The Queen's Rival (11 page)

“I thought it was Master Brandon you fancied?”

“I said that for Gilly’s benefit, of course, because I knew he would tease me worse than he did if he were certain of the truth. No, Charles Brandon is far too cockish. He plays boys’ games with women. His dearest friend, the king, however—now
he
is quite decidedly a man. Just look at him!”

Bess watched the king sprinting magnificently across the court in a loose muslin shirt with leather laces, and padded suede breeches, his muscular chest shining with perspiration. She felt a reaction deep within herself for the first time in her life, and the sensation took her breath away. At twenty-two, Henry VIII was an adult, and she most decidedly was not. She was a silly adolescent girl, but that mattered little in fantasy, she thought, smiling devilishly to herself.

“Do you not think he is glorious?” Elizabeth asked.

“Glorious, indeed. And I would imagine
he
would be a glorious kisser, too, just like Lancelot,” Bess replied with a mischievous chuckle.

Elizabeth looked at her with an expression of surprise. “I knew you could not be so different from the rest of us when faced with that royal, godlike perfection. They do say experience is the best teacher, and I am certain he has had plenty of that. They may look alike, but there could not be more difference between Brandon and the king. You know our Lord Lisle, as they already call him, has lived quite the scandalous youth. He is as ambitious as he is handsome, and he has already had two wives to further his standing.”

Bess looked at the king’s opponent more closely. Brandon was attractive, it was true. Tall, taut, and auburn-haired, he looked as if he could be the king’s brother. Bess watched the two of them laugh and sprint and yell when the other missed a volley or a serve. All too soon, to Bess’s mind, the match was over, Brandon having dared to beat the sovereign. Still, their arms were slung over each other’s shoulders casually as they approached Elizabeth, Bess, and the few other maids of honor who had collected to watch.

“So you witnessed my humiliating defeat, did you, Mistress Bryan?” the king asked with an open, affable smile as he and Brandon stopped directly before them. Both girls curtsied, as the others did around them.

“Your Highness played splendidly,” Elizabeth replied. “I actually thought you won.”

“Brandon cheats,” Henry declared with a little wink as his storm green eyes landed at last upon Bess. “And whom have we here, Mistress Bryan?”

“I am Elizabeth Blount, Your Royal Highness,” she replied for herself, though the words stuck suddenly in her throat and were delivered on what felt like a miserable, high croak as she dipped into a painfully awkward curtsy, then rose back up. The king smiled at her youthful embarrassment, which made it that much worse.

“Ah, yes, you’re Sir John’s girl.”

“I am, sire.” Bess averted her eyes as the reply left her lips, feeling her cheeks flush hotly. She was unable to look into his confident, handsome gaze a single moment longer. She felt like such a fool, a hopelessly inconsequential child in his presence, with his gaze bearing down upon her. His casual smile had seemed absolutely blinding.

“How goes your father’s convalescence? He is missed here at our merry little court.”

“My mother writes that he is swiftly improving, sire.”

“That is splendid news.” He seemed to be studying her, she thought, when she forced herself to look back at him and he had not looked away. “You do very much resemble your mother, you know.”

“I am told that.”

“You shall be a great beauty one day. You certainly hold promise. Do you not agree, Brandon?”

Charles Brandon, who seemed bored with the entire exchange, was glancing off toward the gardens as if he had barely noticed her. He did not even regard Elizabeth Bryan, whose confidence and beauty were already apparent. She certainly did not seem intimidated, Bess thought, feeling a sudden spark of envy toward the girl.

“Brandon!” the king barked.

“Yes, of course, Your Highness. Lovely, lovely,” Brandon blandly returned, still never looking directly at Bess either. She must be too far beneath him for that, Bess thought a little ruefully, finding no admirable comparison between Lord Lisle and the king beyond appearance, just as Elizabeth had indicated.

“I am sorry if it has been dull for you here without the queen, but she shall return soon enough,” the king suddenly said to her.

“Not dull at all, Your Highness. There has been much for me to learn in her absence.”

Henry’s smile widened. His teeth were white and straight, and as magnificent as the rest of him. She could not push the legend of Lancelot from her mind as she looked at him girlishly. “Ah, an optimist, are you, Mistress Blount? That pleases me greatly.”

“They tell me I get that as well from my mother.”

Bess forced herself not to look away this time, but it was a bit like looking at the sun, brilliant and blinding.

“Well, there is much for you to learn at my court, whether the queen is here or not,” Henry said decidedly.

“I am discovering that, Your Highness.”

“Mistress Bryan here is a splendid teacher. Mistress Poppincourt as well. Learn what you can from each of them. Take their advice, too, since both might be ahead of you in many ways,” he said with a wink. Bess made a proper nod in return to the surprising gesture, but when she looked up, she saw that the king and Brandon had unceremoniously turned and were already walking away.

“That went pleasingly,” Elizabeth remarked. “And you did not even say anything too foolish to embarrass yourself, or me.”

Bess thought of saying that Elizabeth’s adoring and silly adolescent gaze upon the king had done that well enough, but she decided against it. Bess knew she needed what friends she could find here.

“Does he always depart like that, without so much as a fare-thee-well?” she asked instead.

“Often, yes. He is the king, after all, Bess.” Elizabeth chuckled. “He has quite a lot more on his mind than two inconsequential girls. I am surprised he said as much as he did. Perhaps it was my new dress that drew him over here.”

“Of course that was it,” Bess said with a smile as they left the tennis court in a line behind the other girls.

Secretly, Bess did not care what had brought the king to her side, or caused him to speak. She knew only that it was a defining moment in her life. And she would wait eagerly and full of fanciful thoughts for it to happen again, somewhere, sometime. While she waited, she would try very hard not to resent the very fortunate queen for marrying him before Bess had even fully grown up.

“What are you moping about for, lad?” Wolsey asked with an irritated sigh as Gil came away from the window through which he had been gazing for the better part of an hour. It was a window that shone down onto the royal tennis courts and the knot garden beyond. The king’s match with Brandon was only just over.

He was a good boy, Wolsey reminded himself, doing his best to finish his letter, but Gilbert was completely distracting him with his endless pacing and dramatic sighs. Wolsey knew the signs well enough. He had been a love-struck lad himself once, before his ambition had begun to speak more loudly to him than the call of his heart. Gilbert Tailbois was his one reminder now of that other world, his other life, and perhaps even love. It was a world he tried not to dwell upon too much on days like this, when a skillfully written letter to the Princess of Navarre, thanking her for her hospitality, seemed far more important.

Gilbert ambled tentatively toward Wolsey’s writing table then, and, with a little thud, sank onto the leather chair opposite him. Wolsey lifted his eyes but kept his chin down.

“Are you planning to tell me what and who?”

“No.”

Wolsey let a small, contained smile pass his lips. “I didn’t think so. But whoever it is, she must be quite remarkable to have you in such a sorry state at the moment.”

“She is remarkable. But she is no passing thought, Father.”

Wolsey dropped his pen onto the parchment. It clattered, and ink sprayed onto the desk and his hands. He lifted his thick chin and frowned at the boy. “You know perfectly well you are not to call me that.”

“Not saying something does not change the truth of it. Is that not what you always say?”

Wolsey sank back against the high upholstered chair and wrapped his hands over the carved arms. Most of the time he saw so little of himself in the boy that, throughout the years, he had frequently doubted his paternity. But then there were moments like this—the small stubborn streak that flared, the set of his mouth, defining him—that dispelled all doubt.

“Be that as it may, you refer to me as ‘my lord’ and ‘sir,’ as we have agreed.”

“When I remember to.”

He stiffened. “Well, remember it. You are a Wolsey, not a dolt.”

“Very well, Father.” The boy smiled at him then. The expression was not disrespectful, but one that showed he held a powerful secret in the palm of his hand and seemed to know how to use it. He could not blame the spirited lad for that. Seizing opportunity was a Wolsey trait. Gil would have a brilliant future, the cleric silently reminded himself, if he did not let the wrong girl turn his head. The court was brimming with temptation for everyone, and falling in love could be wildly dangerous. Gil might be a bastard son, but he was still his son, and Wolsey would never allow that to happen.

Wolsey had seen the longing glances he had given the new Blount girl. He had nearly been able to feel them. In the first few days, Wolsey had assumed it was only adolescent infatuation. Now, he could not be so certain. But she must have nothing to hold against Gil, nothing to threaten his future, or change his life, just as Elizabeth had changed his own life long ago with the advent of their child. Wolsey must be certain. He must confirm to have any peace. He excelled at fading into the woodwork. And he would do that tonight when he searched her room for assurance.

“Is there anything I can do to help things with her along, lad?”

Gil glanced back like an afterthought. The soft laughter of young girls came up softly through the windows below. “I wish there were. But this is something that would be better if I did it on my own,” Gil replied.

Wolsey nodded his approval, yet silently he wondered if his son—this gangly, shy boy—was up to such a daunting task, especially if she proved to be as remarkable as he claimed.

Later that afternoon, Gil rode a horse from the royal stables alone out to Hounslow to the hospital there. Since George Tailbois was one of his royal Knights of the Body, the king had offered Sir George accommodations at court while he recovered from his battlefield injuries. But, fearing that the mental collapse might be permanent and that his condition might cause the sovereign embarrassment, Gil had declined the offer on behalf of the man who had raised him.

George Tailbois had always refused to acknowledge the story of his son’s true conception, and so Gil knew little about himself, or even why George had taken on a child as his own. What he did know had come to him in bits and pieces grudgingly imparted by Thomas Wolsey.

After he was named Dean of Lincoln sixteen years earlier, Wolsey had met a woman called Elizabeth. Only Wolsey’s tone, when he spoke her name, gave Gil any indication at all that he had ever truly cared for her. She had been married off shortly thereafter to the sheriff of Lincolnshire and Northumberland, Sir George Tailbois. Gil had always been forced to draw his own conclusions about how and why the noble family, with a claim to the barony of Kyme and the earldom of Angus, had agreed to take Gil on as their own. Then, several years later, when he was still a boy, both Gil and his adoptive father found places at court among the king and Wolsey’s staff. Thus the ruse had been cemented, and Gil had realized the Tailbois family had been driven by money and position. Gil’s loyalty to George Tailbois, thus, was born not fully of affection but of gratitude for having given his mother and him a name if not the tenderness he still craved.