No Will But His (15 page)

"Oh, no, sir, I never was. Only he cried so much for my love and told me he would die without it and in common charity, I let him kiss me, but"—she hastened to add—"it was not, you know, the same as kissing you. For I had no joy in it."

He narrowed his eyes at her but smiled at the same time, giving the impression that he was tempting her to some exquisite pleasure. "But you have joy of my kissing, have you not?"

"Oh, so much," she said, and with that, rose on her tiptoes to kiss him again.

She didn't know how many times they kissed, or how hard, because like time in paradise, time spent kissing Francis Dereham was perfect and without form or struggle. At last, it seemed to her she heard, very distantly, the sounds of hooves, and Francis pulled back from her.

"Hark," he said. "It is Waldgrave that approaches. Not that he'll tell on us, but all the same, this might not be the best of places to kiss you, for you see anyone might spy us at our pleasure."

As they pulled apart, Waldgrave had indeed arrived next to them and was sitting on is horse, patiently, waiting while Francis Dereham helped Kathryn up on her horse and then, after unfastening the animals from the branch to which they were tethered, mounted his own horse. "No, this is not the best place, Mistress Howard," he said, and grinned at his friend. "I shall have to ask Waldgrave to teach me his way."

Waldgrave scowled. "An' the trellis is sturdy enough," he said, and spurred his horse on and out of the way. It wasn't till they'd got to the stable and after making sure no stable hands were near that Kathryn, as Francis helped her down from the horse, dared to lean closer and ask, "Pray tell . . . the trellis?"

"Indeed. My fellow Waldgrave is mad in love with your bedmate, Alice. Nightly he climbs the trellis so that he may enjoy, as it were, paradise at the top."

"But . . ." Kathryn said. "She is my bedmate. They can't be meeting upon my bed. I do not sleep that soundly."

Francis laughed. "No, no. It is not like that. As I understand, there is another room or closet to which your room leads, and which was quite empty before Waldgrave and Alice managed to pull a mattress in there—one of the straw mattresses that was supposed to be discarded last year when the new ones were stuffed. The only thing you missed, Mistress Howard, was that your bed mate is not always there the entire night."

Kathryn remembered times of waking up in the middle of the night with Alice slipping back into the bed, her cold feet sliding in alongside Kathryn's body, and of sleepily asking Alice what she'd been about and being told that Alice had only been using the chamber pot. Now she knew better and felt an utter fool to have been thus led astray.

"Oh, I shouldn't feel bad to be taken in by Alice," Francis said, as though reading her mind. "For I am to understand she's the most accomplished little liar and thief. Edward Waldgrave brags that every other night at least she gets hold of the key from the duchess's own room, so she can let him in through the dormitory door all right and proper, and spare him the trouble and danger of climbing the trellis."

"How odd," Kathryn said. "And I never suspected any of this. It is as though I never knew Alice at all."

"Aye," Francis said, and there in the stables, it was clear that he didn't dare kiss her, but it was equally certain, from his gaze, that he longed to. "Aye, but you see, by learning all the contrivances we may use, they have paved the way for us. And now we shall enjoy the fruits of their labors. I can't promise, Mistress Howard, that I'll make it up the trellis tonight, but I will do it as soon as it is possible."

Chapter Nineteen

"Master Manox," Kathryn said, as soon as her former music teacher met her in the orchard.

It was obvious he had dressed in his best—a doublet that looked brand new and was made of brocade, slashed through to show silk at sleeves and body. And he had a brand new cap upon his hair, and he approached her with a smile on his face.

The face itself looked deeper, and the eyes more deeply carved than when she'd last seen him. It seemed to Kathryn that Master Manox must have slept badly since he'd last seen her or, perhaps, slept not at all.

The way he looked at her was hungrier than ever, and for just a moment, she was afraid he'd embrace her or kiss her or take hold of her hands. After the bliss she'd known in Dereham's arms, she wasn't sure at all that she could take the more common and coarser touch of Manox's hands.

"Kathryn," he said, and extended his hands to her, then, noting that she clasped her hands behind her back, let his own fall. But his eyes still burned with feverish hunger, and his voice shook with passion as he said, "Oh, I have missed you."

She didn't know what to answer to that, so she looked at her feet, and she said, "I have heard you've been telling lies about me."

"Lies!" he said. "What lies have I told? And who told you so? I sent you a letter through Waldgrave, but he said that you wouldn't even accept it."

"I don't like reading," she said. "Or at least I don't like reading letters where the handwriting is formed whichever way, and besides, Master Manox, we have nothing to say to each other."

He put his hands forward again, as though he would hold her by the shoulders, and she stepped back hastily and said, "Do not touch me, or I shall scream."

"But, Kathryn! You met me under the stairs to the upper level of the chapel. And you met me in the chapel itself, behind the altar. How can you now pretend we never knew each other? And what could make you scream at my touch?"

"I never wanted to meet you," she said, hearing a faint note of hysteria in her voice. "You know I didn't. I only did it because you told me you were suffering and that my allowing you to touch me would relieve you. But it never did, and you just demanded more, and my grandmother said it was all a ruse, of the sort that men use to get women to let them into their beds."

"How can you say that?" Manox asked, his eyes blazing. "How can you say that, Kathryn, when you know what we were to each other."

"What we were, Master Manox? Have your wits gone begging? Didn't I tell you often that you were nothing to me nor could you be? That you could never marry me?"

He shook his head, as though by shaking it, he could deny the words she said. "But it is not like that," he said. "You enjoyed our kisses and embraces. I remember. I remember the sighs that escaped your lips and the moans—" Again he took a step forward, as though determined, once more to show her she could enjoy it.

And once more, Kathryn stepped backward, trying to avoid his hands. "We are not here for that, Master Manox, nor do I wish you to touch me or kiss me or hold me ever again. I've been brought to the grave conscience of my error, and all I want now is to keep myself pure and honest for my husband."

"Pure and honest!" he said, as though the words rankled. "My cousin tells me that Dereham is mad over you and that you encourage him."

"I don't know what your cousin tells you, nor is it any of your business whom I may be mad over. My aunt's chamberer, Mary Lassells, tells me that you have been telling everyone that I had pledged my troth to you, which you know well I've never done; and also that I had told you that you could have my maidenhead, even if it hurt me, because I knew you'd be good to me after; and also that your intentions were strictly dishonorable and you had no intention at all of marrying me, but only wished to see how far you could take your affair with me."

At these words, boldly spoken, Manox stopped. A wave of color came up from his neck into his cheeks, and it told Kathryn, clearer than anything else could, that Manox had indeed said those words to Mary Lassells. Whether he'd meant it or not was something else, something that Kathryn had little interest in knowing.

Manox clasped his head, the way he did when he was distressed. "Mary Lassells was so earnest and so full of herself," he said. "And I remembered the way she'd slapped you in the church, and I thought only of not getting you in further trouble, Kathryn. I swear on my soul's damnation that's all I thought of."

"I do not care for your soul or its damnation," she told him. "Only that you stop telling these lies about me. I am only a poor girl, with no dowry and a marriage to get, and your loose tongue could damage my chances forever."

"It is only the great love I bear you that makes me say things," he said. "How am I to bear the thought that you are in another's arms? That there is someone else kissing your dear lips? That you allow a man full of coarse intent to caress your body, which should be mine only?"

He fell to his knees in front of Kathryn, and before she knew what he was about, he had taken hold of the hem of her dress. Kathryn was taken with great fear that he'd repeat his old tricks and kiss her privy parts right here, even as Mary Lassells spied from the shadows. But even as Kathryn took a step back, Manox was kissing the hem of her skirt, as though she had been a saint or a creature of great virtue. "I can't eat," he said piteously, looking up. "I can't sleep. I don't know what to do but pine for you."

"Well, then you can go on pining," she said, pulling her skirt away from his hands and mouth. "Mistress Lassells told you that if you married me, my relatives would put an end to you. I am now telling you that if your talk doesn't stop—if you insist on broadcasting lies about me from the rooftops and whichever way—I shall myself ensure that my friends destroy you utterly."

She stepped back farther. Manox hadn't got up from his knees and was staring at her with a horrified expression, when she said, "I do not want to be angry at you, Master Manox. Only keep your mouth shut, and we shall remain the greatest of friends." And on those words, she turned her back on him and marched right into the house and half ran up the stairs to the dormitory, where she hoped Dereham would join her.

Chapter Twenty

Dereham did not come up that night, and the next morning, while they were riding, he informed her that he had tried, but it was too likely he'd be seen climbing the trellis and, therefore, he'd felt it would be better not to risk it.

They rode into the forest well ahead of Waldgrave, who did not even make an attempt to follow, and when they were tired, they dismounted and walked their horses while talking. She told him about her meeting with Manox. It seemed natural to do so. As though she should tell him everything always, and it would only make sense that he would understand it and support her. And he seemed to, nodding as she spoke. "An' if he speak again, we'll make sure he suffers for it," he said.

He seemed to completely understand why she'd felt she had to allow Manox such liberties, and he was gentle about it, when he told her the duchess was correct and that men would say the most outrageous things to women to get their love.

Then Kathryn told him about the duchess and the Duke of Norfolk, and what they had said about getting her a husband. This got a serious, worried frown from him. "I wish . . ." he said.

"Yes?"

"I wish I could offer for you, only right now I may not, as I do not quite have the means. Mind you, I will once my uncle dies. I wish . . ."

"Yes?"

"I wish you could promise me not to marry anyone for a few years, for it is bound to happen that I shall come into my inheritance, and then I will come to your grandmother and ask her for your hand."

Kathryn laughed. She hadn't meant to, but she couldn't help it, "Only, Master Dereham, I know not if I can do that. You see, I am only a girl and the daughter of a younger son. I cannot delay my marriage, nor do I have any means by which to do so."

He shook his head, and suddenly he turned, walking backward in front of her, next to his horse, holding the horse's reign. "Kathryn, pledge troth with me. Say that you will marry me, promise. Make a contract with me, for if you are married to me, then they can't make you marry anyone else. And if they do, you can tell them there is a prior contract and demand a divorce."

But Kathryn shook her head, doubtful. "I barely know you, Francis Dereham," she said.

"But do you not love me?" he asked. "I loved you from the moment I first saw you, your auburn hair, your beautiful eyes."

"Aye . . ." Kathryn hesitated. A part of her told her that, indeed, she loved Francis Dereham. But something deep within whispered that she could not trust herself to tell him so. She had known him so little. She remembered Manox who, though she'd never loved him, had seemed to be wholly devoted to her and never capable of causing her any harm. And hadn't Manox been spreading lies all over the length of the countryside. How could she trust anyone now, especially anyone she'd known such a short time.

"We will see by the by, Master Dereham," she said, and that was the only thing she would abide by, the only answer she would give him.

They returned to the stables, and if she fancied that Dereham looked a little stormy and a little angry over her refusal to pledge herself to him, she could not help but think that such roiling emotions looked good on his countenance, as he frowned and cast her smoldering looks from beneath the half-closed lids of his dark eyes.

It was exactly, she thought, like the knights in the romances of old, who were brought to grief by careless damsels and burned with an interior fire for them, despising themselves and unable to hurt the object of their desires and, yet, feeling that they had been betrayed or, perhaps, only loved insufficiently well.

He kept his silence when she curtseyed to him and left him to go back to the house.

That night she didn't expect to see him, and while Alice was combing out her brown locks, Kathryn got into bed and covered herself with her sheet and her thin blanket. She had removed her skirt, and had only, upon her body, the shirt that she'd been wearing underneath her bodice and her kirtle. It was long enough, reaching to her knees, that she would be quite decent, should she be forced to get up, and it was the clothing in which she usually slept.

She turned on her side and promptly went to sleep. In the middle of the night, she woke up a little, and it seemed to her that the bed had moved, the mattress shaking. She thought it would be Alice getting out of bed or perhaps in it.