The Secret Bride (23 page)

“Lady Margaret, it is an honor.” He turned to Brandon beside him then. “You will have heard of my dearest friend, Charles Brandon, Viscount Lisle?”

She nodded, smiled. “Your reputation does precede you, Lord Lisle.”

“I hope only the better parts.”

“Ah, yet those parts would hold little fascination for me.”

Her eyes were wide and pretended an innocence that was slightly appealing even to Henry as he watched the exchange.

“Dance with her, Brandon,” Henry said impulsively, his smile made wide by the second goblet of wine he had been given. “That is,
if
she will dance with
you
.”

Henry watched the slight girlish flush rise onto Margaret’s cheeks. Looking at her, a woman of thirty-three now, it was still easy to see she had been lovely once. Her mouth and her eyes wrinkled at the corners, deepening when she smiled, but he liked that about her. It marked a life fully lived, he thought, the bad and the good. He also saw Brandon’s charismatic response—that charming smile, a hand easily extended. He always secretly marveled at his friend’s unfailing ability with women. He had known Brandon was good—he had not forgotten how good, but it had been a long time since he had seen it played out before him, and never so easily on a woman so influential.

Henry knew the rumor about Brandon and Mary. But he believed the idea that it was anything beyond flirtation was simply a creative fantasy wrought by bored courtiers. Mary knew her duty too well for that. She would marry the emperor’s grandson, as she was prepared to do, and that would be the end of it. But was it actually possible that what Buckingham had said was right? Could Brandon have designs on Mary beyond that charming brand of flirtation of his? Henry knew well enough that his friend was ambitious; he certainly had no illusions about that. Yet to think Charles would be foolish enough to covet Henry’s most prized possession seemed impossible.

As quickly as he allowed the thought that Buckingham had set in his mind, Henry stubbornly refused it. No, Charles, his dear friend, would never be so great a fool. He was charming and ambitious, not stupid. But if any man had the ability to make an emperor’s daughter fall in love with him and face the challenge of convincing that same ruler that a Master of the Horse was a fit partner for his daughter—it was Charles Brandon. Seeing him with her now, Henry was certain of it. A middle-aged widow seemed just vulnerable enough to make such a notion not seem entirely absurd. Binding Brandon to Margaret in order to ensure Mary’s marriage at last to the Prince of Castile—now that would be like cream rising to the top of a rich cup of milk. Charles Brandon was probably the only man in the world who could make a lonely widow convince her powerful father that such an arrangement was her idea.

Henry sat comfortably, watching them both with a discerning eye as they made their way across the vast high tent to the area set up for dancing by torchlight on grand Turkish carpets. He allowed the fantasy of it all to blossom fully in his mind. Henry smiled to himself, noticing then that Buckingham, agile and wiry, had been quick to sit beside him, occupying the seat that Wolsey had been lumbering awkwardly forward trying to take. His almoner stood for a moment, chin pressed into his neck, bushy brows fused, staring disgruntled at a row of chairs all taken up before he turned and found a seat several places away. Henry pretended not to notice the silent, all-too-common little power play. There was far too much infighting at court to take any of it. It was his courtiers’ problem, not his. Besides, right now he was far too fascinated by the wonderful little possibility of a dual marriage.

“You dance impressively for a commoner, my lord,”

Henry heard Margaret remark of Charles with a slightly giddy giggle as he bowed to her in time with the music.

“And Your Highness dances even more impressively
with a commoner. It cannot be easy.”

“You make it feel so, my lord.”

They turned again, bowed again, and the song was at an end. As they walked together to the dais, Henry greeted them, his youthful smile broad and beaming. As Margaret turned to speak with the Duke of Buckingham, Henry leaned 
in next to Brandon as he sank into the chair reserved for him at Henry’s other side.

“Did you enjoy her?”

“She is a tolerably good dancer.”

“She is also a very important widow.”

Brandon chuckled at that and took a swallow of his own wine from a goblet waiting for him beside a brimming bowl of fruit. “I have had my fill of widows, Henry, if
you
remember.”

“This one is the Regent of the Netherlands, which would be rather a grand step up from your usual prey.”

“A step up for whom?” Brandon focused on Henry then, and was silent for a moment amid the strains of another song that had just begun and which masked their conversation.

“I know that look.” Henry smiled cleverly.

“A look only of concern, I assure you.”

“Why would it be so? You are an unmarried man and a remarkably ambitious one at that.”

“Emperors’ daughters do not align themselves with knights, or even viscounts.”

“Ah, but they
do
, from time to time, align themselves with important dukes.”

Brandon sharpened his gaze as he fingered the silver wine goblet. “And do you know of a particular important young duke who is yet unmarried?”

“Your service to me has been invaluable, Charles, as has your friendship. You know that. You deserve an ample reward for this campaign.” Henry toyed with the signet ring on his forefinger. “I had planned to announce it when we returned to England, but there is no reason my most trusted friend in the world should not know my intention now.”

“You are making a Master of the Horse into a duke?”

“I am seeing my greatest friend in the world made Duke of Suffolk. I say this only by way of telling you that, should you come to have an interest in a certain beautiful princess”—he began to smile broadly until he saw the odd expression that dawned on Charles’s face, one almost of surprise—“and if she were to return that interest, you should know that your status would put you within reach of such a liaison.”

“Your Highness’s faith in me is an honor to which I shall try to be worthy,” he only said.

“I have no doubt.” Henry smiled. “Because I
do
have the utmost faith in you.”

In the semi-darkness of dawn, Charles sat hunched, legs sprawled and bare, on the edge of the bed beside a sleeping Margaret, and raked his hands back through his hair. He should be enormously proud of himself, knowing he had not lost his touch. Instead, he was angry and not a little disgusted. He could not look back at her sleeping there peacefully beside him. He could blame what had happened last night on too much of her sweet French wine, or the lateness of the hour. He could try that. . . . He could blame it on the powerful needs of a man like himself, or even on her willingness.

In the night, a servant had slipped in and neatly arranged the regent’s dress, her petticoats, her stockings and her small jeweled slippers. But, in a clear, silent statement, his clothing had been left in a pile on the floor as he had discarded them beside her bed. Charles frowned and pushed away the surge of memories filling his mind. Henry had asked him to consider marrying Margaret, not to bed with her. But the only person he wished ever to marry was the one woman he could not have. The same one who had ridden off to Hampton Court without so much as a farewell. That small bit of defiance he could still maintain had taunted him into what had happened last night, and he almost made himself believe it.

“It is a lovely morning,” Margaret said on a sigh, her voice slightly honeyed and rich, yet, mercifully, nothing at all like Mary’s.

The sound of it brought Charles back to the reality of his life, and his situation, very boldly, as the sun through the windows deepened to pink and gold.

He felt her hands on his shoulders then and her breasts against his back. “Tell me, Charles, what would you like to do on this glorious day?”

Would that I could just see Mary’s face instead smiling back at me when I turned around . . . feel her sweet breath moving through my hair . . . know that my day, all of it, would be spent in her company.

“I, of course, must serve at the king’s pleasure.”

“Has he not an ample supply of courtiers and advisers to call upon for that?”

“For some reason, His Highness considers me indispensable.”

“I can see where he would.”

Brandon stood and turned back to her, determined to face what he had done by regarding her fully in the broad light of morning. The emperor’s daughter lay on her side, her breasts full and her curved hips slender. Her hair, obviously once a rich chestnut brown, now bearing shafts of silver, fell to the side across the spray of pillows behind her. He thought then, cruelly, perhaps, how she had seemed so much more attractive by lamplight. She held out her warm, slim hand, and for a moment he actually considered taking it and letting her draw him back against her. But that would solve nothing, and it would complicate everything. It certainly would not ease the ache battering his heart and closing off his mind to the honor Henry had paid him by offering a dukedom, as well as a regal marriage, and the trust and love that it implied.

She fingered a coil of his tousled hair just above his neck in a seductive way that drew him back to the moment. “Would I embarrass you, Charles, if I told you that you remind me a great deal of my husband?”

Charles stopped for a moment, surprised. He looked at her again, hearing something vulnerable in that. May God forgive me, he thought, but until that moment he had not felt an ounce of compassion for her, or thought of her like the flesh-and-blood woman she was. For any other man in the world, she would be a magnificent partner—a prize. “You would honor me,” he finally responded, trying to press away the mounting guilt for how sincere he knew he was sounding to her.

“He was a good man, handsome, just as you are. Perhaps not quite so smart or ambitious, however.”

“Ah, yet he captured
you,
which makes him smarter than anyone.”

Margaret smiled at that, then said on a sigh, “I do miss him, the easy companionship and the conversation most of all.”

Charles knew well of Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, her second husband. He had died, leaving her widowed and childless, in 1504 after three years of marriage. He could see that, for her, the marriage had been more than a political liaison. Charles understood that and felt it himself. His own second wife, Anne, had loved him that way and a part of him, even at a time when he was wildly calculating in his ambition, had loved her in return . . . just not enough.

If it was possible for a man like him to have changed, Charles had.

He would not make that mistake in a wife again.

That evening the vast tent, striped blue and gold silk, was decorated to receive another guest. The Prince of Castile had journeyed to visit his aunt and to meet his now victorious future brother-in-law.

Gossip about marriages and war swirled like a heady perfume around the flickering candles, the crisp linen, the silver and the grand display of food. The first thing Charles saw upon his arrival was Henry, too taken up by the letter he had just been brought from Katherine to see anything else.

He stood near the opening of the tent, reading it again. But he had already told Charles what it said.  King James, whom Henry considered a vital ally since marrying his older sister, Margaret, had become a dangerous opportunist, threatening Henry with war on a second front.  The Scot knew well that the English were in France and, bargaining on Henry’s youth and inexperience, he had chosen this moment to challenge the English king.

Henry had fired back an angry response of warning, through his ambassador, that had gone unheeded. Now, in a stunning turn of events that had completely shaken him, a messenger stood before him telling him that Katherine, pregnant, but ever the proud daughter of a warrior queen, had elected on her own to be more in this instance to her husband than mere regent.

“
Jésu,
she cannot! She carries the heir of England as she rides into Scotland. And I will
not
lose another.” He was raging so loudly that the music ceased. The crowd assembled inside the tent looked up at him and watched him storm, heavy-footed, back outside. Charles quickly followed.