Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (87 page)

‘Too much for her own peace of mind,' I said very softly.

He leaped up and took two strides away from me and then came back again. ‘She might desire me?'

I smiled and turned my head a little so that he could not see my weariness at this deceit. He was not to be put off. He dropped to his knees before me and peered up into my face.

‘Tell me, Mistress Carey,' he begged. ‘I have not slept for nights. I have not eaten for days. I am a soul in torment. Tell me if you think that she loves me, if you think that she might love me. Tell me, for pity's sake.'

‘I cannot say.' Indeed, I could not. The lies would have stuck in my throat. ‘You must ask her yourself.'

He sprang up, like a hare out of bracken with the beagle hounds behind it. ‘I will! I will! Where is she?'

‘Playing at bowls in the garden.'

He needed nothing more, he tore open the door and ran out of the room. I heard the heels of his boots ring down the stone stairs to the door to the garden. Jane Parker, who had been seated across the room from us, looked up.

‘Have you made another conquest?' she asked, getting the wrong idea as usual.

I gave her a smile as poisonous as her own. ‘Some women attract desire. Others do not,' I said simply.

He found her at the bowling green, losing daintily and deliberately to Sir Thomas Wyatt.

‘I shall write you a sonnet,' Wyatt promised. ‘For handing me victory with such grace.'

‘No, no, it was a fair battle,' Anne protested.

‘If there had been money on it I think I would be getting out my
purse,' he said. ‘You Boleyns only lose when there is nothing to gain by winning.'

Anne smiled. ‘Next time you shall put your fortune on it,' she promised him. ‘See – I have lulled you into a sense of safety.'

‘I have no fortune to offer but my heart.'

‘Will you walk with
me
?' Henry Percy interrupted, his voice coming out far louder than he intended.

Anne gave a little start as if she had not noticed him there. ‘Oh! Lord Henry.'

‘The lady is playing bowls,' Sir Thomas said.

Anne smiled at them both. ‘I have been so roundly defeated that I will take a walk and plan my strategy,' she said and put her hand on Lord Henry Percy's arm.

He led her away from the bowling green, down the winding path that led to a seat beneath a yew tree.

‘Miss Anne,' he began.

‘Is it too damp to sit?'

At once he swung his rich cloak from his shoulder and spread it out for her on a stone bench.

‘Miss Anne …'

‘No, I am too chilled,' she decided and rose up from the seat.

‘Miss Anne!' he exclaimed, a little more crossly.

Anne paused and turned her seductive smile on him.

‘Your lordship?'

‘I have to know why have you grown so cold to me?'

For a moment she hesitated, then she dropped the coquettish play and turned a face to him which was grave and lovely.

‘I did not mean to be cold,' she said slowly. ‘I meant to be careful.'

‘Of what?' he exclaimed. ‘I have been in torment!'

‘I did not mean to torment you. I meant to draw back a little. Nothing more than that.'

‘Why?' he whispered.

She looked down the garden to the river. ‘I thought it better for me, perhaps better for us both,' she said quietly. ‘We might become too close in friendship for my comfort.'

He took a swift step from her and then back to her side. ‘I would never cause you a moment's uneasiness,' he assured her. ‘If you wanted me to promise you that we would be friends and that no breath of scandal would ever come to you, I would have promised that.'

She turned her dark luminous eyes on him. ‘Could you promise that no-one would ever say that we were in love?'

Mutely, he shook his head. Of course he could not promise what a scandal-mad court might or might not say.

‘Could you promise that we would never fall in love?'

He hesitated. ‘Of course I love you, Mistress Anne,' he said. ‘In the courtly way. In the polite way.'

She smiled as if she were pleased to hear it. ‘I know it is nothing more than a May game. For me, also. But it's a dangerous game when played between a handsome man and a maid, when there are many people very quick to say that we are made for each other, that we are perfectly matched.'

‘Do they say that?'

‘When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.'

‘What else do they say?' He was quite entranced by this portrait.

‘They say that you love me. They say that I love you. They say that we have both been head over heels in love while we thought we were doing nothing but playing.'

‘My God,' he said at the revelation. ‘My God, it
is
so!'

‘Oh my lord! What are you saying?'

‘I am saying that I have been a fool. I have been in love with you for months and all the time I thought I was amusing myself and you were teasing me, and that it all meant nothing.'

Her gaze warmed him. ‘It was not nothing to me,' she whispered.

Her dark eyes held him, the boy was transfixed. ‘Anne,' he whispered. ‘My love.'

Her lips curved into a kissable, irresistible smile. ‘Henry,' she breathed. ‘My Henry.'

He took a small step towards her, put his hands on her tightly laced waist. He drew her close to him and Anne yielded, took one seductive step closer. His head came down as her face tipped up and his mouth found hers for their first kiss.

‘Oh, say it,' Anne whispered. ‘Say it now, this moment, say it, Henry.'

‘Marry me,' he said.

‘And so it was done,' Anne reported blithely in our bedroom that night. She had ordered the bath tub to be brought in and we had gone into the hot water, one after another, and scrubbed each other's backs and washed each other's hair. Anne, as fanatical as a French courtesan about cleanliness, was ten times more rigorous than usual. She inspected my fingernails and toenails as if I were a dirty schoolboy, she handed me an ivory
earscoop to clean out my ears as if I were her child, she pulled the lice comb through every lock of my head, reckless of my whimpers of pain.

‘And so? What is done?' I asked sulkily, dripping on the floor and wrapping myself in a sheet. Four maids came in and started to bale out the water into buckets so that the great wooden bath could be carried away. The sheets they used to line the bath were heavy and sodden, it all seemed like a great deal of effort for very little gain. ‘For all I have heard is more flirtation.'

‘He's asked me,' Anne said. She waited till the door was shut behind the servants and then wrapped the sheet more tightly around her breasts and seated herself before the mirror.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Who is it now?' I called in exasperation.

‘It's me,' George replied.

‘We're bathing,' I said.

‘Oh let him come in.' Anne started to comb through her black hair. ‘He can pull out these tangles.'

George lounged into the room and raised a dark eyebrow at the mess of water on the floor and wet sheets, at the two of us, half naked, and Anne with a thick mane of wet hair thrown over her shoulder.

‘Is this a masque? Are you mermaids?'

‘Anne insisted that we should bathe. Again.'

Anne offered him her comb and he took it.

‘Comb my hair,' she said with her sly sideways smile. ‘Mary always pulls.' Obediently, he stood behind her and started to comb through her dark hair, a strand at a time. He combed her carefully, as he would handle his mare's mane. Anne closed her eyes and luxuriated in his grooming.

‘Any lice?' she asked, suddenly alert.

‘None yet,' he reassured her, as intimate as a Venetian hairdresser.

‘So what's done?' I demanded, returning to Anne's announcement.

‘I have him,' she said frankly. ‘Henry Percy. He has told me he loves me, he has told me that he wants to marry me. I want you and George to witness our betrothal, he can give me a ring, and then it's done and unbreakable, as good as a marriage in a church before a priest. And I shall be a duchess.'

‘Good God.' George froze, the comb held in the air. ‘Anne! Are you sure?'

‘Am I likely to bodge this?' she asked tersely.

‘No,' he allowed. ‘But still. The Duchess of Northumberland! My God, Anne, you will own most of the north of England.'

She nodded, smiling at herself in the mirror.

‘Good God, we will be the greatest family in the country! We'll be one of the greatest in Europe. With Mary in the king's bed and you the wife of his greatest subject, we will put the Howards so high they can never fall.' He broke off for a moment as he thought through to the next step.

‘My God, if Mary was to fall pregnant to the king and to have a boy, then with Northumberland behind him he could take the throne as his own. I could be uncle to the King of England.'

‘Yes,' Anne said silkily. ‘That was what I thought.'

I said nothing, watching my sister's face.

‘The Howard family on the throne,' George murmured, half to himself. ‘Northumberland and Howards in alliance. It's done, isn't it? When those two come together. They would only come together through a marriage and an heir for both of them to strive for. Mary could bear the heir, and Anne could weld the Percys to his future.'

‘You thought I'd never achieve it,' Anne said, pointing a finger at me.

I nodded. ‘I thought you were aiming too high.'

‘You'll know another time,' she warned me. ‘Where I aim, I will hit.'

‘I'll know another time,' I concurred.

‘But what about him?' George warned her. ‘What if they disinherit him? Fine place you'll be in then, married to the boy who used to be heir to a dukedom, but now disgraced and owning nothing.'

She shook her head. ‘They won't do that. He's too precious to them. But you have to take my part, George; and Father and Uncle Howard. His father has to see that we are good enough. Then they'll let the betrothal stand.'

‘I'll do all I can but the Percys are a proud lot, Anne. They meant him for Mary Talbot until Wolsey came out against the match. They won't want you instead of her.'

‘Is it just his wealth that you want?' I asked.

‘Oh, the title too,' Anne said crudely.

‘I mean, really. What d'you feel for him?'

For a moment I thought she was going to turn aside the question with another hard joke which would make his boyish adoration of her seem like nothing. But then she tossed her head and the clean hair flew through George's hands like a dark river.

‘Oh, I know I'm a fool! I know he is nothing more than a boy, and a silly boy at that, but when he is with me I feel like a girl myself. I feel as if we are two youngsters, in love and with nothing to fear. He makes me feel reckless! He makes me feel enchanted! He makes me feel in love!'

It was as if the Howard spell of coldness had been broken, smashed like a mirror, and everything was real and bright. I laughed with her and
snatched up her hands and looked into her face. ‘Isn't it wonderful?' I demanded. ‘Falling in love? Isn't it the most wonderful, wonderful thing?'

She pulled her hands away. ‘Oh, go away, Mary. You are such a child. But yes! Wonderful? Yes! Now don't simper over me, I can't stand it.'

George took a hank of her dark hair and twisted it onto the top of her head and admired her face in the mirror. ‘Anne Boleyn in love,' he said thoughtfully. ‘Who'd have believed it?'

‘It'd never have happened if he hadn't been the greatest man in the kingdom after the king,' she reminded him. ‘I don't forget what's due to me and my family.'

He nodded. ‘I know that, Annamaria. We all knew that you would aim very high. But a Percy! It's higher than I imagined.'

She leaned forward as if to interrogate her reflection. She cupped her face in her hands. ‘This is my first love. My first and ever love.'