Heart of Gold (4 page)

Elizabeth’s direct gaze captured the older woman’s. The once-over look that her father’s cousin gave her was clearly disapproving.

“Good afternoon, Sir...Madame.” Elizabeth curtsied and stood quietly.

“Come here, girl, and sit.” Her father waved at the chair by the woman and gestured for his squire to let them be. The elder man made no show of affection for the daughter whom he’d not seen in more than two years.

Obediently, Elizabeth seated herself by her overseer, who now bent over her work, seemingly ignoring all around her.

Sir Thomas paced the room, looking carefully at his daughter’s intelligent, flashing eyes, at the strong set of her mouth and chin. Just like her mother’s. But as Catherine had been gentle and forgiving when it’d come to him, Elizabeth was fierce and avenging. From the time he’d taken in the young girl when her mother died, Sir Thomas had never cared to be alone with her. Even as a child, she’d been able to turn his charity to guilt. Even now, her very presence was enough to prick sharply at his conscience, at the festering wounds that he tried to bury deep. Though Thomas Boleyn had been the one to walk away from Catherine, the pain of losing Elizabeth’s mother still ached within him. It was a hurt barely contained beneath the layers of tough skin. An anguish ever-present, no matter how hard he tried to conceal it.

Elizabeth was tall, her complexion clear and healthy. She was not a voluptuous beauty, Sir Thomas thought. Not like Betsy Blount, Henry’s first mistress, nor like Mary or any of the others.

“I don’t know what he...” The courtier paused, his irritation turning to outright anger. “Oh! the hell with it! Who can understand such things?”

Elizabeth noted the furtive shake of the head that Madame Exton directed toward him. She sat quietly as her father turned and stalked to the table littered with official-looking documents. Sir Thomas lifted a tankard of ale and drained it, banging it on the table before turning back to her.

“Elizabeth, I have always been good to you, haven’t I?”

“
Oui, Sir Thomas
—”

“Speak no French with me, girl!” he exploded.

“Y—yes, Father,” she stumbled, surprised at the ferocity of his manner. She stared at him as he visibly contained himself, and when he spoke again, his voice was calm, controlled.

“Elizabeth, it’s time you took your place in the world.” The diplomat paused, turning his black eyes on her. “The point is, you have caught the eye of one who will raise you to the uttermost heights of society, and you will take...you would do well to take that place.”

The young woman cursed the Duc de Bourbon under her breath. She should have known better than to be sociable with the nobleman this morning. The man had certainly stooped low. Now he was trying to force her compliance through her father. No chance, she thought.

“Father, I have to explain.” Elizabeth paused, trying to gather together the words that were eluding her. “I have no wish to—”

Her father’s glare silenced her. He was standing directly before her, his fists planted on his hips. “Girl, this has nothing to do with your wishes. This has to do with duty.”

“Duty?” she exclaimed.

“Aye. Duty.”

She blurted out the words before she could stop them. “What duty do I owe to a lust-infected nobleman?”

The power of the man’s slap knocked the young woman from her chair, sending her sprawling into the middle of the room. There was a sharp pain in her head, and then numbness, ringing, and the taste of her own blood. She crouched before her father, her shaking hand pressed to her face.

“You will never, hear me, never again speak of your king in such terms.”

“My
king
?” Elizabeth’s eyes widened in disbelief. She glanced involuntarily at Madame Exton in her attempt to understand. The older woman’s head never lifted. Her father’s words brought her attention back to him.

“The king desires to take you into his bed, Elizabeth.”

“No!” the young woman gasped, her hands clutching desperately at Madame’s skirts. The tears rushed down her face uncontrollably. “No...he has...no...he has only seen me but once. This morning at the joust. It was only from a distance. This can’t be. He has given his illness to Mary, Father.”

“I know that!” Sir Thomas shouted. There was nothing he hated more than hysterical women. “She wasn’t pure enough. He liked her well enough, but she wasn’t pure enough to cure his pox.”

Madame Exton laid her hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “The king’s doctors have told him that he must lay with only the purest virgins to rid himself of the disease.” She looked at the young woman reassuringly. “It will bring great honor to you and to our family.”

Elizabeth stared at the woman in horror. She was speaking so softly. No emotions. No excitement. Elizabeth could hear the words clearly. “It is a small sacrifice, Elizabeth. And as Sir Thomas says, it is your duty.”

“I cannot.
I am not
!” she exclaimed, casting about in desperation for some answer, some reason that might halt this madness. “I am not pure. I’ve been raised in the French court. I’ve been with many m—”

The older woman’s hand closed on Elizabeth’s mouth roughly, smothering the words that were tumbling out. “Don’t lie, Elizabeth. You are forgetting your company. If Mary were sitting here and speaking these words, I would have believed every one of them. But this is you. The pure and innocent Elizabeth. The one who has always hidden away from the glamour and from the temptation. The one who skipped even her own presentation at court.” Madame Exton took Elizabeth’s chin in her scrawny hands and jerked it upward. Her voice was as sharp as a dagger’s edge. “I’ve watched you for many years, my girl. Don’t waste your breath with lies. Just do as you are told. You owe that to your family.”

“You have no option, girl,” Sir Thomas added. “And just think of it, if you bear him a boy child, it’ll be so much the better for all of us, and for you.”

Elizabeth slowly raised herself unsteadily to her feet. Her legs were shaking, and she wondered vaguely whether her knees would support her own weight. But then the look of disbelief on her face changed to something else as the terrible reality of her situation set in.

“But I—” There was anguish in her voice.

“There’s nothing more to discuss, Elizabeth. Now go and prepare yourself. When the king’s entourage leaves for Calais in the morning, you will leave with us.” Dismissing her, he turned back toward the table.

The world had gone gray around her, its heavy mists swirling damply within. Her only sensation was the cloudy weight that was settling inexorably on her mind, her body, on her very soul. “But...what of Mary?” she asked in a daze.

Her father half turned to answer, his voice rough, his words clipped. “She’ll go back to Kent. To the convent near Hever Castle. Don’t you concern yourself about her. Go.
Go now
!”

“You have the power to make your own future.”

As Elizabeth hurried along the torchlit alleyways through the camp, Mary’s words kept reverberating in her head. From a small knoll, she glanced across the tented field at the great dinner hall that had been erected out of canvas painted to look like stonework. Its glamour was only a veneer. At the approach of a roving party of men, weaving and lurching their way along, Elizabeth pulled the dark cloak low over her face.

“Hey, you pretty thing! Hey...there goes a woman!”

Elizabeth panicked at the sound of the drunk courtier and lengthened her strides. She would not let them know she was afraid. She would not be their prey. But then she thought of what she was about to do.

“This is insanity,” Elizabeth murmured to herself. She could hear the anguish in her own whisper. “I’ve gone mad! The whole world’s gone mad!”

The young woman put a hand to her face. The swelling had hardly subsided. She could still feel the ache that had made her eyes tear for so long after she’d returned to her tent. But it wasn’t the physical pain that had torn at her heart; it was a pain that ran far deeper. She’d been sold out by her own father. Traded for...what? For another man’s vile use.

When Elizabeth had returned, Mary had been there, waiting for her. Offering comfort, guidance. Coming here, at this hour of the night, had been Mary’s idea. Her younger sister had given her the weapon that Elizabeth had desperately needed. Mary had shown her a way to fight their father.

The Scottish warrior’s shield hung beside the tent’s entryway.

Elizabeth stepped inside.

Sinking deeper into the warm water, Ambrose closed his eyes to the red glow of the coal brazier that had been used to heat the bathwater.

She had not come. He had expected her to. But then, he was no longer one to keep a vigil over any woman. Even one as fascinating as this one was turning out to be, he thought, glancing over at the table—at the emerald ring that he’d given her earlier.

Lying there, soaking his bruised and tired muscles, he let his thoughts drift back over the events of the day, of their political importance. He thought again about the letter of false promises that had been signed by the two kings just a short while ago.

It was common knowledge in diplomatic circles that Henry had come to this meeting with the intention of breaking down the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland. The English king’s chancellor, the crafty Cardinal Wolsey, had left no path untried in his maneuvering to gain some hold on the French king, in his search for some wedge to drive between Francis and the troublesome Scots.

But Ambrose had been successful in disrupting all hope of any real trust between the two monarchs. For, in a private meeting just before the signing, the Scottish nobleman had managed to convey to King Francis proof that his enemy the Holy Roman Emperor Charles was waiting to meet secretly with Henry in Calais. On hearing this, Francis had been ready to confront the treacherous English king on the fields. But with the Lord Constable and Ambrose’s intervention, they had been able to restrain the French monarch from immediately embroiling himself in a war with England. In fact, Ambrose had been able to persuade him to go on with the show of signing the treaty with the double-dealing Henry, while pursuing a different course—a waiting game—and meanwhile trying to gain some inside information regarding the details of Charles’s and Henry’s upcoming meeting.

Ambrose had done what needed to be done. Based on the information he’d had, secret envoys of the Roman Emperor had met with the English king earlier today. Now it was up to the Lord Constable’s contacts to reveal the details. There was one thing that was certain, though: The Auld Alliance between Scotland and France had survived the Field of Cloth of Gold. The Highlander had done his job.

Ambrose opened his eyes and reached contentedly for the tankard of ale that sat on the small stool beside the tub.

She was standing just inside the tent.

“I’m offended once again!”

Elizabeth hid a smile as she gave him a quick glance. Consciously turning her full attention back to the emerald ring that sat on the small table, she continued to stifle her urge to study his naked body. “You are far too sensitive for a man your size.”

Ambrose’s eyes traveled the length of her as she untied the dark cloak and let it fall to the ground at her feet. “I would have hoped that my present vulnerable condition might have attracted a bit more attention than that ring.”

“I don’t think there are too many things in this world that would attract more attention than this thing.” She picked up the ring. The emerald caught the dim light of the brazier and lit up.

“If you were that fond of it, why did you give it up?” Ambrose watched her long, slender fingers, the tilt of her beautiful chin. Her midnight-black hair was gathered on top of her head. Stray tendrils curled against her perfect profile.

Elizabeth could feel the heat of his gaze on her skin. She wouldn’t turn. She couldn’t.

“How did you get it back?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

Ambrose gazed at the lass. She was no maid-in-waiting. He had found that out earlier. And she was not used to answering questions. She asked her own. “Three of the Lord Constable’s men dragged a poor village priest in here. He was caught trying to sell it to get his mistresses separate rooms.” Ambrose grinned into his tankard as he quaffed the ale. Her sidelong glance was quick, but he saw it. “They thought he’d stolen the ring from me.”

“I hope you made sure they dragged the wretch all the way to Guisnes Castle.”

“I certainly did.” Ambrose paused and then stood in the tub.

Elizabeth turned her back to pick up her cloak. Busying herself with folding the garment, she tried to ignore the image of him stepping out of the water.

“But not before I made him confess the truth.” Ambrose tied the towel loosely around his waist as he moved behind her. She smelled of lavender and the fresh summer air.

“You wanted to know the whereabouts of his mistresses?” She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. He was standing far too close. She leaned over and placed the ring on the table. Elizabeth found herself suddenly fighting the urge to recoil, to run away. After all, wasn’t this why she had come here? To lose her virginity?

“Hardly.” Ambrose let his lips brush against her skin. It was as soft as it looked. He felt her body go tense. “Why did you give the ring to the priest?” he asked softly.

“Why did you offer him so much gold to take it back?”

“So you’ve seen him since.” Ambrose let his finger run seductively down her back. He smiled as he saw the obvious shudder that ran through her.

Elizabeth clutched her cloak tight in her hand. She knew she had to relax. She had to let this just happen. She had to admit it had helped to get some glimmering of the kind of man this Ambrose Macpherson was...from Friar Matthew. This afternoon, when the priest had returned to her tent with word of Sir Ambrose’s generosity, Elizabeth had listened closely to his story. She had known Friar Matthew for a long time, and she’d given him the English king’s ring, knowing that many would benefit from it. The ring certainly had no monetary or sentimental value to her. Elizabeth had earned what money she’d needed for Mary’s physician by selling the painting earlier. And if only for her sister’s sake, she knew it would be far better if Mary’s eyes never chanced to fall upon it.