The Virgin's Daughters Page 5

  “Do you dare deny my eyes?”

  “No, Majesty. But I would correct my fault with your instruction.” A queen was never wrong. Kate must endure in silence, whatever came, as she always had.

  The queen raised her hand as if to strike, her face flushed with anger.

  Kate steeled herself for the blow. She was highborn, but still a servant to be chastised as a mistress thought best. She tried to bring all the submission in her belly to her face.

  Slowly, Elizabeth lowered her hand, looking wounded. “Have I not been to you as a mother to a daughter . . . raised you high from your family’s disgrace . . . shown you the favor of great appointment among my ladies?”

  Kate did not say, And satisfied your need to keep an eye on me, though it was true. Instead, she said, “Yes, Your Grace, a blessing for which I meekly thank my God each day.”

  The queen’s face slowly resumed its normal pale shade, her beautiful long, tapered fingers pressed against her heart. “I do remember the gossip about you and Hertford before you were given to Pembroke, and I have heard Hertford has since resisted every suitable offer. Do not wish to marry, Kate. Marriage is death, and well I know it. Live and die a virgin, as I will do.”

  Kate didn’t dare look up, but bit her tongue for suspecting that virgin had broad meaning for this queen. There was Dudley, of course, and before him Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour, who was said to have romped in fourteen-year-old Elizabeth’s bed and even cut her gown from her in raucous sport. Scandal said she was pregnant by him when he went to the Tower block, but she proved them wrong in that, at least.

  “Husbands,” Elizabeth continued, her voice grating on the word, “are master of your body and all. You can have no thought of your own, and in too short a time they love another and then another. What if you could give an earl no sons? Think you he would not rid himself of such an impediment to his hereditary title?”

  It was plain the queen was thinking of her father and her own early years. How could she not have learned those lessons well? It was time for the words that Elizabeth wanted. “Majesty, I am past twenty these three years and soon to be counted an old maid. But more than age, my affection and admiration for you allow me to hold no desire to leave you for marriage . . . or for the throne. I vow that I wish only to serve you for all my days.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “You would make such a vow before God?”

  Kate’s stomach twisted and she wished herself in any other place but where she was. An oath before God could not be broken without putting her immortal soul in grave danger. She could languish in purgatory for eternity, and pleading with all the old saints together could not pray her out.

  But there was no choice. Elizabeth was Elizabeth and not to be thwarted. “Yes, I would make such a vow, cousin.”

  “Kneel with me, Kate.”

  Kate knelt beside the queen at her bedside and spoke aloud: “I swear before God almighty, His crucified son and His holy Church, to serve Elizabeth, queen of England, for all her life, faithful and true.”

  The queen rose, pointing to a trundle at the foot of her great bed. “Stay tonight, Lady Grey. It would please me to have you near if I require a little wine for sleep.”

  “I am grateful for the opportunity to please Your Majesty.”

  Elizabeth yawned. “There will be more, many more such opportunities.”

  Kate took herself to her bed. She did not want to sleep. If she did, she would dream of being a girl again, desperately in love, frantic to escape her fate, the fate of so many women of ambitious families, marriage to an older man who frightened her and who did not love her beyond her dower lands. But sleeping or waking, she could not escape the memory of Edward Seymour and of their hurried, tremulous, stolen kisses, their young bodies pressed urgently together. Once more she was taken back to the night she was to stand before the altar to be married to Pembroke with Guilford Dudley and her sister, Jane, in a double wedding.

  Edward, taking a terrible risk, had sought her in the great stone hall and pulled her behind a huge pillar, away from the torchlight and her own wedding revels. “Sweetheart, I have a carriage waiting at the Holbein Gate to take us to a ship bound for France. The king is ill to death and the government will surely change to Queen Mary unless the king chooses to make a Protestant heir . . . your sister, Jane, who marries Guilford Dudley tonight. That could put your family in great danger. Escape such intrigue with me. We can return later and all will be forgiven us.”

  She clutched his arms, longing for them to enfold her, to hold her safe.

  He pulled her roughly to him and she felt him shaking against her, whether from fear or passion she could not know. She knew only to cling to her only hope for happiness.

  “Come with me now, Kate, lovely Kate . . . or I die. I swear it.”

  He kissed her until she leaned against the rough stone pillar, limp with passion and fear. “Ned, my father would follow us. You know that our rank makes us pawns.” He must know that it was the joining of titles and lands that determined a suitable marriage.

  He bent to kiss her breast swelling above her gown. Struggling for breath, she choked out the words, “Ned . . . Ned, we have no will of our own against our families’ wishes. That is the way it is and has always been.” But she clung to him, fearing to let him go.

  He kissed her wildly, her tears falling on his lips.

  “They will follow and capture us. Ned . . . they will take you to the Tower and throw me to Pembroke to do as he will.”

  His voice came to her in a ragged whisper. “If he beats you, I will kill him!” He shook, his mouth twisted in misery. “Kate, what life will you have if we are not together? What life will I have?”

  He had crushed her against him again so that she could not speak. She fought to keep her sobs from turning to wails.

  Torches suddenly flared in their faces. Her father and mother glared at them.

  The Duke of Somerset wrenched Edward away and her mother clawed at Katherine. “You young Seymour whelp!” her father yelled. “If you were a man grown, I’d challenge you to the death.”

  Guards ran up and forced Edward down the hall, his arms twisted behind him.

  Kate heard his choked voice grow fainter. “I’ll come back for you . . . my love!”

  And there the memory always ended. She was back in her cage.

  Tonight, a man grown, he had come back, but not to the girl. She was a woman now and no longer thought that love would always win. A tear ran down her cheek to the small bolster on the trundle at the foot of Elizabeth’s bed, the last of the tears she would shed for the past, she swore.

  But she’d sworn that before.

  Her eyes were becoming heavy and closing when she felt the warmth of a presence and looked up to see the queen in her white night shift bent over her, a guttering candle in her hand.

  “It is wounding to give up the man you love. I know it well,” Elizabeth whispered, her voice catching on the last word. “But duty for a queen must come first.” She stood straighter, taking a deep breath. “The throne of England demands everything of a woman. I’ve sacrificed my beloved Robin.”

  Kate needed to understand such sacrifice, because it was demanded of her, too. “Why, Majesty?” she asked.

  “To redeem him . . . and my mother, Anne Boleyn. They called her the Great Whore and a witch and took her young head. They call my Robin a murderer, saying he killed his wife to marry me. Whether it’s true or not, I must deny my love for him, for what would confirm their opinion more? But I will stay on my throne and rule this realm, make it greater than the country my father left to me. No foreign prince will ever share my throne.” She drew herself to her full height, the candlelight flickering across her pale face and slender shoulders. “I am a prince of England; my people are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. They will be husband and children to me, and it will be enough. It will be enough.”

  Kate rose up on an elbow. No Englishman would believe for a moment that a woman could rule a
lifetime without a man. “I understand, Majesty,” she said, although she did not understand, nor ever would.

  “Old loves, new loves,” Elizabeth murmured, “both can be pleasing, even more than pleasing, but they are not necessary.”

  Elizabeth receded with her candle into her cavernous and empty bed.

  Kate closed her eyes to make her own dark night. Would she dream? Of Ned? She had sought to put away hope long ago; now was no time to allow it back into her heart. She must try to be as resolute as the queen. It was her only protection.

  Still, the memory of young lovers intruded. In all these years, no one, not even her family, had cared a whit whether she lived or died unless she served their purpose.

  But Edward Seymour had remembered her with love and never sought to use her. And he had kept his promise to come back . . . all these years later. She hugged that thought until finally she slept.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Let this stand you in good stead . . . never tempt too far a prince’s patience.

  —Elizabeth Regina

  Candlemas

  February 2, 1562

  Her skirts gathered up for swifter passage, Katherine hurried from the jewel room down the long stone passage that led to the presence chamber. She was tired and it was not quite midday. The queen rose early and her ladies earlier.

  Kate had been on an errand to return the golden crown worn by the queen at her morning audience with the Scots emissary from his queen, Mary. When the clock struck the eleventh hour, Kate must be in her place to serve Elizabeth her dinner meal. Since the night of her oath, Kate had achieved a perfection of service to please even this demanding queen. And she could not fail now, especially while wearing a valuable silver brooch containing the queen’s miniature . . . a recent gift to mark her special favor. The court was filled with ru mors of Lady Katherine Grey being named heir, while she denied and denied, disbelieved by all.

  Kate pushed hard on her stomacher, reminded by a rumbling emptiness that she had not broken her fast with the least bread and ale this entire morning.

  Ahead, two pikemen threw open the doors to the daylit presence chamber. She saw workmen everywhere on ladders removing the last reminders of Christmas and mounting the first signs of spring. Deep violet pansies, the queen’s most loved flower, forced open by the royal gardeners, were everywhere in pots, woven into vines and strewn about the dais already being arranged for tonight’s banquet to honor the Scots queen Mary’s ambassador. Elizabeth intended to impress him with her brilliant court, a sure contrast to Mary’s in the bleak north.

  As Kate neared the entrance, the Earl of Hertford appeared around the doors and lolled against the wall, one outthrust elegant leg barring her way. The guards did not blink.

  Startled, Kate suppressed any pleasure that might show, forcing herself to look fully into Edward’s face, something she’d tried hard to avoid since the masque, though of late avoiding him had become more difficult and at this moment impossible.

  He bowed, smiling with his easy grace, and stepped into her path, his hand over his heart.

  Now she was well stopped and much too close to him. She sank down in a hasty curtsy, not low enough for his rank and much too fast to be well-done. She thought to step around him, but that would be unpardonably rude. God’s bones!

  “Good morrow, my lady Grey.”

  “A good morrow to you, my lord earl,” she said, as formal as she could manage, “but I must beg your leave to quickly pass. The queen needs my service for the dinner meal and the banquet tonight.” She lifted her head and kept his gaze. Any weakness of spirit was an invitation to bold men. It allowed them to serve up their protection without being asked. No woman could remain a virgin at the virgin queen’s court for long without learning well the ways of forward young lords, especially ones who thought to claim a right they might once have had, but now had no more. No more.

  Though Elizabeth pronounced her court the most virtuous in all Christendom, Kate knew the queen was self-deceived. Under a righteous exterior, love of every hue and stripe roiled. Remember your oath to the queen, she cautioned herself severely, then commanded: What you once felt is gone. She realized that her lips moved as with a private prayer. The more she thought it, the more it would become true.

  Edward dipped his head to follow her gaze, while she tried to slide from under his intense watch. “I am pleased that you are so eager at your duties, my lady. It recommends the woman as innocent tenderness recommended the girl.” His face asked her a thousand questions. “Yet, my lady, is duty a cause to be brusque with a longtime . . . friend?” He bent closer. “What have I done to so deeply offend? It is rather I who could find offense when denied as boy and man . . . when I have so little fault and so many obvious virtues.” He smiled at his self-flattering, the smile growing.

  It was a change from the serious, desperate boy he had once been when they stole moments together in dark corners or an empty chapel, or rounded a lonely staircase to suddenly find each other and desperately embrace. Now his was a light humor she usually admired. All the more reason, she knew, to be on her guard. She clenched her small hands into harmless fists.

  “Or, my lady,” he continued, serious now, “is it my admiration and the truth of my words that cause offense? Would you have me lie and deny my delight in the face and form that I fought for years in Italy to forget? And could not forget.” He bent closer and murmured, “Deny what my eyes witness and my heart yet feels?”

  Kate had heard such courtly words before, but none she’d wanted to believe as she wanted to believe Edward Seymour this minute. She made her voice blunt to stop him . . . and herself. “You take much for granted, my lord. I doubt not that you’ve had great success in warmer climes and even in Hertfordshire with such designed poses, but not in this court . . . and not with me.” Edward’s face looked so instantly and completely dejected that she was ashamed of herself and offered a slight smile. “When I did not come to the garden, I see that you did not freeze, Edward.”

  He brightened at her friendlier offering. “Oh, but, Kate, your eyes cannot truly see me as I was on that night, hoarfrost covering my hair—weighing down my very eyelashes. I must have paced a thousand leagues to keep warm, and I would have walked one thousand more for the sight of you coming into the garden—and along the hedgerow where I always see you in my dreams.”

  Her breath quickened at that deliberate remembrance. “A long way to walk, Edward, even for a very forward lord. I am happy you seem none the worse for your journey.” She made a desperate move to pass, but he stepped in her way, easily refusing her passage. She turned to his other side and he sidestepped again with the agility of the practiced swordsman he must now be, a pleasant smile on his face. A man well grown, he did not lose composure for long.

  “I still think it worth the trip, Kate, though you give me no reason why I should,” he said, adding, “I remember when you called me Ned, when you whispered it at every passing.”

  “Ned,” she said, surprised to hear her voice say that name again. Jesu Christo! She bit her tongue to keep from saying the deliberately forgotten name again, pulled along by a strong current of memory she had to fight. She backed away from him.

  How had they so easily fallen into the use of Christian names as if nine empty years had not passed? She stepped resolutely forward, hating to look the fearful child. She allowed herself to glance into his eyes and found them teasing, but convincing, despite their sparkle.

  She had known much flattery and many attempts to seduce in Elizabeth’s court, but none like this. Was he playing a young man’s game to brag on later? Did he wish to even an old score, as in a game of tennis? She could not believe their youthful affection remained with him as it did with her. Men were quick to forget, finding love again with another woman. Yet, if true affection lingered, she must have greater care than she ever had. But while she wanted to be resolute, as her vow to Elizabeth demanded, her body leaned forward, drawn by something remembered.

  H
e saw her move and yet did the opposite of what she might have allowed, stepping aside with a formal hand flourish. “Take pains when you pass under the queen’s much loved pansies in the presence chamber,” he whispered. “The country folk in Hertfordshire do say the juice of pansies is a love potion. I had no care and you see the result, a man before you quite overcome with unchanged devotion.”

  Kate had to laugh, though she tried to cover it quickly. Had he clung to his boyish dream, when she had wanted to firmly set her own aside, or was he become a most accomplished rascal? She dared not imagine his was a living passion. Dared not! Her heart could not sustain another assault.

  He grinned. “Kate, you are most beautiful when amused. I will seek to amuse you at every meeting.”

  Her voice soft, but as firm as she could make it, she replied, “There can be no future meetings, Ned.”

  “This court is not so large that we cannot meet by happenstance. I could sit near you in the great hall for supper.”

  “I rarely dine there.”

  “Then I could follow you into the maze when you are lost.”

  “I’m never lost . . . or alone.”

  “How fortunate you are, my lady, for I am always lost near a hedge and always alone there.”

  “The queen would not allow us . . . a friendship.”

  “Her Majesty has preceded you in that warning, sweetheart, when I petitioned her to court you.” He took her arm, not hurtfully, but firmly. “Though she be the greatest queen in all the world, I think she cannot stop love in this court, nor clutch it all to herself.”

  Kate put a finger of her free hand to his mouth and hastily withdrew it as if burned. “Say no more, for such words are treason to her.” For the first time, she noticed the white line of a scar that traveled down his cheek to disappear under his beard. Without thinking, she traced it with her finger.

  Ned stepped nearer and put his face almost to hers. “It was this wound that kept me away in Italy so long.”