Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,79

we haven’t tried them all! And it’s not as if my face is one mass of freckles anyway.” Jane held up a mirror and frowned into it. One flaw Mary had not mentioned was that she was slightly shortsighted. “Only a few scattered around my nose. They aren’t large.”

“I can’t believe she’s giving anyone lectures on her appearance,” Kate said. “She’s no beauty herself. If she weren’t the king’s sister, people would call her downright plain.”

“Kate!”

“Well, it’s true, Mother.” Kate, the reigning beauty of my three girls, shrugged.

Jane continued in Mary’s gruff voice, “‘Some men may not like a woman who is too learned, little cousin.’ As if Father would marry me to some cowherd! Any man I would wish to marry would be pleased to have a learned woman as a wife,” said Jane. She traced the finger on which she would have worn a wedding ring. “Mother, are there plans to marry me?”

“It is as I told the lady Mary, there are none at present. But you are almost sixteen. That was the age when I married your father. There will most certainly be men seeking your hand for their sons.”

“But what of my studies?”

“There is no need to stop your studies when you are married. Queen Catherine did not, and you yourself have corresponded with William Cecil’s wife, haven’t you? But they must take second place to your duties as a wife—and eventually as a mother.” Jane looked so stricken, I patted her on her shoulder. “You will adapt, as all of us must do.”

25

Jane Dudley

April 1553 to May 1553

Despite being urged by the king and by the council, the Earl of Cumberland had not accepted Guildford as a match for his daughter, to my irritation and to Guildford’s relief. “I would have caught my death of cold up north, Mother. You should be glad.”

“Oh, Guildford, for heaven’s sake, it’s not that bad up there.”

“I believe he was speaking of the girl,” Robert said, and my sons guffawed.

I could not quite see the humor. Why wasn’t Guildford good enough for Margaret Clifford? He was our fourth son, to be sure, and Margaret was the earl’s only child, but she was not necessarily a great heiress, for Cumberland was young enough to still father sons if he chose to remarry. Worse, there had even been rumors, spread by a former servant of the Duchess of Somerset, that my husband had been plotting to gain the throne through the marriage—even though Margaret Clifford was behind Mary, Elizabeth, and the three Grey girls in the line of succession.

Silly and stupid as the rumors were, they had begun to revive this spring, for the king was not well. The cough that had troubled him on Twelfth Night had never disappeared entirely, and for a few days in February, he had been bedridden with a fever. Though he had recovered well enough to visit with his sister Mary, he had spent much of March confined to his chambers. Yet by early April, he seemed well on the mend, and I trusted the nonsensical rumors would soon die the death they deserved.

Meanwhile, my son Ambrose, after months of mourning his pretty Nan, had begun to take a healthy interest in women again, and in that same April, we held a dinner to celebrate his betrothal to Elizabeth Tailboys, an heiress a few years his senior. “I had rather hoped to be celebrating Guildford’s betrothal by now,” I confided to Elizabeth Parr, Marchioness of Northampton, as we stood watching the young people dance. “But it seems that the Earl of Cumberland is adamant against him.”

Elizabeth, whose husband was the brother of Queen Catherine, glanced at Guildford, capering with one of William Cecil’s daughters. “The girl’s loss, I daresay. He’s a fine-looking lad.” She looked around at the dancers. “I am surprised you never considered the Grey girl for him. Especially now that both your husband and her father are dukes.”

I looked in the direction of the girl in question, Harry Grey’s daughter Jane. I had seen a great deal of her in February when the lady Mary came to court, as the lady Jane was nearly sixteen and of an age to be seen at such affairs. She was fully marriageable, and looked pretty and healthy, but I had somehow never thought of her as a potential match for Guildford or for my youngest son, Hal. “Wasn’t she intended for the Earl of Hertford?”

“So it was said, back when he had prospects.” The marchioness