No Will But His

No Will But His © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013

Cover Art
Portrait of an Unknown Lady

Cover Design Marian Derby

Published by Goldport Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. For information address Goldport Press – [email protected].

This is a work of fiction.  Although based on the Author’s research of the times and places, names, characters, and events are either the product of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner.  Any resemblance to any persons, (living or dead), places or events is a coincidence.

No Will But His

Sarah A. Hoyt

The Backstairs of Hampton Court

"
Are you brave or foolish,
Milady
? Brave or foolish?
"
Thomas Culpepper
'
s fine, long fingers quested beneath the bodice of my dress, caressing along the rounded slope of my breast till they found the nipple and played upon it as a musician upon a virginal. His blue grey eyes sparkled like a cloudless summer
'
s sky down at me as he demanded, his voice thickened by desire,
"
Brave or foolish?
"

I smiled at him, but I said nothing. It has ever been my belief with men that it is far easier to allow them to make up their own minds and tell themselves whatever pretty story they want about your motives.

They can think you love them or hate them, that you
'
re brokenhearted at leaving them or else that you have turned your heart to another. There is naught you can do about their fanciful imaginings, and it saves time and many tears if you simply let them believe as they will. Then they tell themselves their pretty stories and your soul remains unstained by the lie.

As I looked at Master Culpepper from beneath my half-lowered eyelids, I thought it was a good thing he had auburn hair and those fine eyes, and that his features—I thought—resembled what my husband
'
s had been before he
'
d grown so fat. Any get of Thomas could pass as the get of Henry, the king of England.

"
Don
'
t you know, madam, that the wrath of kings is death?
"

I smiled at him, my sauciest smile, and endeavored to appear lighthearted and fanciful and interested in nothing but my pleasure. Or perhaps half mad in love with him, which Thomas would probably fain believe I was. He
'
d grown very vain.

"
You speak too much, Master Culpepper.
"

"
Should one not speak?
"
he asked.
"
When such grave matter is afoot?
"
His hand, more forward than his brain, quested still in the warm reaches of my bodice, and by that questing hand I knew I had him. He might think, and he might talk, but his body would no more let him walk away from me than it would let him ascend to flight like an angel bound for heaven above.

"
My quarters are warm, and all my servants abed, save only Lady Rochefort and Mistress Tilney who is utterly devoted to me—and both of them would die before they betray me.
"

In his eyes for a moment there was a flash of fear. Then it was gone.
"
Madam!
"
he said, desire in his voice ,strong enough to drive away any fear.
"
Madam.
"

"
Dare you not, Thomas Culpepper? And I thought you a brave man.
"
Which by all accounts I should well think him—in the field of joust and in dispute, he stood with the most gallant courtiers.

"
Brave I am, and I
'
ll dare if you will, but . . .
"

My finger rested on his lips, stilling them.
"
Hush then, and dare you all.
"

In his eyes I read lust mixed with a little fear. He would never be allowed to see the fear in mine. I kept my gaze level, my smile broad. He would never be allowed to know that as I stood here, in my velvet gown, my sparkling jewels, I walked a narrow path between two deep abysses.

The king, my husband, lay ill abed. At this very moment, already, he might be dead, taken by the same illness that had caused the wound in his leg to stop flowing and turned his face black with foul humors just two months ago. That same illness had returned, that same blocked humor. And now he would die. And if he died—

If he died, he left nothing. Two daughters and a small son who, though he might be a lusty infant, would still be a pawn of every pretender, every hand against him.

We would find ourselves again as in the time before the king
'
s father when my grandmother said every man had been against every other and no one safe. And I, the relict of the sovereign, would be the first to lose life and limb in such strife.

Only one thing would protect me, and hold me on the throne, and that was that my womb should ripen with a child. But that was impossible as my husband did little that could lead to such an auspicious result.

And so, at this moment, in my peril, I must seize upon another who might impregnate me, and whose son I could pretend to be Henry
'
s. Of course, discovery of my treason would lead to death, but so would Henry
'
s death without having seeded my womb.

I half closed my eyes and wondered how I—who had wanted nothing more than to keep myself free from any man
'
s single, brute power over me—should have come to this.

But I said nothing. I closed my eyes and allowed Thomas to think it was just my desire for him making me hoarse, as I said,
"
Speak no more, Thomas. Only make me yours.
"

Section One

The Rose In The Bud

Chapter
One

"So this be your get, Edmund Howard!" the old lady said, and the way she said it made it clear she disapproved.

She looked very great and more important than anyone Kathryn had yet seen—tall and well arrayed in shining satin and splendorous brocade. Her face set in a mask of disapproval as—her back very straight, her eyes hard—she walked down the line of Kathryn's siblings and looked them over with the kind of speculative glance Kathryn had seen the Howard housekeeper give a side of beef in the market or a row of ill-plucked chickens.

Her eye ran over Kathryn's brother Charles, just fourteen and looking very much like someone had taken an end of him and stretched him up, without making sure that his limbs and form should match his new, greatly increased height.

Like all of Edmund Howard's children, he had been dressed in new clothes, or at least as new as their father's diminished fortune could command. The hose were somewhat faded, but they matched the doublet, which was a new and brilliant shade resembling orange peel. Even then Kathryn thought that it was a right pity that Charles' hair, too, should match the doublet and, as he blushed under the old lady's look, so should his face, which became ruddy under a smattering of freckles.

"Umm . . ." the lady said, and passed on. Her walking stick tapped the ground in rhythm, as though she were keeping pace with her thoughts.
Tap, tap, tap
. And she stopped in front of Kathryn's brother Harry. He was, like Charles, ruddy and redheaded, but the hand of God had as yet to take hold of him and stretch him to a man's height with a boy's frame. Instead, he was almost as short as Kathryn and twice as round, the freckles on his face making it look like an apple that has got speckled from waiting too long in the cold cellar.

The stick stopped tapping the ground for a bare moment, then resumed its tapping again.
Tap, tap, tap
, tap, it went, as the lady said, over her shoulder in the direction of the bowing and cringing Edmund. "That will never do, Edmund. You'll never raise him. He's too fat to be healthy and too ruddy to be gentle."

Kathryn didn't hear what her father muttered, but it had that tone of cringing apology that she remembered from when Mother was alive, when she used to ask him what he had done with this or that money that she'd entrusted to him. Father among men was one thing—wise and reserved, the hero of Flodden Field. But Father with female relatives . . .

The lady didn't pay any attention to him, anywise, but tapped her way to stand in front of Kathryn's brother George. George did not have the carroty hair that had, mayhap, come from the Culpeppers, the family of Kathryn's mother. Instead, his hair was a dark auburn, like Kathryn's, and his eyes, like hers, were broad spaced and dark.

He was a year older than Kathryn, and she remembered that their last stepmother had accounted him a right proper and pretty child, and petted him much and made much of him, even though she had brought eight children of her own onto her marriage with Kathryn's father. Kathryn had been jealous of him, then. Since her mother had died, no one had made much of her. But Kathryn's nurse had told her envy was a sin and that if she persisted, the devil would come and take Kathryn entire to hell and leave only a little burned mark after.