madge nods. “You’re right,” she says, and looks down at her hands in her lap. “And I’m the last person who should be spreading gossip.”

“I think we should all be more careful what we say,” I finally tell her.

Madge looks up. “I just wanted to know,” she says, “if everything is going . . .” She can’t help her wicked smile. “If everything is going well with Fitz.”

I know my smile mirrors hers when she outright cackles. “That well? So you
were
caught!”

“Not entirely. And it was the day . . . the day the queen lost the baby.”

“So you think maybe they’ve forgotten it?”

I hate thinking that way. Hate hoping that somehow someone else’s pain has saved me from my own.

Hoping that the uproar has bought me time alone with Fitz again.

“We haven’t seen each other since,” I finally say. “The king keeps him busy.”

“It sounds like someone else has heard the rumors, then,” Madge says. “But we’ll find a way.” She pats my hand. “Don’t you worry. As the Wife of Bath says, we are made for procreation.”

Margaret slips onto the bench—practically onto my lap—and leans over me to talk to Madge. “What have you done to Mary?”

“She’s done nothing to me!” I squeak.

“We’re cooking up a way for her to be alone with the delectable duke,” Madge says, then whispers to me, “I’m glad to see he can invoke a little passion in you.”

“We haven’t actually done anything yet.”

“But half the fun is in the flirtation,” Madge says. “Look at the queen.”

I do. She’s having one of her good days, flirting outrageously with every man in the room.

On her bad days, she locks herself in her bedchamber and won’t come out.

“Though the other half of the fun comes
after
flirtation.” Madge grins.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to
sleep
with him,” I say. Because I’m not. Not sure what the right time would be. Not sure if it’s what I want or what my father wants. I sigh. “I just want to
see
him.”

Madge wraps an arm around me. “You
are
in love, aren’t you, Mary?”

When I nod, she whoops and the entire assemblage turns to stare. Madge just inclines her head demurely until most of them go back to their own conversations. Then she leans drunkenly into me.

“Then we
must
find a way for them to be together, mustn’t we, Margaret? Who are we to stand in the way of true love?”

“Who, indeed?” Margaret says drily, but I see the smile behind her eyes.

“You have made us realize that the room is far too quiet, Mistress Shelton,” the queen calls. The three of us freeze. I’m sure we’re all wondering the same thing:
Has everyone in the room heard our conversation?

But she turns away from us. “Play us a tune, Master Smeaton. Something . . . seductive.” She laughs a throaty laugh, lounging back in her chair. There is a bright-red stain high on each of her cheeks, and her eyes are too bright. Feverish.

Perhaps she has heard. Perhaps she is also protecting me. I watch her gaze at Smeaton languidly. Then her eyes light on me and she smiles. Just a little.

“We must be more careful in our speech,” I mutter.

“We must communicate all our secrets in the book,” Madge agrees, her eyes shining.

Smeaton starts playing a Spanish tune, and everyone holds their breath, waiting for the queen to lash out at him—strangle him with his own lute strings. We all know she still resents the influence of Katherine of Aragon—a Spanish princess. But the queen just closes her eyes.

“I was convinced Smeaton would be racked for that,” Margaret says.

“Maybe she likes having him around too much,” I offer.

“I don’t know what she sees in him.” Madge picks up my sewing again and starts rolling the hem for me.

“Smeaton?” I lick the end of a piece of thread and jab it at the eye of my needle.

“Sure, he’s a good musician,” Madge says, “but he’s so arrogant. And that stringy, greasy hair.” She shudders melodramatically.

“I don’t think she’s bedding him, Madge.” I take the shirt away from her and start stitching the hem she’s created. “She’s always been musical. I don’t think it matters to her where beautiful music comes from, or what the package looks like.”

“Where does he get the money for liveried servants?” Madge is still staring at Smeaton, and the man who stands behind him. “He’s just a musician!”

“Why, Madge,” I say, feigning innocence, “anyone would think you fancy him!”

She throws a scrap of fabric at me, but it flutters to my feet and I laugh.

“He has horses, too,” Margaret says, and we stop playing to look at her. She’s perfectly serious, her eyes narrowed. “He must have a patron. Someone wealthy and influential.”

Just to the other side of Smeaton, Jane Seymour is playing with a locket. It’s filigreed and gilt, glinting in the firelight. She opens and closes it with precision and intent. Open. Close.

Open. Close.

There’s a little smile on her face. Like she’s far away. But she is aware of everyone in the room. Her eyes flick once our way. She knows we’re watching.

Open. Close.

With a flash like a diving falcon, the queen swoops to the fireside and snatches the locket. For an instant, she and Jane look at each other. Jane’s hands have dropped. The smile is gone. There is real fear in her eyes.

The queen is a tiny tower of rage. Coiled and dangerous.

“May I see what’s in your locket, Mistress Seymour?” she asks, and without waiting for an answer, pulls the chain so Jane’s neck arches forward. The queen opens the locket and reveals something inside that glows crimson and gold in the firelight. For an interminable moment, the two of them stare into each other’s eyes.

Then with a swift jerk, the queen wrenches the chain. Jane screams as it catches in her hair, straining at the skin of her throat. Then it gives way and she tumbles from her stool, clutching at her neck.

The queen stumbles backward and throws the locket at the fire. She turns, her face as cold and white as a snowstorm, her hands clutched to her breastbone as if in prayer. Then I see the red seeping from her fist.

Without thinking, I go to her, wrap her hand in mine. The chain bit into the knuckles of three of her fingers, laying the skin open. One of the maids brings a cloth, and I bind her hand. The little finger is crooked, with a little knob of bone bulging at the side, as if it had broken and hadn’t properly reset.

The queen slips her hand out of mine.

“Thank you, Duchess,” she says coldly. “I can tend to myself now.”

She goes into her bedchamber without another word and closes the door behind her. Jane reaches for her necklace, and I see that the hinge on the locket has broken, the metal flapping open.

Inside is a miniature portrait of the king.

Jane’s smile reminds me of her brother’s. Handsome, but foxlike in its cunning. It disappears quickly and she walks away, clutching the miniature in her soft, white hand.

Madge steps up behind me. “Why is she so special?”

I can see the queen’s solid door behind her, closed to all of us.

“Jealousy is a brutal and depleting emotion, Madge,” I tell her.

I glance once more at the queen’s closed door, wondering if what she felt was jealousy or a fight for survival.

W
E
SPLIT
INTO
TWO
COURTS
—
THE
KING
’
S
AND
THE
QUEEN
’
S
—and settle into a bitter truce. The king moves between Greenwich and London, taking courtiers and Fitz with him wherever he goes.

My father breaks ranks one day and comes to me, his face animated with joy rather than cunning, and for a starburst of a moment, I think it’s because Fitz and I will finally be allowed to be together.

“A grandson,” Father says, one hand on each of my shoulders in an almost-embrace. I feel the blotch starting to rise. “A future Duke of Norfolk.”

My mind stutters and regains its footing.

“Hal,” I say. I can feel the joy exuding from my father’s pores. “Hal has a son.”

“Thomas,” Father confirms, glowing. He drops his hands and steps back to study me, the smile growing broader. “And soon you will, too.”

“The queen—” I try to argue, but he cuts me off.

“Will never get pregnant again. And no matter how many trinkets or jewels or bags of money he sends her, Jane Seymour will not go to the king’s bed.”

“She refused the money.” Everyone commented on how virtuous she must be.

“Because she wants something more.”

I remember the look in Jane’s eyes as her hand closed around her locket, and I know there is something more there than the façade of bland respectability she presents to the world.

“A divorce will take time,” Father continues, and silences my protest with a glance. “If it can be accomplished at all. Meanwhile, I will recall your brother to court, and together we will remind the king of the value of his son.”

Hope germinates deep within me, finding fertile soil in my heart. But I am ashamed that it is once again dependent on the suffering of the queen.

We move to Whitehall and I can
feel
Fitz nearby. In London. Perhaps in the palace itself. Near.

I am just leaving the queen’s rooms with Madge when Margaret passes us on her way in. She bumps against me, and I feel something press against my hand. My book. I hadn’t even realized she’d had it. I take it from her, and she enters the apartments without a word.

Madge and I walk together back toward my lodgings. I keep the book tight in my hand until we pass a knot of courtiers and then I open it, flipping through the familiar lists and poems until I find a newly written marginal comment in Margaret’s careful hand.

In the tennis court
.

I show it to Madge, who grins at me. I remember the day we found Hal and Fitz playing. How Madge found them.

“Can you smell them?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m sure you can,” she crows, and starts pulling me through the narrow courtyard and into the great hall.

We skirt the king’s privy gallery carefully. I think neither one of us wants to encounter him. There is no one in the cockpit, but I can hear the king’s birds that are kept beneath the seating. One in particular seems not to realize that dawn was hours ago.

The first two tennis courts are empty, but as we approach the smallest one, we hear the shouting. The sound carries out over the tops of the walls and echoes along the open gallery between the bowling green and the pheasant yard.

This is not the typical sound of a tennis match—not the grunts and banter and cries of anguish when one player misses the ball by a hair. This shouting is hard and angry. It suits the rhythm of the game, but it isn’t play. It sounds more like war.

Madge hesitates and looks at me.

I’d know both of the voices anywhere, even raised in anger.

“Fitz?” Madge asks.

“And Hal.”

Madge bites her lip. I don’t know when she last talked to him.

“He’s a father now,” I tell her. “My nephew, Thomas, was born just over a week ago.”

“And he’s back at court already?”

I try to explain how our family works. “My father spent most of my childhood on diplomatic missions or at war.”

“But you’ve said he hated your mother.”

“I think the feeling was mutual.”

“I can see why,” Madge says. “Perhaps your mother’s anger stemmed from her resentment at being abandoned.”

“Perhaps my father abandoned her because she’s impossible to live with.”

“Why has Hal abandoned his wife, then?”

Because he’s still in love with you.

I can’t tell Madge his secret. For her sake as much as for his. She’s betrothed to Henry Norris. She and Hal both have the chance to be happy. To fall in love with someone else.

There’s another roar from the tennis court followed by a string of curses that makes even Madge blush.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I tell her.

She takes my hand. “I’ll stay.” She smiles. “In case you need a minder.”

When we enter the viewing gallery, it is empty. This game of tennis is not at all like the last time Madge and I caught them playing. Yes, they have removed their doublets, but their linen shirts stick to the sweat of their backs; their hair is plastered over their foreheads. They are completely focused on each other, on the ball. Hal does not look up and spout poetry. Fitz does not see me at all.

“He’s your father,” Hal growls, braced and ready for Fitz’s serve.

Fitz roars, and the ball hurtles over the net.

“When was the last time you argued with yours?” Fitz shouts.

“Yesterday.” Hal manages one of his characteristic grins before diving for the ball with a grunt.

“And when was the last time you argued with your king?” Fitz says, and slams himself backward to return a swift, low shot.

Hal doesn’t answer, and they continue to pound the ball until one goes astray and sweeps to a stop at my skirts.

Then all is silence.

Both of them bow quickly, Fitz’s eyes never leaving mine. His are a maelstrom of emotions—pain, fury, grief,
love
.

“We are sorry to interrupt your game,” I say.

“Not much of a game.” Hal turns away and starts putting on his doublet.

“It looked like quite a battle,” Madge says, bending to pick up the ball. She squeezes it, watching Hal. He won’t look at her.

I walk to Fitz, who is standing with one hand on the wall. His face is red from the exertion and he looks like he’s struggling for breath. Madge is right. It must have been quite a battle.

“What were you arguing about?” I ask.

“Fitz’s
father
is exiling us to the back of beyond.” Hal has moved behind me, fastening his doublet. He’s glaring at Fitz, the anger still emanating off of him. Like Father after an argument with Mother.

“The
king
wishes to send us to Scotland as insurance,” Fitz says. “The Scots want security for their own king when the two of them meet in York next month.”

“Insurance,” Hal snorts. “We’re going to be hostages, Mary.”

“Scotland?” I find I can’t speak above a whisper. I turn to Fitz. “Do you think this is because . . .”
Because he wants to separate us?

“I think it’s because I’m the closest thing he has to a son. And at present, more valuable than my bastardized half-sister.”

I think of Father’s promise. To remind the king of the value of his son. His ploy seems to have worked, but has had the opposite effect from that expected.

“You’re not even in the line of succession,” Hal says harshly.

“Why wouldn’t he send Margaret?” Madge asks. “She’s half Scottish. Her mother was queen.”

“That’s why,” Fitz says. “King James is her half brother. The king thinks she might want to stay.” He looks at me. “No point having a hostage who doesn’t want to come home to his family.”

Family
. I have always thought of Fitz as my husband. As something separate. But we are bound to each other as surely as I am to Hal or my father. We are family.

“Or at least back to his life,” Hal adds. He’s looking at Madge. Not in a lovesick poet way. Sadly, out of the corner of his eye. He knows she’s not in his life anymore. But his family isn’t the reason he wants to be in England.

I turn back to Fitz. The damp hair has begun to curl at his temples. I reach out to stroke it.

“Any chance he’ll let me go with you?” I’m barely daring enough to ask the question.

Fitz shakes his head and turns to where his doublet is neatly folded on a bench.

I look at Hal. “What about Father? Maybe he could convince the king?”

“Cromwell is still saying it’s Father’s fault Fitz didn’t go to Ireland. It’s been said that Father already controls too much of Fitz’s life.”

“I want to control my own life!” Fitz shouts, his doublet dangling from his hand. “I’ll be seventeen in June. The
king
ruled the country when he was seventeen, and I’m not even allowed to rule myself.” He stands in front of me, so close I can feel the heat and humidity coming from his chest. “I want you, Mary. I want to live with you. Be with you. He keeps postponing it. Finding things to come between us.”

Right now the only thing between us is air. And his anger. I want to kiss it away.

Hal clears his throat. “As a respectable man who always does as the king wishes,” he says, the sarcasm dripping from his voice, “I shouldn’t leave the two of you alone.” He stops and looks at me sadly. “But I think it only right to give you a chance to say your good-byes. Heaven knows when you’ll be alone together again.”

He turns to Madge and holds out his arm. “May I, Mistress Shelton?”

She takes it lightly, and they exit together, only her fingers touching his arm and nothing else.

“Do you think the king doesn’t
want
us to be together?”

Fitz takes a breath that catches deep in his chest. “I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t want us to be married.”

“Why?”

Fitz starts picking at his doublet, pulling strands of gold from the embroidery. “Because I might be more useful married to a princess of France or Burgundy or Spain.”

“Is he thinking of . . . ?” I can’t say it.

“Making me legitimate?” Fitz says it for me. “Putting me in line to the throne?” He throws the doublet back on the bench. “I don’t know, Mary. All my life he’s played with me. Played with the idea of making me king of Ireland or marrying me to a foreign princess or even to my own half sister.” He shudders in disgust. “I don’t know what he wants of me or how he feels about me as a person. Maybe because I feel I’ve never really been a person in his eyes. Just a thing.”

“He can’t do that.” I grab his wrist. “He can’t
use
people. And he can’t pretend we’re not married. He was
there
.”

“If a marriage isn’t consummated, it can be broken.” He looks deep inside me and his gaze doesn’t waver.

I could throw myself on him. The clean, salty smell of his sweat and the warmth of his skin beg for me to taste him, touch him. I could use his anger and turn it to passion. Make him take me right here. I can see it in his eyes. Feel it in my own body. This knowledge makes me feel powerful.

But I can’t do it.

“I don’t want to sleep with you to fulfill a contract, Fitz.”

He hangs his head and turns slightly away. “No. Of course you don’t.”

I slide my left hand along his back and reach around with my right to touch his stomach. I want to pull his shirt up. Take back what I just said. I stand on my toes to whisper in his ear.

“I don’t want it to be a business negotiation. I want it to be for love. I want it to be at the right time.”

He turns and kisses me full on the mouth. Hungrily. Desperately.

“I do, too,” he says, lips brushing mine. “I’m willing to wait for that.”

“I hope we don’t have to wait long,” I whisper into the next kiss.

“Come to Scotland,” he murmurs. “After we’re settled. The Scots king is a hard man, but we’ve always been cordial.”

I pull away to look him in the eye. “You want me to travel to Scotland on my own?”

He grins. “You could dress up like a boy. Ride through night and day and have grand adventures.”

“I can see it now.” I laugh. “I can befriend the highwaymen and seek the protection of Robin Hood’s band.”

Fitz doesn’t even smile. “I’m serious. When you get to Scotland, we’ll tell them we’re married. They’ll never know the king’s wishes. We’ll live in the same room. Sleep in the same bed.”

“We’d have to,” I say, shivering. “I hear it’s bitterly cold in Scotland.”

“I’d keep you warm.”

He wraps his arms around me and he does. He is warm and strong and solid, and when I lay my cheek against his chest, I can hear his heartbeat and the breath still ragged in his lungs.

It’s a perfect dream. Running away to be together. Just the two of us.

“I can’t,” I whisper.

His answer hums in his chest. “I know.”