Tori Phillips (2 page)

“A pox on tennis, you clodpate!” roared the king, his voice shaking the rafters of the tennis hall. A wide grin spread across his thin lips. “I speak of the marriage game—for you, my fine friend. Since you have danced out of Cupid’s way for many years now—” the king swept a glance over the colorful, bejeweled company in the gallery “—much to the disappointment of many a fair lady here, we have taken it upon ourselves to arrange a match.”

Brandon gritted his teeth as he heard a breeze of female tittering behind him. “A wife for me, sire?” His heart thudded within his chest. “You have so many affairs of state, your grace. My father’s request will take up too much of your most valuable time.”

“Let your fears take flight, Cavendish! ’Tis done!”

“The match is already arranged?” The humming sound grew louder in his mind.

The king’s laughter drowned out everyone else’s. “Aye! And to a fine lady with a fat estate in Sussex. Lady Katherine Fitzhugh of Bodiam Castle! By my command, Cavendish, you shall wed her on Midsummer’s Day. The banns were proclaimed this morning at Lambeth Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. This week, you will ride into Sussex to woo your betrothed.”

The laughter, which filled the cavernous tennis hall, could not drown out the hammering of Brandon’s heart. Marriage to an unknown lady in less than a month? An end to his freedom? Why had his father decided that he needed another heir? Several children already scampered around the family home at Wolf Hall in Northumberland. Brandon saw no reason to take a wife. He had enough domestic responsibilities as it was.

Belle, his daughter, would turn the household into a merry hell if Brandon brought home a new mother. And what of Francis Bardolph, his page? Brandon cast a quick glance at the boy’s self-absorbed mother who sat in the gallery. Francis didn’t suspect his true parentage as yet, but daily he grew to look more and more like a Cavendish. How could Brandon present an unsuspecting bride with two love children?

“What ho!” cried the king to his amused court. “Regard my Lord Cavendish! He looks like a great, goggle-eyed turbot caught in a net. Perchance you have won this tennis game, knave of hearts—but methinks, I have won the match! Ha!”

“Sweet angels! What have I done to deserve this fate?” Lady Katherine Fitzhugh sank to the cold comfort of one of the stone benches in her rose garden at Bodiam Castle. She fanned herself with the parchment she held in her hand. The letter dripped with the thick, red wax seal of the king himself.

Miranda Paige, Kat’s gentle cousin and companion, abandoned her trug basket on the newly turned flower bed. “Sweet Kat, is it ill news from court? What has that peevish nephew done now?”

“Marriage,” Kat managed to gasp when she got her breath back. The bodice laces of her green gown had suddenly become too tight.

“Fenton has married without your knowledge?” Taking out her handkerchief, Miranda began to flap it in front of Kat’s face.

“Nay, nay, worse than that!” Kat reread the king’s missive, in the vain hope that she had misunderstood his message. Alas, she had not. “God shield me, Miranda, I am doomed.”

“Shall I call Montjoy to help you to your bed, coz?” Miranda stopped waving her handkerchief, much to Kat’s relief. “Do you require a cordial for a headache? Shall I call—”

Kat cut her off. “Call down thunderbolts and hail to rain on Hampton Court, Miranda! Send a storm of fiery arrows into every bleating idiot who utters the word ‘marriage’ to me!” Remembering her two disastrous forays into matrimony, she shuddered.

“Who is to be married?” Miranda asked, taking Kat’s hand in hers and giving it a squeeze. “Is it me?”

Despite her distress engendered by the king’s command, Kat smiled into her cousin’s hopeful eyes. Poor Miranda! Ignoring the unhappy examples of Kat’s late husbands, she had always harbored a childish romantic fantasy of true love.

“Am I to have a husband at last?” Miranda prodded, craning her neck so that she could read the letter in Kat’s hand.

“I wish that were so! Nay, ’tis I the king commands.”

“To marry him?” Miranda’s jaw all but dropped. “But he is already wed to good Queen Catherine these past twenty years—and they say he has a paramour besides.”

“Nay, Miranda! ’Tis to some popinjay of the court named...” Kat consulted the letter again. “Sir Brandon Cavendish, eldest son of the Earl of Thornbury—whomever
that
might be. After the good Lord saw fit to take Fitzhugh to his eternal reward—”

“May God have mercy upon his soul,” Miranda murmured at the name of Kat’s second husband.

“Save your breath! That man is roasting his backside upon the devil’s spit!” Kat closed her eyes in the effort to blot out her last memory of Edward Fitzhugh’s face, mottled with insane rage.

Miranda quickly made a sign of the cross. “’Tis bad luck to speak ill of the dead, Kat. Say a prayer!”

“Say one for me,” Kat retorted. “Fitzhugh heard enough of my prayers and pleading during his lifetime. I shall not taint my mouth any further for his sake.” She shook the king’s letter, causing the red seal to bounce merrily on its white satin ribbon. “These past two years have been a paradise for me. After surviving two such husbands as mine, I had hoped to spend the rest of my life in gardening, and caring for my people. I did not expect to be saddled with yet another piece of vermin such as this...Cavendish! I will never be any man’s property again!”

“Perchance he will be different,” Miranda suggested, a faraway look glazing her green eyes.

“Perchance the piglets in yonder sty shall sprout feathered wings and fly! Bah! I am sick to death of husbands!”

“You could write to the king and beg him to change his mind,” Miranda suggested in a soothing tone.

Kat snorted. “Ha! An angel from heaven would be unable to dissuade His Grace once he has made his decision. Alack, I am undone, Miranda!”

Miranda picked up the parchment from the bench where Kat had dropped it. She ran her finger across the name of the suitor. “I wish you could give him to me. I am willing to take a chance.”

“You are moonstruck, dear coz. Marriage is heaven for a man, but hell for the woman. All husbands want are housekeepers and broodmares.” Kat chewed her lower lip as she thought of her barren womb. “Our good king has got marriage on the brain. He should settle his own affairs. Let him marry the Boleyn woman, and leave me in peaceful widowhood.”

“Hush, sweet coz!” Miranda glanced over her shoulder. “’Tis not wise to speak of the king in such a disrespectful manner, even here.”

Kat sighed. “Aye, gentle coz, you give me good counsel. But what am I going to do with this horse’s backside who claims me?”

“When does the letter say he arrives?”

“’Twas written a week ago Monday. The king states that I should expect to receive this Lord Cavendish very soon. Sweet angels! For all I know, the man could be here by supper time today!” Kat rose and began to pace up and down the crushed shell path of the rose garden. She must find a way out of this marriage, or else her hard-won happiness would soon vanish like snowflakes in July.

“Mayhap he will get lost along the way here,” her cousin suggested with a grin. peace, Miranda. This marriage is no laughing matter. I wish I could spy out this proffered husband, then I would know better how to deal with him.” She could not face a loveless marriage again.

Returning to her task of pulling weeds, Miranda sang a child’s silly tune. “‘A Cavendish came a-hunting in the wood, to-woo, but the white-tailed doe was not at home, to-woo. The Cavendish came a-hunting in the wood, and though his aim was true and good, he shot a rabbit and not the doe, to-woo.”’

Pausing at the end of the path, Kat cocked her head, as Miranda repeated the nonsense song under her breath. An outlandish idea bubbled up in Kat’s mind. Her grin deepened into trilling laughter. The sound startled Miranda out of her song.

“Sweet lark, you have hit it! I have the very plan when this Cavendish comes a-wooing!” Grabbing her cousin’s hand, Kat pulled her out of the flower. bed. “Come, we squander the precious daylight with our idle chatter. There is much work to be done.”

“What did I say?” Miranda asked as Kat hurried them back to the castle. “What are we going to do?”

“To exchange a doe for a rabbit!” she answered with a mischievous grin.

“They have gone, my lord.” Tod Wormsley tweaked his master’s bedsheet. “’Tis safe to come out”

Poking forth his head from under the covers, Sir Fenton Scantling glowered at the door of his small chamber. God’s teeth! How dare those London merchants send their hirelings into the king’s palace here at Hampton Court to seek Fenton and loudly demand payment of his bills! Fenton hoped that no one of importance had heard the ruckus. How dare those minions call him such disgraceful things through the keyhole!

Fenton kicked away the rest of the covers, then swung his legs over the side of the bed. He studied his reflection in the glass that hung on the wall opposite him. He brushed the wrinkles out of his sleeveless doublet made of a rich mulberry brocade and straightened the slim gold chain that hung around his neck. His sniveling body servant, Wormsley, stood behind Fenton and fluffed out his white silken puff sleeves that had become crushed under the bedclothes.

“This color suits me, does it not, Wormsley?” Fenton mused as he leaned closer to the glass to inspect his teeth. Good. No unsightly remnant of food clung there from the noonday dinner.

“Right well,” Wormsley murmured, holding out Fenton’s flat hat fashioned in a matching shade of velvet mulberry. He curled the cream-colored feather through his fingers. “And costly, if those tailors who came to call are to be believed.”

Wheeling on his servant, Fenton raised his hand to strike him for his impudent tongue. Then he thought better of it, as the youth regarded him with a smug expression.
One day, churl, you shall push me too far
. “By that gleam in your eye, Worm, there is something in the wind. Out with it!”

Wormsley blew on the feather, causing it to flutter. “Since you stayed in London until late last night, you have not heard the news.”

“Has the king finally gotten his bloody divorce? Or has Mistress Anne Boleyn announced that she is with child? Ha! That would set the whole court in an uproar!”

“Neither, my lord. The news I speak of pales next to the king’s Great Matter, but it touches upon you personally.” Wormsley flicked an invisible speck of dust off the cap.

Fenton itched to wipe the hint of a smile from the rogue’s mouth. “Out with it, varlet! I have no patience today to play the fool with you.”

Wormsley ran his tongue around his lips before replying. “There is to be a marriage, my lord. The groom is none other than Sir Brandon Cavendish—”

Fenton burst out laughing at this surprise. “So the knave of hearts has been trapped at last! Did he get some poor damsel with child? Has her father threatened to kill him? Ha! I cannot wait to rub this in his face. I warrant, he does not go to the altar willingly. This is news, indeed!”

Wormsley cleared his throat. “It is an arranged match requested by Sir Brandon’s father and commanded by Great Harry himself. The bride is no maiden, though she is quite wealthy. We speak of your aunt, Lady Katherine Fitzhugh, and the wedding date is in four weeks—on the twenty-fourth of June, Midsummer’s Day.”

Fenton’s tiny ruffled collar suddenly choked him. He couldn’t breathe. He opened his mouth but no sound emerged. He pointed to the half-empty flagon of wine on the side table. Wormsley filled one of the gray-and-blue salt-glazed cups to the brim with the deep red burgundy. Fenton drank it down in one gulp, though its slightly sour taste curdled the back of his tongue.

What had Fenton ever done to deserve these ill tidings? Hadn’t he been a dutiful, though often absent, nephew to Kat? Hadn’t he always been polite enough to that mewling cousin of hers, Miranda? Didn’t he always bring them a little present or two whenever he had to visit Bodiam—when his funds had run low again? How he had danced the galliard when his late, unlamented Uncle Edward had worked himself into a fatal stroke two years ago! In due time, all those prosperous estates and rents of Bodiam Castle should be his as Kat’s only heir. Marriage to a healthy—and lusty—stallion like Cavendish would ruin his hopes of a wealthy future.

“My lord, are you well?” Wormsley asked, pouring another cup of the vile drink.

“Are you brainsick?” Fenton roared back at him. He quaffed the wine. “Of course, I am not well. Nor should you be, for where my fortune and fate go, yours will follow. Where is Cavendish now? Has he left Hampton Court yet?”

“Nay. He tarries, hoping that the king will change his mind.”

Fenton paused in his fuming. A slow smile cracked his lips. “Then the match does not sit well upon the bridegroom’s shoulders?”

“I hear that he all but fainted on the tennis court when the king informed him of his future happiness.”

Chuckling, Fenton rubbed his palms together. “I can well imagine, considering his amorous reputation with the ladies. This is better than I first thought.” He snatched up his cap and set it at a jaunty angle on his head. “I shall seek out Sir Brandon and have a little talk with him pertaining to family matters. Look for me after supper, though I may tarry awhile at the gaming tables. God’s breath, suddenly I feel that fortune smiles upon me this day.”

Locating Cavendish was not difficult, despite the maze of galleries at Hampton. Every tongue at court wagged of Sir Brandon’s romantic downfall. The closer Fenton drew to his quarry, the more tales he heard whispered behind lace fans and perfumed handkerchiefs. Fenton found his man deep in conversation with Sir John Stafford, his boon companion. The two lounged under one of the arches in the palace’s cobbled courtyard.

The knights were as alike as most brothers. As tall as the king himself, both men boasted the blond hair, broad shoulders and slim hips that made the women of Hampton Court, from countess to scullery maid, hungry to gaze upon them. When the king’s golden duo strode by, other men straightened their own postures. Before confronting the pair, Fenton pulled back his shoulders and lifted his chin a notch. Though they spoke in low tones, he caught the tail end of their discussion.