Betrayed, Betrothed and Bedded

by Juliet Landon

  Looking back on that particular night, as Ginny did so often in the following months, she realised that she’d been in a daze, rather like a dream that she knew made no sense yet could not be halted. ‘I shall have to stay, mistress,’ Sir Jon said to Molly as the door closed on the last of their guests, ‘if I go out there, I may be seen and that would not help our cause.’

  ‘Then, if my mistress doesn’t need me?’ she said, looking at Ginny.

  ‘Er...no, you go, Molly. I’ll manage,’ Ginny whispered. ‘Goodnight and thank you. Sleep well.’

  Molly would have wished her the same, but had the wit not to. Once they were alone, the antagonism that had worked so well in the garden only hours before seemed inappropriate after a ceremony in which they had promised to marry ‘at some time in the future’, which, if the king had his way, would be sooner rather than later. Spreading her hands in a helpless gesture, Ginny shook her head, looked for a chair, and sat down heavily as though her legs had softened. ‘This is quite ridiculous,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been pushed into this, Sir Jon. You could not have expected it to happen this way any more than I did. I don’t know how a man must feel when he’s been manoeuvred into—’

  ‘Shh!’ he said. ‘I haven’t been manoeuvred, mistress. If I had not wanted to take you for my wife, then believe me, I would have refused. He wouldn’t have killed me for declining his invitation.’

  ‘He would not have offered you rewards either, would he?’

  Sir Jon came to squat on his haunches before her where his head was on a level with hers. The candlelight caught at the high cheekbones, and the dark line of his chin covered with soft hair that she had felt upon her skin. Pouches of laugh lines gathered beneath his eyes and she knew he was amused, which she thought odd, in the circumstances. ‘Shall we not go into all that again?’ he said quietly. ‘You are tired. You’ve had an eventful day that hasn’t been easy for you. Perhaps we should delay talking about the future until another time. It’s too late to go into all that again.’

  As before, talking was her best defence against something she did not want to happen, so when she began again, his response was to take one of her hands to stop the flow of protests, whatever they were. ‘I know what the problem is, mistress. So this is what we’ll do. We have to make it look as if we’ve been to bed together. In theory, that is what’s required of us.’

  ‘In theory?’ she said, revealing at once by the squeak in her voice that he had cleverly identified the cause of her concern. ‘How...in theory?’

  ‘We shall be asked if we have actually lain together and we shall have to say yes, because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You not being available to the king.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So all we have to do is to share the same bed and lay side by side. That’s all. I have never taken a woman unwillingly, mistress, and I shall not start with you. You are more than safe, from me and from His Grace. I’m sure that’s what you’d prefer, isn’t it?’

  Whatever she had been expecting to happen, this was something she had not thought of, and now it came as a shock to her to hear Sir Jon finding a way out of a delicate situation that any man would have taken advantage of without a second thought. It was true that she had no wish to go to bed with him on this night or any other. He did not want her and she did not want him, but he might have given her the option of refusing him in a maidenly fashion, instead of conspiring how to deceive the interested parties who would ask questions tomorrow. Not that she’d had much time to imagine how it would be to suffer his lovemaking, but she had thought of how she might offer various excuses that would be sure to disappoint him. After all, how many women would have refused him since his wife departed? she wondered. Probably none. Yet how else was she supposed to make her disapproval of him clear except by being so reluctant in bed that he would derive absolutely no pleasure from it? And now he had removed that chance from her with his damned chivalry. Was his suggestion what she would prefer? Or would she have preferred him to make just a small attempt to win her? Something like the kiss in the chapel?

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘That is what I would prefer, too. I believe that would suit both of us, Sir Jon. I’m sure you cannot be any more eager for the intimate part of the business than I am. But heaven only knows how I’m to shed these clothes when I cannot reach the back. I may have to ask for your help, lacking Molly’s assistance.’ It was, she thought, an inspired idea that would show him what he had just forfeited.

  Recognising a certain confusion in the young lady’s mind in which her curiosity conflicted with her reluctance to satisfy it, he continued with the chivalric conduct he believed was probably the safest while her nerves were so on edge, her body tired, her thoughts too packed with happenings beyond her control. ‘Of course, mistress. If you will turn, I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘Are the sleeves to be untied first? Or the laces?’

  Ginny suspected he knew the answer to that when he began deftly to untie her sleeves, then peeled each layer off and laid it aside as efficiently as Molly would have done. Steering her round with firm hands on her waist, he began to unlace her bodice, removing each of the pieces one by one with none of the chatter that Molly would have offered. By the sureness of the process, Ginny was sure he’d done this before, more than once.

  She had tried to be matter of fact about it, telling herself that, having been forced into this commitment against her will, she would now have to make the best of it and accept those aspects about which she could do nothing while making her objections plain in every other way open to her. Including intimacy. She now began to see that this was not going to be quite as straightforward as she had planned. His fingers, warm and firm, touched her skin here and there and, whether he knew it or not, sent tiny shivers of delicious shock flowing through her before she could control them. Even though he was doing no more than Molly would have done, the male presence of him, his bulk, his scent, his breathing, the concentrated attention so close to her, all contributed to an overwhelming desire for more than the accidental touch of his hands, more like the sudden swoop of his mouth, as it had been in the chapel. She had expected to arouse him. Now it was she who was being aroused, if that was indeed what this vague and disturbing longing was, deep within her body.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, more sharply than she meant. ‘That will do well enough. I can manage the rest on my own.’ She moved away from him, stepping out of the pile of rose-pink velvet and slubbing off the petticoat like a second skin, heaving the discarded fabrics onto the chair while clinging to the fine linen kirtle she wore underneath. That, she decided, would have to stay on.

  But now Sir Jon was undressing. Though her intention was not to watch, the room was small and, short of closing her eyes, it was impossible not to be aware of his performance when he took up so much of the space. He was graceful and strong in every movement and apparently oblivious to his audience of one, sitting on the edge of the bed, too curious to climb between the sheets. She had expected that he might spare her modesty by keeping his shirt on but, before she could avert her eyes, he had whipped the shirt over his head and thrown it aside, revealing to her the full length of his body, the powerful shoulders, the rippling muscles of his back, the small rounded buttocks, the slender waist and long, shapely, sinewy legs. Some parts of him were a slightly different shade from the rest, hidden from the sun or exposed to it, darker at each extremity. She had last seen her brothers like this when they’d swum as children, when they were all skin and bone, scrawny and white. This creature was fleshed out, beautifully proportioned and superbly fit, without a trace of self-consciousness in the presence of a woman. And though she had taunted herself repeatedly, without any hard evidence to go on, with the knowledge that he was experienced with women, what she saw now only helped to confirm that, with such a body and so much self-assurance in her company, his casual mention of never having taken an unwilling woman
was not a boast but sure to be fact. For what woman, seeing him like this, would not wonder how it would feel to lie with him? Growing more and more aware of the train of her thoughts, Ginny covered her face in her hands so as not to see him turn in her direction, for that would either quickly dispel her growing desire or fuel it, she did not know which.

  Sir Jon was not so insensitive that he would have knowingly shocked her, just for effect. Instead, he took advantage of the hidden eyes to turn down the sheets, then to scoop her up into his arms, deposit her carefully between them and cover her over. Without another word, he entered his own side of the bed, leaving a very decent gap between them, and blew out the candle. She neither moved nor spoke and in only a few moments, by the sound of her regular breathing, he knew that she had fallen asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. This, he told himself, might just as easily have happened even if they’d been friends, for she was desperately tired and fraught with anxiety, and that was not how he would have wanted their first night to be. It remained to be seen what King Henry would say when he discovered they were already ahead of him and his plans. His last thought before sleep was that it was very uncharacteristic of Henry to summon a young unmarried lady to keep him company last thing at night while staying in her own father’s house. What had got into the man? How difficult would he find it in the future to keep Henry’s hands off this ravishing woman by his side?

  His thoughts turned, as they still did in the dark hours, to that other woman, the beautiful Magdalen, and of how the king had ogled her, too, quite openly, during his third wife’s pregnancy. Of how she had first lain by his side, naked and desirable, but consumed by her own needs, not his. Then, too, he had been tempted to overcome her, physically, except that force was not his way and he had preferred to wait, as he would do with Ginny, until she could see her way to replace duty with desire. Not for a king’s ransom would he accept a woman’s pity, or anything less than joyful surrender with at least the stirrings of love. Unrealistic it might be, but his pride had already suffered a setback, and he’d be damned if he’d allow it to happen again. This, he knew, was a second chance to obtain his heart’s desire and if it was yet only a masquerade, he would need time and patience to make it real.

  * * *

  Ginny woke several times during the night with the level of her downy mattress slightly altered, the sheets not where they should be, the sound of breathing so close. Her hand crept towards the warmth of his body, but stopped before it reached it, in case he should wake and think she had relented. The dying fire cast a pink glow over the room and once again the enormity of what she had done, or rather allowed to be done, came around her like a cage from which there would be no escape. Never. Bleakly, she saw the future where a complete stranger had been handed control of her life, where she would breed to supply him with heirs and, if she could not evade the function of being mistress to the king, keep his bed warm, too. Between queens. Tears of anguish rolled down her cheeks to be soaked up by the pillow, her sobs stifled as best she could by the linen sheet stuffed against her mouth.

  Trained to be vigilant, even in sleep, Sir Jon felt the sobs and heard the muffled gasps for air and knew what ailed her. Waiting a little, debating what best to do, he shifted himself into her space and pulled her backwards into his arms like a father with a distressed child, smoothing her damp hair with one hand and bending her into the curve of his body, closing the space that had been between them. The sobs died away, except for the occasional disturbance of her lungs that remembered the cause of her weeping, and sleep returned without her registering that it had ever left.

  * * *

  The vague remembrance of some kind of physical contact lay at the back of her memory as they rose next morning before the light had begun to show, but Ginny could not be sure about it. Like some other things that might or might not have happened yesterday, it was filed away for later inspection and, since Sir Jon had duties with the king on rising, he left after the briefest exchange. Not, she supposed, how genuine lovers might have behaved. Sir Jon had seemed preoccupied.

  He had hardly gone more than a few paces along the passageway, however, when he was stopped by Ginny’s brother-in-law, who looked relieved to see him. ‘A word, Raemon,’ said Sir George, ‘if you don’t mind. Best you should know this before the king discovers the deceit. He still doesn’t know you and Ginny are betrothed, so you’re going to have to tell him yourself when you go in to him.’

  Sir Jon frowned, not quite understanding. He had expected Sir George and Elion D’Arvall to take that message to His Grace last night. That had been the arrangement.

  ‘We went,’ Sir George told him, ‘but the king was fast asleep. He had sent no message to Ginny.’

  ‘What? You mean...?’

  ‘Yes, it was a hoax. And no prizes for guessing who was behind it. Apparently, Culpeper and Ginny’s brother Paul decided between them that it would be interesting to have Ginny arrive at the royal bedchamber and see the king snoring his head off. They didn’t stop to wonder if she would see the funny side of it, but whatever they had in mind, neither of them thought that she or any of her family would react as seriously as we did. Elion and I told them what had happened as a result of their disgraceful behaviour, and they’re now pissing themselves in case you or I tell His Grace, for he’ll not take it lightly, will he? If he thinks Ginny has been embarrassed by this, there’ll be all hell let loose.’

  ‘There certainly will, George. Paul cannot continue to behave like this. The little toad is getting to be a liability. As for Culpeper, well, you know my thoughts on him. He’s a dirty piece of work, though the king will believe no ill of him, even when it’s true. We’d be wasting our breath complaining of him. Best to keep quiet about it.’

  ‘Yes, and best not to let Ginny hear of it, either. She will not be pleased.’ He knew, as Sir Jon did also, that this was an understatement. Ginny would be mortified and humiliated to think that her own brother would not hesitate to put her in such a position and was taking Henry’s interest in her so lightly as to make a jest of it. ‘I’ve told Maeve already that Ginny shouldn’t know, but now I’m going along to my father-in-law’s room to tell him. Don’t worry,’ he said, seeing the concern on Sir Jon’s handsome face. ‘I know him better than you and I can explain why he and Lady Agnes were not invited. I’ve dealt with his anger before. He doesn’t really have a leg to stand on, does he? It was he who wanted it so badly. Well, now it’s happened and he’ll have to pretend he’s delighted.’

  Sir Jon did not feel inclined to say anything about how things were between himself and Ginny, but he thought George might possibly guess. Now he would have to face Henry. He did not look forward to it with any degree of optimism.

  * * *

  As it turned out, the king had had a peaceful and pain-free night, so when a roar of royal laughter bellowed through each of the small chambers in turn, Sir Jon’s relief confirmed that it would take more than what the king was pleased to call ‘his damned impatience’ to upset the favour he’d enjoyed so far. Sir Jon, said the king, had done no more than he himself would have done in the same circumstances, so if he was in so much of a hurry, he must prepare himself and his lady to take the next step of marriage. Yes, right there in Sir Walter’s chapel, that very day. They would go hawking first, while the day was still new, and give Lady Agnes time to prepare for a wedding feast. The idea of consulting Mistress Virginia or anyone else did not occur to him. Convenience was the king’s privilege.

  Unrepentant, and still secure in the king’s regard, Thomas Culpeper grinned at Sir Jon as he left. ‘No harm done, then?’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’ve done you a favour.’

  Sir Jon swung round, his eyes revealing nothing of the dislike he felt for this irresponsible young man. ‘No harm done at all, Tom. I’ll do you a similar favour one day, perhaps, and hope for the king’s understanding. Eh?’ There was no doubt of the young woman they both had
in mind, a certain Katherine Howard, one of the queen’s maids and a relative of the powerful Duke of Norfolk. With connections like that, one would have to be very careful how one trod around her sense of humour.

  * * *

  The news that Ginny was to be married that very day, at home in the private chapel where she and Sir Jon had wrangled about their future, was not taken lightly, as those nearest her had anticipated. Sir Jon had broken the news to her about the king’s wishes as gently as he could, but had not stayed long enough to hear the complete version of Ginny’s views. Particularly those on the king’s hurry to meddle with her happiness. Didn’t a woman have the right to choose her dates?

  The morning was like a bright jewel sparkling in a sapphire-blue sky, the air sharp and as clear as a bell, cloudless, stinging the nostrils, crisp underfoot and perfect for sport. Ginny loved hawking as much as the rest of her family, but this day she had to suffer the king’s laughing references, mostly to his courtiers, that Sir Jon had taught her, at last, to come to his hand. Nevertheless, Henry was never coarse or vulgar, and though Ginny was obliged to stay beside him for much of the time, there was a moment when her brother Paul managed to speak to her without being overheard. ‘Sorry, Ginny,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We meant no harm by it. Thought you’d see the jest. Better be more careful in future, hadn’t we?’

  It was his use of we that puzzled Ginny. ‘Are you talking about your indelicate remarks yesterday, Paul? If so, they’re best forgotten. By both of us.’

  ‘I’m talking about the message we sent you last night, sister. We neither of us thought you’d react like that, to go and get betrothed, I mean. That was a bit extreme, wasn’t it? Now Henry’s insisting on going the whole hog with your marriage. I never meant that to happen, when you and Sir Jon have hardly spoken to each other till now. Still, I expect you’re a mite better acquainted after last night. No?’