Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,38
my shame, but I was the Marchioness of Dorset, after all, the highest-ranking lady present, and I had to act up to my station. So I struggled into my riding dress—even the feather that adorned my cap drooped as if hung over—and rode out to the hunt with the rest of the household, Master Stokes by my side. How many times had I told him the previous night he was handsome? At least, I consoled myself, I had not tried to seduce him. As we rode at the tail end of the hunting party, every step my horse took feeling like a hoof on my head, I said, “I believe I asked you several times last night not to tell my husband of my foolishness, Master Stokes, but I will ask you again nonetheless.”
“There is no need, my lady.” Master Stokes smiled. “Indeed, my lady, I must confess that after our encounter last night, I myself overindulged. I have very little recollection of what happened before and afterward.”
I looked into Master Stokes’s deep blue eyes, which bore no sign of recent dissipation at all, and shook my head. “You are a poor liar, Master Stokes, but I thank you.”
***
Our next stop on our journey to London was worlds away from George Medley’s house: Beaulieu in Essex, a home of the lady Mary also known as Newhall. “Will we have to go to Mass?” asked Jane as we rode side by side.
No inkling of my regrettable behavior at Tiltey seemed to have reached Jane, or anyone else besides Adrian Stokes and my ladies: the Lord was certainly entitled to some heavenly thanks for that, Mass or no Mass. “Yes, if she wishes us to attend with her. She is our hostess and is entitled to that courtesy.”
“Perhaps she won’t let us be present,” Jane said hopefully. “We are heretics in her eyes, after all.”
Mary was indeed at Mass when we arrived at Beaulieu, which gave my daughters and me time to freshen up after our journey and to admire a special feature of my own luxurious chamber: the bathing room. Even Jane looked awed as we stepped inside and played with the faucets: one for hot water, one for cold. “May we take a bath tomorrow, Mama?” Kate asked.
“Of course,” I promised. I turned to my youngest daughter, who appeared wary. “It’s quite safe,” I assured her. “Just like the tubs we use, only this one has its very special room.”
We could have enjoyed admiring the bathing room and the other luxuries of Beaulieu for a while longer, but shortly thereafter, Lady Anne Wharton, one of Mary’s waiting women, came to lead the four of us to her mistress in the great hall. We walked past the indoor tennis court, once enjoyed by Anne Boleyn’s brother George, and by the side chapel. Sitting on the altar in a splendid receptacle was something that had long been banished from our own altar and from nearly every other altar in England: the Host.
Lady Wharton genuflected in front of the Host and made the sign of the cross. I was about to follow suit, out of respect for the lady Mary, when Jane spoke up. “Why do you do that?” Exaggeratedly, she looked around. “Is the lady Mary out here?”
“I make my curtsey to Him who made us all,” Lady Wharton said coolly.
Jane widened her eyes in mock puzzlement. “Why, how can he be there that made us all, when the baker made him?”
“Jane!”
Kate tittered under her breath while Lady Wharton flushed with anger. “The lady Mary awaits you,” she said. “Come.”
I glared at my daughter, but there was no time to reprove her, for Mary, clad splendidly in a red gown that appeared almost gaudy, stood before us. She embraced my girls and me in turn. “So you are on your way to London,” she said. “The Tower menagerie has taken over the government there, you know.”
“I have heard but little of this business, actually. Harry has been much concerned with his own affairs.”
“Oh? Well, time will tell, but in my opinion, there is but one motive behind this action against the Protector. Envy and ambition, namely, that of the Earl of Warwick, the most unstable man in England. I have never liked him.” She put up her hand, and the ladies around us all stopped what they were doing to hear her speak. “Don’t ask me why. He has never been less than civil to me, and his countess is very pleasant.