The Queen's Rival (14 page)

Bess’s gaze darted among the three of them, looking to gauge their reactions. Then she forced herself to laugh blithely along with them, as though she were a part of the great private joke that had been made at Jane’s expense, although she did not understand it at all.

“If it is true what they are saying about Jane and the duc de Longueville, that resourceful girl will find a way to return to France with him once he is released,” Brandon said.

Bess longed to ask him precisely what that meant, but she held her tongue because everyone else apparently knew and she could not bear to go on looking naive.

“Of course it is true, Charles,” said the king. “They have been secret lovers for weeks now. You think I do not know what goes on in my own court, especially with a noble prisoner, who is more guest in my court than any sort of captive, yet one I personally took on the battlefield in France?”

“Our Jane certainly does not hesitate to try new things!” Brandon affably joked.

Once again the two men laughed, and then suddenly, as the king looked at Elizabeth, Bess saw his hand drop down to Elizabeth’s knee, disappearing beneath the table cover. She felt a jolt of shock; then something else caught her attention from the corner of her eye. It was another glance exchanged across the table between Charles Brandon and Princess Mary. At first, Bess was amazed that the king did not notice the exchange, for it was the most open of glances and lasted longer than was appropriate, but he was whispering something so closely to Elizabeth’s ear that he was almost grazing her neck.

“So, Mistress Blount, do tell us all something interesting about yourself that we do not already know,” the king suddenly bid her. “You are definitely the most quiet of the girls in the queen’s household.”

“Does Your Highness no longer find mystery enticing?” Elizabeth cleverly interjected.

“Unraveling a mystery can be as tiresome as hunting if the right prey is not captured. I must know whether it is worth my time.”

Brandon chuckled, as did the king. “Is there not some juicy little detail you will share with us, Mistress Blount?” Brandon echoed. “Mistress Bryan is an open book to us now, so we must look elsewhere for something new.”

Bess’s heart beat like a bird’s wings against her ribs, because she knew she must think of something on the spot. This was her moment to please them and show, like all of the other girls around her, how clever she could be, but it had come too suddenly, and she was unprepared.

“I am not certain I want to be captured,” she said in a soft and careful tone.

The king bit back his smile. “I have a large enough collection of exotic creatures at Greenwich, Mistress Blount. I think you are quite safe from capture. I shall have to show them to you one day.”

“I shall look forward to that, sire.”

“Indeed you would be wise to. As I will look forward to your great secret when you decide to reveal it. Suddenly, I have a feeling it shall be worth the wait,” the king remarked, just before he turned his attention back to Elizabeth Bryan, whose bright and clever smile had dimmed.

Gil was waiting for them when they returned. He was outside Elizabeth’s small room, and he followed them inside, closing the door behind them.

“Tell me everything,” he bid Elizabeth and Bess, “and spare not a single detail.”

The girls exchanged a glance, then smiled at each other. “There is really nothing to tell. Just the usual; kill a stag, then dine and dance and laugh for hours. Merriment is so exhausting,” Elizabeth replied tauntingly, since she knew how badly he had wanted to join them. “Still, the king could not be more handsome, which makes up for everything else.”

“Or more clever,” Bess added, as they both began predictably to giggle.

They had been there only moments when a knock sounded at the door. Gil went to open it.

“Mistress Blount, you are to come with me,” declared a young page dressed formally in Tudor livery of green Bruges satin with gold buttons. His words held an ominous note. He did not smile or even bow to her. Suddenly she feared the worst, that she had somehow displeased the king with her first, adolescent attempt at clever evasion. Her heart began to pound again, and her throat went very dry at the possibility.

“May I ask why I have been summoned?”

“I was told only to bring you, mistress. Not the reason.”

Elizabeth clasped her hand for a moment in silent support and then smiled. Bess’s expression was stricken as she followed the page from the room.

“You are very transparent, you know,” Elizabeth said once they were alone.

Gil came back and stood beside her. “Am I?”

“Quite. She really has no idea how you feel about her. I shall keep your secret, though, if you will keep mine. I am dying to tell someone.”

“I thought Bess was your confidante.”

“Not with this.” There was an awkward silence for a moment as Elizabeth Bryan attempted to summon her courage. It was one thing to want to confide in Gilbert Tailbois, whom she had known most of her life, but it was quite another, she found, to actually speak the words aloud, giving validity to them.

“You were right all along. I am hopelessly in love with the king.”

Gil unlatched the little leaded glass window beside the bed and opened it. “Is not every young girl at court?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Perhaps. But I have actually been his lover, so I suspect that makes my affection a bit above par.”

She watched his expression carefully as he came to sit beside her. There was strained silence between them as a bee droned just outside the open window and footsteps passed by out in the corridor beyond the closed door.

“The gossip was that he was bedding Mistress Poppincourt.”

“That was true until last spring,” she said simply.

“Why have you not told Bess instead of me?”

She straightened her back and primly fluffed the folds of her burgundy and gold skirts. “Bess Blount believes in the image of the king and queen, their happy marriage, and equates everything she sees here with the romantic tale of Lancelot. She looks at our king as a legend and a fantasy, not a man. Who am I to ruin that for her?”

“And you are afraid she will learn from you, as you learned from Mistress Poppincourt, how to catch the king’s eye herself.”

She frowned at that. “I really do love him, Gilly.”

“As futile an exercise as whistling in the wind.”

“And yet did you not tell me yourself just this morning that he told Bishop Wolsey he was considering a divorce?”

“Angry men say many foolish things.”

“Even powerful kings?”

“When you were gone, Wolsey told me the king might consider his suggestion to allow the French king to marry his sister. In that case, all anger would be forgotten between Henry and Ferdinand, and divorce would not be necessary.”

“Mary will never agree to that,” she scoffed. “She is in love with the Duke of Suffolk, and he with her. Everyone knows it.”

“Love has nothing to do with marriage, Elizabeth. You would be wise to remember that. Bess would tell you the very same thing.”

“Well, you must not breathe a word about any of this, especially to her. Promise me, Gilly. At least not until I know for certain where I stand with the king.”

He lowered his eyes judgmentally upon her. “You have no intention of stopping, do you?”

“Not for as long as he will have me. I cannot
.
It might be as futile for me as things with Bess are for you, but you know neither of us is going to give up,” she said. He did not answer, because he could not disagree. He was only sixteen, but Gil Tailbois knew it was true. He was hopelessly in love with Bess Blount.

Bess was led silently by the page down a twisted flight of stone stairs and along a corridor to a chamber concealed by carved double doors. Her heart was pounding with dread as she waited for the boy to knock. What she did not expect was whom she saw on the other side once the door was opened. Bess gave a little shriek of surprise, engulfed by the warm, familiar scent of her father, John Blount, as he drew her into a hearty embrace.

“Why did you not write to me that you were returning?” she sputtered, tears blurring her eyes as she laid her head against his noticeably slimmer chest. He felt more fragile, still weakened, she thought. Yet he was here. The post of Royal Spear, bodyguard to the king, was a demanding one, so he must be returned to good health.

“And miss that expression on your sweet face?” he said with a chuckle.

“We wanted to surprise you.”

The voice behind them, sweet, gentle, and female, belonged to her mother. Bess gasped in disbelief at Catherine Blount, who stood in a pretty topaz satin and beadwork dress with delicate lace at the square neckline and sleeves, her face framed by a smile. She was slimmer as well. Bess did not need to embrace her to see that; yet still she did so, and heartily. She went to her mother’s open arms with all the love of a child who had lost her way, and only now had found home.

“Apparently the surprise pleases our beautiful daughter.” Catherine Blount smiled serenely. “Just look at how you have grown in a year’s time. And we have heard much about you from Lady Hastings.”

“I do not think she likes me very well,” Bess confessed as they stood together in the center of a room with a high ceiling ornamented with heavy beams and two tall windows filled with colored glass.

“The Duke of Buckingham’s sister likes you well enough to write to us that you have been elevated to an impressively prominent place at the king’s table when he dines in public.”

“That is only because I am friends with Mistress Bryan, whom the king favors most especially as a dining companion. She is, after all, very clever and beautiful.”

Her parents exchanged a glance. “Sir Thomas’s little daughter?” her father asked, but it was not really a question. “Bollocks! He has boasted for years about parading her out before the king the very moment she was old enough to be matched, not caring for the consequences. I always thought he was joking. Unseemly, is what it is.”

“She certainly deserves a proper match. I always thought she was such a pretty girl,” said her mother.

Bess studied each of her parents, much aged in the last year by her father’s convalescence and her mother’s constant care of him. Both looked a little less elegant than she remembered, yet it was so wonderful to have them back here with her. She did not want to dwell on Elizabeth any longer.

“How are you truly, Father?” she asked, gazing into eyes that were more deeply sunken than a year before. “Are you certain you are strong enough?”

“Fit as ever, dear one. Not to worry. Returning to my post will be the perfect medicine for me.”

They were both smiling at her so happily that Bess had no choice but to believe them.

“Does the queen know you have returned?” she asked her mother. “She calls for me very little these days.”

“I went to her first, of course. As you know, she is most uncomfortable at this stage of her pregnancy, and she finds it a comfort, she says, to be in the company only of women who have endured the same process. It also cannot be easy to know that such pretty young girls as you and Mistress Bryan keep her husband’s company while she cannot.”