The Queen's Rival (22 page)

“Certainly.” She nodded compliantly.
Te quiero con toda mi alma
, she was thinking. And Katherine of Aragon did love her husband with her whole soul, for all the good it would do her if she could not produce a living heir, she thought, as he turned and walked away.

Very late that evening, after a banquet and more dancing, Gil, Elizabeth, and Nicholas Carew accompanied Bess to her own little room above the queen’s apartments. They were laughing and joking, their moods light. It was so good to have her back, Bess thought. Elizabeth even seemed a bit softened now to her marriage with Nicholas Carew, defined by little flirtatious exchanges and quiet laughs between them, where once there was frosty compliance. And Bess was glad of it, since she did not want to think of her dear friend so unhappily married as both of them had thought she would be.

Jane was conspicuously absent from their group that evening, having mysteriously disappeared not long after the king retired for the evening, which set the gossips abuzz. It seemed impossible for Bess to believe any of it because Jane had wept so uncontrollably after de Longueville had returned to France; she was certain they had been in love.

“Love has very little to do with the king’s fancy,” quipped Nicholas as he flopped down happily, and a little drunkenly, onto Jane’s bed, which sat beside Bess’s bed in the same little room. It gave in to his masculine weight with a low creak. “His fancy lands upon many,” he said with a chuckle. “He is a bit of a scoundrel, our king, not always the fairest person when it comes to ladies.”

“Yet why should he be? He is young, brilliant, impossibly handsome, rich—and can have anything, and
anyone
he pleases,” Elizabeth remarked.

“He
is
to be envied for that,” her husband returned.

“Does the king still fancy Jane, then, do you think?” Gil asked.

The question came as a complete surprise to Bess. Everyone glanced at one another in awkward silence. Gil and Elizabeth exchanged a particularly knowing look.

“Well, when the queen is with child, as she so often is, it is well-known that our good sovereign must find entertainment elsewhere. It does not make him a bad husband,” Nicholas added philosophically. “Only a predictable one.”

“How fortunate for you, Lady Carew,” Gil quipped.

Elizabeth playfully batted his arm in response.

“My experience with husbands had well better be different than the queen’s,” Elizabeth said, biting back a smile. “Is that not true, Master Carew?”

“Indeed, wife, it is,” he replied with mock gravity.

“Still. . . Jane and the king?” Bess remarked, trying to sound nonchalant. It was difficult to keep the disappointment from her voice. “I am still truly surprised. I thought it was an evening or two, just one of the court flirtations I heard so often about as a child.”

“Then you are the only one,” Nicholas replied.

“It
is
only a dalliance, Nicholas,” Elizabeth said, quick to counter. “Not a love affair, certainly. Jane is ambitious, and he is bored.”

“And what were you?” her husband asked sharply.

The sudden silence was palpable. “Naive. Nothing more.”

Bess was stunned at Elizabeth’s words. Though she had seen the way the king had periodically favored Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s connection to the king’s Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Bess had never been entirely sure of the nature of their relationship. She wanted to take Henry at his word when he said he never took actual mistresses. Bess wanted to believe he simply indulged in harmless flirtations—or at the worst, momentary dalliances. But it was difficult to ignore the conversation heatedly swirling now around her.

What shocked her even more was that Gil did not betray the slightest hint of surprise, and she wondered if he had been privy to confidences she had not been. The thought stung.

“It is time to retire,” Elizabeth announced in a clipped tone. “Are you coming?”

Nicholas stood more slowly but did not look directly at his young, beautiful wife. “Of course, my dear. As always, whatever is convenient for you.”

“Do I even want to know what that was about?” Bess asked Gil once the Carews had gone.

“Court games, as you supposed. Nothing of gravity.”

Bess walked the short distance to Jane’s bed, reached beneath it, and withdrew a small red leather pouch of gold coins. The pouch bore the letter H sewn in silver thread. This was in addition to the exorbitant two hundred pounds per year Bess knew Jane already received as a member of the queen’s household staff.

“I believed him when he said he did not take mistresses. Am I truly such a foolish girl that even after all this time here, I understand little of what goes on around me?”

Gil pulled her gently down onto the edge of the bed beside him and drew up her hand. It was nothing like the king’s firm, sensual grip, but there was warm reassurance there, and she needed that at the moment.

“A trusting girl, Bess, but no, not a foolish one.”

“Too trusting. Jane is nineteen now, and she knew all along I looked at the king through the eyes of a little girl. Yet she never said a word in warning.”

“What could she have said to you, Bess, truly? Theirs is a unique relationship, based on boredom and convenience. Not love. If the king told you that himself, I supposed you should believe him.”

A moment later, she wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling every bit the girl she still was. Forgetting completely the odd exchange between the newly married Carews, she leaned against him for the reassurance she so craved.

“What would I do without you?” Bess asked as she saw a strained little smile finally lift the corners of his mouth.

“I hope you shall never discover the answer to that.”

Bess sat back for a moment and dropped the pouch of coins onto the bed. “Speaking of gifts, did you not say you had something for me?”

His smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. “It was not important,” he replied dismissively. “Besides, it shall keep.”

Bess tipped her head to the side, studying him for a moment. “You’ll not tell me what it is?”

“Perhaps one day I shall,” he replied, finally letting go of her hand. The expression on his face was intense. It was one she had never seen before. “I shall know if the time is right.”

“You are being so mysterious,” she said with a chuckle as he suddenly stood to leave.

“Not so much mysterious, Mistress Blount, as realistic. I think you shall have to grow up for me just a bit more first.”

“Difficult to avoid, it seems.” Bess smiled.

“Many things will be. Much more than you know,” Gil returned.

Bess did not say anything after that as he left. Tonight she had realized he was probably right. There was obviously a great deal for her to learn, even after a year here, and to do that, she must grow up. From now on, thoughts of the king were to be avoided, in all but the most pure and respectful of ways, Bess decided firmly.

It was frigid all across England for the Twelfth Night celebration, and the ground at Greenwich was thick with an icy winter frost. The landscape, as Elizabeth Carew gazed out the window, was bleak. The tree branches in the courtyard below were twisted and bare, and only the flock of crows flying past lent any color to the landscape.

Gil Tailbois silently watched her, waiting for her to speak.

“So, what precisely did you tell her while I was away?” Elizabeth finally asked him. Her back was to her friend, hands framing the cold glass panes, and an icy draft worked its way through the stone.

Gil thought about how much she had changed since he had first met her, and even more in the months since becoming a wife. Her hair was still that lush red-gold, and her eyes were still blue, but the soft, girlish shape of her face had begun to show more definition. There was now a purposeful set to her mouth, and her body was defined by curves.

“Do you mean Bess?” he asked.

“Of course. What does she know?”

“If you are asking me whether she knows about your brief interlude with the king, the answer is she knows it not from me, if at all.”

She turned around then and leaned against the windowsill as the sky steadily darkened and a light snow began to fall past the leaded panes of glass. “Many thanks,” she said.

“Would it really matter so much though if she did?”

There was a little silence as Gil noticed her elegant new gown that matched his own green velvet doublet, both with full brocaded sleeves and bright, multicolored beads designed for tonight’s masque.

“Bess is the only one at court who does not look at me with pity because the king married me off to be rid of me.”

Gil went to her at the window and pulled her into his embrace, and they stood like that silently for a while—friends who trusted each other. He was tall and still so youthfully thin that for a moment the embrace felt awkward, but they had shared so many adventures and milestones that there was a reassuring familiarity there for both of them.

“I just feel such a fool for ever having cared for him.”

“He is rather a difficult force to avoid.”

“Still, I should have known.”

“You were too young to have known, and he favors variety.”

Elizabeth came away from the window and from his embrace. She sank down at the little rosewood-framed looking glass set at her dressing table. Pretty enough to catch a king, he thought, just not interesting enough to keep him.

“Have they bedded yet?” she asked Gil through his reflection in the mirror.

“She would have told me if they had.”

“She still does not know you are in love with her then?”

“No, since I would be a rather pitiful replacement for a handsome young sovereign. She continues to have those youthful fantasies guiding her.”

“As did I.”

He settled a hand on her shoulder and paused for a moment as the door opened behind them. It was Nicholas Carew dressed in the same style of green velvet costume as Gil and Elizabeth, since he would be partnered with his wife for the evening’s festivities. Gil felt her tense at her new husband’s presence.

“But I did get her a Christmas gift,” Gil said as he proudly drew a small red leather volume from a pocket in the folds of his heavy doublet.

Elizabeth took it from him. It was a copy of
Lancelot
. “Bess loves that tale.”

“I know,” Gil replied with a small, reserved smile. “Do you think it will please her?”

“How could it not?” Nicholas replied for his wife as he clapped Gil soundly on the back, man to man. “Are you waiting for just the right time to give it to her or something? ’Tis not much left now that it’s the Twelfth Night.” Carew winked.

Gil looked away. “I tried to give her something else once and the timing was all wrong. I have not been able to rally the courage since.”

Elizabeth stood and her husband wrapped an arm around her waist, but she drew away from him and turned around. Gil noted that movement as well. It was a pity really, he thought. “We shall help if we can,” she promised encouragingly. “But you really do not want us to give her a hint? Something that might help your cause?”

“It would not be best for either of us if it were to happen like that,” Gil said as stoically as he could manage, “and perhaps it would be best as well if she grew up just a bit more first. I told her so myself.”

They all walked together down the long, torch-lit corridor, across an intricate tile floor, and down a twisted stone staircase that echoed their steps. At the bottom, they met other courtiers, dressed as they were, in green velvet, who also had been invited to participate in the king’s evening.

When they arrived in the banquet hall, Gil saw her almost at once. She was holding her mask, not wearing it, and smiling at something the man beside her had said. She looked so beautiful, he thought, and he was eager to give her the book—until he saw that the man was Charles Brandon, recently returned from France. Brandon, he thought, with a little grunt of competitive disgust. The man was an insufferable rake, far worse than even the king. Gil rolled his eyes. What women saw in him, he could not fathom. Yes, Brandon was tall and muscular with a square jaw, thick copper hair, and deep brown eyes full of feigned sincerity, but should there not be something more? He laughed at himself, self-deprecatingly, for even having the envious thought.