Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (54 page)

An hour later, having collected Constance from John Browne’s bedchamber, she returned to Sussex House the same way she had left.

T
HE SECOND TIME
Nan crept out to meet Ned Corbett, the kisses were more intense. “I love the way you smell,” she whispered.

She felt him smile against her cheek. “I am a noxious weed compared to you, my flower. I never knew lavender could be so sweet.”

Again they parted too soon to suit Nan, and the third time she visited Master Husee’s little house, Ned greeted her with the news that this must be their last meeting. “Husee intends to make the crossing on the first of December. I am to meet him at Gravesend, in Kent.”

“Must you return to Calais?” The aching, empty feeling inside her was far worse than any hunger for food.

“I am one of your stepfather’s regular couriers,” Ned reminded her. “That means I will come back from time to time.”

“But we will never have this house to ourselves again.” Tears sprang into her eyes. First she had lost her best chance at attracting a wealthy, titled husband. Now she would lose Ned’s company. It was not fair!

Ned took her in his arms and kissed her damp cheeks. When his gentle, comforting embrace turned passionate, the lure was irresistible. Nan tugged at his laces even as he began to undo her kirtle.

“Are you certain?” he whispered. “I would not hurt you for the world.”

Nan did not reply in words. Caught up in a whirl of new and fascinating sensations, she seized his face in both hands and pulled until his lips met hers. Her world tilted and spun and by the time the tumult slowed enough for her to think again, she was naked in Ned’s bed and he was pushing himself into her.

The intrusion hurt … until Ned slid one hand down her body. The waves of renewed arousal lashed at every place he touched. She had never experienced anything like what he did to her, never imagined such
pleasure was possible. She had no name for what she felt. She only knew that the moment of pain was quickly replaced by shudders of ecstasy.

Only later, when they lay sated and smiling, did Nan realize the enormity of what she had just done. Men wanted wives who were virgins. How could she have allowed herself to become so caught up in passion that she’d lost all common sense? How was she to catch any husband now, let alone one who was rich and titled?

Nan sat straight up, fumbling for her smock. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes, but this time she was determined not to let them fall. She dared not look at Ned, although she could feel him watching her.

“Wounds of Christ,” he swore. “I’d never have taken you for a puling infant. Is it really so terrible to have given yourself to a lover? Great ladies do it all the time, and so do maids of honor!”

“I am not a maid of honor any longer!” Nor was she a maid. Nan met his gaze at last and read concern there, as well as frustration.

“Did I not please you, Nan?”

“You know you did,” she whispered.

“Then what is it that troubles you?”

“This … this is not … acceptable behavior.”

Startled, he blinked once and then began to laugh. Nan glared at him, but after a moment she saw the humor in her choice of words and her prim tone of voice and joined in the mirth. Acceptable or unacceptable did not begin to define what they had just shared. And if she had truly cared a fig for what was “acceptable,” she would never have crept out of Sussex House to be with Ned in the first place.

What was done, was done. Her maidenhead was gone. That being so, Nan reasoned, why should she not enjoy herself while she could? Scooting closer to Ned, she rained kisses down his chest. He responded with enthusiasm.

They had two days before he had to leave to meet John Husee. They made the best of them, spending both afternoons in his bed. What Cousin Mary thought of Nan’s sudden spate of headaches, Nan neither knew nor cared. She did not trouble herself overmuch with worrying
about it. She had discovered the delights of coupling with her lover and was far too eager to be with Ned to concern herself with the consequences if she were found out.

The only thing Nan dreaded was the moment when they must say farewell. Inevitably, it arrived. They made love for what would have to be the last time. Then Ned, his face wearing the most serious expression she had ever seen there, took her hands in his and drew her up so that they were kneeling face-to-face upon the bed. Hangings closed them in, away from the rest of the world, but they could still hear the faint sounds of London beyond. A death knell began to toll the years of a deceased parishioner’s life.

“We can go through a private form of marriage here and now, Nan, if you are willing. None will ever be able to part us if we do.”

What Ned was suggesting made Nan’s limbs go stiff with shock. “We cannot marry!” she blurted out.

“Formal trothplight is the only answer. It is not a ceremony in church or the presence of witnesses that makes a marriage binding. We have only to pledge ourselves
per verba de praesenti,
as they call it, and we will have made a legal precontract. That done, neither of us can ever marry anyone else.” He grinned. “We have already taken care of the consummation that seals the bargain.”

“We cannot!” Her voice rose in panic.

“Why not? I love you, Nan. And you love me.”

“What has love to do with marriage? My dowry is but one hundred marks and you have no prospects at all.”

A spasm of displeasure momentarily turned his handsome features ugly. “What if you are with child?”

Nan jerked her hands free of his and scrambled off the bed. “Was that your plan? To force a marriage? Well, it will not work.” Surely it was not that easy to conceive. Her mother and Lord Lisle had tried without success for years. Nor had the king been notably successful at getting his wives with child.

More slowly, Ned followed her from the bed. They dressed in silence,
his brooding, hers a mixture of anger and trepidation. In spite of living with two pregnant women, her cousins Mary and Isabel, it had never crossed her mind that she might quicken with Ned’s child. Such an outcome was unlikely, she told herself firmly, and dismissed the possibility from her thoughts.

She was more concerned that Ned would betray her. If he told her stepfather that they’d been meeting in secret and that he’d taken her maidenhead … Lord Lisle
could
force them to wed. More likely, he’d turn Ned out for his effrontery. She did not think Ned would risk that. She hoped he would not.

“I love you, Nan,” Ned said as she was about to leave, “and I think you love me.”

“That may be, Ned. But marriage is a business arrangement. A contract negotiated by parents for their children. Love, if it happens at all in a marriage, comes after the wedding and bedding.” So she’d been taught her whole life.

“And what we’ve shared?”

“A mistake?”

She heard the regret in his voice and was sorry for it, but he should never have pressed for marriage. “Go on, then. Run back to the countess. Pretend none of this ever happened,” he said bitterly.

Nan walked rapidly through the gathering dusk, trying to outrun her troubled thoughts. She left Constance at the lych-gate, bidding John Browne a tearful farewell, and hurried through the house to the safety of her own bedchamber. She saw no one along the way and was certain her absence had gone unnoticed … until she caught a whiff of Cousin Mary’s rose-water scent.

Curled up on the window seat, her face shadowed in the twilight, the Countess of Sussex watched Nan close the door. Nan had the sense that her cousin had been waiting for her return for some time.

“Where have you been, Nan?”

“I went for a walk.” Perhaps there was still a chance to bluff her way out of trouble. Mary could not possibly guess where she had been or
what she had been doing. All she’d know for certain was that Nan had not spent the afternoon prostrate on her bed, laid low by a megrim.

“Alone?” Mary’s displeasure was a palpable force in the room.

“I took Constance with me. I was most desperate for relief and, indeed, the air and exercise seem to have done wonders for my aching head.”

“This is not the first time you have left the grounds with only your maid for company. Do not trouble to deny it. Yesterday one of the gardeners found the lych-gate unlatched.”

“I did go out. Just for a few moments. That is how I came to realize that venturing beyond the gates does more to ease my pain than banewort leaves moistened with wine and laid to my temple, or bloodwort made into a plaster, or even infusions of cowslip juice.”

“It is not meet for you to venture into the city without a proper escort.” Cousin Mary’s voice dripped icicles.

Nan winced. In truth, her head
had
begun to throb. “It will not happen again. I promise.”

Mary patted the cushioned seat beside her, indicating that Nan should come and sit. She was far from mollified, but Nan thought her cousin might believe her. She was certain Mary
wanted
to. It did not reflect well on the Countess of Sussex if one of her household misbehaved.

“My Lord Sussex and I have worked hard on your behalf, trying to convince the king that he should guarantee you a place with the next queen, whoever she may be. It would be a great pity if you ruined your reputation before her arrival in England.”

Nan bowed her head. She
had
been foolish. If she was to return to court, she must engage in no more dalliances. Moreover, she must take care to appear both biddable and virtuous. No one, least of all Cousin Mary, must ever discover that she was no longer a virgin.

“I devoutly hope we will have a new queen soon,” Mary said as Nan took the place beside her on the window seat. “There is talk of a young woman at the court in Burgundy—Christina, daughter of the deposed king of Denmark. She is your age, Nan, but already a widow. A virgin
bride, or so they say, but by that marriage she became Duchess of Milan. As such, she would be a most suitable wife for the king of England.”

Mary rambled on, extolling Christina of Milan’s many reported virtues. Nan had only to nod and smile. She agreed with everything Mary said for the next hour, but for much of that time a part of her mind was elsewhere.

As soon as her cousin had gone, Nan sent for Constance. “I think she believed me,” Nan said when she’d repeated the first part of her conversation with Mary, “but just in case she asks you, you must confirm all I told her. We ventured no farther into London than a few yards from the garden gate.”

“You have naught to fear from me, mistress,” Constance vowed. “And I’ve no doubt Lady Sussex is so wroth with you only because she is great with child and uncomfortable with it. Mayhap you should ask your mother to send her more gifts.”

Cousin Mary had not developed a craving for quails, but she did love pretty trinkets. For once, Nan wished she
could
write a letter in English in her own hand. She resolved to have Master Husee set quill to paper for her as soon as he presented himself. She’d ask Mother to send whatever tokens she thought would keep the countess sweet.

“If everything goes well,” she said, as much to convince herself as to reassure Constance, “it will only be a matter of time before I am back at court where I belong.” Pageants. Dancing. Disguisings. Tournaments. A little sigh of anticipation escaped her as she contemplated all the pleasures of life at Hampton Court and Greenwich Palace and Windsor Castle.

And then she pictured King Henry in her mind’s eye. Tall. Muscular. Smiling. She could almost smell that wonderful scent he wore. And the thought of encountering His Majesty again in the flesh, of seeing admiration in those blue-gray eyes, produced a distinct flutter in Nan’s belly and set all her female parts to tingling.

L
ESS THAN TWO
weeks after Nan had resolved to turn over a new leaf, King Henry sent word that her place as a maid of honor to the next
queen was secure. Nan was elated. She saw this news as proof that the king remembered her fondly and that she had done the right thing by refusing Ned’s offer of marriage.

December passed quietly and, save for the servants, entirely in the company of women. Then, in early January, the Earl of Sussex rode into London from Whitehall Palace, in the City of Westminster, where the court was, to pay a visit to his wife. Eager for news of the king’s search for a bride, every gentlewoman in the household, Nan included, immediately surrounded him.

“We will not have a moment alone until you have satisfied their curiosity,” the countess warned her husband. “And I, too, am eager to hear of the doings of the court.”

“The king leaves for Greenwich Palace in two days’ time,” the earl said. “He will celebrate Twelfth Night there.”

Disguisings, Nan thought. And a Lord of Misrule to preside over the Yuletide festivities. She longed to be there.

“He is still in mourning for Queen Jane,” Jane Arundell objected. “How much celebration can there be?” Then she saw something in the earl’s expression that made her light gray eyes go wide. “Who?”

Nan watched the earl’s expression change as he glanced around the circle of eager faces. He seemed to be debating with himself, but in the end he relented. “No doubt you will hear of it soon enough. The election lies between Mistress Mary Shelton and Mistress Margaret Skipwith. I pray Jesu that the king will choose the one who will give him greatest comfort.”

“You cannot mean he intends to
marry
one of them!” Kate Stradling exclaimed.

“He is supposed to wed a foreign princess,” Nan added.

The earl shook his head. “It is a mistress His Grace is after from among the gentlewomen of his acquaintance, not a wife.”

“M
ARY
S
HELTON,
” J
ANE
Arundell mused when the earl and countess had retired. “Well, well.”

“Do you know her?” Nan sat with her legs curled under her on a cushion on the floor.

Isabel, whose pregnancy weighed heavily on her, had claimed the window seat that overlooked the garden, while Kate occupied a stool. Jane took the countess’s chair.

“I have never met the woman, but I know who she is. One of her sisters, Margaret, was at court when Anne Boleyn was queen. Madge, they called her. That one was no better than she should be.” Jane paused to glance over her shoulder at the door, making sure there was no one else listening. Then she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Madge Shelton warmed the king’s bed throughout one of Queen Anne’s pregnancies.”