Royal Mistress (4 page)

Jane’s eyes stung again, but she did not dare tell her mother she desired someone else—someone else whom she had just met and who, with time, would surely declare himself. Now was not the moment, however, but as soon as Tom came forward, surely his suit would be considered as good as William’s. It was plain he was gently born, and surely her father would be ecstatic if she raised the Lamberts up to the gentry or perhaps even the nobility. There was an air about Tom, although perhaps it was because he was already a prince to her. How she would gloat when Tom
came to ask her father’s permission to woo her. Now, knowing her mother was waiting, she shifted in her seat and promised to walk out with William, and Amy was satisfied.

“You’ll see, my dear. Once you get used to a man, you can love him and be a good wife. And then you will have the gift of children. ’Tis they who bring a woman the greatest joy.”

“Aye, Mother,” Jane acquiesced, imagining a son she might have with Tom Grey and not Master Shore. “I dream of holding my own babe, ’tis true, and I pray for it nightly . . . with whomever I wed.”

T
he next few weeks were as confusing as they were titillating for Jane, believing she had two men vying for her hand. To placate her father, she allowed William to come courting and hoped that, before the slow-moving, deliberate mercer signed the formal contract, Tom Grey would declare his intentions.

It was not long before William came to Hosier Lane and sat with Amy Lambert and her daughter as he struggled to find common ground for conversation. All he knew was his trade, and he had never sought much female company in his almost forty years. Growing up, he had found his several younger sisters foolish and had chosen to escape the wilds of Derby as soon as his long, narrow feet could take him to London. There he had worked hard for the customary seven years as an apprentice to Mercer Reynkyn and received the freedom of the city when he was in his mid-twenties. As a guild member, William had associated with many of the most prosperous merchants in Europe, and his shop in the Coleman Street ward, although not as extensive as John Lambert’s, was making him a comfortable profit. Even his forays to Antwerp and Bruges had been all about business, and if the truth be told, he had never paid much attention to his surroundings and was able to offer the two women but minimal details of those cities. Aye, he was good at conversing about all things commercial, but in front of Jane and her mother he was quite at a loss for words.
In fact, he was uncharacteristically nervous and was annoyed to see his hand shaking as he picked up his cup of wine. He saw Amy confide something to Jane, and so anxious was he they were talking about him that when Jane suddenly laughed at Amy’s innocent joke, he started abruptly and spilled wine all over his fine grosgrain gown.

“God’s truth,” he mumbled, brushing off the tawny liquid with the back of his hand as his neck flushed red around the fur of his collar. “Your pardon, Dame Lambert, so clumsy of me.”

He would have been surprised to know that his moment of humiliation actually caused Jane to feel sympathy for him. It made this rather stiff, unemotional man seem human, and she quickly went to help him. When he saw her concern for him, his mind was eased and he smiled his thanks. Jane was gratified to see that the smile made the man’s normally sober expression almost handsome. Mayhap he is not so bad, she told herself, unconvincingly.

“I understand your business in Coleman Street is beneath your accommodations, Master Shore,” Amy said, also trying to lessen the discomfort of her guest and make genial conversation. “Do you have two or three stories?”

William, taking measure of the Lambert’s solar in his mind, said that he did indeed have three stories and that his parlor was only slightly smaller. “It lacks a woman’s touch, I regret to say, Dame Lambert. ’Tis not so well appointed as this, but it could be.” He was pleased with his hint that perhaps Jane might be the woman whose touch it lacked. Amy tittered and looked coyly at Jane.

Sweet Jesu, Jane thought, taking a bite of sugar wafer, they had her wedded to him already. The bell for sext sent a tingle through her body. In two hours, it would ring for nones, and, if sweet St. Elizabeth had heard her plea, she would soon be with Tom Grey.

The bell reminded William he had business elsewhere, and he gratefully took his leave, first kissing Amy’s hand in an exaggerated
show of courtesy and then giving Jane an elegant bow. “Shall we walk to mass together soon, Mistress Jane? If it please your father and mother, perhaps I could escort you on Sunday.”

Jane wanted to say, “Nay, it is too soon,” but did not dare when Amy agreed to his company with alacrity. The two women watched him stride toward Chepeside, his long legs and splayed feet teetering on his wooden pattens.

“Your father will be pleased to know how well you behaved,” Amy said, cheerfully. “I think Master Shore is smitten.”

Jane took her cloak from a peg and hid her smile in it, winding the soft stuff around herself and pulling up the fur-lined hood. “I am going to see Sophie, Mother. I promised to help her with the children this afternoon.” Amy reminded her to stop in the Poultry and buy a chicken for tomorrow’s dinner as Jane strapped on her pattens to keep her feet out of the mud. Amy was pleased with her, and although there was mending Jane could be doing, she let her daughter go and visit her dearest friend. Jane was devoted to the little ones, she knew. She needs her own babes, Amy thought, consoling herself that Jane would have them soon enough with Master Shore.

A few minutes later, Jane had disappeared around the corner of Watling Street as if she were going to the Vandersands’ house a few minutes away in St. Sithe’s Lane. But as soon as she guessed her mother had closed the door and retreated into the kitchen to see to tomorrow’s main meal, she turned and hurried in the opposite direction toward St. Paul’s. When she had dressed to greet Master Shore that morning, she had really chosen her wardrobe for Master Grey. Her mother had approved and even commented on her apple green damask gown, commending her for dressing to attract the prospective bridegroom.

Jane felt for her purse and checked to see she had enough money for a chicken at the more expensive poulterer on Carter Lane, and she set off eagerly for her assignation with Tom. She would buy the chicken later, and God help her if there were none left.

A
little while later, the rain was letting up when Jane reached St. Augustine’s Gate, which led into St. Paul’s yard. The market in front of the south door of the cathedral was all but over, but not wanting to risk being recognized, she skirted the back of the building where the high free-standing pulpit of Paul’s Cross stood. Today, with no announcements or sermons to be heard, there were no spectators gathered around it, and except for a gravedigger busy with a bucket of bones near the charnel house, the rain was keeping other visitors away.

She huddled in the lee of a buttress along the north side of the church, pulled up her hood against the drizzle, and waited on the cold seat. She was early, she knew, and she whiled away the interminable minutes thinking about William’s visit. It did seem to her that the man was determined to have her, but this was not the first time John Lambert had attempted to marry off his eldest daughter, and so Jane convinced herself that she could turn Master Shore away.

Her practiced fingers fondled the soft silk woven into her belt as she ruminated on her future, feeling a flaw in the weaving that made her look down at it with critical eyes. She and Bella had learned at an early age the art of working silk into elaborate fringes and tassels that were so fashionable at court as adornments on bodices, sleeves, and hats. Bella’s dexterity put Jane’s to shame, and Jane decided her talent lay in the less complicated weaving of belts, ribbons, and colorful garters for hose and in attracting customers; the irony that her father was not above using her beauty for the latter did not escape Jane. Bella, on the other hand, was allowed to work at home, under the kinder eye of their mother, but Jane spent much of her week at the Mercery, employing her lap loom when the shop was quiet. For all she was lazy at her loom, Jane had discovered she had a talent with the pen, and she
liked nothing more than amusing her mother and sister on quiet evenings with her clever verses.

Jane’s reverie was interrupted by a group of monks chanting their way to nones along the path through the churchyard to the cathedral. Jane signed herself and intoned an ave, her eyes following them past the stone pulpit until they disappeared. It briefly crossed her mind that the choice of sacred ground for an illicit meeting might open up a rocky road to hell, but she dismissed the idea with a “pah!” and a smothered giggle and thus failed to see Thomas until he startled her with his first words.

“You did not expect me, Mistress Lambert?” he teased, catching her hand and pressing it to his lips. “Do you have such little faith in me?”

The bells above them clanged for nones and her embarrassed stammer, “N-nay, T-Tom, I mean, Master Grey,” was thankfully lost in the din.

Tom curled her arm in his and joined her on the stone seat. It was out of the wind and drizzle, and she had been right about the privacy. He made sure there was no one about as he indulged himself in the first kiss of this new affair. She smelled of rosemary and citron, and her lips were hungry and warm. His instinct that Jane was versed in the art of flirtation had not failed him, and he could sense she wanted more, so he kissed her again.

“Your eyes are the color of the sea, Jane,” he told her, holding her perfect oval face in his fingers. “I cannot make up my mind if they are green or gray.”

His kiss stoked a fire in her that left her wanting more, but she knew what she must do in this dance of courtly love. Had she not read it over and over in her books: she must chastise him for his compliment. “You are impertinent, sir. You do not know me well enough to kiss me thus.”

She expected that more high-flown prose or even poetry would
continue the dance, but instead he said boldly, “Then forgive me, sweetheart, is this better?” And his lips were again on hers and this time she could feel his tongue seeking an entry. She pushed him away despite how much she longed to kiss him back in the same way; she did not want to forget the lessons that kept a real love like this burning brightly, even though he seemed to have waived his courtly manners. There was a rule that pertained to this moment, was there not, she thought. Ah, aye, rule number fourteen:

The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.

Jane smiled. “Perhaps I do not understand the conventions of courtly love well enough, Tom. Do I not deserve some poetry? I am sure you are not supposed to kiss me so . . . so soon.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “You are a tease, Jane. But I will try.” He pulled a wayward strand of hair from her coif and wound it around his finger. “Your tresses are like the sand on the seashore,” he said, studying it. “I am no poet, in truth. Where have you heard this . . . ?” He wanted to say “nonsense” but he indulged her.

“My tutor let me read an old book in Latin about romance. I think he was besotted by me when I was but thirteen.” She smiled at the memory. “It was by one Master Capellanus, and I made poor Master Cook translate much of it. Latin was not my strength, I am afraid.”

“You learned Latin? I thought girls learned but the rudiments of reading and writing.”

“Pish,” Jane retorted. “Not only do my sister and I know Latin, but we speak some French, too, Maître Gris. But you have cleverly changed the subject. We were talking about love. True love between a man and a woman.”

She leaned into him eagerly and willed him to declare his love, too, but he sank back against the wall and carefully unraveled her hair from his finger. His reticence made her impulsive.

“There is a mercer who is seeking my hand,” she began a little desperately, “and my father is anxious to be rid of me, but I cannot go to another when the only man I wish to be with is you.” She stared anxiously at his face, but his expression caused her to rush on. “If my father knew you, too, wished to court me, he would not gainsay you. ’Tis plain you are gently born, Tom. You are, are you not? Speak to me, I cannot bear your silence. You are looking at me strangely. What does it mean?”