Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,82
John said. “Lady Jane is for you and for no one else. Most fourth sons I know wouldn’t complain of getting a duke’s eldest daughter for a bride. I have overindulged you, I fear. There shall be no more comment from you about the subject.”
He turned and walked out of the room, leaving an open-mouthed Guildford. “Mother? Isn’t there anything you can do to make him change his mind?”
“Not this time.”
“I don’t understand. What is so important about this girl? She’s of royal blood, but she’s not the only girl in England who can say that. She’s not an heiress. She’s not beautiful. She’s clever, but there’s such a thing as being too clever. Why does my marrying her mean so much to Father?” He frowned. “Is there something that you’re not telling me?”
“Don’t be absurd. It is simply a good match, that you are too blinded by your prejudice against this girl to realize. You have been overindulged.”
Just as John had, I turned and left the room, leaving my son doubly puzzled.
***
Guildford’s betrothal to the lady Jane—a match to which the Duke of Suffolk had eagerly assented—seemed to inspire everyone in the court to begin matchmaking. Suffolk, not content with arranging the marriage of one daughter, promptly began negotiating for the marriages of the other two; in addition, he proposed his niece Margaret Audley as a wife for Hal. The Earl of Huntingdon suddenly decided that no one but our little Katheryn would do as a bride for his son, Henry, Lord Hastings. Even the Earl of Cumberland, having in time-honored fashion decided that Guildford might make a suitable husband for his daughter after he had been promised elsewhere, agreed to a match with the one remaining Dudley—John’s younger brother Andrew, whom I had considered destined for perpetual bachelorhood.
There was to be a triple wedding on May 25—Guildford and Jane, my Katheryn and Henry Hastings, Kate Grey and the Earl of Pembroke’s son, William Herbert. In preparation, the king showered presents on all of us—cloth of gold, cloth of silver, and jewels, most of which had come from the goods forfeited to the Crown by the Duke of Somerset. There seemed no end to the cloth the duke had acquired: produced for him by the finest workshops in Italy, it came in every imaginable shade of blue, green, tawny, yellow, and crimson, and in a variety of patterns, so no one at the wedding would be in the same garment. As my dressmaker transformed some green cloth into a gown that would flatter even me, I could only wonder at why Somerset had amassed so much uncut fabric. Had he been saving it for his own children’s weddings? For his daughter Jane’s longed-for marriage with the king? It did not seem a good omen, but the cloth was too lovely to let superstition stand in the way of wearing it. Instead, I gloried in the way it set off the fine tablet, bearing the face of a clock, which had also come to me from the Somersets’ goods.
Guildford and Katheryn were also being fitted for their wedding garments. Guildford would stomp into his fittings, allow himself to be draped with fabric, and stomp out again, but ten-year-old Katheryn had given herself entirely over to the bridal preparations. She kept a limning of her seventeen-year-old husband by her side constantly and tucked it under her pillow at night; I could only hope the live original matched her expectations. Just the day before, when I went to her chamber to check the progress of her lessons, I had found written on an entire page that should have contained an Italian translation, the following, in various sizes and scripts:
Katheryn Hastings
Katheryn, Lady Hastings
Katheryn, lady to Henry Hastings
At the bottom, my daughter, whose father-in-law the earl was still very much alive, had been unable to resist the temptation of trying out:
Katheryn, Countess of Huntingdon
“I wish I could dress like this every day,” Katheryn sighed now as she stared at the blue fabric billowing around her. “Is this what King Henry’s sisters wore to their weddings?”
“Something very like it, no doubt.”
“I will be afraid to eat in it,” Katheryn said happily. She hopped down from the dressmaker’s stool on which she had been standing and stared out the window. “Oh, I can hardly wait until my wedding day! I wonder if the lady Jane and the lady Katherine are finding the wait as long as I am finding it. It must be excruciating for them.”