Tarnish (5 page)

“I am a respectably married man.”

“It doesn’t seem your respectability prevents you from extramarital amusements. I know the people with whom you choose to associate.”

He takes another step toward me, too close by far.

“Watch what you say, Anne; your brother is one of them.”

“That’s how I know.” I turn and walk toward the mews, uncomfortably pleased when he falls into step beside me. “All you do is play games—jousting and cards, hunting and women. You build a reputation for seduction and pretty words, but show little discrimination.”

“Ah,” he says, leaning so close to me that I smell sugared almonds on his breath. “Have you been watching me?”

Really. The man is insufferable, and doesn’t deserve a response. But I can’t help myself.

“I suppose you’re here with an offer I can’t refuse.”

Again the quirky uptick, creating a dimple to the right side of his mouth. Just one.

“Perhaps I’m here to take you up on yours.”

I turn at the door of the mews to look him in the eye. Perhaps George is right. Perhaps my incontinent speech will get me into trouble one day. Just not today.

“I had thought you more perceptive than to take me seriously,” I say. “But then, the game of courtly love always catches the witless unawares.”

Wyatt throws back his head and laughs, a great burbling roar that draws the attention of the courtiers clustered against the walls.

His breath tickles the hair that has escaped my hood at the temple as he leans ever closer.

“I always take such offers seriously.”

“Well, you can sing for it, Thomas Wyatt.” I’m tired of his drivel and innuendos. “I saw what happened to my sister when she was my age. She succumbed to King François and the other golden boys of the French court. To their sweet words, their grins and dimples. They laughed at her behind her back. They talked about her like she was chattel. A mare to be ridden and passed on. She was forcibly removed from France by my father and married in shame.”

“She came to our court and enchanted our king.”

That is unlikely to happen twice in one family.

“You think you know everything, don’t you?”

“And you know nothing.”

I square up and itch to strike the look of amusement off his face.

“For your information, I can speak French better than anyone in this court. I know Latin and some Greek. I have read the works of Erasmus and the poetry of Clément Marot. I’ve met Leonardo da Vinci!”

My words tumble over one another and I sound breathless. I pause to collect myself.

“But you don’t know anything about how to get along in the English court.”

“I know perfectly well how to get along in this court.”

“So you choose to be segregated. A pariah. The one person in the room with whom no one will speak or even make eye contact.”

No, I didn’t. It was chosen for me. By the court. By my clothes. By my tongue. The pain of having this pointed out to me by a stranger settles hard into my chest. Maybe life would be easier if I just fit in.

“A loss for words.” He smiles. “I’m sure that doesn’t happen very often.”

“Why are you speaking to me?”

“Because I want to help you.”

I gaze at Thomas Wyatt without reaction, the courtier’s smile on my lips but not reaching my eyes. I can’t trust him—a man for whom words are playthings and women little better.

“And what do you get out of this?” I ask. “You offer your assistance, but it’s nothing that will line your pockets.”

“Perhaps I only wish to promote the advancement of a former neighbor.”

Even I can see that Thomas Wyatt would run down his neighbor with a rabid horse without a second thought. I make a noise halfway between disbelief and laughter.

“Would you believe I seek to further my own reputation?”

I am instantly wary.

“And tarnish mine.”

“But yours is already tarnished, Anne. Perhaps it needs a little poetic shine.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I heard a rumor about the Shrovetide pageant last year.”

I hesitate. He wasn’t there. Yet the gossip chases me.

“Oh?” I affect nonchalance. “What do you hear?”

“That you had too much to drink. That you stumbled out of the Château Vert and threw yourself at the king.”

“I
danced
with him.” Or tried to.

“But he didn’t dance with
you
. It embarrassed your entire family. Humiliated your sister.”

My sister wasn’t the only one humiliated. A sharp jab of guilt in the back of my throat prevents me from swallowing. No matter what I do, no matter what my intention, I’m always hurting Mary, who least deserves it.

Wyatt doesn’t know what it was like. The candles. The richness. The wine.

The king. The king was dressed in gold and crimson, like a god, with the emblem “Amorous” embroidered across his chest. We were masked. I was new at court, and everything seemed possible. For a single, glittering instant, I dreamed he could be mine.

How was I to know that he’d already slept with Mary?

“I’m trying to forget,” I mumble.

“Everyone else already has.” Wyatt reaches for my chin and won’t let go when I try to twitch out of his grasp. “It’s time to give them something to remember.

“What do I get out of this? I get the admiration of every man here. At this very moment, I’m with a lovely girl who is melting at my touch after a little tiff. It only furthers my reputation.”

“But that’s not what happened.” I fight the urge to see if anyone is watching. “And I’m not melting.”

But I don’t shake him off.

“Ah, but Anne, in this court, it doesn’t matter what really happens. What matters is how it’s perceived.”

“So you get a little boost to your own self-worth,” I prompt. “And you’re not looking for anything else?”

“I’m always looking for something else, my dear,” he says, his voice rolling low into an octave of seduction. “And you have offered a challenge I can’t bear to pass up.”

“And what is that?”

“You say I won’t get anywhere near your bed. But I challenge you back, Anne Boleyn. I say that if I help you—that if the two of us gain your acceptance to this most unaccepting of courts—before long in this pretty, showy dance, you will want me in your bed.”

I laugh right in his face. “Would you like to place a wager on that outcome?”

A glimmer of shock crosses his face—quick, like a sun shadow.

“I never pass up a bet.”

“And if you lose—which you undoubtedly will—you will not press me further?”

“As long as if I win, you follow through.”

We stand, motionless, the flow of barbs and banter stanched by his proposition.

Wyatt’s smile vanishes. I feel something constrict beneath my lungs—something like fear.

“My maidenhead survived the French court intact, Wyatt.” I somehow keep my voice even. “I think it can survive you.”

His expression changes—a flash of understanding—and I realize I’ve just told him I’m still a virgin. Something unexpected in a French courtier. Or a Boleyn girl.

“You present me with high stakes,” I say to cover up my discomfort. “And yet you forfeit nothing to me if you lose.”

“If I lose, I will trouble you no more. I pledge to leave you to your happy life amongst the social elite and always mourn the conquest that never was. I will swear there was nothing between us but courtly banter, and bear the burden of the mocking laughter of my peers.”

“You speak in riddles.”

“I speak in poetry.

“If it be yea, I shall be fain;

If it be nay, friends as before;

Ye shall another man obtain,

And I mine own and yours no more.”

I hold his gaze so that I don’t roll my eyes at his doggerel. But one word strikes a reverberating chord in my mind—
friends.
I could use a friend here. Even one like Thomas Wyatt.

“If I lose”—Wyatt holds a hand to his heart—“I will write a poem about you that will be passed down through the ages as a masterpiece of all time. And I will always remain your humble servant.”

He bows to me with a flourish, and I am able to affix a mask of nonchalance before he rises. I can’t let him see that he’s already charmed me. I can’t let him see how much I need him.

“So what is your strategy?” I ask.

“I will pursue you. And you will encourage it.”

“And what will that gain me?”

“The attention of all the other men at court. At least the ones that count.”

“Like Henry Norris? No thank you.”

“Norris can get you places. He’s a favorite of the king.”

“So is my sister.”

Wyatt looks at me as one would an idiot child.

“But women don’t matter at this court, Anne. In our world, women have no influence, carry no interest.”

Have no voice. Have no lives of our own.

“It’s the men that matter,” he continues. “And most men are too stupid to see what’s right in front of their faces. The only time they want something is when they can’t have it, a jewel in someone else’s bonnet. They take notice of something when it flashes a signal—like the white tail of a deer. The signal for pursuit.”

“So you intend to be the flag on my ass?”

His grin broadens to double dimples.

“I intend to hold you up so that you catch the light.”

A jewel. The image delights me. Wyatt cocks an eyebrow as if he’s scored a point, and I start to turn away.

“Thank you for your offer,” I say coldly.

“Thank you for your promise.”

I pause. Look back. Narrow my eyes at him.

“It was a bet, Wyatt, not a promise. And I intend to win.”

“Shall we kiss on that to seal the deal?”

He steps forward, and my partially turned shoulder brushes his chest, the fabric of his cloak sweeping against my skirts. I can see the stitches in his doublet and feel the heat of his breath on my forehead.

I look up into his face. He is so much taller than I am that I have to tilt my chin to see his eyes, which are focused not on mine but on my lips.

I take a step back.

“I have not yet agreed.”

“And what will it take for you to agree?” Wyatt doesn’t seem at all put off by my rebuff. Rather, he crosses his arms and leans back lazily, his body completely absent of tension, like a purring cat.

“Time.”

“Don’t take too much, Anne, or you may find yourself supplanted in my affections.”

“Don’t follow too closely, Wyatt, or you may be caught in the hunter’s net yourself.”

Richmond Palace

1523

6

I
AM ALONE.
A
GAIN.
T
HE SETTING HAS CHANGED, BUT THE
reality has not. The court moved to Richmond because Greenwich was desperately lacking in air, but the crowded conditions grow even more stifling. I share a bed with Jane and two other girls, sleeping in rotation, the linens always damp and smelling of sleep and perfume. And once, I swear, the acrid sweat of a man.