No Will But His (17 page)

She looked at him, and she ducked her head. She had experienced such bliss with him these last few days, that she could not imagine being happy—or married—with anyone else, either. "I will marry you, Francis Dereham," she said. "And I will be yours."

"Well then," he said. "We are betrothed. And you know that once we are betrothed we are as good as married and no one, not even the church, will object to our sleeping together and taking all the joys that married couples do."

"Oh," she said. Though she wasn't sure how they were to bring this about, or how she could refuse her uncle and her grandmother should they choose to marry them to someone else, yet she was sure that she would somehow manage it and absolutely sure that it was right and meet.

"And now I go," Dereham said, fastening his clothes, and leaning over to kiss her. "Keep well, my dear wife, and I shall see you in the sunny morning for our ride."

Chapter Twenty-three

From then on, Dereham called her "my dear wife." He procured her a length of fabric which she gave to the seamstress to make into a cap. The seamstress embroidered it with true lover's knots, which Francis said was just as it should be.

Every night he came, and they caressed, their caresses growing ever more daring. It seemed to Kathryn that day by day she got to know his body till it seemed like she knew it as well as she knew her own—she knew how he tasted and how he felt and what each of his reactions meant, and she knew how to please him well. But as yet, they had not done that to which he referred to as what husband and wife did together.

She was afraid that she might get with child, but Francis told her, for now, he'd pull out right quick before he spilled his seed in her. "We needn't get a child unless we list it," he said. "And we won't list it until we're married for everyone to see and in our own estate."

She'd always heard losing your maidenhead would hurt, and also that you would bleed all over the bed. But it did not hurt very much, and the only blood was but a spot on the blanket. Of course, it also didn't last very long. There was the moment of his inserting his part into hers and the sudden shock of the intimate connection, and then, it seemed like, it was done.

She enjoyed most the moment afterward when he held her tight in his arms and kissed her fervently, telling her how beautiful she was and how now they were truly married.

Kathryn fell asleep in Dereham's arms, but she woke up alone in the morning. However, she fretted not, for she knew he would be back.

Chapter Twenty-four

One month slid into the next, their evening parties and the love making with Francis, all seeming like part of some enchanted land where only good things would happen. In September they heard that the queen had an heir, and the duchess seemed unhappy about it, but not for long, for it seemed the queen, that whey-faced wench, died shortly after giving birth to the prince.

Kathryn started noticing the duchess looking at her with a long, speculative glance, while Kathryn went about her usual tasks, or sat in the duchess's chamber, playing the virginal or the lute while the duchess read and signed papers or talked to her tenants and farmers.

And Dereham kept coming into the room. Intercourse got more interesting, too, as it didn't last just the space of a breath but longer, and it roused feelings in her that even Manox's talented tongue had not managed. She learned to pleasure him, also, with her hands and her mouth and every part of her being.

"My dear wife," he called her, and well might he have done, for she was his wife in all but that neither priest nor parent had heard their betrothal. But it was learned of, anyway, in yard and dormitory. Not that they ever told it to anyone, or not that boldly.

In spring, the duchess said they would go to Lambeth again, just a few miles from London. She made some remark about the court, and Kathryn looked at her in surprise. "The court, ma'am! But there is no queen, so there can be no place for me."

The duchess looked up from a pile of papers and stared at Kathryn in silence for a moment, then cackled. "Ah, as the sun rises in the East, Kathryn Howard, there will soon be another queen."

"But why?" Kathryn asked. "How? Surely now he has a prince an' heir and—"

"And he'll want him a queen to warm his bed, aye, and to stand behind him at ceremonies. And no throne is so secure that he will not want a younger brother for Prince Edward, either, now that he's made both princesses illegitimate."

"But . . ." Kathryn looked at the lute she'd been playing and tried to count the number of wives the king had already. Three  she made it, and everyone knew he had mistresses, too, like Bessie Blount, who'd been the mother of his older son. "But how many wives can he mean to have!"

The duchess cackled, spontaneously, at Kathryn's shocked look, and laughed outright as Kathryn looked yet more shocked. "He'll have as many as he wants, and his being the king. Didn't you hear, girl, about King Solomon."

"What, with his thousand wives?" Kathryn asked. The story had always seemed to her rather scandalous.

"Indeed. And he an anointed of God. So you see, the king can have as many an' more."

"But King Solomon, madam," Kathryn said, "didn't divorce them or behead them when he wished to take a new one."

"No indeed," the duchess said. "He had them all at the same time. I've always thought to myself what it might mean and how it might work. Did he have them all in at once or a goodly number of them, or did he draw sorts? And how did he stop the squabbling that is common where many women gather together? What's more, how did he know if their children were his or not? Surely he couldn't keep an eye on each of them every minute of the day nor could there be guards enough . . ." She seemed lost in thought for a moment. "Eunuchs, I suppose." And looked up to what Kathryn felt must be her expression frozen in horror. The duchess laughed again. "Close your mouth, girl, before you catch a fly. No, our king cannot play Solomon, though it's often been said he looks on the maids of honor as his own personal seraglio. But there's been no proof of that, save only Bessie Blount, and she . . . well, no better than a common drab."

The Duchess stopped talking, as Kathryn managed to close her mouth and turned her attention to her lute, plucking a desultory tune upon the strings. After a while, she became aware of the duchess's eyes on her once more. "But you know, Kathryn," the duchess said, as though she were continuing an interrupted conversation and merely adding to reasons already given. "You know that the king is getting old, and soon, whatever wife he picks will be his last—and with his son still small and both his daughters declared illegitimate, think what power his last wife will have. Why! She might as well be queen herself, in her own right."

Kathryn thought about it and sighed as, for the first time, she understood what power Queen Anne had been trying to grasp when marrying a man that much older than herself. It was well known that dowagers could have more power than anyone else, male or female, for they had the normal dispensations of a woman, but could rule money and lands like a man. To be the dowager of England . . .

"Ah, I see you understand," the duchess said.

And Kathryn understood indeed. The power of it and the freedom and, she supposed, the glory and power for her family. She sighed. "Ah, well," she said, "it is not likely to be anybody we know." She'd heard rumors and repeated them, while her fingers played, heedless, with the lute. "I've heard he's sent delegations abroad to look at foreign princesses, though I didn't give it much thought, what with his wife so recently dead."

"I don't give much thought to his sending delegations, either," the duchess said. "Our king has always seemed to prefer Englishwomen."

They spoke no more of the king's marital prospects or of the wondrous power that would come to his dowager. Instead, Kathryn played her lute till she was dismissed to walk out into a household that was already preparing for its trip to Lambeth.

Rugs and blankets were out in the big yard between stable and house, getting beaten and aired, prior—Kathryn assumed—to being rolled up and packed for the trip to London.

And amid the bustling servants, the confusion of horses being picked for the trip, and of carriages and litters being cleaned, Kathryn walked right into a group of her fellow maids and the gentlemen in attendance. She registered a momentary shock at seeing Manox—a thinner and unhealthy-looking Manox—among them.

He gave her a dark, suffering glance, which she guessed was meant to stab her through the soul, but she let her eyes glance over him, remembering the duchess's injunction to not try to cheer up every sad soul or heal every harm someone told her she had caused.

Instead, she joined the group without looking between whom she was standing and was startled to feel a hand around her waist, then smiled when she saw that it was Francis standing next to her.

"Hark," Alice said. "Me thinks that Master Dereham means to have Mistress Kathryn Howard for his wife."

"You might guess twice," Francis said, laughing. "And guess worse." He grinned, "Is it not so, my dear wife?"

"Indeed," she said, smiling. "It is so, dear husband."

It seemed to her that Manox flinched at her words and went a shade paler, but she looked away.

"Is that the hat made from the fabric I gave you?" Dereham asked, taking her hand and squeezed it. "What a handsome hat it is. With true lover's knots upon it."

Kathryn nodded and looked up, and Manox was quite gone.

Chapter Twenty-five

They came upstairs by twos and threes in the night. Dereham was, as usual, first and got into bed with Kathryn straightway, pulling the curtains closed around them. She had on her loose shirt that she wore under her normal clothes and nothing else. He wore a doublet and hose, but got under the covers, which meant, she knew, that they'd end up, sooner or  later, naked in bed.

Upon first getting in bed, he kissed her hard, holding her close. "How difficult it is," he said, "to prevent myself from kissing you every time I see you."

She smiled at him, as soon as he let her go. "You were daring enough," she said. "Holding my hand like that in the yard, and calling me your dear wife."

"Well . . . an' did you not see Manox's face? He richly deserved it, the presumptuous rooster, thinking he was ever good enough to touch the hem of your dress."

Kathryn thought of Manox, on his knees, literally kissing the hem of her dress and shivered. Such a form of obsession seemed to her very little short of madness. What would not a man thus infected do? She suspected he would do anything and dare anything, and she did not think she was far wrong.

"Ah, Manox is all in the past now," she said, as she leaned near Dereham for another kiss. "For I am wholly yours."

He kissed her hard, then soft, then kissed her forehead, and frowned a little. "Indeed, Kathryn, and do you not forget it."

"How could I forget it?"

"I know not," Dereham said. "But I don't want to be like poor Manox, forever parted from your heart."

"How could you be," she said, taking his hand and setting it over her heart, "and you so near it."

He smiled this time, then sighed. "A time might come . . ." he said, and frowned. Then took a deep breath, as though a man forcing himself to plunge into a frozen lake. "You see, Kathryn, I heard . . ."

"What heard you? That I would forget you?"

He chuckled. His hands caressed her shoulders and ran down her sides, as though they needed to remember her contours. "Not quite that, though I fear it. I heard that your grandmother, aye, and your uncle are even now plotting to marry you."

"Marry me!" Kathryn said. "Then you heard more than I did. To whom do they intend to give me?"

"Some knave," he said. "Thomas Culpepper by name. It seems he's very great in the king's house and his favored companion, and thus they seek royal favor by delivering you onto his hand."

"Culpepper!" she said in astonishment, remembering the russet-haired man who had so devoutly squired what seemed to her now a very little girl through the perils of a London gone mad for the coronation. "Thomas Culpepper!" She realized it had been only four years ago that she had met him, but what a time it seemed. He had treated her—aye, and she had felt—like a very young girl and utterly lost. And he had failed to visit her as he'd said he would. She'd never even seen him again. And he'd certainly never fulfilled his promises to her. "He promised me oranges," she said, and was surprised to see a jealous look inflame Dereham's dark eyes.

"Kathryn!" he said. "You know him, then!" He pulled a little away from her on the bed, as though he thought she might have Culpepper hidden under the covers, Kathryn thought.

"No, no," she hastened to say. "Or only a very little. You see, he is my cousin. My distant cousin, upon my mother's side, my mother's name before marriage being Jocasta Culpepper. But I haven't seen Thomas since I was a very little girl." She thought of him holding her in his arms, as he twirled her round and round.

In her memory he was a very tall man and more powerful than any she'd ever met since, able to hold her and twirl her, and do with her as he pleased. She was sure this was but because her memory of him came from when she was very small. She had grown since. She wondered what he would look like to her now.

"And he promised you oranges?" Dereham frowned at her, his expression puzzled, as though he were making a desperate effort at understanding.

"Aye. He said he would come visit and bring me oranges. But he never did."

"You see," Dereham said, smiling. She could tell from his smile that he was imagining her as a much smaller girl than a mere four years ago. "You cannot go and join your fate to such an oath breaker."

"Indeed, I cannot," Kathryn said, and smiled back, thinking that in her mind the whole event seemed as though it had happened many, many years ago, and why should it not be so? Why should she tell Dereham anything that would distress him? What good would come of it? But her heart beat just a little faster. If she were to find herself betrothed to Thomas Culpepper by the force and will of both families, how could she avoid it? How could she even oppose it? It was very well of Dereham to say that she should say nay, or else say she was pre-contracted, but how would any take their contract seriously?