Tarnish (38 page)

I risk a glance at him. He smiles patronizingly.

“You think his mother and sister will simply hand over the country to you.” I can’t avoid saying the words.

The king stops and holds my gaze.

“They are women.”

I will him not to look away, terrified that I have his attention, that I stand so close to him and cannot touch him. Even more terrified that I am about to argue with him again.

“Women can be formidable when aroused.”

A wall of shock crashes down between us, and I take a step back.

“Opposed,” I correct myself. “Women can be formidable when opposed.”

The king bites his bottom lip and I remember the touch of it on my own. The horror of my verbal flux washes me afresh.

“They can.” The king closes the gap I created with my retreat. I am stunned into paralysis by his gaze, like a deer ready for slaughter.

“It appears that you and Mistress Parker had a disagreement.”

“You saw that? You heard?” Oh, God. What if he believes it?

“Saw from a distance. Heard nothing.”

Relief floods through me.

“You and Mistress Parker have always appeared to be cordial. What was the cause of your disagreement?”

“It wasn’t so much of a disagreement.” I falter. “She is upset because the plans for her to marry my brother may not come to fruition.”

“She loves him?”

I nod, unable to say so in words.

“And you want her to be happy.”

“She’s my friend.” Was.

“I shall speak with Lord Morley,” he says abruptly.

“Oh, no!”

I immediately throw my hand over my mouth. I should die. Now. Instantaneously.

He narrows his eyes for a fraction of a moment, then bursts into a full, rolling laugh. I hear a couple of the attendants chuckling sycophantically behind us. They can’t help themselves.

I smile weakly.

“Don’t do anything on my account, Your Majesty,” I say, and sink into a curtsy. I don’t want Jane to marry George. I don’t want it to be my fault.

“No, Mistress Anna.” He offers a hand to lift me up, the vibration buzzing through my fingers, igniting every nerve. “I do it for young Jane. Leave it with me, and I will ensure it comes to fruition. Jane is a sweet girl and deserves to be happy.”

“Yes. She does.”

I can’t tell the king that George may never make Jane happy. I may never speak again, made mute by wanting what I can’t have.

“As do you, Mistress Anna.”

I stare at his hand, afraid to look in his face. The rings on his fingers have made ridges on his palm. His nails are slightly ragged, as if he chews them. The imperfections only serve to make me want him more.

“You deserve to be happy. The most happy.”

I hold my breath and look up. His face is shy. Boyish. As if all the confidence has fled him.

As all of mine has fled me.

The man I fell in love with at the age of thirteen is holding my hand. A man nearly twice my age. But still so handsome it hurts the eyes. And he is looking at me. Really looking. I feel the hum begin to fill me.

He is my sister’s lover.

He is married.

And I’m in love with someone else.

The thought hits me like a storm at sea crashing, thundering, blow upon blow. It rocks me over then buoys me up only to plummet me into the next trough. I shake my head to clear it.

“You think you don’t deserve happiness?” he asks, mistaking my action. “What would make you happy?”

He looks at me earnestly. As if I can answer that question easily. I would be happy if Thomas wasn’t married. If he had never taken that bet. I would be happy if I had never left France. If I weren’t tangled in a sticky mess of choices and innuendos and the desires of other people. If I were holding someone else’s hand.

“Love.”

The word answers for me.

The king smiles. Gorgeously. Dazzlingly. It singes me.

“Perhaps that can be arranged.”

As he takes his hands from mine, he slips the ring from my finger, the plain gold band with the single pearl.

“I should like to keep this,” he says, and kisses it before sliding it onto his smallest finger. The only one that was bare.

55

T
HE FIRST RULE OF THE HUNT IS NEVER TO LOOK BACK AT THE
hunter.

When I leave the king, my feet take me through the gardens. I don’t check behind me to see if he’s watching. I pass through the gate, looking ahead into the orchard.

I see a figure dressed in green, conjured from my thoughts and wishes. Vivid. Solid. More. I cannot stop myself from going to him.

“Looking for me?” He cocks his head and grins at me, but his body is still. Stiff. There is tension behind his words.

“No.”
Yes
.

“For him.” His jaw tightens, and I see the hope diminish.

“What? No!”

“Don’t lie to me, Anne,” Thomas says, his voice laced with sadness. “I saw you. How you looked at him. How you reacted to him. I know you as well as I know myself. Remember?”

I remember. And say nothing.

“You want the court to fall at your feet.”

“I did,” I admit.
I do.

“You want the king, Anne?” His voice cracks. “Is that why you agreed to go along with all of it?”

I did want the king. From the first moment I saw him—gilded and brilliant on the Field of Cloth of Gold. I wanted him more after that foolish, teasing kiss in my sister’s room. The one that meant nothing to him and yet everything to me.

Now I don’t know what I want.

“Don’t be stupid,” I croak. “It’s ridiculous.”
Isn’t it?
“A childish fancy. A fairy tale. The influence of too many chivalric ballads.”

“The ones that always end badly.”

I shiver.

“You should know, Thomas Wyatt. None of your love poems end well.”

“I deserve that.”

“You do. And more.”

“I certainly don’t deserve you.”

“But you can’t have me. Not as a wife. Not as a mistress. Don’t you see? This is a chance for me to be heard.”

“You want to be heard,” he pursues. “But do you know what you want to say?”

“Does it matter as long as someone’s listening? I want to say what I think and be taken seriously. I don’t want to be nothing. If I have the king’s ear,” I say, my words slowing upon themselves, “I can be anything.”

“It’s not his ear he follows you with.”

Thomas’s voice is low and dangerous. I think of what that implies, and I shiver again.

“I don’t want to be the next Mary.” I speak without thinking. What I should have said was,
I wouldn’t do that to Mary.

The angles and contours of his face blur beneath the scudding shadows of an early spring sky. His cheekbones stand out against the stubble of his beard, and his eyebrows curve gently above it all like the sharp lines of bare trees.

“Then be with me. Not as a wife . . .” Thomas clears his throat. “Nor as a mistress. Not even as a friend.” He smiles warily. “But as the girl I love.”

The words stifle him and he doesn’t say any more, but his eyes keep asking.

I have no answer.

He reaches out a tentative hand, the fingers a little too knobby, the knuckled bones standing out, the tips blunt, stained with ink. He hesitates, but I don’t move away.

His hand catches the side of my face and I lean into it, breathing in the scents of ink and paper, of almonds, of warmth. I close my eyes. There are no words for what I’m feeling. Or perhaps there are too many.

I feel the skim of his breath on my face, the brush of it against my lips.

And he kisses me.

So softly at first, I’m not quite sure he’s touching me. The fog of breath. The scent of almonds. The faint roughness of his beard, the flicker of skin on skin.

I lean forward, pressing my lips to his, and it breaks me open. His hand leaves my face and traces notes up my arms, strikes chords on my throat and up into my hair. His mouth forms lyrics that expose my soul.

This kiss is like a song played only once. And forever.

And then I remember that Thomas Wyatt has had lots of practice. He knows what he’s doing when he kisses a girl. When he touches her.

No wonder it feels so good.

“I can’t.”

I pull away. My mind is filled with reasons. I open my eyes and look into his. I have the queerest feeling that he’s been watching me the entire time.

“Can’t what? Kiss me? I think you just did. And rather well, I might add.”

A ghost of fear hides behind his eyes. He can’t cover it with a joke or bravado, or a single-dimpled smile.

That ghost shadows all my defenses. Because he has lowered his.

“I will never make you do anything you don’t want to, Anne,” he says.

I think of Percy, how I could want something and not want it all at once. Want it for the wrong reasons. How do I know what are the right reasons?

“I want you to kiss me again,” I say without thinking. Always without thinking. Perhaps it’s only when I don’t think that I say what I really mean.

He traces my hairline with his fingers, following my jaw until he holds my face in his hands, and kisses me again, as if drinking me in. But this kiss is different from the first. It has no melody, just percussion.

I listen to his breath, to his heart. I listen to the words he doesn’t say. The three words he said before.

And I believe him.

56

S
PRING COMES IN ON A COLD NORTH WIND, FLUTTERING THE
sprouts of new leaves while the heads of daffodils plunge beneath it. Narcissus bowing before his own reflection.

Thomas is kept even busier. I see him less, now that I want to see him more. And the king . . . keeps watching.

I finally work up the courage to visit my sister. To apologize, no matter what Thomas told me. To tell her . . . what? That nothing happened? Nothing has. But I know that doesn’t mean it never will.

I make my way past the courtiers preening in the new sunlight, their feathers and silks bannering in the wind. Pick my way through the crowded lodgings to her door. Take a deep breath. Square my shoulders, as Father taught. And enter.

“Nan!”

Mary doesn’t sound angry. If anything, she sounds delighted. She jumps up and holds me at arm’s length.

“Nan, are you all right?”

Mary loops her arm through mine and leans close. I can smell her hair—the lavender she uses to rinse it. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, and the skin of her hand is so smooth.

“Do you love him?” I blurt.

She doesn’t have to ask who.

“Yes and no. I love Catherine more than anything. More than I ever imagined was possible. So I love whoever gave her to me.”

Mary doesn’t know who Catherine’s father is. It might not be the king. And perhaps, just perhaps, the king’s waning interest will not break Mary’s heart. I succor myself with that thought, but it’s like trying to fill an empty stomach with cherry comfits.

“You look pale, Nan. Like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine.”

She pulls me through the door and sits me down by the fire. She moves so smoothly. She is so serene.

“Will you play?” she asks. My lute—Thomas’s lute—is in the corner.

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re not my Nan.” Mary smiles gently. “Give up an opportunity to play? What have you done with my sister?”

She no longer knows me. She knows nothing of what is happening at court. My sister inhabits her own world, and no one can puncture the bubble of it and intrude.

“I’m
nobody’s
Nan,” I say, and pinch my lip between my teeth to prevent the tears that threaten. “I belong to no one, Mary.”

“You will marry soon enough,” she soothes, still not understanding. “The Butler marriage would never have made you happy. Shall I ask Father to find someone for you?” She pauses. “Or perhaps the king?”