Royal Mistress (2 page)

“Allow me to accompany you, mistresses,” Tom answered, his eagerness telling Jane that he was serious about the offer.

Sophia began to protest, but Jane dug her elbow into her friend’s ribs and thanked the young knight—for certes, from the cut of his cloth he must be gently born, she decided. Smiling, she took
his proffered arm. “We accept with pleasure.” Without thinking to ask her companion, she told Sophia to take the other. The timid Sophia touched Tom’s arm as if it were on fire but did not demur.

And thus the trio made their way down the cobbled street to Cordwainer’s Row, Jane having no inhibitions about engaging Master Grey in conversation. Sophia, on the other hand, glanced warily right and left, hoping no one she knew would tell her husband she was on the arm of another man. Jealous Jehan Vandersand could be abusive for no good reason whenever he returned from the Pope’s Head, and here she was, on her way to deliver some of the silks she had spun to the weaver and should only be about her business. She rued allowing Jane to be so bold. Although she had admired Jane’s fearlessness from the first day they had met as children, it had got the two friends into more trouble than Sophia had ever anticipated over the years. She began to count the steps to the weaver’s workshop, where she could safely make her escape.

“My father’s establishment is behind us in the Mercery, Master Grey,” Jane was saying, avoiding a puddle of drying piss from the contents of a chamber pot thrown earlier from an upstairs window. “He has the finest Venetian silk in London, does he not, Sophie?”

Sophia nodded, and Tom laughed. “I do not think Mistress Sophia approves of me.”

“Sourface Sophie!” Jane cried, grinning at her friend. “That’s the name I gave her when we were girls,” she explained while Sophia blushed. “I was always the naughty one, and she was always trying to save me from landing in hot soup.” Seeing Sophia was now mortified, Jane hurried on, “But we are the best of friends, and I cannot think of life without Sophie in it, even though she is married now and must be a dutiful wife and mother.”

Tom smiled encouragement at prim Sophia, her long Flemish features offering no hope of beauty, and turning back to Jane, he could not imagine his luck. He had left his mother at her town house not an hour earlier in search of a tavern after arguing with
her over how little time he had spent with his wife in their six months of marriage. He had stormed out, determined to wash down his woes with strong ale in the anonymity of a city drinking establishment, when he had encountered Jane and her companion. Now he was drinking in the sensual beauty of the young woman beside him, which was every bit as intoxicating to the hedonistic young man as any cup of ale. And even more titillating was seeing the young woman return his interest.

“Good day to you, Master Grey,” Sophia said, withdrawing her arm and bobbing a curtsey. “Jane,” she said meaningfully, “do not forget your errand. Your father needs his shoes.” With relief, she crossed to the conduit in the middle of the Chepe, then to the other side of the busy thoroughfare and disappeared through the doorway of the weaver’s house as the couple watched.

Without Sophia as chaperone, Jane suddenly felt exposed. “Forgive me, sir, but Mistress Vandersand is right. I must attend to my errand or my father will have yet another reason to chastise me.” She reluctantly reclaimed her hand, which Tom had taken to his lips, and she tucked it into her coney-lined muff. “May God give you a good day, and my thanks for your escort.”

“But, mistress, you have not told me your name.”

“ ’Tis plain Jane, sir,” Jane said with a twinkle. “Although I was christened Elizabeth. And I work at my father’s shop under the Maiden’s Head.” She laughed when his eyebrows rose in astonishment. “He is a mercer, sir, as I told you. John Lambert is his name, and you would know the guild’s insignia is the head of a maiden if you lived in London. She is well known in the city; you’ll see her swinging from every mercery. Ah, perchance you are from the provinces?”

Tom nodded but chose not to take her hint and reveal any of his personal information. Let her think he was Master Tom Grey and not Sir Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, oldest son of Queen Elizabeth and her first husband; he was enjoying himself. “And
are you always so bold, mistress?” He laughed. He was determined to see this engaging, sensual young woman again; she was such a pleasant change from his dull, though young and very rich, wife.

“Until we meet again, Jane Lambert,” he said, pulling up his hood and covering his thick chestnut hair. “For I am certain we shall.” He turned and walked back the way they had come.

Jane felt as though she was floating down Bread Street. She wondered if Tom Grey had experienced the same exciting rush as she had when he had kissed her hand. This man was different from all the others she had dallied with, she was certain.

L
ater in the early darkening of the day, Jane was on her way down to the kitchen when she heard her father’s voice say her name from the spacious solar on the second floor. The door was ajar, and she could not resist eavesdropping. Then she wished she had not.

“She was seen walking arm in arm with a complete stranger this morning—albeit a well-dressed stranger,” her father complained. “She does not seem to care about her reputation. I will have to punish her yet again, wife. Does she think when she walks abroad that people in the Chepe will not know who she is? Or does she forget she is my eldest daughter and I have my good name and business to protect? Why can Jane not comport herself like dear Isabel?”

Jane grimaced and leaned heavily against the wall in the passage. Always Isabel, she thought bitterly; she can do no wrong. Was it just ill luck that invariably caused Jane to be found out? She knew Bella was no paragon, but nothing her sister did ever chafed at her father’s temper as Jane’s transgressions did. To be fair, Jane mused, there was no reason to resent her eighteen-year-old sister: after all, she knew Bella would never be a rival to her beauty and intelligence, but she was jealous of her all the same. Bella was their father’s adored favorite, his obedient and diligent daughter who warranted fatherly embraces, whereas Jane seemed only to incite him to the occasional slap or tirades about insolence and sloth.

“ ’Tis no wonder we cannot find a husband for her. And God knows, I have tried,” John went on to his placid wife, Amy.

“There, there, my dear,” Amy soothed. She often found herself defending her willful, passionate daughter, perhaps because Amy recognized her own nature in Jane’s. She hoped John would never discover Jane flirting, as Amy had on more than one occasion, and was thankful her daughter had intelligence and good breeding enough to resist losing her maidenhead to some amorous young apprentice. “She has beauty on her side, never fear. And she knows the mercery trade as well as any. She will find someone, mark my words.”

John patted his pretty wife’s hand. “It cannot be too soon for me, my love,” he said, and Jane was glad to hear a softening in his tone. “I suppose I must call her down and show her that I will not tolerate such imprudent behavior.”

Jane tried to leave her hiding place and race down the stairs to avoid being seen, but her fine woolen skirt snagged on a nail, and she was caught red-faced when her father flung wide the door.

“Just the person I wanted to see.” John’s tone took on its familiar impatience. “Come in and explain your conduct in the street today.” He stood aside to let her pass in front of him into the warm, fire-lit room. “Who was the man you were seen walking alone with so cozily?”

Jane could not help retorting, “But we were not alone!” And then she hung her head. “His name is Master Grey, Father,” she said and cast a pleading look at her mother, whose eyes remained fixed on her mending project.

Amy did not dare give Jane any sympathy, as much as she longed to. She hated these scenes, and knowing well John’s violent temper, she did not interfere, unwittingly giving Jane more cause to be disappointed in her. Her mother’s apparent subservience had only made Jane more determined never to be governed completely by a man, despite her understanding of a woman’s lot in society.
Jane was not privy to the many times Amy had attempted to stand up for herself during the first few years of her marriage, but after many beratings and several beatings, Amy had learned to be the stoic, dutiful wife she was now.

“What else do you know about him, pray?” Her father stood in front of his daughter, his fists clenched. Jane raised her eyes to his angry blue ones and shook her head. “I know nothing, Father. I promise you that Sophia was with us until the very last minute, when she had to cross the street. I left him almost immediately—”

“Not soon enough for a clatterer to see you, my girl,” he cut in, shouting now. “It was all about the Chepe in minutes, how little you think of your good name and mine. Take this for behaving like a harlot,” he said, and he struck her face hard with the back of his hand. “Leave us, and forgo your supper. You disgust me.”

Jane let out a sharp cry of pain and ran from her father as fast as her bulky skirts would allow up to her room, where she flung herself on the bed and wept.

“I hate it here,” she moaned into the snowy white pillow. “I wish I were dead.”

T
om Grey looked up at the maiden’s head sign swinging over the door to John Lambert’s mercery and smiled at the memory of Jane’s remark of a few days earlier. He had not been able to get the buxom, green-eyed young woman out of his mind. He was twenty years old and confident in his good looks, and what he had liked about Jane was that she, too, knew she was comely. They were well matched, he thought as he had walked away that first morning, and if he did have the chance of seeing her again, he might tell her so. His confidence had been gained by watching and aping the seduction techniques of his stepfather, the king, and his stepfather’s best friend, Lord Hastings, who, much to the frustration of his mother, began to take Tom with them when they enjoyed a rollicking evening in the taverns and stews of London as soon
as the youth was old enough. His mother had hoped they would have given her pleasure-seeking oldest son sage paternal counsel on behaving like a gentleman instead.

Thus it was with more than three years of wenching experience tied up in his codpiece that Tom now clicked open the latch on the sturdy wooden door that led into John Lambert’s flourishing mercery. Shelf upon shelf was weighted down by bolt upon bolt of magnificent silk, satin, damask, cloth of gold, silver cloth of gold, wool, velvet, sarcenet, scarlet, grosgrain, kersey and cambray, and in one corner, looking like delicate, magnified snowflakes, lengths of lace from Venice, Antwerp, and Bruges vied for a customer’s discerning eye. Gorgeous tapestries hung on the walls and fine lawn bed linens were cleverly displayed on a long table, where two women were fingering the quality and discussing the price with a sturdy middle-aged man whom Tom took to be Mercer Lambert. The wide window along the front, which in more clement weather would have been opened to the air to facilitate customers’ viewing, gave adequate light through its leaded glass panes, but the back of the shop was only lit by a wheel chandelier of wrought iron hung high from a sturdy beam. One carelessly dropped taper and John Lambert’s fortune could disappear in a fireball that would light up London. As he searched the premises for Jane, he noticed the mercer paid a small boy to sit close and watch, alerting an apprentice when a candle got near the end of its wick.

Tom ducked behind a gaudy display of velvets and saw his quarry entering from the small garden at the back of the shop. Jane spied him instantly, and her heart raced; she could not believe he had actually sought her out. Checking that her father was still in deep conversation with the shilly-shallying buyers, she beckoned to Tom to join her in a less conspicuous corner. One of her father’s apprentices, who was fond of Jane, turned his back as Tom sidled past him to Jane’s side.

“Master Grey, may I help you?” Jane said pertly, already intoxicated by his scent of leather and musk.

Tom merely raised her hand to his lips, his eyes alight with humor.

“You know full well why I am here, mistress,” he told her. “I had to see you again, ’tis all.”