No Will But His (29 page)

She'd nodded. "Margaret Douglas."

"I only miss her as I'd miss my own heart had it been torn from my chest," he said. The way he said it, each word carefully enunciated, made Kathryn realize that his seeming lack of feeling wasn't, in fact, because he'd not cared about his paramour but that he cared so much that he dared not say anything, for fear that once it flowed out he'd not be able to stop.

He was tightly controlling a roiling pit of emotion trying to burst out, but she had to ask him, "What made you do it, then? I know she would be a great catch, but sure you know the king would never let you have her! Surely you know it would be death to attempt her. You're lucky to have escaped with your life."

His answer had been a laugh, short and hollow, like the tolling of a bell telling of death. "Lucky, little Kathryn? Lucky? Know you not that being dead is much easier than living with a broken heart."

"Charles!"

He shook his head and looked ahead of him at the darkness of the trees in the garden. A little wind had started up, stirring dust from the long-dry ground and hitting upon Kathryn's exposed face and hands like tiny stinging slaps.

"I would do it again, you know," Charles said. "Tomorrow if opportunity presented."

"But why, if you knew you could never marry her?"

"Ah, for the time with her, that's why. Even if it had been no more than a few hours . . ." He shook his head and looked at her. "You've never loved, have you, Kathryn? Not loved like that, not loved madly. If you had, you would understand. When two souls knit together at first sight, any risk is worth it for one minute, one hour with the one you love. Even if you know that you must die for it."

Chapter Forty

In October they came to London, and Kathryn glided into town at night on a very grand barge surrounded by her own people. At a banquet, afterward, all the worthy of London paid their respects to her.

In the morning, the king asked her if she felt equal to receiving Anne of Cleves. "For I promised her," he said, "that she'd come to court whenever she so wished, and if I keep her at bay, people will invent some infamy or other and her party will go. It must be seen, my lady, that you two are friends and like sisters." He looked at Kathryn with a worried expression. "But I know you have so open and frank a nature and are so shy of dissimulation that I am afraid of asking you to undertake this and in public yet."

Kathryn was forced to smile. She could not imagine why the king thought she needed dissimulation, except that during these months she'd come to know him somewhat. He joined to his fear that people would find him, himself, not the king—Harry without the crown, as he called his natural self—repulsive, a strange and great illusion that every woman on whom he deigned to rest his favor came to love him madly. She thought that was what he thought—that she must be jealous of Anne of Cleves because Anne of Cleves had spent all those nights by his side and, therefore—even if she'd left him as good a maiden as she'd arrived—Kathryn might resent her.

She forced her smile and bowed her head and tried to reassure him without lying too openly and without offending him. "It is true," she said, "that I find it very hard to pretend that which I do not feel, but Your Majesty knows my sole care is for your happiness and to make you rejoice that you chose me as your wife. If Your Majesty needs me to be kind and gracious and to behave to my Lady of Cleves as though we were close friends, then we shall do so." Latching onto a memory of the past and knowing that the two of them had most often talked during walks in the garden or while petting the royal court's excessively large number of pet cats and dogs, she added, "Only perhaps, if it were possible to procure two young spaniels of the kind the ladies at the court favor, for my Lady of Cleves loved them exceedingly and I do not think that she took any of them with her. A good breeding pair, perhaps, so she can treasure them and enjoy the company of their offspring."

The king had smiled. "You are graciousness itself, Kathryn. I shall arrange for my gentlemen to seek those dogs out. Also, if you will permit me, my sweetheart, I will arrange for two gentlemen to attend you and her, should you wish to dance or in otherwise to do as will amuse you with music or dainties or whatever you ladies do in private. If I spend overmuch time with her, people will say that I am contemplating bringing her back into my bed. It is best you two be seen to be as close as sisters."

And so it was that Anne of Cleves came to court. While Kathryn felt no trepidation at all over the reception of the queen she had displaced, yet the situation must be awkward. She did not know how Anne of Cleves felt. She remembered the former queen's innocent joy in her position, her certainty that the king loved her, though he never made love to her, and she wondered if perhaps the older woman resented her.

On the appointed day Kathryn waited in her chamber, seated upon a chair that wasn't a throne and yet gave the impression of one, and surrounded by her closest maids when the door opened and Anne of Cleve's was announced.

Kathryn didn't know what she expected, but she did not expect for the other woman to fall upon her knees and, on her knees, approach the throne.

It was partly because she wanted to obey the king and be seen to love this woman as her sister, but partly because she felt a horrified sense that this was wrong, that Kathryn jumped up and met Anne of Cleves halfway up the chamber, taking her by the hands, kissing her on each cheek—which with the taller woman on her knees was at a very convenient height indeed. "Rise, Lady of Cleves, rise, for you embarrass me. You must not be so humble before me. What am I, but the most humble of your maids? And you the daughter of a prince and the adopted sister of my lord. Rise, please, rise."

Hesitantly, as though shocked at such emotion from her hostess, Anne of Cleves rose slowly and spoke in English that was no longer halting, even if it was marred still by a strong German accent. "Your Majesty," she said, "must understand that I was very afraid of offending you."

"Offending me, you? You, who had ten times the reason to be angry at me?"

"But why would I be angry at you?" Anne of Cleves asked, confused. "For well I know that you did nothing to replace me. It was only that the king preferred you to me, and we all know what men are." She smiled a little at that, as Katherine led her back to the chair that had now been set beside the one Kathryn had occupied. "You can no more control them than I could. I am glad the king, who was a gracious and kind lord to me in all but that he could not love me, has found a lady so suited to his temper, and I vow I hope for the longest and happiest life for both of you, and many children to gladden the kingdom."

After that, Kathryn had dismissed her maids, and she had sat with Anne of Cleves and talked. It should have been awkward, and they should have found their conversation halting and slow. But instead, Kathryn found that she was speaking to the one woman in the world who knew exactly the life she was living, and who understood her frustrations and distress at being always on display.

Before they fully realized it, they were discussing the embarrassment of everyone prostrating themselves at their approach and the natural shame of having such things as their monthly cycles known to all.

There was only one moment of sadness when the former queen asked Kathryn if she was quite sure that the king behaved to her as he should to a wife. Kathryn understood this to mean that Anne of Cleves was asking her if she was quite sure that she was no longer a maiden. Kathryn assured her of this and a fleeting shadow crossed Anne of Cleves's face. Then she smiled and said, "I find it unlikely that I will ever marry, but I have asked the king if I can have the Lady Elizabeth with me at Richmond, for I feel like she's as a daughter to me, and I've seen her there often."

From that they'd talked about the king's children—that goodly babe, Edward, fussed over by an army of nurses and maids; Elizabeth, precocious, inquisitive and already showing signs of what the dowager duchess would doubtless call the Howard charm;, Mary, proud and reserved. "I do not think," Kathryn said, "she gives me the deference due her mother."

At this Anne of Cleves had laughed. "But how can she, Your Majesty, when she is older than you?" And Kathryn's humor, catching on that, made her laugh at her own pretensions. "I owe I'd not thought of it that way."

"She's well enough, is Mary," Anne of Cleves said. "We correspond and meet sometimes. She likes to speak of books and theology, and the theology she learned is so different from the one I learned that we find we have everything to talk about."

At that moment the two puppies were brought in, and Kathryn presented them to Anne of Cleves. They were full young, just removed from their mothers and very beautiful, with large, liquid eyes. Anne's reaction was all Kathryn had hoped and for a while they played with and petted the puppies.

"I think I'll call this one William," Anne said, at last, seizing hold of the little male. "Wilhelm. See how his mouth is set in such a scowl? He looks exactly like my brother when I displeased him, which I'm afraid happened very often. Though the puppy," she continued as the little animal licked her, "seems by far the more affectionate."

They were both laughing over this when the king came in. Kathryn quickly asked a servant to take the puppies away for now, until my Lady of Cleves required them, then rose to greet the sovereign. He embraced her and kissed her, then embraced and kissed Anne of Cleves with perhaps more warmth than Kathryn had ever seen him show that lady.

The three of them sat together at supper, and a right merry supper it was. Now that Anne knew enough English to make jokes, she proved a very suitable conversationalist. And now that the king was no longer forced to be married to her and thus kept from his heart's desire, he seemed to genuinely enjoy her company.

But after dinner he left them, saying he was too old to dance—an amusement both girls had expressed an interest in—and that he would send in two of his gentlemen to partner them. He ignored Kathryn's protests that "Fie, my lord is not too old," kissed them and embraced them, then left them.

Musicians came in and set up their instruments.

And then two gentlemen came in and bowed to them. One of them was Charles Howard, Kathryn's brother. The other one . . .

Momentarily, Kathryn couldn't breathe. He was a tall man, with hair as red as the king's own hair must have been in his spring. His features were perfectly regular and pleasant. His eyes oval, well cut, and expressive beneath his arched eyebrows. And his lips were sensuous and seemed to come to a resting position in a little smile. He was shapely of body, too, with muscular legs and a well-built chest that could not be hidden even by the richly broidered and ornamented doublet he wore.

But describing him meant nothing. He was all that, yes, but he was so much more. The effect of him compassed his presence, something that could not be described, nor seen, but could surely be felt. And he moved like a cat, with ease and naturalness.

Her hands clenched upon her skirt, her throat closed. She was aware of Anne of Cleves' giving her an odd look and her brother Charles, a knowing one. After which Charles drew Anne of Cleves into conversation, probably, Kathryn thought, to save her from seeing how stricken Kathryn was.

Knowing she was stricken allowed her to conquer it, though. She drew herself up proudly. "My lord," she said, though her voice might be a croak.

He gave her a very deep bow, and she thought that the bow was as much out of respect as to hide a smile of the deepest mischief, a trace of which remained upon his lips as he straightened.

"My lady queen," he said. "I am your cousin, Thomas Culpepper, and I believe we've met once before."

Now she felt her color come up in waves upon her face, but she had an excuse, and seized upon it. She laughed, a shaky, unsteady laughter. "We have indeed," she said. "How well I remember. And I was seized with embarrassment remembering how that young Kathryn must have annoyed you and kept you from the natural entertainments of a gentleman on a coronation night."

He laughed easily. "I don't think you kept me from anything," he said. "Save only perhaps getting very drunk on the free wine flowing from all the fountains."

"I am sure you would not have gotten drunk," she said, and turned to Charles, so blinded by her confusion that she seemed to see him as through a mist. Even through the mist, she realized how concerned her brother looked and how much she must sound unlike herself, but she tried to force herself to be normal and said, "Charles, I met Thomas at the coronation of our cousin Anne. I'm afraid I'd got quite lost, separated from our grandmother's ladies, and he found me wandering about in a most disreputable manner."

"Not disreputable," he said. "Only lost."

"Disreputable. And he devoted the rest of the night to playing squire to a little girl. Though it will shock you to learn that when he left me at our grandmother's, he promised me he would be back to visit me and give me oranges, and he never did."

"That doesn't surprise me at all," Charles said, hiding his alarm well beneath a veil of amusement, but not so well that Kathryn didn't perceive it. "Thomas is well known for disappointing ladies' expectations." He smiled brightly at both Kathryn and Anne of Cleves. "And now, my ladies, shall we dance?"

They'd danced, all four of them a very long time. First the traditional dances and then more modern ones and finally some dances from her country that Anne of Cleves taught them. She'd never got to dance them in her country, she said, since her brother was so strict, but she had seen them danced and now that she was her own mistress, she'd been learning them alone in her room.

After Kathryn got used to Thomas Culpepper's presence, some of her awkwardness vanished. Not the odd sensation that looking at him gave her. She still felt as though one look at him made her unable to breathe, caused her heart to clench in her chest, and made her quite unable to think clearly.

But as with wine or strong beer, more exposure lent some immunity. She could look at him without showing her interest and treat him like the cousin he was without causing Charles to give her odd looks.