The Secret Bride (50 page)

“There must be some penalty for betrayal, even for Mary! I cannot take them back,” Henry declared. “That is the end of it!”

As Charles knew it would be, the marriage was everything.

Perfect. Precious. He wanted nothing more in the world than what they had found at last. Perhaps to go home one day, but Wolsey in his letter made that sound an unlikely happening.

Other than that, as they lay wound in one another, deep beneath the bedcovers of her poster bed in the Hotel de Cluny, more happiness for one man was not possible.

His kisses were deep and languorous. Charles murmured as his hands moved deftly again down the length of the curves and hollows which he had come to know well these past long two weeks as husband and wife. Threading his fingers through her own small delicate ones, he rolled his eyes closed. He was sated, replete. Finally happy.

“I wish we could just stay here like this forever.” He sighed deeply. “But we must plan for our future now—decide what we mean to do with the rest of our lives.”

She looked up earnestly, her eyes shining. “I want to go home, Charles.”

“Perhaps we should have thought of that before we married. No matter what I say, Wolsey says Harry will not forgive me. And I suppose I don’t really blame him. I really did wound him at the core.”

“That very masculine chivalric code of yours.”

“Don’t laugh. It means something to a man.”

“Then why did you agree to marry me?” she asked, with a tiny hint of irritation.

“Because you meant more. A great deal more.”

He watched the tears that had been pressing at the back of her eyes flood onto her cheeks. She missed Henry so dearly, he knew. Katherine . . . Jane . . . Mother Guildford. He believed she was happier than she had ever been but that longing would never change. In spite of how it had occurred, they should all be sharing her joy. Charles kissed her sad, wet face then and drew her back against him. “We shall find a way with Harry. Somehow together. There must be a way. I cannot believe he will want to live the rest of his life without you.”

Two weeks after their last letter from Wolsey arrived in Paris, and six weeks after their secret marriage, Charles rode a magnificent steel-colored bay beside the duc de Longueville’s silver-clad horse, both thundering through the forested countryside beyond the palace of Fontainebleau. Ahead of them, hooves churning leaves and pine needles, the king led a party of other nobles on the hunt. It was an early spring day, cool but invigorating, no longer wet and frigid. The French forest was different from the lush English ones in which he had grown to manhood riding. Sunlight streaked through new, lacy branches like shimmering fingers, and a thick carpet of leaves and pine needles crunched beneath their horses’ hooves.

“Still no response?” Longueville, once his captive but now a friend, casually asked.

“Wolsey’s last response was that my king was still livid. I expected that. And I deserve it as well.”

To the jangle of harnesses, they rode more slowly as the royal scouts pinpointed a stag. “Well, he cannot stay angry at so dear a friend forever.”

“Ah, you do not know the king. He has a long memory and a toughened heart for those who disappoint him. His own wife has discovered that well enough.”

Poor Katherine. The parade of women through the king’s bedchamber door was increasing daily. The French gossiped about poor Mistress Blount, who had given the king the one thing he desired more than anything else, and lost him as a consequence.

“He was not always like that,” Charles said as they watched Francois do the ceremonial honors of killing the captured stag. “Not so long ago, he seemed confounded by women and only Katherine’s attentions would do, no matter how many lovely girls threw themselves at him.”

“One does wonder how history might be changed if the poor Spaniard had given him a son.”

“Apparently we shall never know. It is said back in England that she is quickly becoming too old to bear more children, and all of his interest anyway lies with that Boleyn girl.”

They dismounted, then stood amid the collection of other courtiers, both of them removing their gloves. “A thought occurs to me.”

Charles cast a glance at him as the stag was hoisted up by a rope pulley into a tree to be gutted beside a strong, new fire. “What if my master, the French king, were to write to King Henry on your behalf speaking of pleasure at your ability to . . . negotiate? Would Henry not find you irreplaceable then and perhaps it could defuse the wildest portion of his anger?”

“How the devil would I ever get Francois to do a thing like that? He has despised me since Mary’s coronation.”

“One powerful king would not wish to make an enemy of another. Did you not tell me he tried nearly every day she was here before you married, to make the dowager queen his mistress, and rather aggressively?”

“True.”

“The only thing that might anger Henry more than what you have done would be to know what a married sovereign had tried to do.”

Charles looked at Francois, his long straight nose like a punctuation mark on an otherwise young and handsome face, chin tipped up, that air of entitlement swirling around him as he observed the stag’s disemboweling. His arrogance was such a palpable thing it might be amusing to find his way back to Henry’s good graces by knocking Francois down a peg or two if he could.

“I suppose it
is
worth a try. I shall speak with him at the banquet tonight. And, if it works, Louis, I shall owe you more than I could ever repay.”

“Just send Jane Popincourt here to France when you return,” he replied unexpectedly as they tethered their horses to the same tree. “And that shall be more than payment enough.”

Jane . .
. So Louis actually did care for her after all. This day really was quite full of surprises, Charles thought as they moved toward the dead stag.

Waving off his Yeomen of the Guard with irritation, Henry walked the length of the long gallery, with a view into the gardens, his hands then linking behind his back. Yet it was not a strolling pace his favorite spaniels and greyhounds followed. They were long, stalking strides he took and with which the Duke of Norfolk struggled to keep up.

“Loath as I am to admit it, sire, I find that in this circumstance I do agree with Buckingham. A penalty needs to be paid.”

Henry shot the older man an angry stare. “Which one then, Norfolk? Murder Brandon as Buckingham recommended or simply imprison him?”

Henry knew that pain would be shooting up through Norfolk’s spine at the king’s breakneck pace down the interminably long gallery, which, with his gout, it was nearly impossible to match. Henry could tell he was trying not to huff but he could barely catch his breath. His glory days of war, or even hunting, were long over. “All I am saying is that there must be a price for his treasonous—even treacherous—act wrought against Your Highness. He married a princess of the blood without royal consent, after all.”

“I know better than anyone what he did,” Henry growled, shaking his head. “If Charles Brandon is to return to England, then he must also be made to pay a price. Respectfully, sire, you could not possibly act differently on this. A punishment simply must happen.”

Katherine was approaching them in unadorned black silk and a tight gabled hood hiding her swiftly graying hair.

Her hands held a small prayer book and her expression was somber, with Dona Elvira and Maria de Salinas flanking her in equally plain dark dresses, each with a crucifix bobbing at her chest. When they met, the queen dipped into a deep curtsy to her husband, and her ladies followed.

“Would my husband grant me a private word?” Katherine asked in a low, perfunctory voice still heavily accented with Spanish, which once long ago Henry had found charming.

Before Henry could respond, Norfolk bowed to her, then to the king, and excused himself, along with Katherine’s two ladies.

She wasted no time in coming to her point. “Do not let them do it, Hal, I bid you. I hope I am in time to stop you. If I have a shred of influence left on your heart, do not let the dukes of Buckingham and Norfolk convince you to punish them.”

“I never liked Mary’s eavesdropping, and I sure the devil do not find favor in it from you,” he shot irritably. “How would you have a clue what Norfolk and I were speaking about?”

“Because I know Norfolk and I know
you.
You may not love me anymore, Hal. But there was a time when you trusted my opinion. You even made me your regent, and what a glorious day that was for me, full of so much promise. You know I have always put this country and you ahead of everything else!”

Looking past the sallow skin and the age lines that defined her face now, and into dark eyes that mirrored their years together, the joys, the love and the losses, Henry softened. “I know that.”

“Then if you do know it, you must welcome your sister and her husband back to England with the greatest forbearance.”

“Reward them for their treason?”

“They only fell in love. That does not go against you, or England. Any more than what we once felt was treason toward your father. You remember that feeling . . . we both do.

And there was a time, long ago now perhaps but which, to my heart still, feels like yesterday, a time when you as well would have done anything to marry me—and you did just that.” She moved a little nearer, but she made no attempt to cross the chasm of their estrangement. Katherine knew it was too late for that. “Remember it, Hal, how we met in secret, the plans we made, the vows . . . and know that they did nothing more or less than you and I.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the two women and Norfolk lingering beneath the window, Norfolk stroking one of the greyhounds, yet doubtless having heard every word.

Henry did not love Katherine any longer, but he would always trust her. Yet he trusted Norfolk as well. There was a choice to be made. Clear, cold and distinct. He saw that.

Henry simply was not certain if it was one he was yet prepared to make, even for his Mary.

An hour later, Henry flipped his opponent over and forced him, with a single powerful thrust, to hit the rush mat. The sound was a whacking thud. They were both out of breath and their white linen shirts were drenched in sweat and pressed against the taut curves of their chests. Gawain Carew, new at court and full of enough ambition to challenge the king, tried to pull his twisted arm from a hold that was steadily and painfully being screwed up the length of his back.