I, Jane: In The Court of Henry VIII (35 page)

God, how he ached for Jane, body and soul, because it would never be fully over between them. She was imprinted on his very soul from boyhood and would never leave him. He would always want her no matter what he had personally done to make that fantasy impossible.

Her indifferent gaze when she had looked at him had cut straight through to his heart. Yet William knew he deserved that and more for not having fought harder for Jane. He could make a million excuses about loyalty and duty, but at the end of the day, he was the man who had the unique distinction of disappointing her, and for that William would pay for the rest of his life.

After passion with his wife had overtaken him and he had allowed himself the degrading fantasy of pretending she was Jane, William sat propped in bed, watching Mary sleep beside him. He tried very hard not to feel disgust at how he used her, but that was always impossible afterward.

William should have been pleased with his life. On the surface, he had everything a man could want. He was sleeping with his pretty wife in an elegant chamber near the apartments of Thomas Cromwell, one of the most powerful men in all of England. He had everything…but the one thing he truly desired. He was still not ready to give her up entirely. Not yet. Even though the King of England seemed to have set his sights on her now as well. But was it too late for him and Jane?

Edward and Thomas Seymour showed no surprise when, near midnight that night, Jane entered Thomas’s small receiving room, with a
view of the shadowy cobbled lane between the west wing and the royal kitchens. The brothers were playing a hand of cards by lamplight when she pushed open the door, whirled around in her blue velvet gown, then closed the door quietly behind her.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” she announced, leaning against the curved, heavy, mahogany doorframe and letting out a dramatic sigh.

Edward tossed down a card. “About what issue?” he asked nonchalantly.

“The king’s interest in me.” She could feel her smile broadening at the confession, but she could not help herself. The prospect was as exciting as it was dangerous, and Jane had never entertained anything truly dangerous in her life. Perhaps if she felt even a modicum of respect for Anne Boleyn, she would feel regret, but years of watching that concubine torment the poor queen had leached that possibility from her heart.

“’Tis about time you opened your eyes,” Thomas said with a conspiratorial smile. He was still elegantly dressed from the banquet in an embroidered doublet with thick padded sleeves and a crisp Venetian collar.

Jane took an empty chair at their carved maple-wood card table.

“We must be extremely cautious if we mean to make something lasting of His Majesty’s momentary interest in you. There is no room for even the slightest mishap,” Edward warned, laying down his cards and leveling his eyes on his sister with intensity. “In this game, you must be the complete antithesis of the queen, or there shall be no reason for him to leave her for you.”

Jane could not control her gasp, even as she pressed her fingers to her lips. “Do you truly believe he would do that? That
I
might actually become—”

“Queen? Indeed I do. His Majesty is far more traditional a man
than you might think—he wants only sons and a bit of peace as he grows older. These years with the concubine have worn him down. All of us have seen that,” Edward confirmed as Thomas beamed at the prospect. “But she will not go without a fight, so our plan must be flawless. We have Sir Nicholas and Sir Francis on our side, of course. They have both left her camp of supporters, as she has worn them down with her belittling remarks and rages. But we need Cromwell. He is the king’s most trusted adviser now, and without him it may all fall to nothing.”

Jane thought of his expression earlier when he found them in the aviary. She had always known Thomas Cromwell as a supporter of Anne Boleyn based on their mutual commitment toward religious reform. Everyone knew the Seymour family to be traditional in their beliefs. But the world with Queen Anne was a very different place than it had been with Queen Katherine, and faith seemed secondary, Jane reminded herself.

“Leave Master Cromwell to me. I have an idea,” she said confidently.

The brothers exchanged a skeptical glance. It was not the sort of thing Jane ever said.

“But, sister, you must focus all of your attention on the attacks you will need to fend off from the queen and Lady Rochford once your relationship becomes more widely known,” said Thomas. “The viciousness of women cannot be underestimated.”

Suddenly, Jane felt a smile bubbling up. A little chuckle followed as her gaze slipped from one brother to the other. Back and forth it went until they all were looking at one another slyly. Her smile was so contagious that, finally, all three of the Seymour siblings—these children of the humble Wiltshire countryside—were laughing in
disbelief at the utter fantasy of how far they had come…and how much further they might go if they played their cards right.

“Nor should I be underestimated,” Jane said.

Jane was exhausted from all that had happened that day when she slipped alone down the shadow-drenched gallery outside the queen’s apartments and up a flight of stairs to her own bedchamber. She ached for sleep, and yet she knew she would get little. Her excitement was too great for sleep.
Could this actually be happening?
she still wondered, pondering that same thing over and over again since the moment the king had taken her away from the banquet earlier that evening and openly declared his interest. With a heavy hand, she twisted the iron handle on her paneled door, but it was another hand, strong and male, that reached behind her to push it open. Jane turned with a start in the forbidding darkness, gazing up into William’s tormented expression. Yet it was not a surprise. Somehow she had known he would come to her and they would meet like this. It had always been meant to happen.

“How long have you been waiting here for me?”

“Hours…Days. A lifetime. Truly, I know not time,” he said, and by his slurred tone it was clear to Jane that he had been drinking.

“You must go, William, back to your wife. I am certain she is waiting for you.” Jane could not keep the bitterness from her voice, altered now by fatigue and anger as she pushed past him and into the small, dark bedchamber.

She went to a table and lit a lamp, then kicked off her soft-soled shoes. William closed the door behind them, then followed her so closely that she could still feel his breath on the nape of her neck. Her heart was racing. Her private room was small, and it was
difficult to get away from him—if that was something she even wanted. But Jane was not certain that she did.

So much of her life was tied up in her love of this man.

Finally, when there was nothing else to busy her movements, she leaned against the side of the bed and faced him fully. The torment in his expression was so raw and so real that she shuddered with compassion in spite of everything else she felt. “What do you want, William?” she asked brokenly as tears clouded her eyes.

He ran a hand behind his neck as the tears in his own eyes splashed onto his smooth cheeks, and he sank brokenly onto the edge of her bed, hunching over and pressing his face into his hands. “I know only that I love you, that I will always love you. In spite of what I did to destroy it, we have been meant for each other since we were children. The fact that I cannot ever have you is a wound from which I know I shall never recover.”

Jane sank onto the edge of the bed beside him. She was so close she could feel his warm thigh, which was pressed against her own through her dress. William reached over and tightly clutched her hand in his as if it—and this moment—were some sort of lifeline. She was surprised that he did not mention the king. But, then, what had always been between them had never included anyone else. William lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of her palm with such emotion then that she felt herself begin to tremble. Jane reached up and ran a hand through the thick hair above his ear, knowing what the intimate touch would lead to and not caring. She was wounded, too.

He turned his head slowly to face her, tears staining his cheeks and brightening his eyes. He kissed her hand again, then leaned in slowly to kiss her slightly parted lips. Jane did not refuse his advance; she craved
it. God help her, the king’s kiss felt nothing like this, nor did his touch, in spite of how majestic she thought he was only hours earlier.

Forcefully, yet with an aching gentleness, William pushed her back onto the bed and came down on his side, pressing against her and reaching up with a hand to touch her cheek. It was not unlike the seductive dance they had done together all those years ago in a field filled with red poppies behind Wolf Hall. He wiped away her tears with the backs of two fingers. Deftly, he moved in to kiss her again, this time far more passionately, opening her mouth with his own and pressing the full length of his body against hers. He pressed a hand onto one of her breasts and moved over her. Jane ran her hand through his hair again, craving the softness, craving him. But then, as they kissed and touched, Jane knew they could do no more than this. There was too much at stake for both of them.

As if sensing her resolve, William sat back on his elbow without argument and gazed at her beneath him. There seemed some comfort for him in her tears as he let just a fraction of a smile lengthen his lips. “You are not going to become my mistress, are you?” he asked sadly, already knowing the answer. “Far too complicated to become the lover of two men, I suppose.”

He sat up fully then, and Jane sat up beside him. “I’ll not become his mistress either, William.”

“Then what are you doing with him, precisely, besides endangering your very life by challenging the queen?”

“I am being myself. That is all that I
can
do. Pray it shall be enough.”

“Enough for what?”

Jane looked away from him as she smoothed out the skirt of her gown.

“You do not honestly believe that he will divorce her and marry you, do you?”

Jane shot him an angry glare. “Apparently, you do not have as much faith in me as my brothers do. But then that is really no surprise, considering how little fight you seemed to think I was worth in the end.”

“I was told there was no hope.”

“And you believed everyone else without even asking me?” She bolted to her feet, straightening her sleeves. “You asked for my hand twice, but never even asked me how I would feel if you married someone else! You never gave me a chance to fight for you, fight for
us
! And I would have done that; I would have fought for you, William. Just as I have fought for every single thing I have,” she declared brokenly, feeling the anger and frustration rise within her. She loved William more than anything in the world, but he had hardened her in a way nothing else possibly could.

“You don’t know everything, Jane. The decision was not as simple as that. There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Love is simple, William. One either feels it or not. If you do, you fight for it. That is what I believe.”

“That is a sentiment for fairy tales!” he declared, shooting back to his feet and towering over her.

“I want a fairy tale!”

“What you shall get with the King of England is a nightmare, not a fairy tale!” he raged, clamping his arms around her again and drawing her against his chest furiously. Jane could tell there was something he was not telling her, something about what had happened before he married Mary Sidney, yet whatever it was, it did not matter now. It would never matter again. William was another
woman’s husband. And if she had her way, and she was very skillful, she would soon become another man’s wife.

William kissed her again, but this time she did not kiss him back. She merely waited for him to taste the broken heart that would never heal and that would never belong to him again. When he did, he released her and stepped back.

“I want you to do something for me, William.”

“Anything,” he replied softly.

“More than that, I need you to speak well of me to Master Cromwell.”

“I have never spoken of you in any other way.”

“I need the loyalty that belongs to Anne Boleyn. In spite of her decline in power, she is still a ruthless and influential woman.”

He looked at her with a spark of incredulity for a time before he said, “You want me to help you become Queen of England?”

“Yes.”

“I owe you that much,” he finally replied, but not without a grudging note in the words.

“You owe me nothing, William. I ask it of you only as a friend.”

“You should be my wife, not my friend.”

“We all make choices,” she said, trying hard not to sound bitter.

“This is not what I wished for us. Please know that.”

She waited, but he said nothing else before he took her into his arms and pulled her close against his chest, holding her there chastely for a long time, as if somehow he could undo the years they had lost. So much had brought them to this point. So much had torn them apart. She hoped he would do this for her. But Jane would have to wait and see if the love of her life was up to the task of helping her become another man’s queen.