The Queen's Rival (18 page)

“I am not certain what Your Highness means, exactly, but my brother George always said I was full of thoughts that only I would ever understand.”

Henry smiled his dazzling smile at her response, which then faded into a soft look of sincerity. “I understand you perfectly well, I believe.”

“Do you?”

“As I understood Arthur. Bess, sincerity is rather easy to see. You may well be young, but your sincerity is strong, apparent, and a comfort to be around.”

She felt a shiver at the sound her name made on his lips. It was strangely intimate to her, a kind of communion between them, and thus totally inappropriate, both because of her youth and because he was married. She must not forget that.

Bess glanced back up at the grand castle, wondering who knew they were out there alone together. Most likely everyone knew.

“I am truly flattered that you would find me so.” She struggled against the powerful attraction she felt. His gaze told her he was feeling the same. She glanced a second time at the stone manor up above the winding gravel-covered path.

“In such a complex world, am I less of a comfort to
you,
Bess?” he asked deeply as he closed the gap between the two of them in a single movement.

“Not because you are the king, my lord, but because you have a wife.” Bess was not certain from where the words had come. The declaration had been bold, but the words had pushed their way out before she could deny them. She had thought and dreamed of little else for months, but how different she would feel if he were an unmarried man. Bess so loved the fantasy, but just now she valued loyalty to her family more.

Henry smiled again, and this time the expression was full of easy confidence as he reached up and very gently touched the side of her face with the back of his hand. The sensation was so charged that Bess grimaced as she felt her face grow very warm. Her body was weakening, no matter what words she had managed to force past her lips.

“It is precisely because I am king that I require a wife and, by extension, a son.”

She tipped her head as she studied him. “You are not saying that you do not love the queen, are you, sire?”

“She is my heart’s duty, if not my heart’s desire, so at times I suppose I am drawn to something more,” he said philosophically.

His tone surprised her nearly as much as the admission. Even though she had seen evidence of it and long suspected it was true, of course, there was a harsh reality to the confirmation, which seemed far-flung from the romances, like
Lancelot
, in which she still so wanted to believe. “So you do take mistresses then?”

“That is not at all what I meant.”

The wind was tossing their hair and masking their words so that only the two of them could hear. “But I do find myself powerfully drawn to you, Bess, and I am at a loss as to how I might temper the attraction.”

His voice had become melodic, keenly seductive now, and somehow he had moved close enough that she could feel the rise and fall of his chest against her own. Again, he ran his hand along the side of her face, tracing the line of her jaw down near her mouth. Bess knew she should protest, but she could not.

“Do you feel nothing at all for me?” he asked.

“I feel my duty to the queen more.” Her body had begun to ache in a way it never had before, and the urge to melt deeply against him was unrelenting.

Henry smiled again. “Care to tell me how much more?”

She could not contain her feeling, and she smiled. Why had God set before her like this someone so clever, so handsome, so desirable, and so far beyond her reach?

“No, I do not care to tell you.”

“No matter.” He chuckled. “Your eyes have shown me, even if your words do not. Not to mention your body,” he added, glancing down at the way she had yielded, pressed against his doublet.

Embarrassed, Bess stepped back. Her parents would be livid if they knew.

“Too late,” he gently quipped, not surrendering the intimacy between them. “This is just the beginning.”

“Beginning of what?”

“Only time shall tell, Mistress Blount.”

“Not ‘Bess’ any longer?” she asked with a sudden flair of spirit.

“Not ‘Bess’ again until I know hearing it on my lips, in the way I mean to say it, is what you desire, as much as do I.”

She bit back her smile as they stood together in the last vestiges of daylight. “And what if that day never comes?”

“Oh, it shall come,” Henry glibly said. “Of that I have no doubt.”

Bess half expected to find Elizabeth or Gil waiting when she returned a few minutes later to her small bedchamber, which had a wonderful view of the sea. She missed them both here in Dover, so far from court. There was so much to tell, yet there was no one but Jane Poppincourt in whom to confide—and even Jane was mysteriously nowhere to be found.

Bess stood at the single open window, letting the night air and the rhythmic sounds of the sea wash over her. It had been a strangely unnerving day of battling her conscience and her desire. Her father had warned her about this world. Mountjoy had as well. These were powerful men with even more powerful desires to use beautiful young girls as playthings in meaningless games of courtly love. But never in those warnings had anyone adequately prepared her for the possibility that one of those men might ever be the married King of England.

She closed her eyes for a moment as the cool night air dried the perspiration on her neck and the hollow between her breasts, beneath her velvet gown. She did not even like Jane overly much, yet Bess longed to tell her about the evening anyway. She longed to tell someone in case she woke up tomorrow and it had all been a dream. And it
was
a dream of sorts—a dangerous one. Gil would not hesitate to warn her of that. Better to have him back at Greenwich with Wolsey and the queen, Bess thought with a little spark of defiance, and better for this to be an incredible, delicious little secret for her alone.

The roads were especially muddy and rutted by summer rain, and they had slowed the journey back to court to a jarring, neck-aching crawl. Bess longingly anticipated a soft, still bed as she climbed the last staircase, then twisted the iron door handle that led to her chamber. What she had not anticipated was who would be waiting for her when she arrived.

For the first time in more than a year, Bess gazed in surprise and disbelief at her favorite brother, George, standing beside her bed, smiling. He was here without warning, just as her parents had been.

“How?” The single word was all she managed to shriek as she flew into his arms.

He held her tightly for a moment, then kissed the top of her head with great affection. “I was summoned very suddenly. A servant to the king came to Kinlet and told me I must come at once.”

Two days earlier, she had stood on a cliff with the king and they had spoken of brothers. This was an obvious gift to her from King Henry.

“I have missed you!” she cried as tears made little pathways through the road dust that covered her face.

“And I you, Bess.”

“How long will you stay?”

“I have not yet been told, and I did not want to endanger anything by asking. But I am so dearly glad to be here.” He held her out for a moment at arm’s length then, his smile widening. “Look at what a beauty you have become in a year. I can scarcely believe it. You look like a proper lady now, and a grown woman.”

“Thank you, Georgie,” she replied, giving him her best, serene court smile until they both began to giggle and then collapsed onto her little bed. “Do Mother and Father know you are here?”

“They showed me to your chamber.”

“They must be thrilled, Father especially.”

“You are their hope now, Bess. There is great family pressure on you to make an important marriage, you know.”

“No,” she said honestly. “I did not know. I assumed I would be sent back to Kinlet soon, now that Father is well recovered and they are both returned.”

George smiled at her, with that smile full of so many memories and happy times. “I believe it is safe to say that plan has been forever changed by the brilliant match your friend Mistress Bryan made with Master Carew.”

Bess’s smile faded. “I do not know how brilliant she would say it was. Elizabeth wept the entire morning of the ceremony.”

“A coltish bride is no surprise, Father always says.”

She gazed up at the ceiling, feeling constricted now by her tight stomacher, the heavy velvet gown, the shoes, and the proper headdress, all of which she longed to cast off. “It was more than that, Georgie. Although she refused to speak to me or our friend Gil about it, I always believed she had designs on someone else.”

“Gil, is it?” he asked with a twisted smile. “Do you mean Master Gilbert Tailbois, ward of Bishop Wolsey?”

“How do you know of him?”

“I have always been a good student of our parents’ lectures on the key players at court, lest I be called into service. Or even for just a visit such as now, where I might make an impression. So then, what about you and Master Tailbois? Since he is the aide to one of the king’s most trusted confidants, Father and Mother must be hoping he will consider you.”

Bess felt herself blush discussing this with her own brother, no matter how close they were. “Gil is sweet and kind, that much is true, but I assure you there is no feeling of romantic connection between us. I do believe I would be the last girl he or the bishop would consider.”

George turned his head to look at her as they lay beside each other, her now-hoodless blond hair fanned out between them on the bed. “Is there someone, then, with whom you
do
have a romantic connection?”

Bess met his gaze for a moment, wanting to push past the awkward sensation in order to confide in the one person she knew without question she could trust. “Promise you’ll not laugh?”

“I promise.”

“It is impossible, of course.”

There was a little silence then. “Oh
Jésu
, no.”

“He has done absolutely nothing improper, but I believe King Henry brought you to court in order to please me.”

“You and the king?” George began to laugh as if it were the most preposterous statement in the world. “Little Bessie Blount from Kinlet and the King of England?”

She felt herself stiffen at the slight. “Is it really so difficult to believe?”

“That a handsome, powerful sovereign, one with an equally important queen to whom he is devoted enough to name regent, would think of my little country sister as anything beyond a dalliance? Yes, Bess, it is very difficult to believe, indeed.”

She sat up with an indignant little huff and pushed her long hair back behind her shoulders. “The king is a serious man with serious intentions. He told me so himself. Why else would you think he would suddenly bring you here other than because I told him I missed you?”

“You were having that sort of intimate conversation with our married sovereign and you do not believe me? Whom else have you told about this?”

George was sitting up now as well, but she would no longer look at him.

“No one.”

He exhaled deeply. “That, at least, is a relief. See that you keep it that way, or you shall endanger not only your own position here, but Mother’s and Father’s as well.”

George took up her hand then and held it tightly. “The truth is, I can understand the lure. But do not be a fool, Bess. There is nothing he could offer you beyond what the others have already gotten.”

“He may be a bit bold with his flirtations, but he told me he does not take mistresses, and I have no reason not to believe him,” she countered with adolescent stubbornness.

“Mother told me herself it was whispered that your friend Elizabeth Carew was one of them,” he put in very gently. “Perhaps the tears you saw at her wedding were of innocence lost?”

“Elizabeth may have flirted with him like the rest of us, or even, I shall grant you, joined him in his chamber, but she would never have compromised herself fully like that.”