Lady in Waiting: A Novel (39 page)

I pictured coming into this room at the end of the day, after locking up a little antique store in downtown Manchester. Or maybe not.

Maybe there was no little antique store in downtown Manchester. Managing an antique store wasn’t on my list of things I liked to do. I hadn’t written anything about owning or managing a store on that list. Treasures from the past still wooed me but selling them on the retail market obviously did not.

Perhaps, instead, I would take some classes from Professor Claire Abbot. Maybe someday I would teach history, like she did.

Perhaps I would check out the pretty white church near Brad’s new hospital. Contemplate what Jane Grey staked her life upon. Get a dog. Learn how to waltz.

My list was expanding.

I headed back downstairs to the kitchen. I was hungry.

Brad was right. There was practically nothing in his fridge. I got back in my car and headed to the corner grocery store on the other side of the boulevard that led into his gated complex. I decided not to overdo it. Just a few basics. Bread. Eggs. Cheese. Bananas. Frozen pot stickers, because Brad liked those. Rice. Baby carrots. Cheerios. Milk. A microwaveable entrée for me for dinner. And all the ingredients to make a red velvet cake, including the nonstick cake pans, since I was sure Brad didn’t have any. I love red velvet cake.

I returned to Brad’s, put the groceries away, and started on the cake.
While it baked, I ate my dinner and did the crossword puzzle in Brad’s newspaper. After frosting the cake and cleaning up my mess, I watched an old movie. At ten o’clock, I headed up the stairs, stopping when I got to the landing. Brad never told me where he wanted me to sleep. I hovered at the guest room.

I had no desire to sleep in there.

Pivoting on my toes, I headed into Brad’s bedroom. I didn’t know much about that house. But that was a room I did know a little about.

I lay in bed a long time before sleep finally came to me. I felt like I was heading into the vast unknown on an open sea. Ahead of me lay the uncharted territory of my marriage where no one had dropped a boundary marker. I heard a ticking clock in the darkness of Brad’s bedroom, and I thought of the clock my mother had fixed, as a gift to me; an unintended reminder that things that last always have second, third, and fourth beginnings. That is why we have antique stores. That is why past beauty has a sure home in the future. I didn’t know what time it was when sleep overtook me.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I awakened suddenly. I knew where I was, but I was afraid nonetheless. I felt like I wasn’t alone. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. Across from me, in an amply stuffed armchair, Brad was asleep. His head was cocked to the side, and his feet were crossed at the ankles on the matching ottoman. An empty wine glass rested on the table beside him.

It looked as though he’d sat there, watching me sleep and sipping a glass of wine until he, too, fell asleep.

Part of me wanted to wake him and ask what made him leave the conference early. What made him sit in a chair and watch me sleep? I wanted to ask if he was beginning to understand, as I was, that our relationship had roots we hadn’t seen, buried deep below the surface of our routine lives.

Part of me wanted nothing about that serene moment to change.

I sat there for a full minute before I slowly lay back down. I rested my head on Brad’s pillow and watched him, until sleep again returned to me.

When again I woke, moonlight was just giving way to pearly day. The chair across from me was empty. I turned in the bed to see if Brad had slipped in beside me, but I was alone in the room.

Had I dreamed it? Had I dreamed he was there? It seemed so real.

I got out of bed and dressed, unsure. Then I heard a noise downstairs.

I made my way to the door and quietly opened it. More noises. In the kitchen.

I tiptoed down the stairs. The kitchen light was on, and coffee was brewing. The clock over the sink read a few minutes before six.

I heard noises now from inside the garage. Then the door to the garage swung open, and Brad jumped slightly when he saw me. He was wearing a fishing vest and faded jeans.

“Jane. You’re up.”

“You’re here.” I kept my tone light.

“Yeah. I … I left the conference last night. It just wasn’t doing anything for me, and I wasn’t teaching at it, so I left.”

“Get home late?” I walked over to the cupboard and pulled out two coffee cups.

“Um. Yeah. After two.”

I didn’t ask him where he slept. I knew where he’d slept. And I was done with pretense. I poured him a cup of coffee. “Going out in the canoe this morning?”

He took the cup from me, and his fingers brushed across mine. “Yes. I … I’m sorry if I woke you up. I’ll be back in plenty of time for us to drive together to Dartmouth.”

I carefully poured my own cup. “Is it okay if I come with you?”

“To Dartmouth? Sure. Sure, we can drive together.”

I turned to him. “I meant, can I come with you right now?”

He blinked at me. “You want to come fishing? In the canoe?”

I nodded and sipped my coffee.

“Um. Well …”

“I’ve been out a few times with an instructor. I know how to get in and out and where to sit and how to paddle. I even know how to bait a hook and reel the line in. I promise I won’t be in the way.”

Brad’s wordless stare was impossible to read. “How …?” But he didn’t finish.

“I started meeting with an instructor a few weeks ago. I know I still have a lot to learn. I just didn’t want to be afraid of the water anymore, Brad. I wanted things to be different.”

Brad just nodded.

“So. Is that yes? I can come?” I asked.

“Yes.” His voice was barely audible.

“I’ll just run up and put my hair in a ponytail. Is it okay if I borrow one of your sweatshirts?”

“Uh. Yes. Of course.” A slight smile rested on his lips.

I left him to gather his thoughts, and I took my coffee with me. I needed to gather mine.

Brad seemed happy I wanted to come canoeing with him.

He seemed happy.

I sipped my coffee as I brushed my hair, slipped on my Keds, and rifled through his dresser drawers for a hoodie. Brad seemed happy.

When I came back downstairs, he was standing by the sink, waiting for me.

“You made a red velvet cake,” he said.

“I did.”

“I’ve missed those.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but he stopped.

“Ready to go?” I asked.

He smiled and nodded.

We headed out to our canoe-laden Jeep in the garage and the hushed stillness of dawn.

Brad backed slowly out of the driveway, and there was no other sound but our vehicle and the music of birds. The garage door closed with a quiet thud behind us, and we turned toward the breaking day.

S
pring came reluctantly in the weeks following Jane’s death. Or perhaps it came as it always did for everyone but me.

I did not want the sun to shine on London. I did not want color to burst on the hillsides or riverbanks. I was angry at the forces that wished Jane dead and aggrieved that no one save a few understood the immense pleasure my lady had at choosing, at last, her fate. A traitor is capricious in his or her allegiances. Jane was no traitor.

Guildford was executed the same morning as Jane. Her father, a few weeks after. Her mother swore fealty to Queen Mary and was reinstated at court. I chose never to look upon Frances Grey again. In the midst of all this, my father’s illness bore him to heaven, and my one consolation was he did not suffer the dismal state of Mary’s sway.

Jane’s sister Katherine, whose marriage to Lord Herbert was annulled before consummated, spent the years of Queen Mary’s blessedly short reign as a prisoner, as did the Princess Elizabeth. Threats to the Crown, they were. Katherine secretly married Edward Seymour, and I have long wondered if the two found a bit of consolation for their many woes, including the loss of sister and soul mate, in each other’s arms. I honored Jane’s request and never sought Edward to return the ring to him. And since no one knew the ring’s whereabouts—not even Mrs. Ellen knew I had it—no one asked about it.

The spring that I had despised brought one bit of wonderful news. Nicholas and I learned I was with child. Our daughter, Jane Margaret, was born the following January, and it was her timely arrival into our hearts and lives that kept us from quaking within at the bloody horror of Mary’s reign.

Nicholas continually reminded me, as he had done when I first met him, that religion was not the true end of many a monarch’s horrific schemes, but power. Always power.

Mary was a hungry ruler, desperate for control and posterity. Her marriage to the Spanish prince brought her neither. He did not love her, and she did not produce an heir with him. He left her.

Nearly three hundred souls, Reformers who would not yield to her demands, were executed under her reign. Nicholas and I left London for a safer life and home for Jane Margaret the winter of Queen Mary’s second year on the throne. Nicholas took a post at a school in Bristol, far from London’s chaotic atmosphere. A year later, our Thomas was born.

When the Queen died four years after wresting the crown from Jane’s innocent head, no one mourned. Her half sister, Elizabeth, ascended the throne, rebirthed the Church of England, and a calm return to Reformist rule. She was not a perfect ruler, of course, but she brought a measure of peace. Many daughters born in the years of her reign were named Elizabeth, including two of mine; one who lived and one who did not.

My dear little Jane Margaret did not care for needle and thread, and try as I might to teach her to sew, she would not have it. She was forever getting into tussles and spats, with boys, not girls. And she ever hated to lose an argument with anyone. She is, even to this day, truthful to a fault. She has never bent to the will of anything or anyone but her own. She
married a ship’s captain who often takes her on voyages that leave me breathless with worry. Jane loves the sea; it is the image of God to her—vast, beautiful, unknowable, powerful, and steady. Her sons are just like her. Lovers of the ocean, respectful of its command, mindful of their own limitations with regard to it.

My Thomas followed in the way of his father and became a teacher. He is now a tutor to an earl’s sons. Elizabeth has become a better seamstress than I ever was. She and her tailor husband live in London where they own a tailoring shop. They are the parents of three beautiful girls.

Nicholas and I stayed in Bristol where I sewed party dresses for young ladies and old women. My dearest lived to see his last grandchild born before a wasting sickness bore him away from me. My days are lonely and long now without him beside me.

I feel my own mortality treading upon me now. Through the years, I have often wondered if Lady Jane would still be my friend had she lived. Would her reign have been peaceful had Mary not been successful? Would she have reigned for many long years or would illness or violence have taken her? Would she have borne England a son? And would that son, a Dudley, have a heart like his mother or like his father? Sometimes I would wonder these things aloud to Nicholas, and he would kiss my head and tell me it is impossible to guess what the will of God would have brought us in a different turn of events. The course of history had already been written by Lady Jane’s choices, not all of which were made for her. Not all.