Blaze Wyndham (34 page)

“It is good to see you, Tony. I understand from Blaze that we are to be related by marriage.”

Anthony Wyndham’s eyes swept the room, finding her. For a moment he could not speak. He had forgotten how beautiful she was, but seeing her standing there in her mauve silk gown, her honey-colored curls loose about her plump shoulders, reminded him sharply. Her eyes, however, were icy with their disdain. So she was not happy about this turn of events. She obviously liked being the royal whore, he thought, and anger welled up within him.

“Greetings, madam,” he said. “The king has obviously told you of our upcoming nuptials.” His voice was cold, and Bliss found herself shivering openly.

“Last night as we sported ourselves,” replied Blaze unkindly, seeing his look, and recognizing it as contempt. “The date has been set for November fifth, if you did not know.” She glared at him defiantly. How dare he judge her! How could he know what it was like to be a woman, helpless before a king’s power?

“So the king informed me this morning, madam. He also informed me that your intimate association is now finished. I assume that you remember how a Countess of Langford conducts herself?”

“As well as I remember how Edmund died,” she replied in a deceptively sweet voice.

“Let us have some wine to toast this event,” said Owen FitzHugh, and he valiantly attempted to ease what was obviously a tense situation, particularly seeing that his wife was totally nonplussed by the open warfare that had broken out between Blaze and Tony.

“There is nothing to celebrate,” said Blaze angrily, and she swept past them out of the room.

Bliss, never at a loss for words, could only stare after her elder sister. Owen FitzHugh calmly poured three goblets of dark, rich wine and handed them around. Then raising his own cup he said, “You’ll find that Morgan women are as hot-tempered as they are hot-blooded, Tony, but at no time are they ever dull to be wed to, my friend!”

“Owen!”
Bliss had recovered, and glowered at her husband. “What a thing to say about my sister and me.”

“I speak only the truth,” teased the Earl of Marwood, and Anthony Wyndham found himself suddenly smiling.

“Do you beat Bliss often?” he inquired politely, but his blue eyes were warm and twinkling.

How very handsome he is, thought Bliss, seeing those eyes now in a different light.

“Nay,” replied Owen. “I do not beat her at all, for I have a far sweeter way of moderating her behavior, do I not, my adorable one?”

“And I oversee his behavior the exact same way,” said Bliss in honeyed tones, “do I not, my lord?”

Tony laughed now, and said ruefully, “I doubt that Blaze and I shall ever find the happiness that you two have.”

“Then why do you claim her?” asked Owen FitzHugh.

“Because he loves her!” crowed Bliss. “Oh, you do, don’t you, Tony?” In the space of a brief moment she had seen the vulnerability on his face when he spoke of Blaze.

“Aye, I love her. I always have,” came the quiet reply.

“Which was why you could never see Delight,” Bliss continued, and then, “Oh! poor Delight! She will be heartbroken when she learns that you are marrying Blaze, or does she already know?”

He shook his head in the negative, and Owen said, “ ’Twill be the best thing that could happen to Delight. She has been mooning about Ashby for two years. Now, perhaps, she will look to some of the young men who have been trying without success to court her.”

“Oh, Owen, you do not understand Delight! For men everything is so black-and-white,” said Bliss in an exasperated tone. “You have surely been wed with me long enough to know that is not so.”

“With you, my darling Bliss, nothing is ever certain,” said Owen FitzHugh.

“Neither is it with Blaze,” replied Bliss, looking to her future brother-in-law. “You will have to meet with her on some common ground, Tony. You cannot go battling to the altar.”

At the mention of Blaze and their situation his eyes clouded once more. He was now publicly committed to her, and he wondered if he might not live to regret his impetuosity. He had deliberately pledged himself to a virago who obviously hated him. What hope could he have of their happiness under those circumstances? Still, he had to try to bring her to reason. In a few short weeks they would be condemned to spend the rest of their lives together. The thought was a most sobering one, and he recklessly drank his wine down in two gulps.

Life at court had not changed, he found. There were factions everywhere, and right now those factions were attempting to reassess the king’s position in relation to Lady Blaze Wyndham, particularly since the king had that very day publicly announced the betrothal of Anthony Wyndham, the Earl of Langford, to his dearly beloved friend, Lady Blaze Wyndham. Was the king planning to use Tony Wyndham to father for an expected bastard? Lady Wyndham had but one servant, a stubborn red-cheeked countrywoman who could not be bribed, and so no one could be certain if the slender Blaze was or was not with child.

It was obvious that the king was not in any way angry with Blaze Wyndham, for his manner toward her was most jovial and kind. She was therefore not out of his favor, particularly as she remained in her apartments directly over the king’s. That gave rise to additional rumors, these of a more salacious nature suggesting that the king and the earl were sharing Lady Wyndham’s favors.

Then, of course, there was the possibility that the king had found another lady to pursue. It did not take the sharp eyes and the sharper tongues long to discover that Mistress Anne Boleyn was suddenly being singled out for royal favor as Lady Wyndham was being eased out of it with her upcoming marriage. It was truly a most exciting autumn! On one side of the coin was the king coyly attempting to court a new ladylove. On the other was his previous inamorata publicly squabbling with her betrothed husband, much to the delight of the court.

“Can you limit your shows of temper to our private times, my lord?” snapped Blaze when Anthony had escorted her to her apartments one evening.

“I will confine my shows of temper when you behave as you should, madam,” he snapped at her.

“Lord Neville and I were but speaking. We were in public where we could be seen by all. What did you think he would do under such circumstances?”

“Lord Neville was openly staring down your gown,” raged Tony. “In another minute his hand would have been on your breast, and he would have been tumbling you in the open for all to see!”

Blaze slapped him furiously. “How dare you!” she shrieked. “I have never behaved like a common drab in the past, and I am not behaving as such now. You, however, are behaving like a fool!”

“I see,” he said coolly. “Playing the whore for a king is different from playing the whore for just a simple peer!”

Blaze whitened outwardly though inwardly fierce rage pumped through her veins. “You know nothing, my lord,” she said. “
Nothing!
If, however, you think me such a whore, why do you even disturb yourself by wedding with me? Surely some whey-faced and unsullied virgin would suit you better!”

“Perhaps you are right,” he shouted at her, “but I gave my promise to Edmund, and I have always been a man of my word! I will wed you, Blaze, and then I will take you home to RiversEdge where you will behave as my wife should behave, and bear my children so that the Wyndhams do not die out.”

Furious, she backed away from him. “I bore a son for the Wyndhams once. You killed him!” Her hand found a porcelain bowl of potpourri, and grasping it she threw it at his head with all her might.

He ducked, and the bowl, spewing its contents of dried flower petals and fragrant spices, scattered all over the room. Threateningly he stepped toward her, his face a mask of black anger.

“Go ahead,” she taunted him. “Beat me, if you dare! The king is still not so enamored of Mistress Anne that I cannot bring his wrath down on your damned head! Wherever you mark me I shall show him! He has always loved my fine white skin, and it distressed him whenever I sported a bruise. Touch me, and he will know of it, I swear it you!”

“You damned bitch!” he growled at her, and turning, flung himself from the room, hearing her mocking laughter, hearing her shout after him,
“Coward!”

The king called her to him the next day, and seating her upon his lap within his privy chamber, he said, “You are causing a scandal with your constant battles, my little country girl. You cannot continue to openly disagree on every matter with our good Tony. There are those who say I am forcing you to this match, and such chatter hurts me, for you know I do this only so that you will be safe and content in your home with your little daughter once more. You are really not meant for the court, Blaze Wyndham, and once you are wed you are to go home again. Do you understand what I have told you?”

“I understand more than you believe I do, my Hal,” she said, and her lower lip quivered as her eyes filled with hot tears.

“I have loved you, Blaze,” the king said softly, “but you must never make the mistake of presuming upon that love. As I have warned you often enough before, I am not a simple man.
I am the king!
Do you now understand what it is I am saying, sweetheart?”

Mutely Blaze nodded, and was then sent from his presence. She understood. Oh, yes, she understood quite well. As Bliss had said those weeks before, the king had cast her off. He had seen her provided for with a suitable husband, and now he was washing his hands of her so he might concentrate his efforts upon his pursuit of Mistress Anne, the cat-faced bitch! As long as Blaze would behave herself she would have the king’s friendship, but Henry Tudor had all but bluntly told her that if her public disagreements with Anthony Wyndham did not cease, she would have his enmity.

Fleeing to her apartments she locked herself in her bedchamber much to Heartha’s distress. She needed to think. She needed to be alone. Really alone. For almost a year now the fires of her anger over Edmund’s untimely death had burned hot within her. Though with the passing of time she had come to realize that Anthony Wyndham was not really to blame, she had not been able to openly release him from his culpability in the matter, but now she had to if there was to be any peace between them. Henry Tudor had virtually insisted that there must be.

She had loved Edmund Wyndham with the first love of an innocent girl. Had he lived she knew that she would have loved him for the rest of her life. He had given her everything she had ever wanted, and more. His devotion. A sweet love. His name. Little Nyssa. RiversEdge. She had never dreamed that such happiness could exist between two people as had existed between them, and then he was gone from her life as suddenly as he had entered it.

As for the king, she had not willingly sought to catch his attention, yet with Henry Tudor she had found a different sort of love. She quickly learned how his royal upbringing had molded him into the powerful, volatile, brilliant monarch that he was. Henry needed a gentle woman who would allow him to lead her, and with him she had found real passion. Few, if any—the Princess of Aragon, Will Somers, herself—saw the unsure and uncertain boy beneath Hal’s bluff nature. The boy who needed the comfort and reassurance that only a soft-spoken woman could offer. Aye, the king had needed her, though he would never have admitted to it. She wondered who would minister to those particular needs now. Certainly not Mistress Anne Boleyn with her French manners and her grand pretensions.

What was left? What kind of love could Anthony Wyndham possibly offer her? Certainly she could not go back in time and give him what she had given Edmund. Nor could he be to her the man that Henry Tudor was, nor would she want him to be. She shook her head ruefully. Why was she even considering love where Tony was concerned? He did not love her, and she doubted that he ever would. He would marry her because of a promise that he had made a dying Edmund. She had come to believe that, because there was certainly no reason for him to have said such a thing if it wasn’t so.

There would be no love between them; but then, what
would
there be between them? She was not so silly as not to realize that true love within a marriage was a rare thing. Most people married for other considerations, such as property, children, familial duties of some sort. How on earth did they manage to live in peace together, feeling nothing for one another? She had been so fortunate her entire life, for her own parents loved one another, and she had loved Edmund, and her sisters had found love with their mates. They were, she knew, all the exception to the rule.

Without love what was there? Friendship? Respect? A mere toleration of one’s mate? He did not love her. Did he love any other woman? Did he have some rustic little mistress who had already borne him children? She did not know, for she had to admit to herself that she did not really know Anthony Wyndham. Still, if she could manage to forgive him Edmund’s death, perhaps they might build something on that. She had to try. She couldn’t go on being angry, wanting to stick a knife into his black heart! In just a few days’ time he would be her husband, and they would leave Greenwich and the court. She would not have the king to run to anymore in her pique. She smiled ruefully. She did not have the king anymore at all now. He had told her so only a short while ago. She must make peace with herself.
She must!

“M’lady! M’lady!” Heartha was rapping upon her bedchamber door. “M’lady! Betty says that Mistress Bliss needs you right away!”

Blaze unlocked the door to the room and hurried out. “Where is my sister?” she asked Bliss’s tiring woman.

“She’s in her apartments, and she’s very sick, m’lady! Ohhh, she’s very sick indeed, poor lady!”

Bliss was as white as a sheet. She had already vomited twice into a silver basin, and was looking dreadfully drained. “I feel awful!” she wailed. “ ’Tis the second time this week that this has happened. What is the matter with me? No! Not that gown, you stupid girl! Did I not say it was too tight the last time I wore it? Ohh, Blaze! I feel wretched!”