Gilt (12 page)

“I’ll flirt,” I said to soothe, though I didn’t mean with all the boys. Just one. “But we’ll both dance.”

A
T THE END OF
J
UNE
, A
NNE OF
C
LEVES MOVED TO
R
ICHMOND WITH
her furs and her head intact. Cat moved back to court. Throughout the spring, Norfolk House had been in a continual furor. If we weren’t planning a dinner for the king, we were cleaning up from one—usually both at once. Now, the absence of Cat and the king was like the space of a missing tooth. I kept probing it to see if it was real.

Even more painful was the fact that William returned only infrequently. And I waited as impatiently as the duchess for news from her stepson at court. He came once, mid-July, on what felt like the hottest day of that hot, dry summer. The duke and dowager duchess sequestered themselves in the cool cave of the downstairs withdrawing room. And William coaxed me outside, where the sun had bleached the topiary and cast a diamond reflection off the river.

“Why don’t we venture outside the walls?” William said. “I spotted a little grove of trees on a rise just south of here . . .”

He trailed off, watching me. In my mind, I knew those men no longer lurked in the shadows beyond the apple orchard. But in my heart I felt them waiting outside the gates.

“You don’t like the park?” he asked.

I hadn’t set foot in the woods since that evil afternoon the autumn before.

“Actually, it’s one of my favorite places,” I blurted. The quiet. The birdsong. The ever-changing, myriad shades of green.

“But?”

I couldn’t tell him. Because I’d done nothing. Nothing to help. Nothing to hinder. I’d run. I’d saved myself. And still I didn’t feel safe. I never felt safe.

Except with William. I managed a smile and moved toward the gates.

“Don’t.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t do something just to make me happy. This isn’t only about me. It’s about both of us.”

Freckles dusted his knuckles like they did his nose. His nails were short and even a little grubby. William didn’t spend all his time indoors drinking wine and flirting. He worked. I liked that.

He took his hand back, ducked his head, his hair concealing his embarrassment. I loved that his face told me at least as much as his words, and sometimes more.

“When I was little,” I told him, “I used to pretend that the arch in the oak trees was a gateway to the fairy world. I could walk through there and be in the forest where the leaves changed the color of the light and the bluebells formed a carpet more luxurious than anything produced by man. I always felt it was there that I truly belonged because no
one expected anything of me. No one told me what to do or what I wanted or who I was. No one told me I wasn’t good enough.”

I took his hand from where he held it behind his back and smiled.

“A magical gateway.” He sounded dubious.

I nodded. It was my turn to feel embarrassed.

“That is something I must experience for myself.” He began to run up through the orchard, pulling me with him. Elation and terror mixed within me. The sun illuminated the arch like a golden door, and when we reached it, William swept me up into his arms to carry me through.

The light patterned through the leaves like stained glass. William set me down but didn’t take his hands from my waist. The fairies must surely have lived there, for I forgot, in an instant, all that had happened in that forest.

“This will be our special place,” he said, his gaze so keen I lost sight of the sun itself. “No one here will tell you that you aren’t good enough.” The dappled sunlight played across his features, chasing the emotions that sped from elation to confusion to determination. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine.

For one startled moment, I stared directly into both of his gray-blue eyes, then I closed my own and kissed him back. A kiss that dissolved with spice and sweetness on the tongue.

My arms ached to wrap around him, but I didn’t know how.
His waist? His neck? Could I run my fingers through his hair? In the end, I stood still, arms straight at my sides and fingers splayed.

William stepped back and looked at me, blinking surprise.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m not.” Something about him drew the truth out of me.

“I have no prospects. I’m nobody. I have nothing to offer you.”

“Neither have I. I have no family connections. I will bring no dowry. We’re equals.” The word ignited something in me. We were the same. The wonder of it made me smile.

But William didn’t. Deep in the shadows of that shrouded wood, the expression that crossed his face combined anxiety with a half dose of despair. But his eyes still held hope. Just a shred of it.

“I am dependent upon the duke,” he said. “My loyalty to him is based solely on need. The need to make the right connections.”

I nodded. The sunlit warmth had fled from my body, and I shivered. I was not the right connection.

“He knows this,” William continued. “And doesn’t let me forget it. That my choices are not entirely my own. But you’re related to the dowager duchess?”

“Distantly,” I said. “Very, very distantly.”

“He couldn’t say no,” William said quietly.

To what?
I wanted to ask, but held my tongue. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“When I first saw you, at that banquet, I couldn’t take my eyes off you,” he said.

I remembered. With a blush.

“You were so different from the others.”

So much taller. So much more awkward.

“So much more real.” William took my hands in his. “You didn’t preen or simper or bat your eyes. You didn’t wear cream to make your skin pale or paint your cheeks. You wore a plain gown.”

I had to.

“You didn’t flirt with the duke when you served him.”

Ew
.

“In fact, it appeared you couldn’t get away from him quickly enough. Despite the fact that he could get you to court.”

Maybe that’s why the duke didn’t pick me.

“I liked you before I even knew you, Kitty,” he said, and stepped closer still. “But getting to know you has made me like you even more.”

When he kissed me again, my arms went around his neck of their own accord. My hand reached for his hair and buried itself in the thick, textured luxury of it. My tongue found his, and I lost myself in the brilliantly faceted sunlight and shadow of his touch.

I
SLIPPED IN THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR OF THE HOUSE, ONE HAND TO
lips that felt green and renascent, like spring itself. The entrance hall dozed, languid, in the afternoon heat, buzzing with the hum of a single fly.

And voices. From the duchess’s little withdrawing room.

I tried to slip past, but was caught by the sound of my name.

“Katherine?” the duchess said. “You try telling that snip of a girl what to do. I’ve tried for years now, and she still does whatever pleases her.”

A shot of fear passed through me that someone had seen me with William. That the duchess disapproved not of my choice but of me making it.

“Perhaps that is why she is so headstrong,” came the duke’s voice. “She has never been punished for it.”

“Are you trying to tell me how to run my own household, sir?” the duchess cried.

“I would never do such a thing, my lady. Though others might wish to if they discover the laxity of your control. Especially in the past.”

“No one will ever learn Katherine’s secrets.”

Secrets? I had none. At least none the duchess knew. Or so I thought.

“Which is exactly why we must fill her chambers with those allegiant to the house of Howard. And one in particular who will be willing to tell us everything. What is said and by whom. Who is in favor and who is out. When they consummate the marriage. How often and how vigorously.”

I realized which Catherine they discussed. And why.

“We will need to know every detail of her monthly courses,” the duchess agreed.

“God forbid that she have them,” the duke interrupted. “For what we really need is a Howard heir in the royal cradle.”

The duchess murmured her agreement. I started to creep away, having no desire to be privy to the rest of their conversation. But the duke’s next words stopped me.

“We will need help. Someone close to her. Someone we can trust, but whom she must trust as well. A sister?”

The duchess let out a condescending laugh.

“She hates her sisters,” she said. “No, it will have to be someone closer than that.”

“Someone loyal,” the duke reminded her.

“I know just the person,” the duchess said. “Loyal to the grave.”

I
T WAS WHAT THE DUCHESS HAD CALLED ME, MANY MONTHS BEFORE
.
Loyal to the grave.
Closer than a sister. When Cat fulfilled her promise to bring me to court, would I be expected to tell all her secrets to the duke?

On July 28, Thomas Cromwell, who had engineered the marriage to Anne of Cleves, lost his head for his singular lack of judgment.

Cat married King Henry the same day.

Cat followed instructions and appointed great ladies to her household. She kept Jane Boleyn, the Lady Rochford, widowed sister-in-law to the first Queen Anne. And she selected several candidates from amongst her family members. Cat’s half-sister Lady Isabel Baynton, thirty years older and infinitely more tiresome, and Cat’s stepmother, Lady Howard, retained the positions they’d had in Anne of Cleves’s household. Cat’s aunt, the pale Countess of Bridgewater, and Lady Arundel, another half-sister, rounded out the Howard retinue.

And then Cat appointed the dowager duchess herself.

Cat finally had them all where she wanted them. She wielded more power than her stepmother. More influence than her
aunt. More status than her grandmother. Cat had won. Finally.

But she didn’t have us. As the long, hot summer stretched on, we received no word. The duchess packed up her house. Dismissed her servants.

Wrote letters to the parents of the girls in her care.

We waited as the summer scorched the earth. Into the dry autumn when the leaves dropped from sheer exhaustion. The wheat withered in the fields before it could be harvested. Cows and sheep and men and women battled starvation.

Joan started to cry.

“Don’t worry, Joan,” I said, barely able to console myself. “She promised, remember?”

“No, Kitty!” Joan cried. “She promised
you
.”

I froze, one hand on her shoulder. Had Cat only promised me? And how much was that promise worth?

“I was there, remember? In the maidens’ chamber. The day she was practicing her vows. She said she would make
you
her greatest lady. Her greatest friend. She didn’t promise me anything. She didn’t even look at me.”

“Of course she meant all of us,” I said helplessly.

“You can’t really think that,” Alice said. Quiet as ever.

“We’ve always been together,” I said.

“It’s always just been the two of you,” Alice said. “Kitty and Cat. And me and Joan on the side. You were always the important one.”