Tarnish (30 page)

But all I really want is at the English court. I maintain the fruitless hope that one day I’ll return. I am always looking over my shoulder for a pardon without apology.

Then one evening, just after the equinox, Father and George ride in through the portcullis gate at Hever on black horses, looking for all the world like Famine and Conquest having left the other two horsemen behind.

When they dismount, the servants scurry about them like mice, tending their needs and responding with obsequious bows to Father’s barked orders. I stand in the doorway of the entrance hall and watch. Waiting.

“You’re going back,” my father says, with no preamble, and pushes past me.

For a single, shining instant, I feel a cascade of relief, like the rush of water at the breaking of a dam.

“You will need to do exactly as I say and not set a foot out of line.”

The stopper goes back in the bottle. I am silenced.

“You should stop talking altogether.” George pauses beside me and kisses my temple.

“Heed your own advice, George,” Father mutters.

George’s smugness at delivering criticism disintegrates. His face, still handsome, is becalmed and wary of Father’s contempt.

“Sounds like prison,” I blurt.

George cuts me a look that begs me not to speak.

“It will be a prison of your choosing,” Father says. “Here or there.”

“Or marriage to James Butler.”

“That possibility is no longer. You ruined that chance.”

“So you need me at court to marry me off to someone else.”

“Don’t turn this around. I do not need anything, Anne. It is you who needs a husband. You who needs this opportunity. I will not pay forever for you to spend your days here sewing and playing your little melodies.”

He turns and walks into the desolate dining hall, engaging the steward immediately in conversation. Leaving me with George.

“You’d do better not to vex him,” he says quietly. He is protecting me, like when we were children.

“I can’t help it.”

“You have to, Anne. Father never should have allowed you an education. It made you think. Thinking makes you speak— something you really shouldn’t do.”

The memory of our friendship dies, and all I remember is what has happened since. I forget that he protected me from our father’s chilling disappointment. And all I see is his.

“Jesus, George, aren’t you opinionated today?”

“I’m opinionated every day, little sister. It’s the right of an educated man.”

“But not an educated woman.”

George levels his gaze. “You are clever. You always were.”

He leans forward with the grace of a cat, his eyes becoming keen like those of an animal identifying its prey.

“Your cleverness is your greatest defect.” Emotions ride across his face like soldiers in retreat. I watch in wonder, because at court, George wears only an expression of amused sarcasm or begrudging sycophancy.

“Father is negotiating for a wife for me,” he says quietly.

George is confiding in me. George is asking me to listen. George is here to keep me company.

“Who is it?”

“Jane Parker.”

“She might be good for you.”

“She’s a ninny. A dullard. A skinny, staring, mutton-faced mare. Sleeping with her would be like bedding a sheep.”

“You are cruel, George! You don’t even know her and yet you judge her.” I ball my hands into fists. When we were children, we used to fistfight when we disagreed. I landed a couple of decent blows to his head one day before Father pulled me off him, swinging and snarling like a cat.

It was the only time Father ever slapped me. One of the few times that I was the one who provoked the silence at the dinner table.

George watches me, his gaze flicking to my hands, the tension in my shoulders, my distance from him.

“I don’t think you could best me now, Anne, despite your vicious temper.”

He takes a step forward that is stunningly swift, and I flinch away from a blow that never comes.

“I didn’t come here to fight with you, Anne.”

When I look up, his hands hang limp at his sides.

“You could have fooled me.”

“You need to curb your temper, Anne. You don’t have Wyatt here to discipline you now.”

“Leave Thomas out of this.”

“Oooh.” His voice glides up and down like someone trailing fingers over the keyboard of the virginal. “It’s Thomas now, is it?”

I bite my lip, thinking of the warmth of Thomas’s breath and heartbeat sending me to sleep.

“Forgive me—I would hate to interfere with your perfect romance,” George spits.

“There is no romance.” I wonder what he knows of Thomas’s visits. I wonder if I’m lying.

“You got one thing right, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I say. Thomas Wyatt was never interested in you, Anne. And never will be. You’re not his type.”

“He doesn’t like clever women?” I ask, unable to prevent a trace of bitterness.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” George sneers. “All I know is that when he visits the stews, he likes the ones that are blonde and busty.” He leans closer to whisper in my ear. “The ones that scream with passion. I don’t believe cleverness has anything to do with it.”

I feel sick.

“Are all men the same?” I ask weakly.

He studies me, and I think I see a trace of contrition or perhaps compassion. Until he speaks again.

“Not, apparently, squirrelly Percy.”

He has taken all the fight out of me. Just as he used to when we were children, when he’d describe Father’s wrath until the words were more frightening than the reality.

“I’ll go pack my things,” I say, and my voice is dull and tuneless even to my own ears, “and write a note of thanks to the queen.”

“The queen didn’t ask for you.”

I pause.

“Did Father find me a position?”

“No.” George sniffs. “Hardly so. In fact, he tried to place you somewhere else entirely.”

“Then why? Why am I to be recalled?”

“It isn’t Father or the queen who wants you back,” George says. “Mary does.”

Windsor Castle

1524

42

A
DEEP BREATH IS ALL IT TAKES TO ENTER A ROOM.

This time, I do not pause. I do not wait outside the door, avoiding eye contact with the guard. I have kept my head up and my hands steady as I made my way through the thick battlement gates, across the expanse of the upper ward, the ancient layers that protect the heart of the royal court.

This time, I walk through the door into the queen’s presence chamber, allowing my sleeves to cover my fingertips, my too-short train barely skimming the floor behind me. I don’t even adjust my hood or smooth the broad expanse of hair it exposes.

It is more than a year since I left. More than a year since the Duke of Suffolk charged his way across the Channel to Calais to wreak havoc on the French. More than a year since I let Henry Percy take from me the only thing that was truly mine to give.

This time, I won’t let the whispers get to me.

This time, I have something I didn’t have before.

I have Thomas Wyatt.

He is the first person I see when I walk back into the queen’s watching chamber. I am drawn to him as if he is a lodestone. My anchor. When he looks up, a single, perfect note stretches between us. Audible. Visible.

A hiss of whispers ripples through the room, replete with knowing nods and well-timed glances in my direction.

“She’s back.”

“Again.”

“What is she wearing?”

The single note transcends the whispers. I will not let the gossip or the lies deter or defame me. I make my obeisance to Queen Katherine, who smiles tightly and sends me away.

“Anne!”

Jane Parker leaps up from a stool by the window and weaves her way between courtiers and ladies. They watch her, whispering, but she doesn’t seem to care, her eyes focused just on me.

There is something different about Jane. The past year has treated her well. She isn’t taller, but seems somehow
more
. Better dressed, in a gown of aqua-blue damask split to show a kirtle of pale-blue silk. More vibrant. More beautiful. Her smile lights up her face.

Jane Parker is happier.

“Jane!”

When she hugs me, her arms feel like a steel vise, holding me together.

“You’ve changed,” I murmur.

Jane pulls away, and her gaze flickers over my face.

“So have you.” Cautious. Her voice steady.

“You are prettier than ever,” I tell her, and slip my arm through hers. We walk slowly toward the window, knowing that the angle of afternoon light brightens the tawny orange of my gown until I glow like a flame. It sets off the darkness of my eyes and the black of my hair, and only the blind and the stupid will be able to take their eyes off me.

I resist the urge to find out if Thomas is watching.

But Jane clutches my elbow rigidly against the hard edge of her bodice and slows her pace.

“Look.” Her voice is strangled.

So I look.

Thomas’s eyes are on his cards, and I feel a river of disappointment. But next to him, George is staring, the expression on his face indefinable. As though he can’t decide if he’s happy to see me or wishes me gone. Probably the latter.

I glance at Jane, who is smiling tentatively, her eyes fixed on George. And I realize that this is one of those situations where she can’t tell which of us he’s focused on. She thinks he’s gazing at her.

When I study George again, I can’t really tell, either. He seems to be staring right between us. His expression is unreadable—but . . . yearning.

“Is he looking at me?” Jane whispers, her voice just slightly too loud. I know the tables nearby are listening, the clack of dice not enough to drown her out. I steer her away from him.

I lean my head toward hers, hoping to make the conversation more private. I take in the lavender scent of her sleeves, the point of her gable nudging my own hood farther back on my head.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see George still watching. Now Thomas is, too, and his fierce scrutiny makes me suddenly want to run.

“Because he could be looking at you,” Jane continues, doubt creeping into her voice. “But why would he be looking at you like that?”

Like what?
I long to ask her. But don’t. Whatever Jane saw is not what I saw. I push her quickly out of the chamber and into the next, away from George, away from Thomas.

“Can you keep a secret?” Jane asks. She stops in the middle of the room and glances over each shoulder. Subtle. “I have a secret.”

“You, Jane? The most transparent girl in the entire court? You have a secret? It can’t be.”

“I’m learning to be discreet. I’m learning to be the perfect courtier. No one knows my thoughts anymore.”