The Queen's Mistake (7 page)

“So then it is true?”

The sound of his voice, uncharacteristically reedy and trembling, startled her. He was so close behind her that Catherine could feel his breath on the back of her neck. But she did not turn to face him.

“How can you go when you are my wife?”

“Surely you realize we are not really married, Francis. Our troth-plighting was a game only.”

“Not to me.”

She turned around slowly to see him standing there, entirely bereft. His eyes, which were normally so brightly blue and full of mischievous pleasure, were bloodshot and misted with tears. His hands hung limply at his sides, as if all the life had gone out of him. His desperation brought a sensation of revulsion from Catherine rather than compassion. It made her think too much of Henry Manox, who had pleaded tearfully when she had ended things with him.

“I haven’t any choice, Francis,” she said in a low voice. “It is the will of my uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. You have always known who I am, not just who my grandmother treated me as.”

“Ah, but
you
haven’t known it.” He shrugged his shoulders slightly. “And it was that part of you I foolishly allowed myself to love.”

“You should not have loved me. It was folly. They were games we played, all of us.”

“It would have been easier to cut out my own heart than not to fall in love with you. You have become a great beauty, Cat, full of promise. The Duke of Norfolk sees that as clearly as any of us. But he alone has the power to take full advantage of it.”

“They say I look too much like my cousin Anne Boleyn to find any real favor at court. Her memory still looms large with the king. I suspect my uncle plans to use me rather as a set of eyes and ears to spy for him in the queen’s household.”

“And to make a good match with someone of his choosing.”

“Yes, likely that.”

Catherine glanced back at Dereham. “I’m sorry I did not tell you myself. I just really did not know how. Forgive me?”

“One last embrace in the bargain?” he asked, his charming grin for the moment returned.

Catherine laughed blithely for the first time in days, and let him fold her into his arms. She would miss that—the challenge and the little victories of seducing a handsome, sensual young man like Francis. She could only guess at the complications of the royal court before her.

“My lady grandmother and the Duke of Norfolk both believe I am still an innocent, you know.”

Francis held her away with mock incredulity. “Do they truly?”

“Of course.”

“And yet sending a kinswoman into the very seat of all power without the armor to do battle and triumph seems unwise.” He lowered his gaze. “You are, after all, of an age, Cat, a babe in arms no longer.”

“You are saying the Duke of Norfolk knows what I, what we—”

“Your grandmother does, at the very least, I should think.”

“But she beat me for any sort of defiance or, worse, for any interest in men.”

“To maintain her hold, quite likely, not halt your education. Did you not ever wonder why the keys to your dormitory were so easy for me to obtain?”

Catherine felt faint. “You are saying she has raised me up like a trained whore?”

“Perhaps she allowed things for the greater good. You said it yourself: You are a Howard, and one to whom much is given and from whom much is expected.”

“And what do
you
expect of me, Francis? Is that not far more to the point?”

“What I expect is for you never to forget who your friends are, Cat.”

As Catherine gazed into his crystal blue eyes for the last time, she could not help thinking that there was far more to his words than what he said. Thank the Lord she would be getting away from her past, for good. A new life, no matter what surprises it held, seemed better to her in light of what would be here for her if she stayed.

Chapter Three

 

 

S
omething grand must be done before Catherine’s ar rival, and it must go with the precision of clockwork, Norfolk decided. There could be no error if this was to succeed as he intended. His son Henry was only one of two people whom he dared trust with his ambitious plan, the other man being Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. He was a man who despised the enemy Cromwell almost more than Norfolk did himself. They were a triumvirate in his plan to bring the true Catholic Church back to prominence, to unseat Thomas Cromwell as King Henry’s chief minister, and return the Howard family to ultimate favor with an increasingly volatile monarch.

The risks in it were nearly as great as the potential reward.

Norfolk sat in his apartments in the east wing of Whitehall Palace at his ornate writing table, with a crystal pot of ink and a box of sand before him. Wearing elegant gray velvet, with black slashings in his wide sleeves and a heavy silver chain across his chest, he was a formidable figure as he paused to consider the next sentence in the directive he was writing to his son, who was at their family home at Lambeth.

Until the moment was absolutely perfect, until he was satisfied that the groundwork was meticulously laid, they must bide their time. The marriage to the German Anne of Cleves was unraveling, as he had expected.

But could Catherine be clever enough to take advantage when the moment came?

The marriage between Henry and the princess of Cleves had been a disaster of epic proportions from the first moment the king had set eyes upon her. Seeing them together had been the single thing that had sent Norfolk to Horsham after the debacle of his other niece. Ah, no matter now. But Anne was four years ago, and his own standing at court had been renewed, if not quite yet his place in the king’s trust. Those foolish snakes the Seymour brothers had seen to that, slithering in and taking prominence of place with their weak little sister Jane before Anne’s blood had even dried on the block.

“Pardon me, but it is time, Your Grace.”

Norfolk turned with a start. He dropped his ink-dipped pen, spraying the parchment black. He had been so deep in thought he had not even heard the door open to admit a portly and balding servant.

“Already?” he asked the servant, disregarding the onyx pool before him.

“The music has begun, Your Grace, and His Majesty has danced a tourdion. I thought you should not wish to miss another.”

His dark marble eyes narrowed as he tossed sand on the wet ink before him. “Why did you not come for me sooner?”

“Your Grace did not answer the door, and when I called out to you some moments ago, you were most firm that I should go away.”

“Yet you are here now?”

The servant inclined his head. “This time His Majesty the king sent me for you, so I let myself in.”

Norfolk jumped to his feet and hurried, nearly at a run, down a staircase and across a covered bridge lined with oriel windows, then down the paneled corridor, shoe heels clicking across the intricate tile floor in the vast echoing silence. The lime-washed walls he passed were lined with massive tapestries and torchlight that flickered in the dim light of early evening as he neared the great hall and the sound of the music.

The banquet in honor of the new queen and her German emis saries had already begun when he arrived in a sweep of fur-lined black velvet. But there was an empty seat beside the king usually reserved for Cromwell. Since it was Cromwell who had orchestrated, then pushed for this already disastrous union, it came as no surprise that he was nowhere in sight.

Norfolk had been given a chance with Anne. Now he had a second chance.

Catherine must not disappoint him.

Her future and his own depended upon all she had learned at Horsham.

Catherine stood in the courtyard of Horsham, putting on her riding gloves and gazing into the dry-lipped, scowling expression of her grandmother, who had come out grudgingly to bid her farewell. A cool breeze blew across the gently rolling terrain as Catherine curtsied properly to the woman who had been more keeper than relation.

“Remember,” the dour old woman finally said, “you’re going to court with nothing beyond your passable looks and your Howard name. If you are very, very fortunate, you may become a maid of
honor, but your personal state of poverty keeps you no better than the girls with whom you shared that dormitory, unless you do something bold about it. Never forget that.”

Catherine had an overwhelming urge to make a face just then, or to say something spiteful in response. She had been aching to do that for years, and yet she had always been forced into compliance.

“I understand, my lady grandmother.”

Agnes arched a silver brow. “Do you? Are you certain?”

It would be impossible not to understand your contempt of me,
she thought. “I do,” she said instead.

“Do you also understand, somewhere in that empty head of yours, how that lark to seduce not one but two of my servants could put you in jeopardy of never making any sort of important match at court?”

“How would anyone discover such a thing, and why would anyone care about the indiscretions of a country girl from Sussex?”

The retort came tumbling out like marbles rolling across her tongue before she even knew what was happening. She stood stone still, but refused to drop her gaze from the dowager duchess’s cold stare. But this time Agnes would not dare to hit her, not when her soft skin and smooth face were the only chance in the world to regain the Howard standing. Catherine knew it and belligerently took full advantage. The silence stretched on. Catherine still did not break her gaze.

“So you do have something of your cousin Anne in you, after all.”

“Thank you, Grandmother.”

“Pray only hope it is not the part that landed her on Tower Green, separated from her head.”

Catherine felt a shiver deep in her chest, but she would not show it. “Everyone wishes me well, as I do them. They will speak against me to no one.”

“A spurned heart is a dangerous thing.”

She was not certain whether her grandmother meant Henry Manox or Francis Dereham.

“They shall marry one day and forget the past, just as I plan to do.”

“And for your sake, and for the family’s, I shall pray for that, since the alternative could be ghastly.”

Suddenly, before she could say anything more, the old woman drew something from a pocket in her blue slashed bell sleeve. A ruby suspended from a silver chain glittered in the sunlight through the clouds as she held it out to Catherine.

“My husband, the duke, gave this to your mother on her wedding day. He thought it might bring her luck. It quite obviously brought her no benefit. So, since I have no use for it . . .”

Her words fell away as she awkwardly offered the chain to Catherine. She reached out her hand and took the precious piece of the past her grandmother offered. She had so few things by which to remember her mother. There was no painted likeness, no letter. Only one linen-and-lace chemise had been left to her, one Catherine greedily guarded. Now there was this personal offering from a woman with whom she had felt no personal connection at all before now. As they stood near the entrance to the manor, a breeze whistled softly through the bough of evergreen trees above them.

“Did she wear it?” Catherine’s voice was shallow, and she could barely force herself to speak.

“Out of duty to him, whenever she visited my husband, yes, Jocasta wore it prominently.”

So at least it had touched her skin. It had been a part of her, Catherine thought. Now it offered a connection to the only time in her life when she had been the recipient of real affection.

Catherine placed the necklace at her own throat and clasped
it behind her neck without breaking her grandmother’s gaze. She vowed she would always wear it to remind herself of what she had lost upon her mother’s death, when she was forced to this sheltered, verdant countryside. There had been no love or affection for her here, but she would try to find that again at court . . . if some courtier, suitable to her uncle’s purposes, might actually come to love her. She had been training herself for a long time to find just that.