Tarnish (21 page)

“Your father is a commoner. He comes from trade. But you, my dear, are descended from royalty.”

“Flattery from Thomas Wyatt?” I ask, my bitterness encompassing everything. “I suppose I should consider myself honored.”

“Not flattery. Truth. You’re clever. You have poise and beauty and therefore bright prospects. You just have to help your father realize it.”

I think of the time I tried to correct my father’s French when he was ambassador to the French court. And how he didn’t speak to me again until I washed up on England’s shores, bedraggled and alone, two years later.

“You don’t know my father very well, do you?”

“I know that he has more ambition than the rest of us put together. And that any attachment you make that will bring you closer to the peerage will get his attention.”

“So I should just tell him that I’m bound for greatness and that he’d better get out of my way.”

Wyatt laughs. “Even I wouldn’t tell my father that I’ll be better known than he will be. That my name will go down in history, and he will be long forgotten. He would slap me senseless and send me back to Kent, and then where would I be?”

“Kent.”

Wyatt throws his head back in that delighted roll of laughter that makes me want to spin with joy. But he grabs me around the waist and does it for me.

“Of course, you’re right.” He stops, nearly breathless. “But what I mean is that you can know the truth and not tell it. I will be famous. My father will not.”

“You certainly think a lot of yourself.”

“I have to. No one else will. Certainly not my father. And you are in the same position.”

He says it so blithely. Points out with supreme indifference what broke my heart when I was seven. My father abandoned me as soon as he realized Mary was pretty and I never would be.

“So Henry Percy hasn’t asked for your favor for the joust?” Wyatt sounds almost too casual.

“No.” I keep my voice purposefully neutral.

“And that disappoints you.”

It isn’t a question.

“It does a bit.” I hate to admit it. Especially to Wyatt.

“Your paramour doesn’t wish to be connected to you.”

“Don’t be rude.” I’m stung by how close he is to the truth.

“It’s true, though. He sits next to you in the queen’s chambers, but is never seen with you elsewhere. He doesn’t buy you trinkets or ask you for any. He barely looks at you at banquets and dances, when the other men at the court are falling over themselves to accompany you.”

My anger layers over itself. At his nerve. At how devastatingly he points out the truth.

“It’s not him,” I hiss, my voice tight. “It’s his father. It’s the court. Gossip. He just wants to avoid it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having a mistress.”

“I don’t want to be a mistress! A whore. I don’t want to share a bed and not a life.”

“And have any of these men asked that of you? Has Percy?” Wyatt’s eyes look like a falcon’s. Hooded. Unflinching.

“Percy’s been nothing but noble. But Norris has made insinuations. And some others.”

“And have you said yes to any of them?”

“No!”

“For a favor in the joust,” he says, leaning close to my ear. “Not for your maidenhead.” The scent of sugared almonds encompasses me. I lick my lips.

“No.”

“Good. You shall grant it to me.”

“My maidenhead?” I look at him from the corner of my eye, like a teasing flirtation. Two can play at this game.

“God forbid,” Wyatt replies tightly.

I suddenly feel like I should cover myself and take a step back.

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“My pleasure,” he says, his body at ease again. “Your favor is all I ask, my sweet.”

“What sort of thing are you looking for?” I think of a colored handkerchief, tied to a jousting lance, fluttering like a helpless maiden.

“This.”

Lazily, Wyatt raises the index finger of his right hand and lets it come to rest on the gold
A
that hangs between my collarbones. He leaves his finger there, as if feeling for my pulse, and stares directly into my eyes. His own, glass-blue, reflect the sky.

We are so close. It’s unnerving. If I took a step forward, his hand would be flat on my chest, directly over the breakneck rhythm of my heart.

I struggle to move my mouth—to smile or flirt or speak—never letting my eyes waver from his.

“My lady Marguerite of Alençon gave me this before I left France,” I manage.

“Perfect.” He traces the letter with his finger and then strokes the pearl that hangs from it, never once touching my skin. “Meaningful.”

I reach for the knotted ribbon, but Wyatt stops me. There, in the garden, with anyone and everyone watching, Wyatt reaches, his arms encircling me, so close we almost touch. Almost, but not quite. His chin is the same height as the crown of my hood. I suppress the urge to raise my face to his.

His fingers are deft—as if used to managing unseen knots. I picture him unpinning his lover’s hood. Untying the sleeves of her gown, the stays of her bodice. Something feral claws inside me.

He pulls the ribbon from around my neck and ties it quickly around his own, the
A
peeking out of his collar. He raises it to his lips with two fingers of his right hand, kisses it.

“Wyatt . . .” I want to ask him to stop. Stop flirting with me.

I want to ask him for more.

“Perhaps it’s time you started calling me Thomas.”

Yes
, I think.
More.

“Everyone else calls you Wyatt.”

“All the men call me Wyatt, Anne. You are supposed to be my lover.”

Supposed
to be.

“No,
Thomas
, I am the white-assed roe deer you pursue. There’s a difference.”

“A distinct one.”

Silence wraps around us like the summer sunlight—hot and smothering. Another crash from the tiltyard steps me backward, and the spell is broken.

“What will you be wearing?” Wyatt—I cannot call him Thomas because I am not his lover, I am nothing to him—asks, turning to walk me back through the orchard. “To the joust.”

“Blue.”

“No.”

“Now you wish to dictate my clothing choices to me? You tell me where to go, how to walk, to whom I may speak and grant my favors. And now you restrict my choice in gowns?”

“It’s for your own good, Anne. The queen will be wearing blue. To match the king. You’d do better to stand out. Wear yellow.”

“And it’s as easy as that, is it? You can tell me what to wear just like all the rest of them? Like my father, who insists I limit my use of velvet because it is too dear. Like my brother, who tells me I look like a slut in a French hood. Like the Duchess of Suffolk, who tries to make me up like a halfpenny whore. Like my sister, who claims I should lower the neckline of my bodice to display my assets.” Like Henry Percy, who asks that I disappear into the background as he does.

“Well, there’s not really that much to display.”

“You are full of honeyed words today, aren’t you? Just the observations to make a girl feel good about herself.”

“My job isn’t to make you feel good about the things that are wrong. My job is to ensure you get noticed for the things that are right.”

“Your job?” I cry. “You see me as a debt? You claim to be my friend. And I thought you were. Probably the only person who truly knows me. Who knows what I’m afraid of. Who knows what I want, who I am. But you only see me as a challenge.”

“No, Anne.”

“You may carry my favor, Thomas Wyatt,” I say, and walk away from him. Away from the smell of apples. Of almonds. “And I’ll wear the yellow gown. But I won’t speak to you.”

“You’ll have to if I win the joust.”

I’m forced turn around to look at him because he hasn’t followed me. He’s grinning. I want to rid him of the grin. Erase the dimples. I want to hurt him.

“Then I shall simply have to hope you lose.”

“Only witchcraft can make me lose, Anne.”

“That confident, are you?”

“I have to be confident about myself, Anne. No one else is going to do it for me.”

“It could earn you the reputation of a braggart.” I still want to hurt him. But he deflects all my weapons.

“It seems you’re in serious danger of earning a reputation as one who breaks her promises.”

A sudden panic overtakes me.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you swore never to speak to me again,” he says with a flourishing bow. “And here you are.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he steps close to me, obscuring the sun, and places an ink-stained finger on my lips.

“I listen to every word you say, Anne. You may think no one hears you. You may think no one listens. That you can toss off sentences and condemnations, promises and speeches that will fly into the wind and will never be remembered. But I remember, Anne.”

“Because it’s your job?” The feel of his touch on my lips nearly takes my breath away.

His hand drops back down to his side. My chest tightens, but my weapons are already unsheathed.

“Because it’s a challenge?” I pursue.

For a moment, I think my words have pierced his armor. His eyes flash and flicker over my face.

And he steps back.

“Because someone has to remind you of your promises, my dear.”

30

T
HE MORNING OF THE JOUST DAWNS GRAY AND MURKY, THE SKY
reflected in the turmoil of the Thames at the incoming tide, as if swirls of sediment fill the very air we breathe.

The queen dons her gown—a deep grayish-blue silk with heavier velvet oversleeves the color of steel reflecting the sky. The bodice is decorated in swirls of seed pearls like wisps of wind, but the whole ensemble makes her look a little dumpy—like a fat cloud on a winter’s day.

Nevertheless, the ladies of her chamber—from my step-grandmother, Agnes, the Duchess of Norfolk, all the way down to little Joan Champernowne, who has her sights set on the thin-faced Anthony Denny—all wear similar hues. The entire household is a sea of blue with the occasional flash of green or magenta. The entire flock of sheep obsequiously trying to blend together.

In my yellow gown, I stand out among them. The black sheep. I squared the neckline of my bodice using an ingenious stitch that secures the corners to the lining and fits the bodice flat and smooth. I added chevrons of russet velvet—small enough not to break my father’s taut purse strings. Cream-colored sleeves hang to just below the tips of my fingers. And the skirt boasts a train slightly too short so I can move easily and dance quickly at the banquet following the joust.

Each of the alterations on their own would have caused a kerfuffle amongst the ladies. But the combination of all, plus the color of the gown, has created a veritable cacophony of whispers. The French hood I had fashioned from yellow velvet is seeded at the crown with pearls and embroidered with silk of azure blue—my one nod to the monochromatic nature of the other dresses. It sits far enough back on my head to contrast with the black of my hair, but close enough to my face to offset my “sallow” skin.

I feel very, very visible.

Suddenly, all the noise in the rooms ceases. The queen is looking at me, her bright eyes questioning. And a little hurt. I’ve broken the tacit agreement to prove to our visitors that we are all alike and all agree.

Just before she speaks, a herald comes to the door, ready to announce her at the tiltyard tower. The fun can now begin.

The ladies sigh in disappointment. For now they’ve been deprived of the fun that had already commenced.

I am free to go, yellow gown, exposed hair, square neckline, and all. For once, fate is with me.

I follow the other ladies from the queen’s chambers down the great stair and into the hall. It is already decorated with swags of colored silk, as the lists will be. The forest green of the Tudors, accented with white and gold.

And alternating with swags of blue.

Jane falls back to join me as the ladies make their way to the viewing towers. The duchess casts one scathing look back at her, and I wonder that Jane doesn’t combust on the spot.

“Are you sure you want to be seen with me?” I ask. “I’m certainly persona non grata today.”

“I’m through with the Duchess of Suffolk and her crowd. I want to be like the Boleyns.”

“And what are the Boleyns like?” I ask. We are opinionated. Ambitious. Jealous.

“Different. Exciting.”

“No one wants to be a Boleyn.”

She looks into my eyes, and the strength of the passion behind hers surprises me.

“I do. More than anything.”

We are interrupted by a cheer from the tiltyard. The competitors bow as the queen moves toward the towers, then return to slapping backs and play-wrestling. They know they are being watched. They know they have to show off their strength one way or another.

Percy is not among them.

He is already in the stands, sitting up straight and purposeful. I expect my heart to melt at the sight of him. To feel that pulse of recognition. But there is nothing.