The Queen's Rival (43 page)

“She is exquisite,” Gil exclaimed with tear-filled eyes focused on his daughter, who was only minutes old.

“She has your eyes,” Bess wearily observed, her face still glistening with the perspiration from childbirth as she proudly watched.

“So long as she does not have my nose, she will be blessed since you are her mother.”

“Harry will adore her, do you not think?” she asked, aching for her other child in a way she had never believed possible. It was as if a part of her was actually missing in his absence. “How long has he been gone? It feels a month’s time already.”

“Only three days, my love,” Gil replied tenderly. “But he shall be back with us before you know it.”

“I
do
know his loss already, Gil, and I ache for him so desperately. I am not whole with him gone. Every night since he was taken, I wake and think I hear him calling for me. Even this precious little girl cannot change that,” she said, cradling her newborn daughter as her eyes filled with tears at the overwhelming emotions she felt.

“The king will be good to Harry, you shall see.” Gil tried to reassure her, nestling in gently beside her and pressing the wet blond hair back from her forehead.

“Why did he wait so long to see him then if he truly cared for my child?”

“Wolsey says it is because he lost so many others in his life. It is said the loss of his brother was the most difficult to bear and changed him most. He is hesitant about whom he loves now because of it.”

She did not want to believe anything tender about Henry any longer. She wanted to have the hardened heart she felt for him, since it was what had helped to lessen the pain of his betrayal. Yet Bess could still not stop herself from remembering the little child’s blanket unearthed so long ago, and the way the man beneath the crown once had trusted her enough to confide in her about it. Had even that been a ruse to seduce her into their affair?

Bess despised herself now for how much she had so naively loved him.

She took Gil’s hand then and squeezed it to chase away her thoughts. She was happy now to be his wife; happy to have found this life when once it was the last thing she thought she desired. Theirs had never been a romance, but rather, a slow and steady kindling of affection and trust, and now, after all these months, Bess believed she loved her husband—not passionately, perhaps, but steadfastly and enduringly.

“My love, we must make a decision soon about Rugby. The town and the manor there will be in need of direction soon.”

“It is payment for my son, Gil. I cannot take that.”

Gently, he rubbed her temple and prepared to reason with her. “This house has been in my family’s possession for more than a hundred years, and it will always be our home. Doubtless, Harry will receive advantages from his father as he grows to manhood. Accepting Rugby is something we could do for our daughter. It could be her dowry since, if we are blessed in time with a son, Goltho Hall will be his. Should we not give this precious child as close to the same advantage Harry will have, if we can?”

Bess was silent for a moment; then she turned her lower lip out in a little mock pout. “I really do despise it when you make sense.”

“Elizabeth deserves this, Bess,” he lightly insisted. “The king wants you to have it, and I want our daughter to have the best I can give her.”

“She has a name already?” Bess smiled.

“It could be no other, my love, than your own.”

“How do you know the king will provide for Harry? He has not shown much of an interest until now, after all.”

Gil glanced down at his daughter, her eyes wide and inquisitive upon him. “Because now I know what it is to be a father. There is nothing I would not do for my child. I am certain once the king sees his son for the first time, his life will be changed forever, just as my own now has been.”

Henry’s green eyes shimmered with tears as he knelt in the courtyard before the now-toddling boy, dressed in his best little black velvet trunk hose, doublet, and white collar to meet the king, an ensemble so small a child would never have worn otherwise.
God’s blood!
It was not just himself the boy resembled, but Arthur.

He had planned so many things, dreamed of them, before this moment. He had meant to declare to the boy that he was his father. He had intended to embrace him. Now all Henry could do was stare with awe at the little wide-eyed child, his own heart cut open and raw now by the startling resemblance to his beloved brother.

“Do you see it, Mary?” he asked his sister, who stood behind him with her husband, Charles, as the little boy held fast to a nurse’s hand. Mary herself was pregnant with her fourth child and full of the emotion that family connections brought. Henry knew she understood how much he had longed for this moment. It felt safe having her here as the tears came.

“I am Henry,” he finally said gently, afraid to move a muscle nearer the boy who looked positively dazed by all of the eyes upon him, and the unfamiliar adults crowded around. “You’re called Henry, as well, are you not?”

He watched the wide green eyes, fringed with long lashes, suddenly glisten with tears as well, and the little rosebud of a mouth begin to quiver in response.

“Ma,” he said very weakly, barely managing to utter the word.

He stood as bravely as could a child his age, yet still the tears fell in two long ribbons down his full ivory cheeks at the mention of his family left behind.

“Ah, well. My family has always called me Hal, but I think I like Harry much better.”

When he noticed his son transfixed by the heavy gold medallion hanging across his ornate doublet, he drew it off without a thought and carefully placed it over the little boy’s head.

“There now, that looks splendid.” He smiled. “Bring a looking glass!” he bellowed, and there was a great deal of scurrying behind him to comply. “Would you like to see?”

Harry nodded and wiped his own tears clumsily with the back of his small hand.

“I received that from my father after my first military battle,” Henry explained, sharing a deeply held memory he knew the child could not possibly understand nor would he ever remember. “Having to meet all of us at once like this certainly qualifies as your first great challenge. This shall mean absolutely nothing to you, but I have wanted to meet you since the very day you were born.”

The mirror was brought then and held before the child, with his downy soft mop of copper curls. He began to smile just slightly at the grand, glittering jewel weighty across his chest.

“You cannot have meant to give that to him, can you?” Mary asked her brother as little Henry Fitzroy, every bit his father’s son, began to admire his own reflection.

“Why not? It shall be his one day, after all.”

“And if the queen bears you a son?”

“Have we all not given up
that
ghost by now?” he shot back coolly.

“I do not suppose Katherine has.”

“Then that is a bad bit of fortune for her.”

“Mama?”

The small voice before them was clear in its request and interrupted their bickering as the king and his sister looked back down at him in surprise.

“We are going to Calais first, my boy, to show you off to the King of France.”

Harry’s lower lip began to quiver again. “Mama,” he repeated in a more desperate tone

“
I
am your—”

Mary’s fingers pressing into his shoulder stopped him from letting the final word fall from his tongue—at least for now. Mary had warned her brother when he came seeking her counsel on the matter that delicacy with a small child was of the essence.

He stood slowly and turned to his sister. “It is just not right. He should know who he is. He should understand his role,” he whispered desperately to her.

“He is only a small child, Hal. He shall understand in time, if you do not quite frighten him to death first,” she whispered back.

“What can I do?”

“Why not show him the aviary? It is an amazing place your daughter has always loved. Then after that, perhaps your marmoset and the dogs?”

“Of course.” He smiled and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”

“No thanks required. He
is
my nephew, after all.” Mary smiled back at him. “I want Harry to be happy for as long as he is with us.”

“Oh, he is not returning to Lincolnshire,” Henry firmly declared. “A son of the king must be brought up at court, being properly educated and trained for the role ahead of him.”

“Role?” Mary asked with a note of surprise. “Hal, he’ll not succeed you as your heir.”

“And yet he is the son of the King of England, acknowledged and so named. There shall be titles, grants, gifts, and, when the time comes, an important match to be made, possibly even a strategic one. I waited too long for a son, Mary. I’ll not let this one go.”

In the silence broken only by the sound of the swish of her skirts, she led him a few steps away from the boy, who stood looking at them quizzically as the strangers they were to him.

“Wolsey promised Lady Tailbois the child would be returned to her by month’s end,” Mary said.

“He should have made no such promise,” Henry snapped.

“The cardinal had no reason to believe otherwise, Hal, since the child is a year old already and this is the first interest you have ever shown in even seeing him.”

Henry walked to the window, braced himself on the sill, then looked back at his son, who was being spoken to quietly by Charles Brandon. A giant of a man like the king, Brandon had knelt before the boy and was showing him the jeweled scabbard he had drawn from the hilt on his jeweled belt while brother and sister spoke in low tones.

“Every single waking hour since I knew he had drawn his first breath at Jericho, I have longed to see him, to hold him in my arms, and to make him my son,” Henry declared passionately.

“Then why did you not?” Mary asked him.

He closed his eyes for a moment before answering. “For Bess’s sake, of course. She was in love with me, and I knew it. I used her badly, Mary. I was selfish and cunning, knowing just exactly how to win her. And then, somewhere along the way, I know not even where, I truly began to care for her. And that caring became love. It was not the same with Lady Hastings, Jane, or Elizabeth. It is not the same now with Boleyn’s daughters, willing as they are.”

He glanced at his small son again, already the haunting image of Arthur. “Perhaps I was idealistic. I know not. I was definitely foolish with Katherine and her expectant tear-filled gazes as well as the constant praying, damning me to hell. But I came to feel a fool for Bess. . . . For a moment, Bess, I suppose, was like starting over. God help me, but she loved me, and I allowed her to love me.” He drew in a breath and exhaled it deeply, looking back at their son once again. “Letting Bess heal from that injustice . . . Giving Tailbois a chance with her heart. . . Those were the only honorable steps to take.”

“And not tempting your own heart in the bargain?” she gently asked with a knowing tone.

“Selfish again, I suppose.”

“Very. But I do understand.”

“You are probably the only one who does. Bess quite likely despises me now, and she will despise me even more when she learns about the boy’s future. But she has just had another child already, and she and Tailbois will have their own sons in time. It seems with Katherine, however, that I shall not have any more chances. Unless perhaps she were to die and I could marry again, Harry shall be my only son. He is my hope, my legacy. . . . He is Arthur to me.”

“Should you not go to Lincolnshire and reason with her yourself then? Perhaps that way she will come to understand the things that a life at court can provide for him that she and Lord Tailbois never can. She will want that for her child if she knows how much we all will love him,” Mary proposed with hope as she, too, looked back at the little boy, the essence of innocence, mingling brightly there with his Tudor heritage.