Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,12
London from the North and was eager for a taste of court life. “I wanted to marry him years before. Everyone knows it; why should I lie about it?” The queen settled back on her stool and smiled reminiscently. “Tom came to me not long after the funeral on the Protector’s business, as he put it. I knew there was no such thing, and I did not care. Soon we had picked up where we had left off before King Henry married me.”
I was rather more grateful than otherwise that the queen’s confidence did not extend to telling me exactly what they had been doing with each other when they left off.
Catherine was continuing, in a more regal manner than previously. “I am telling you these things because I know your husband is friendly with the Protector. Tom and the Protector have been at odds since they were boys, and you know what I think of his wife. How I detested having that woman in my household! So we are neither suited to the task of gauging his feelings. But if your husband could not tell the Protector, but sound him, getting a sense of how he would receive my marriage, I would be most grateful.”
“I will speak to my husband.”
“Thank you, my dear. I know he is clever enough to manage the business. In the meantime, my husband plans to write to the lady Mary, asking her to urge me to the match.”
“She is no longer in the household here?”
“No, she left in April. I don’t believe she suspected anything; her chambers are far off.” The queen’s eyes positively twinkled. “And Tom came at night and left in the morning.”
I was only a few years older than the queen, yet I felt hopelessly old-fashioned. The intrigues and amours of King Henry’s court had passed me by; I’d lain with but one man in my life, even in my imagination, and I could not imagine lying with another, not to mention having someone sneaking to my house in the middle of the night. My distaste for the whole business must have shown, for the queen said, “We always did intend marriage, you know. And we are married now.”
“Of course,” I said brightly.
“In any case, he is coming for supper today, all quite in the open. Will you stay? He is bringing his new charge with him, the Marquis of Dorset’s eldest daughter, and she is quite an interesting little thing. Have you met her?”
“Only in passing.”
“Well, you and she ought to get on well together.”
“I would be happy to stay.”
“The lady Elizabeth will join us, too, of course. She never likes to miss a sighting of Tom.” Catherine shook her head. “Indeed, keeping her in the dark has been far harder than it was the lady Mary. The lady Elizabeth misses nothing.”
***
The Admiral, as Thomas Seymour was known because of the position he’d been given when the new king came to the throne, kissed the queen’s hand decorously as two pairs of young eyes observed him: those of the lady Elizabeth, the king’s thirteen-year-old sister, and of Lady Jane Grey, Dorset’s ten-year-old daughter. Elizabeth’s alert eyes were indeed focused upon the Admiral, while Jane, dressed expensively but very plainly for a girl of her high station, crinkled her brow in disapproval at the queen’s bright summer gown.
I turned my own attention upon Lady Jane. In the last century, it had been Jane’s great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, whose beauty had led Edward IV to make her, a knight’s widow and a mere commoner, his queen. This girl was descended from Elizabeth Woodville’s first marriage, to one John Grey, as well as from her royal marriage, and the family’s good looks had not been much diluted over the generations. Jane was a pretty child, with reddish-brown hair, much darker than that of her kinswoman the lady Elizabeth, and she was slender and pale skinned, like her mother, Frances, and her grandmother, the French queen. If she’d been my daughter, though—and I had two living—I would have put her in a gown of a more flattering color. If I’d not learned to play at the game of courtly love during my time at court, I had at least learned to dress well. But the Marquis of Dorset was a strong evangelical, more so than his wife, and evidently it was he who had influenced the manner of his daughter’s dress. “Are you enjoying staying with the Admiral, Lady Jane?” I asked when we were