Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,26
the rest of the spectators.
The Duke and Duchess of Somerset had joined the throng and stood there hand in hand, watching their own daughter dance with the king. Then the duke walked over to his brother and took his hand with a smile that seemed genuine, if wary. “I am glad to see you here this Christmas, my brother. Is this a portent of a better year between us to come?”
“You say ‘I,’ Brother, not ‘we.’ Are you slipping?”
I could not help but smile at this, for John, too, had commented on the alacrity with which the Protector had taken to using the royal “we” in his letters. Somerset said in an injured tone, “I use ‘we’ in correspondence, as befits my position. I do not use it elsewhere.”
Thomas Seymour snorted. “Well, I have come here to see my nephew the king. I cannot see him in private. I must make do at public occasions like this one.”
“I have never prevented you from seeing the king,” Somerset said. “I have asked only that you see him when he is at leisure to receive visitors and that you refrain from giving him the presents of money that you have brought him in the past. He has plenty in hand.”
“Yes, and you have plenty of my late wife’s jewels in yours. Or on your wife’s person, I should say.”
Somerset’s hand went to his left hip, where he would have worn his sword had this not been a feast. With obvious difficulty in controlling his temper, he said, “We have been through this. The jewels became the Crown’s upon the king’s death, and even if there was the slightest bit of doubt, which there is not, they certainly became the Crown’s upon the death of the queen. Until the king marries, the Duchess of Somerset has every right to wear them. It is fitting, as my wife, that she do so. She graces them by placing them on her person.”
“Indeed,” said Seymour. “I see that your daughter is wearing some of them, too. Have your youngest children some tucked inside their cradles, as well?”
“I will not have you speak of my daught—”
The music stopped, and Somerset flushed as heads turned to see why he had raised his voice. The king released his partner with a bow that made her beam and run to her mother to recount her triumph. Young Anne Seymour had barely left the king when Thomas Seymour, the queen’s jewels forgotten, swiftly disengaged the lady Jane from my son and propelled her firmly in the king’s direction. “Your Majesty, might my young ward be allowed to demonstrate the tutelage of her dancing master?”
The king smiled down at Lady Jane. She was a small girl; the Protector’s gangly daughter, by contrast, was slightly taller than her royal partner. “Why, we shall be honored.”
With Seymour and Jane’s father, the Marquis of Dorset, beaming nearby, I watched as the king and the lady Jane danced together. I had expected such a studious young lady would have no interest in such frivolity, but I was quite wrong. Jane danced beautifully, though she seemed to be enjoying the music more than the dance itself. As for the king, his father had been a fine dancer in his youth, and Edward evidently took after him in this respect. I turned to the Somersets, who were talking together unintelligibly but obviously angrily. “They make a pretty pair, don’t they?”
“Lovely,” said the Protector. He put his hand on my husband’s shoulder. “Let us talk,” he said quietly.
***
By midnight, the king himself had begun nodding off in his chair, and the Protector gave the signal he be escorted to his bed. The rest of us, some more sober than others, straggled to our chambers.
John would have kissed me and rolled over to sleep, but I would not let him. “What on earth did the Protector have to discuss with you, on Christmas day? Why does the man look so miserable? Why is everyone acting so strangely?”
My husband gave half a smile. “Can I choose which question to answer, or must I answer all at once?”
“You can answer any one of them, because I suspect that they all have the same answer.”
“You would suspect right.” John lay on his back, staring up at the canopy. “The Admiral is becoming truly dangerous. It is not just that he wants to marry the king to that lady Jane Grey, which would be harmless enough, as the king can’t be forced to marry