Tarnish (6 page)

Which makes me think of Wyatt’s proposition. I admit, I’m a little afraid he might win our bet. He’s charming and handsome and . . . persuasive. But I refuse to let that happen. Virginity is my trump card.

I can’t help looking for him in the crowds at court. I tell myself it has nothing to do with his voice or his casual grace or his eyes.

No, it’s his words that draw me to him. And the fact that he listens to mine.

But the burgeoning crowds of Richmond conspire to isolate me. To make matters worse, we are now less than an hour by barge from London, which means Cardinal Wolsey and his entourage of hangers-on fill the rooms by day more often than his regular Sunday visit.

The cardinal is the king’s lord chancellor and most trusted adviser, and his arrival always causes a bit of an uproar. I stand in a window of the queen’s watching chamber and monitor his progress. The barge, decorated in gold and silk and tinsel and landing at the water bridge, becomes the focal point of anyone wishing access to the king. Men kneel before Wolsey, kiss his ring, whisper in his ear.

One wouldn’t think to look at him that Wolsey wields the kingdom’s power. He comes from nowhere, a family of merchants and butchers.
He
didn’t need to marry well to join the circle. He just used his brains and spoke accordingly. The droopy skin of his cheeks reminds me of a loose-skinned dog, and his chin recedes into the folds of his cassock. But his eyes—shrewd and calculating—tell a different story.

I watch as he moves through the throng. He appears serene, despite the press of bodies and clamor of requests and complaints. His face is serene, but his eyes—shaded by his brow—are triumphant. They are those of a man who can change lives with a single, well-placed word. A man to whom people listen.

Wolsey is followed from the barge by a trail of courtiers. His own. For he holds court at least as well as the king. He collects his courtiers from the best families in the country—young men keen for position but perhaps not vibrant enough to engage the king. And others—like James Butler—are virtual prisoners, hostages to the political machinations that keep their fathers in line. There are no women in Wolsey’s household. The boys come to the king’s court to learn the rules of flirtation while their master changes the rules that govern us all.

The cavalcade disappears from view, but I continue to watch the place just vacated. So much power in a butcher’s son. The rain returns, and the flat, cloudy light hammers the river into pewter and erases the shadows from the wall. It is as if Wolsey’s very passing has caused the sun to cease shining.

The door rattles, and I turn to see the duchess and her confederacy enter. She carries herself imperially, looking left and right to make sure that everyone is watching—and that everyone is bowing.

“Little Boleyn.” The duchess’s voice resonates high in her mouth, giving it a nasal quality. An ever-present sharpness.

“Your Grace.” I keep my eyes on my hands. Deferential. Sheepish.

“Like a little sparrow, aren’t you?” she asks. “Drab. And rather . . . disheveled.”

Her confederacy titters, the sound rippling away into the room.

I bite my lip and think of George’s words:
Be quiet. Be the same. Be accepted.

I look up. The duchess’s head is tipped to one side, her expression one of schooled amusement.

“Many creatures are not as they first appear, Your Grace.” I cannot stop the words. “A falcon at rest may be drab and disheveled. And a cuckoo hides its ignobility by insinuating its offspring into a superior bird’s nest.”

As insults go, mine is thinly veiled, casting aspersions on the duchess’s children—the cuckoos in the royal nest, placed there by Charles Brandon, whose ancestry is even more questionable than my own.

Her expression freezes. She turns without speaking, followed by a tide of skirts and gabled hoods. Jane Parker glances back at me—the last girl to follow—but quickly scuttles after.

I’ve done it again. I stand alone in the center of the room, wrap my misshapen finger in a pleat of my skirt, and twist the pearl ring with my thumb. The duchess and all her followers whisper together. The room begins to feel like one gigantic eye—staring, but not seeing. They will never accept me. I need to get out.

I move to the door just as it opens again.

“We have come to entertain the ladies,” Henry Norris says as he enters. His gaze slides across my brow and finds the duchess and her confederacy behind me. He is followed by George, who studiously ignores my existence, and Wolsey’s men, who crowd up behind him, eager and wriggling like puppies.

I stand to one side, barely observed and highly invisible, as more seductive prey is spotted within the room.

Finally, I can no longer stand it and push my way through the door, running nose first into a russet doublet. I look up into the face of a boy my age. His eyes are strange. Like chalcedony—more blue than gray but almost colorless. His hair is the color of fox fur, and just as thick, a swatch at the back of his head giving the impression of a feather in a cap. His face is cut at angles like stone, creating broad planes, sharp edges, and deep shadows. But when he smiles, the shadows melt away and I feel something warm and delicate rising within me.

He’s looking at me. He sees me.

The man behind him gives him a push, and he stumbles forward into the room, breaking our gaze, but my eyes follow him. Until someone grabs my hand and yanks me from the room.

“You flirt with Henry Percy?” James Butler’s voice is all rough edges like uncut granite.

“I’m doing no such thing.” I wrench my hand from his and turn, but he’s whip quick and his grip bites into my elbow.

“Good. His fate is decided. Like ours.”

He manages to hide all but a hint of brogue by clipping his sentences and swallowing words. But he can’t disguise his coarseness. His shirt is rumpled and his hair cropped roughly, as though trimmed with a scythe.

“Our fates are not decided, James Butler. There is no marriage until it is written and signed.”

“And sealed,” he leers, exposing the gap of a missing tooth next to an overly sharp canine. I suppress a shudder at the thought of his suggestion. Consummation.

“That will never happen.”

“Wolsey and the king want this. It will happen.”

The thought that the king is part of the execution of this contract makes me ill.

I allow Butler to walk me through Richmond’s crowded rooms and to the covered gallery around the garden. Weak spring sunshine slants over the walls, igniting the gold flame of the cockerels that top the donjon’s cupolas. They point north, into the wind, and for a moment I’m reminded of the Louvre, the striped towers swept clean by rain. And I ache to go back. To be anywhere but here.

I’m shaken by my desperation to get out of this predicament. To get my arm out of his grasp. To unlink my life from his.

I stop. Square my shoulders. Take a deep breath.

“The marriage rests on the settlement of the earldom of Ormond,” I say evenly. “That is yet to be decided.”

I know George wants the earldom. So does Father. I am nothing but a bargaining chip, a sacrifice to the pretense of capitulation. They’ll fight Butler. Won’t they?

“The earl had only one son. My father.” Butler’s smile is mocking.

“His illegitimate son.”

Butler scowls, but I continue.

“My grandmother was named as coheiress in the earl’s will.”

“Women,” Butler says in a voice most people reserve for the stupid and the Irish, “cannot inherit. They don’t know money. Don’t know rules. They squander every groat on baubles.”

He flicks the
A
pendant that hangs from a ribbon around my neck.

“Women,” I counter, grabbing his hand and squeezing it to make a point, “are in every way men’s intellectual equals.”

He laughs, showing off his teeth.

“We can grasp languages and texts as easily,” I continue. “Women translate Latin, compose music, even orchestrate war, as Queen Katherine did in Scotland when the king was away playing games in France.”

“A fluke. Desperation. Look at her now. She can’t produce an heir.”

“She has a daughter.”

“Just my point.”

I could strangle him.

“Mary will be queen!” I cry. “As the king’s only legitimate child, it’s her birthright. I’m sure she’ll do better than most men, who have lost entire peerages to depravity and gluttony.”

“And to the wantonness of women.”

“Wars are waged and death unleashed by men who follow without thought their own ambition and misplaced loyalty,” I pursue.

“Like your grandfather.”

My mother’s father, the second Duke of Norfolk, was attainted after fighting on the wrong side of the battle of Bosworth that knocked the crown from Richard III’s head and rolled it to Henry Tudor. The Howards have been weaseling their way back into Tudor court life ever since.

I’m embarrassed to be related to them.

“Traitors and pretenders,” Butler growls. “I’m doing you a favor.”

“How romantic,” I say, wrenching my hand from his.

“Romance is only in books and music,” he says. “You won’t find any of that in Ireland.”

I feel myself grow pale. I can’t face a future with no music. All we hear of Ireland are stories of barbaric lords and fiefdoms, as if they continue to live in the Dark Ages. No music. No poetry. No court.

“Are you threatening me?” I demand, my voice stronger than my heart.

Butler’s face lights up with wicked mirth and he laughs. I smell the meat on his breath.

“Yes. With me, you’ll be a countess. Without me, you are nothing.”

He snaps a smart bow and turns away before I can even curtsy back. Not that I plan to.

The walls of Richmond press in around me. Ladies whisper as I pass. I keep my face still and pleasant. I don’t rush. I don’t fly through the rooms as my limbs are desperate to do.

I move slowly, almost regally, to a quiet, disused antechamber at the far end of the palace, just beyond my sister’s ill-attended room. It is musty and dirty, with a single, cracked window and no tapestries, and I believe everyone has forgotten about it.

It is the perfect place to cry.

And when the tears are spent, it is the perfect place to plan.

7

“W
HAT DO
I
NEED TO DO?”
I
ASK
W
YATT WHEN
I
FIND HIM IN
the long gallery.

“. . . is exactly the right thing to say.”

I struggle not to roll my eyes. It’s hard to take the man seriously when he says things like that. But if I’m going to rid myself of James Butler, I need to attract the attention of someone else. Someone better. Wyatt just might be able to help me with that. So I will suffer his foolishness.

I turn to the maps that line the walls of the gallery. England. The Channel. The Low Countries. France. I run my fingers along the shadowy outline of what they call the New World.

“I wish I could go there.”

He takes my hand in his and says, “Why would you want to leave England when everything you need is right here?”

He presses my palm to his heart, and I bite back a laugh.

“A little overdone, don’t you think?”

“I’ve been pining for days.” He leans in close, and I can see the rim of black around the blue of his eye. A tiny dark speckle, like a grain of onyx, glints in the right one. “It took you long enough to come and find me.”

“You were supposed to be pursuing me.” I feel his heartbeat beneath my fingers. His breath on my lips.

“You said you needed time. I do little pursuing unless I’m going to get something out of it.”

“Your seduction techniques are not going to work on me, Wyatt.”

“Do you want to bet on that?” The laughter in his voice is evident—a musical bass note that makes me want to laugh, too.

“I shall choose to ignore them, then,” I say lightly. And repeat myself. “What do I need to do?”

“Flirt with me.”

“Now?” I glance quickly around the room. It’s full of maps and tapestries and quiet conversation. Courtiers plotting advancement. Ladies making assignations. Henry Percy. Norris. George.

Wyatt brushes a stray hair from my cheek to draw my eyes back to his.

“Constantly.”

“Wouldn’t that be a little obvious?”

“I believe I’ve said before that most people at this court can’t see what’s in front of them until you beat them with it. So, yes. It has to be obvious.”

“And nothing else?”

“Nothing until you want it, Anne.”

His gaze moves from my eyes to my mouth and back. Almost without my wanting to, I look at his mouth, the full lower lip and the hint of reddish stubble on the upper one.

“If you do as I say,” he continues so quietly that I find myself unable to stop watching his mouth, “I can guarantee the entire court will fall swooning at your feet.”

I force myself to look back into his eyes.

“Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”