by Diane Haeger
Bess gave a startled little jump. When she turned around, she was surprised to see it was the king standing there in the same magnificent black and silver doublet he had worn at supper. But without his cap, there was nothing to draw attention away from his eyes, or his handsome face, which seemed so troubled.
“Foolish, I suppose, since Mary is a grown woman with a duty to fulfill,” he added with a heavy sigh.
Bess paused, uncertain if he meant for her to respond.
“I miss my brother George as well. I know he is happy where he is, yet still I miss him,” she eventually replied with some hesitation.
“The sibling bond is deep,” Henry said knowingly.
“Like no other,” she replied in agreement.
He linked his hands behind his back and gazed out at the sea along with her as the very last crimson strip of the sunset dipped below the horizon before them.
“But I am pleased to hear that you are happy with your place at court.”
“I am indeed, sire.”
“I had a brother once. He was called Arthur,” he said a moment later. The words were so casually spoken that she thought he might have been any other ordinary young man in England making a passing reference to his brother—not someone meant to be king.
“Yes, my lord. I have heard of him.”
“He died when you were very young, but you would have liked him. You have a similar way about you.”
Bess was surprised by that, and she guiltily hoped that the little blanket she had taken had eventually found its way back beneath his bed. “Your Highness flatters me by saying so.”
“There was the same reserve about Arthur that you possess, but there was always much beneath the surface, for those who took the time to see it.”
The king’s eyes were haunting to her now as they settled deeply upon her, the warm wind stirring their clothes and hair. Such a deep and fathomless green, they were eyes Bess knew, even then, she could lose herself in, if she allowed it. He was everything a young girl from the country ever dreamed about. The thought frightened her, because he was a king, yes, but more than that—because he was irrevocably linked to another woman: his wife.
“Did the queen see what you saw in Arthur?” she asked, surprising herself. His marriage was much on her mind these days, but she found that she truly did want to know.
“You mean when Katherine was his wife? Yes, she did. We all loved Arthur so dearly.”
She watched Henry’s eyes mist with tears just before he turned and gazed back out at the sea. “I have no idea why I just told you that.”
“Yet I am flattered that you did, Your Highness.”
“Sire. Your Highness. My lord. All such wearisome appellations,” he said, sighing and sounding much older than his twenty-two years.
“Would you think me less of a flatterer, and perhaps more a fool, if I told you that the great King of England who stands before you keeps an article of his brother’s, almost as if it were a talisman, hoping to bring him back? It is a small cradle blanket in which he was wrapped as an infant. Sometimes I feel, when I touch the delicate fabric, that he is near to me again. And that feeling somehow lightens the burden of being king.”
“That is very dear, not foolish at all,” she said, meaning it. But this time she could not bring herself to pull her eyes from his. Henry’s gaze had a strange command over her, and Bess knew, at that moment, she must work very hard not to fall beneath its powerful spell. No matter the harmless, courtly flirtations she had seen, he rightfully belonged to Katherine of Aragon, Bess diligently struggled to remind herself. So strong was the sensation that his nearness brought, and so complex were her feelings, she did not think to wonder what had brought him out here in the first place to this rocky cliff to stand alone with a girl he barely knew.
“Dear.” He repeated the word with a little scoffing laugh that Bess thought surprisingly brittle. “Well Arthur loved his wife, and she loved him. They were well matched, even for ones so young.” The king seemed like an ordinary young man with weaknesses of his own. His words gave her the courage to be bold.
“And you, my lord, are you well matched with your queen?”
“Katherine was the right woman to become Queen of England after Arthur died,” he finally replied with a burdensome sigh. “Without a child, though—without a son—I do sometimes wonder if I displeased God by believing that.”
“I pray God you did not displease Him and that this next child will be a son for you both.”
Henry looked at her deeply then, almost studying her. “You really are a different sort of girl, are you not?”
“I am not certain what Your Highness means, exactly, but my brother George always said I was full of thoughts that only I would ever understand.”
Henry smiled his dazzling smile at her response, which then faded into a soft look of sincerity. “I understand you perfectly well, I believe.”
“Do you?”
“As I understood Arthur. Bess, sincerity is rather easy to see. You may well be young, but your sincerity is strong, apparent, and a comfort to be around.”
She felt a shiver at the sound her name made on his lips. It was strangely intimate to her, a kind of communion between them, and thus totally inappropriate, both because of her youth and because he was married. She must not forget that.
Bess glanced back up at the grand castle, wondering who knew they were out there alone together. Most likely everyone knew.
“I am truly flattered that you would find me so.” She struggled against the powerful attraction she felt. His gaze told her he was feeling the same. She glanced a second time at the stone manor up above the winding gravel-covered path.
“In such a complex world, am I less of a comfort to you, Bess?” he asked deeply as he closed the gap between the two of them in a single movement.
“Not because you are the king, my lord, but because you have a wife.” Bess was not certain from where the words had come. The declaration had been bold, but the words had pushed their way out before she could deny them. She had thought and dreamed of little else for months, but how different she would feel if he were an unmarried man. Bess so loved the fantasy, but just now she valued loyalty to her family more.
Henry smiled again, and this time the expression was full of easy confidence as he reached up and very gently touched the side of her face with the back of his hand. The sensation was so charged that Bess grimaced as she felt her face grow very warm. Her body was weakening, no matter what words she had managed to force past her lips.
“It is precisely because I am king that I require a wife and, by extension, a son.”
She tipped her head as she studied him. “You are not saying that you do not love the queen, are you, sire?”
“She is my heart’s duty, if not my heart’s desire, so at times I suppose I am drawn to something more,” he said philosophically.
His tone surprised her nearly as much as the admission. Even though she had seen evidence of it and long suspected it was true, of course, there was a harsh reality to the confirmation, which seemed far-flung from the romances, like Lancelot, in which she still so wanted to believe. “So you do take mistresses then?”
“That is not at all what I meant.”
The wind was tossing their hair and masking their words so that only the two of them could hear. “But I do find myself powerfully drawn to you, Bess, and I am at a loss as to how I might temper the attraction.”
His voice had become melodic, keenly seductive now, and somehow he had moved close enough that she could feel the rise and fall of his chest against her own. Again, he ran his hand along the side of her face, tracing the line of her jaw down near her mouth. Bess knew she should protest, but she could not.
“Do you feel nothing at all for me?” he asked.
“I feel my duty to the queen more.” Her body had begun to ache in a way it never had before, and the urge to melt deeply against him was unrelenting.
Henry smiled again. “Car
e to tell me how much more?”
She could not contain her feeling, and she smiled. Why had God set before her like this someone so clever, so handsome, so desirable, and so far beyond her reach?
“No, I do not care to tell you.”
“No matter.” He chuckled. “Your eyes have shown me, even if your words do not. Not to mention your body,” he added, glancing down at the way she had yielded, pressed against his doublet.
Embarrassed, Bess stepped back. Her parents would be livid if they knew.
“Too late,” he gently quipped, not surrendering the intimacy between them. “This is just the beginning.”
“Beginning of what?”
“Only time shall tell, Mistress Blount.”
“Not ‘Bess’ any longer?” she asked with a sudden flair of spirit.
“Not ‘Bess’ again until I know hearing it on my lips, in the way I mean to say it, is what you desire, as much as do I.”
She bit back her smile as they stood together in the last vestiges of daylight. “And what if that day never comes?”
“Oh, it shall come,” Henry glibly said. “Of that I have no doubt.”
Bess half expected to find Elizabeth or Gil waiting when she returned a few minutes later to her small bedchamber, which had a wonderful view of the sea. She missed them both here in Dover, so far from court. There was so much to tell, yet there was no one but Jane Poppincourt in whom to confide—and even Jane was mysteriously nowhere to be found.
Bess stood at the single open window, letting the night air and the rhythmic sounds of the sea wash over her. It had been a strangely unnerving day of battling her conscience and her desire. Her father had warned her about this world. Mountjoy had as well. These were powerful men with even more powerful desires to use beautiful young girls as playthings in meaningless games of courtly love. But never in those warnings had anyone adequately prepared her for the possibility that one of those men might ever be the married King of England.
She closed her eyes for a moment as the cool night air dried the perspiration on her neck and the hollow between her breasts, beneath her velvet gown. She did not even like Jane overly much, yet Bess longed to tell her about the evening anyway. She longed to tell someone in case she woke up tomorrow and it had all been a dream. And it was a dream of sorts—a dangerous one. Gil would not hesitate to warn her of that. Better to have him back at Greenwich with Wolsey and the queen, Bess thought with a little spark of defiance, and better for this to be an incredible, delicious little secret for her alone.
The roads were especially muddy and rutted by summer rain, and they had slowed the journey back to court to a jarring, neck-aching crawl. Bess longingly anticipated a soft, still bed as she climbed the last staircase, then twisted the iron door handle that led to her chamber. What she had not anticipated was who would be waiting for her when she arrived.
For the first time in more than a year, Bess gazed in surprise and disbelief at her favorite brother, George, standing beside her bed, smiling. He was here without warning, just as her parents had been.
“How?” The single word was all she managed to shriek as she flew into his arms.
He held her tightly for a moment, then kissed the top of her head with great affection. “I was summoned very suddenly. A servant to the king came to Kinlet and told me I must come at once.”
Two days earlier, she had stood on a cliff with the king and they had spoken of brothers. This was an obvious gift to her from King Henry.
“I have missed you!” she cried as tears made little pathways through the road dust that covered her face.
“And I you, Bess.”
“How long will you stay?”
“I have not yet been told, and I did not want to endanger anything by asking. But I am so dearly glad to be here.” He held her out for a moment at arm’s length then, his smile widening. “Look at what a beauty you have become in a year. I can scarcely believe it. You look like a proper lady now, and a grown woman.”
“Thank you, Georgie,” she replied, giving him her best, serene court smile until they both began to giggle and then collapsed onto her little bed. “Do Mother and Father know you are here?”
“They showed me to your chamber.”
“They must be thrilled, Father especially.”
“You are their hope now, Bess. There is great family pressure on you to make an important marriage, you know.”
“No,” she said honestly. “I did not know. I assumed I would be sent back to Kinlet soon, now that Father is well recovered and they are both returned.”
George smiled at her, with that smile full of so many memories and happy times. “I believe it is safe to say that plan has been forever changed by the brilliant match your friend Mistress Bryan made with Master Carew.”
Bess’s smile faded. “I do not know how brilliant she would say it was. Elizabeth wept the entire morning of the ceremony.”
“A coltish bride is no surprise, Father always says.”
She gazed up at the ceiling, feeling constricted now by her tight stomacher, the heavy velvet gown, the shoes, and the proper headdress, all of which she longed to cast off. “It was more than that, Georgie. Although she refused to speak to me or our friend Gil about it, I always believed she had designs on someone else.”
“Gil, is it?” he asked with a twisted smile. “Do you mean Master Gilbert Tailbois, ward of Bishop Wolsey?”
“How do you know of him?”
“I have always been a good student of our parents’ lectures on the key players at court, lest I be called into service. Or even for just a visit such as now, where I might make an impression. So then, what about you and Master Tailbois? Since he is the aide to one of the king’s most trusted confidants, Father and Mother must be hoping he will consider you.”
Bess felt herself blush discussing this with her own brother, no matter how close they were. “Gil is sweet and kind, that much is true, but I assure you there is no feeling of romantic connection between us. I do believe I would be the last girl he or the bishop would consider.”
George turned his head to look at her as they lay beside each other, her now-hoodless blond hair fanned out between them on the bed. “Is there someone, then, with whom you do have a romantic connection?”
Bess met his gaze for a moment, wanting to push past the awkward sensation in order to confide in the one person she knew without question she could trust. “Promise you’ll not laugh?”
“I promise.”
“It is impossible, of course.”
There was a little silence then. “Oh Jésu, no.”
“He has done absolutely nothing improper, but I believe King Henry brought you to court in order to please me.”
“You and the king?” George began to laugh as if it were the most preposterous statement in the world. “Little Bessie Blount from Kinlet and the King of England?”
She felt herself stiffen at the slight. “Is it really so difficult to believe?”
“That a handsome, powerful sovereign, one with an equally important queen to whom he is devoted enough to name regent, would think of my little country sister as anything beyond a dalliance? Yes, Bess, it is very difficult to believe, indeed.”
She sat up with an indignant little huff and pushed her long hair back behind her shoulders. “The king is a serious man with serious intentions. He told me so himself. Why else would you think he would suddenly bring you here other than because I told him I missed you?”
“You were having that sort of intimate conversation with our married sovereign and you do not believe me? Whom else have you told about this?”
George was sitting up now as well, but she would no longer look at him.
“No one.”
He exhaled deeply. “That, at least, is a relief. See that you keep it that way, or you shall endanger not only your own position here, but Mother’s and Father’s as well.”
George took up her hand then and held it tightly. “The truth is, I can understa
nd the lure. But do not be a fool, Bess. There is nothing he could offer you beyond what the others have already gotten.”
“He may be a bit bold with his flirtations, but he told me he does not take mistresses, and I have no reason not to believe him,” she countered with adolescent stubbornness.
“Mother told me herself it was whispered that your friend Elizabeth Carew was one of them,” he put in very gently. “Perhaps the tears you saw at her wedding were of innocence lost?”
“Elizabeth may have flirted with him like the rest of us, or even, I shall grant you, joined him in his chamber, but she would never have compromised herself fully like that.”
“Perhaps if she once believed the same things you now do—”
“Stop!” Bess cried, and bolted for the window. As she tried to collect herself by glancing down into the courtyard, she saw that most of the horses used on the long journey to Dover had been led back to the stables and only a few servants remained. They were still unloading the carts that had accompanied the massive royal entourage. The king. Dover. The cliff. . . Finally, Bess drew in a steadying breath and turned back around. “I am happier than you shall ever know that you are here,” she said with a slight tremble to her voice. “But there are some things you simply do not understand.”
“And even more things that you do not. Sister, please. I’ll not tell anyone, but I bid you, take great care.”
“No matter what I may feel, my loyalty is to the queen, who allowed me to come to court, and I told him as much myself.”
George Blount slapped his forehead then, his eyes rolling to a close. “You have spoken that familiarly with the king?”
“I do not expect you to understand someone you do not know,” Bess snapped in reply.
“And you do? Pray, take care with this friendship, Sister,” he warned, “or you may get well more than you ever bargained for.”
They stood looking at each other stubbornly, both angry, and at an impasse that had come as suddenly and swiftly as their reunion.
“I shall be careful, I promise,” she finally said, knowing even as she spoke the vow that she was flirting with danger. Bess was a different person now in more than appearance, changing every day into the kind of woman who courted danger, no matter the risk.