by Diane Haeger
“Oh, now, my lord Weston,” Anne said, laughing as playfully as a young girl, which was unseemly to Jane for how little of the girl there was left in this queen. “You would do well to take care of such playful overtures for how many spies surround us. Courtly games can be seen as much more by some.”
“When the cat’s away, we all do play the more,” Norris added flirtatiously.
“I fear Sir Norris needs not such an excuse, as he attends Your Highness far more than he does poor Mistress Shelton, even in the presence of the Great Cat,” Francis Weston quipped, seeing how Norris was ignoring his betrothed, who stood nearby.
Jane watched Anne’s expression sour. She could almost see the thoughts churning around behind her dark eyes. Jane’s sympathies for Henry increased with his wife’s every giggle. Anne was unparalleled in her self-absorption, Jane thought.
“Poor, dear Weston, I fear you indict Norris only because you want our dear Madge for yourself.”
The silence that followed was broken by muffled snickers. Weston nodded to Anne with a flourish, then said, “’Tis true that I do love only one in your household.”
“And who might that be?” Anne asked with a playful little smile, clearly toying with him.
“Why, Your Highness, of course,” he replied with a bashful smile and a wink.
To her credit, Anne knew the danger in such a revelation. She bolted to her feet, her smile evaporating instantly, since everyone present could hear the exchange. Silence fell like a powerful, heavy thing as she swiftly left the room, the swish of her skirts the only sound in the vast, beamed gallery.
“Well, now, that was awkward,” her brother’s wife, Anne, remarked in Jane’s ear, as it was her custom to say.
“Indeed it was.”
“At first I thought Her Highness was entertaining Master Smeaton, but did you see the look between the queen and Weston just now?”
“’Twould have been difficult to miss,” said Jane.
“The queen plays with fire, I fear.”
“She seems to fear the heat very little,” Jane remarked coolly.
She did not see Cromwell behind her near the door with the powerful Duke of Norfolk, who was newly returned to court from the diplomatic mission to France. She missed the conspiratorial glance between them as well, one that acknowledged their mutual feeling that the queen was destined for a great fall.
It was not until the banquet that evening that Jane finally saw the king herself.
As a statement against what she had witnessed earlier between the queen and Weston, Jane wore the king’s pendant more prominently over a bodice designed to show it off. Part of her was surprised at her own hubris in doing so. She had also chosen not to hide a scar on her neck that she had received during her fight with Anne.
Yet for all of her daring, Jane felt sheltered on the arm of her brother Thomas and her protector, Nicholas Carew. Edward and Anne Seymour followed closely behind. As they walked into the swirling mix of music, candles, and laughter, her sister-in-law had a new, haughty air about her as the family rose to prominence, but at least she was pleasant enough to Jane—her new confidante—and at the end of the day, that was really all that mattered to a girl who needed the reassurance of female support now more than ever.
Lord, but he looked magnificent. That was her first thought as the king strode regally into the room amid trumpet fanfare and cheers hailing his return. Charles Brandon and Francis Bryan, newly returned from France, flanked him, all three elegantly dressed and bejeweled, their velvet caps plumed, laughing and joking as if they had not a care in the world.
In spite of everything against them, Jane felt her heart race as she caught Henry’s eye from the center of the crowd. She felt herself flush with as much excitement as embarrassment to be singled out with a prominent nod. Perhaps it truly was not a dream that she was meant to be someone meaningful to England’s king.
He approached Jane openly then, pulling her toward him through the crowd. He was smiling broadly as he drew her against his wide, slashed-velvet sleeve, then greeted each of her brothers and kissed the back of Anne Seymour’s hand.
“I trust, my lady, that you are enjoying your new accommodations?” he asked Edward’s wife, a woman to whom he had never publicly paid the slightest attention before now.
Jane had been in her company many times and had no idea he even knew Anne Seymour. Clearly, it was not just Jane’s own status that was rapidly changing. Still, driven by self-preservation, Jane surveyed the room for signs of the queen while Henry spoke to Anne. She was relieved for the moment not to see her.
“Your Majesty’s generosity is humbling. We have yet to fully take it all in,” Anne said with appropriate flattery and a deep curtsy.
“Since our accommodations are so near to each other now, I am certain we shall all become the very best of friends,” Henry said magnanimously. “Edward, you shall keep us on our toes in that regard?” he said, chuckling affably.
And then he saw the scar on Jane’s neck and his smile swiftly fell.
“Jane?”
She curtsied clumsily. “Your Majesty.”
“You have been injured. Pray, tell us how.”
“’Twas only a scratch, sire.”
“It may well be a lance blow to your exquisitely gentle flesh for how it wounds me to gaze upon it.”
Jane lifted her hand to cover her neck in mock embarrassment. He saw the pendant then, and she could see him putting the two elements together as his copper brows lifted in sudden surprise. “Lady Seymour, my new friend, I trust you shall speak the truth of this to me? Know you how this wound occurred to our dear Jane?”
Brandon and Carew exchanged a worried glance. Jane could feel the conflict thrust upon Anne, and she suddenly regretted the calculated move not to hide the evidence of her encounter with the queen.
“Speak up, girl, when your king commands!” Brandon prodded in the silence that fell.
“It came by the queen, Your Majesty,” Anne finally replied and lowered her eyes.
“The queen?” the king asked incredulously.
“She was not pleased by my good sister’s choice of jewelry, apparently, Your Majesty.”
Again Henry glanced at the pendant bearing his own image. “’Twas I, then, who caused this wound?”
No one dared at first to answer as the musicians in the gallery above played on with a lively tune. Over the music, the king said, “Jane, is this true?”
“She is the queen, sire. As her humble servant, I did not think to question her displeasure at me.”
“So I have scarred your exquisite flesh in this way by not protecting you properly.” He seemed truly to care, and that struck her. His face blanched and the genial smile was gone from his expression.
“Perhaps I should not have worn it,” Jane weakly offered, hoping he could not tell that she did not mean it.
Suddenly, Cromwell was upon them, listening intently. Then William, like a shadow, was behind him as well. God’s blood! Why was he always there, looking at her with those eyes? Silently reminding her of who she used to be when she was trying so hard to move on and become someone else?
“Would Your Majesty like me to call your physician for the lady?”
“At once, Cromwell.”
William frowned, and Jane could not bear to look at him any longer. What she felt for the king was as complex as what she felt for William. It was not an easy road any of them trod.
“This must be dealt with immediately,” the king decreed, still frowning as he nodded to Jane. “Forgive me, but I must speak with the queen. Pray, stay and enjoy your evening. I shall call upon you anon.”
Jane knew there would be no stopping him. He was angry. As Henry turned to leave, Jane’s gaze went from Henry to William. Their eyes met. His expression held jealousy; she knew hers held disappointment.
“Do you think you might actually have brought about the end of them?” Anne Seymour quietly asked Jane as they stood stock-still amid the music and
revelry after the king had gone.
“Anything that happens to Anne Boleyn has been brought about entirely by herself,” Nicholas Carew said.
An hour later, a page bent over Jane’s shoulder as everyone dined and informed her that the king desired to closet privately with her. She was to go directly to the Seymours’ new apartments, which she knew connected with His Majesty’s own. Just before her summons, the queen entered the great hall and sat beside her brother, Lord Rochford, without much fanfare, and certainly not with her customary merriment.
As Jane rose, so did Edward. “You cannot go alone in this tense new atmosphere. It would not be safe. I shall accompany you. No one will think anything of a brother and sister departing together for their accommodations.”
“Unless those people are wise enough to remember the location of those accommodations, or to notice that the king and Jane are conspicuously absent together,” Anne remarked.
Jane could feel the snap and crackle of change in the air as she and Edward followed the silent page down one long gallery after another until they came to Edward’s new apartments. At the closed door, illuminated by a flaming torch, Edward turned to his sister, took her hands up, and held them tightly. Jane could not remember a greater moment of intimacy between them in all her life. But she was important to him now. She was critical to all of the Seymours.
“I know this is a difficult time for you, sister. Much is expected of you from all of us without a great deal of assurance from any one, least of all the king. But we have all changed much since our naive childhood days in the Wiltshire countryside, and I think with a little sly work, we Seymours can all give the Boleyns a proper challenge.”
“It is your desire that I become queen?” Jane asked tentatively, still wanting his approval.
“With every fiber of my being. Do you wish it for yourself?”
A smiling image of William danced across her mind then, rich and full enough to be real, but Jane pushed it back stubbornly. You cannot do that to me any longer. You made your choice; now I am making mine…“Unlikely as I am for the role, I am beginning to want it anyway. But you and Thomas must not forsake me in this. It is all rather daunting to go up against her.”
“We are here for you, sister. So is Anne, Carew, his wife, Elizabeth, and a silently growing faction who disapprove of that Boleyn woman pretending to be queen.”
A faction? Little Jane Seymour had her own faction? She felt herself tremble at the prospect as the page pulled back the tall, carved door, ushering in a cold gust of air.
“I assume His Majesty would prefer I leave you now and return to the banquet,” Edward joked. “You can do this, Jane,” he encouraged.
“I do care for him a little.”
“Make him believe it is more than a little, and you shall have the world at your feet,” he said.
Henry was slumped over in a tall padded chair, head in his hands in a very unroyal fashion as she approached him in the Seymours’ drawing room.
“Thank you for coming, Jane. I simply could not bear all of the merriment around me this evening.”
“Had I really any choice but to come when you commanded?”
He glanced up at her, his face in this light more lined, more aged and full of worry than she had ever seen it. “Everyone has choices. Take the queen, for example. I have just been informed that some of her decisions in my absence have been, shall we say, less than wise.” He drew her down onto his lap just then, and she allowed it. The air was charged between them. “You attend her daily. What do you know of what has been occurring?”
“My access to Her Majesty has been diminished of late,” Jane demurred, suddenly not wanting to be the one to hurt him by telling him what she and everyone else already knew. “I know very little other than that she is not fond of me.”
Henry gently touched the long cinnamon-colored scar on her neck. For a moment, his jaw slackened and she saw the pain in his expression increase. “I am so terribly sorry. Anne can be a dangerous woman when she feels threatened.”
“I was told as much by the former queen.”
Henry tipped his head to one side, and she saw a grim smile break through the serious expression. “You really are not going to say things only to try to impress me, are you?”
“Never, sire.”
“How you do so remind me of Mistress Blount and a simpler time of my life,” he said wistfully. “But I have told you as much before.”
“I was mightily proud to be compared to the mother of the Duke of Richmond, sire.”
“Were you?”
“Who would not be?”
“I think not the current queen—my less than loyal wife.”
“Think you, sire, that she has actually been unfaithful?” Jane dared to ask.
“I am told to prepare myself for evidence to that effect. Men who have free access to her might well have enjoyed that liberty.” He ran a hand up the column of her neck and along her cheekbone tenderly then. The more she let go of her youthful fantasy of William, the more she liked the feel of Henry’s rough, masculine fingertips against her smooth skin, and she felt it ignite something within her again.
“There was more than one?” Jane asked with a convincing tone of innocence, thinking of how Anne had behaved publicly with both Smeaton and Norris, even Weston.
“So Cromwell reports. But he pleaded for time to find evidence before he takes part in destroying anyone’s life.”
“That seems just.”
“Oh, Jane,” he sighed, his hand falling away from her face as he laid his head wearily against the back of the chair like a man who had just fought in some great battle. “So few people around me seem to know what is just, much less how to act upon it. But you do, don’t you?”
“I like to believe that I do, sire.”
“Then what would you advise me to do?”
She was taken aback. “About the queen?”
“And about you. I love you, Jane. I know that I do. I feel it every time I look at you. But legally, for now, I am a married man, one who has struggled valiantly for years to tie myself to the one woman who might be bent on making me a laughingstock and a cuckold. God knows, she has not done her duty of making me a father. At least not one of a proper heir.” He drew in a calming breath, then exhaled.
“And here you are, so precious to me, with your honesty and innocence so tantalizingly near. And I am like a boy with a plate of warm, fresh, sweetly fragrant gingerbread before him, of which I am not allowed to partake.”
“Still, are you not a man who must lead his country first rather than follow his heart?”
He touched her throat again, but this time his hand slipped down to her cleavage and the place where the strip of lace met her warm, bare skin. His hand stilled there for a moment as he leaned over and very tenderly kissed her.
“I am a man of many loyalties and passions, Jane. ’Tis difficult for someone such as myself to give up one for the other.”
“You desire it all?”
His answer came as he kissed her again, more roughly this time, and his fingers pressed their way beneath the lace and velvet onto the swell of her breasts, then found her warm, wide nipple. “Oh, yes, God help me, that I do. What do you desire, Jane? For I do believe I would give you the world if you asked me for it.”
She could feel him grow hard as he pressed his manhood against her, and she softly said, “To maintain my honor, so long as I am an unmarried woman, sire. That is my utmost desire.”
She knew she had hit the mark perfectly, which her brothers wanted of her, when his hand stilled, then fell away from her breast. There was compassion, not anger, in his tired green eyes.
“Oh, Jane. Forgive me. You have been such good counsel, and such comfort. You deserve only respect from me and the rest of my court. I want to lift you up…I want to marry you.”
“That is not a wish for Your Majesty rightly to have,” she said in a tone schooled by years of watching Anne Boleyn.
“Not now, pe
rhaps,” he conceded on a weary sigh. “But there is nothing so constant in this world as change.”
She let a slim smile lengthen her lips, feeling for the first time in her life in control of something—even if it was only the art of seeming innocent.
“I am honored you wear my image still. It gives me hope,” he said and pressed a tender, more chaste kiss lightly onto her cheek. “Change is constant. But without hope there is nothing.”
“I suppose that is true,” she carefully conceded.
“Perhaps I should not tell you this, but Cromwell is working even now on a possible case for divorce.”
“With infidelity as the grounds?” she asked, now understanding how and why their conversation had begun as it had.
When he nodded his head affirmatively, she added, “Do you believe England would tolerate another marital fissure?”
“I am not fool enough to believe my people ever developed any sort of fondness for Anne. I would imagine most would be well-pleased to be rid of her.”
Jane only lowered her eyes. She did not dare to respond to that, because if she did, she knew he would hear pleasure in her voice, not compassion.
“Tell me only that if this divorce were to come to pass, you would look favorably upon my official overtures toward you.”
Jane felt the heat in her cheeks rise again at the mere thought of herself as Queen of England. When she lowered her gaze, Henry lifted her chin with a single steady finger—one that bore his onyx signet ring.
“Would you, then?” he pressed.
“’Twould be my great honor, sire.”
“Hal. Certainly my future wife must call me what my family always has.” He smiled at her. “I do believe we shall make a splendid match, Jane, and in it, pray God, I shall find a bit of peace, as well as a son or two.”
