Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (33 page)

I turned and left, not guessing that Ned’s words would return to haunt us both.

D
id I turn conjurer in the weeks that followed, or was Ned Seymour as eager to cross paths with me as I was with him? Often when I thought of Ned, he suddenly appeared, a slight flush on his high cheekbones, his eyes whispering deep magic, his instinctive arrogance worn softer by sorrows he had let no one see until that moment in the garden when we encountered each other.

I had forgotten what real happiness felt like, and recapturing it sweetened my world like the pieces of honeycomb Ned brought to me from Hanworth’s beekeep.

We found cozy places beneath the willow trees, Ned and I—wove daisy chains, played at cards or hoodman blind those times Jane accompanied us outside. The country air began to kiss roses back into her fever-wasted cheeks. Or was it something else that made my dearest friend so happy—the thought of the two people she loved best growing close to each other?

We were wandering in a meadow one day, and I had gathered up a lamb in my arms. As the fluffy white babe sucked on my chin, Ned’s grin filled his whole face.

“I have not seen Ned smile thus since he was ten years old,” Jane confided. “It is your doing, Kat.”

I blushed. “He deserves to be happy.” Yet there was one at Hanworth who was not pleased by the change in Ned. Hospitable though Anne Seymour was, she regarded me with a cool courtesy that would have troubled me more were it not for her son’s warmth.

As Ned and I spent lazy summer days leaning close in conversation, I felt that no one had ever understood my heart so well: the grief, the broken dreams that I tried to piece together so that the rest of my life would not stretch out bleakly.

I understood his moods in turn: the anger that sometimes hardened his mouth, the fierce desire to raise his family’s fortunes, and that haunted air of unease when he was remembering how uncertain court life could be. One could lose everything in one cast of the dice. Both our families had done so before.

It was not so strange, then, that Ned’s nerves grew tauter, and his gaze more brooding, save for flashes of defiance I sometimes noticed when he looked at me. I had not done anything to offend him—if anything, he sought me out more openly, providing diversions he knew would please me—marchpane shaped into knights and ladies, games of skittles in the sunshine, kittens just toddling out of their nests in the stable. He read to me, poetry and tales of King Arthur. He tempted me with the sweetest oranges, feeding them to me with his own fingers. One day when I had run ahead of Ned and Jane on a woodland path, I found Achilles caught in a poacher’s snare. I rushed to his aid, the animal’s teeth slashing my hand as I freed it. How shamed Achilles looked at his treatment of me when Ned wrapped the animal in his cloak and carried it to his master of hounds. I helped him fashion a splint and mixed a poultice that the keeper of our hounds had used to help with the healing. When Achilles was freed of the contrivance and bounded off to join the other dogs, Ned’s grin shone bright as my own.

It was as if some bond of understanding had spun between Ned and me. I was even so foolhardy as to write to Mary of this connection.
I cannot explain it, but I feel as if I have known Ned forever, yet all the world is new
.

My sister’s reply flew back with astonishing speed, its tone biting, as if she had spoken the words instead of scribing them with her awkward hand:
It is no surprise that Edward Seymour wants to know your secrets. Father broke off his betrothal to Jane, and Pembroke got Seymour’s father executed. If I were he, I would like very much to steal your love from Henry Herbert. Then I could cast you aside before the whole court and shame you both the way people shamed me
.

I felt so sickened by her missive, I might have stuffed it into the fire, except that Jane rested in a chair nearby and would have questioned me. I tucked the paper beneath the top edge of my stomacher and fled out to the garden to cool my temper and to sift through the emotions Mary had loosed.

Why did she have to ruin the one good thing that had happened to me during these four years? Why make me question the only person who seemed to understand how I felt? Most painful of all, what if Mary was right to warn me?

Could Ned mean me harm? The possibility wrenched at my heart. I remembered the barely veiled mockery I had suffered during the months I first came to serve Queen Mary. I had felt stripped to my shift before the people of court. The prospect of suffering so again—and at Ned’s hands—was more than I could bear.

I stumbled toward a rose bower where I loved to hide away. I had barely sat down upon the stone bench to gather my scattered wits when Ned Seymour strode into my retreat, a scowl creasing his noble brow.

I might have thought he followed me, except he appeared so surprised when he realized it was me. “Kat … I mean, Lady Katherine,” he amended, looking a trifle guilty, a good bit angry and discomfited to see me.

Why? I wondered. Had I caught him concocting some scheme of revenge?

“Ned,” I said, bowing so formally, he looked startled. I looked straight into his eyes as if to unravel truth from lie, to discern his true motives for his kindness to me.

“What are you doing here?” He hooked one finger in the collar of his pierced-leather doublet and gave it a tug. His face flushed. His eyes held a spark of anger that only sharpened when he looked at me. My fingers curled tight into my palms, as if to crush my uncertainty. The anger, resentment, the sense of embarrassment I felt emanating from him—were those his true feelings being revealed as Mary suspected?

“I ask you again,” Ned pressed me. “What are you doing here? You look as brain-rattled as I feel. What has upset you so?”

“Nothing.” My cheeks burned, and I touched the edge of parchment against my bosom. “I mean, it has little to do with you. It is a letter from my sister.”

“Little Mary? She is not ill?”

“No. She only vexes me.”

Ned’s shoulders sagged in some measure of relief. “Sadly, it is a family duty to torment one of its members from time to time. I feared that my lady mother might have spoken to you.”

“I have not encountered Her Grace yet today. Why should you fear it?”

“I would not have you caught amidst family unpleasantness. She and I have not seen eye to eye on a certain matter for some time, but we had rather danced around our differences in opinion. Today we cut to its core.”

“My own mother and I do not always agree. It is difficult to be at odds with her.”

“What is the matter of contention between you?”

I lifted one shoulder, a trifle embarrassed. “My lady mother is a most ambitious woman. She does not feel I have been forward enough in advancing my position at court.”

I did not dare be plain about the reason for the war we had waged over the past years—Mother had done all she could to tempt her cousin to make me her heir in place of Elizabeth. I was not doing enough to help—so my mother claimed. But what could I do, save make myself as pleasant to Her Majesty as possible and please her regarding matters in which Lady Elizabeth tried the queen’s patience?

The ladies of the bedchamber had often heard the queen say she wished I was her heir. She even spoke to her secretary William Cecil of making it so, but when it came to discussing it with her other ministers, she balked, insisting she would have a son to be heir. It seemed cruel to do as my mother wished and ask Cousin Mary what would happen to England should she be stricken with the sweat and die suddenly as so many had before her. Or to remind Her Majesty that should Elizabeth be crowned, England would lapse from the true faith, and Mary would be responsible for the lost souls of all her subjects. Was not that the same argument Northumberland had used to torture Cousin Edward in his final days?

“Katherine.” Ned’s voice reached through my musings. “You look so somber and grieved. Do not trouble yourself. This matter is between my mother and me. You must leave it so and promise you will not let it cloud your visit.”

“But if you fear my speaking to your mother, your argument must hold something that concerns me. Is she wearied of my company here at Hanworth?”

“No!” Ned exclaimed with such vehemence, I sensed it was a lie. As if he saw the disbelief in my face he flushed. “Well, perhaps …” He kicked a clump of grass. “Even if my mother might blame you, it is not your fault.”

What had I done to elicit such a reaction from the duchess? “I would not be a burden to your mother,” I said, tempted to order my maids to begin packing.

“I am the one she is displeased with.” Ned must have sensed my urge to flee. He caught my shoulder, knocking loose the letter from Mary. I grabbed for it, but Ned was swifter. I feared he had seen some of what Mary had written.

“You must not mind Mary,” I hastened to say. “She is ever suspicious, and—” I stopped, not knowing how much Ned had truly seen. Perhaps I was exposing my sister’s nasty accusations of him for no reason. But another part of me—the part that still ached for that ten-year-old boy who had failed to save his father—needed to know if what my sister said was true. The risk of angering him distressed me, but at least I would be able to find my answer in Ned’s face. “Why have you been so kind to me, Ned?”

“You are my sister’s friend. My family’s guest,” he began with a formality far from the natural communion that had graced so many of our conversations. His voice grew taut. “Is it some grave sin—my wanting to see you happy? My mother thinks so, and considering what you say about your sister, so does she.”

“Mary thinks you wish to wound the Earl of Pembroke and strike back at my father for sundering your betrothal to our sister Jane.”

Ned recoiled. “Your father is dead! Even if I did want revenge, I would hardly take it on you! As for Pembroke, he is not worth a moment of your concern.” Ned’s eyes narrowed. “Let the earl and his son take care of themselves.”

The scorn in Ned’s tone startled me, and I sensed layers of enmity lying deeper even than Pembroke’s betrayal of Somerset. Enmity directed at Henry, when I believed the two had once been friends. “So you
do
wish the Herberts harm?”

“I do not wish them good fortune, but their fate has nothing to do with you.”

“Some would say that it does. I was wife to Pembroke’s son. If you were to court me and win my regard, it would be a fitting revenge.”

“Do I have to have some dark, twisted motive for the way I feel about you? My own mother thinks I covet your affection because of your royal birth. She fears that I will lose my head for loving so near to the crown. When others learn of my attachment to you, they will think like your sister—that my goal is to humiliate Pembroke and the rest of the Herberts. Let them think the worst of me. I do not care. But you?” His voice broke, and I knew I had wounded him.

“Ned, I am sorry to distress you. I regard you most highly—”

“I love you, Kat.” The words seemed torn from him, something painful, something awed. “Do you really think I would hurt you to settle a score with your father?”

I felt as if the ground beneath me vanished, washed away by the emotions that tumbled through me. Joy and fear, shock and surprise, and the strange sense that I had been waiting my whole life to hear Edward Seymour speak those words to me.

Every part of me quivered with life. In that moment I was more certain than I had ever been of anything in my seventeen years. “I love you.” I waited for joy to light his face, for him to gather me into his arms. He only regarded me with an unflinching gaze.

“I did not ask if you loved me.” His voice stung me with its stubborn resolve. “Answer my question. Do you believe I would hurt you out of revenge?”

I could not bear the look in his eyes. “I do not
want
to believe it,” I said so softly Ned had to bend close to hear. I knew he had, because I felt some thread between us sever. Even if I managed to tie the pieces together, I knew the knot would always be there, reminding us of my failure, his wound. He stepped away. “Ned, I do not wish to hurt you, but my answer is not as simple as it seems. Let us speak more of this!”

“There is nothing to say.” His skin seemed to freeze with the iciness that his haughty mother was famous for. “If you believe I would hurt someone I love for such a vile purpose, then whatever love we feel for each other is hopeless. How could you ever trust me?”

I searched for words to wipe away the hard truth in his question. It was as if my little sister popped like some cursed troll inside my head, forming my words: “Can anyone really trust anyone?”

He pressed his knuckles to his chest and rubbed as if to shelter it from another heartbreak. “In that case I will travel to my sister Anne’s estate in Northumbria as soon as I am able. I spent time there after our father’s death.”

So Ned’s sister Jane had told me. I could imagine what that visit must have been like, considering who Anne’s husband was. I remember the gossip in Father’s great hall, how Somerset had attempted to ally himself with the wolfish Dudley faction by marrying his daughter to Ambrose, eldest of his enemy’s sons. When Dudley had turned the full fury of his power upon the Seymours, the marriage must have become abominable to Ned.

Being under the guardianship of someone linked to your loved one’s death was a special kind of torment. I had learned that serving Queen Mary. That Ned would go to an estate that held memories of such an anguished period in his life to escape me left me chastened.

Only revealing where my doubt had originated might stay him. “You wonder how I could believe you might use me in some scheme. My father loved me. He loved me better than either of my sisters. But if he had survived Queen Mary’s wrath, I know he would have made me a pawn to gain the throne in time—even though that ambition had cost Jane her life and might demand the forfeit of my own. If I know this to be true about my father—who should have tried to extend my years as long as possible—is it so difficult to understand why I might wonder about your motives?”

Ned cupped my chin in his hand, ran the pad of his thumb across my lip. “It is not difficult to understand, sweetheart. But it is impossible to mend. Farewell, my Kat.”