No Will But His

by Hoyt, Sarah A.

  That night she was called to play for the duchess and her company—the Duke of Norfolk, who was visiting. As always, her playing was much admired and complimented, causing her to smile broadly and show two little dimples on either side of her face.

  They asked her to play everything, from airs to madrigals, on the lute and on the virginal and finally the duke told his stepmother, “Well, you are right. There is something of Anne to her, and sure her playing is enchanting. Quite the best musician I’ve ever met. I’ll see what can be done. I’ll make enquiries.”

  After the duke had left, the duchess asked Kathryn to stay behind, while her chamberer undressed the old lady with hands made deft by practice. “Do you wonder, Kathryn,” the Duchess asked, “what the duke wants?”

  “Indeed,” she said, “I don’t, for I vow it won’t be anything to do with me.”

  But the duchess laughed and said, “Forsooth, so modest, child. It is indeed to do with you. We’re arranging to forward a great marriage for you. But there, I won’t say more, for fear of casting ill luck on the endeavor. Know only that your grandmother and your loving uncle are thinking about you.”

  Kathryn curtseyed and said thank you, and left the room wandering what marriage they could possibly be forwarding for her while the pall of Queen Anne’s execution still hung over the family. But she desisted from trying to understand it; for sure, if it were someone she knew, then the Duchess would have told her who it was. And if it were not someone she knew, at least she was fairly sure it would not be a mere country squire; if it were, then the duchess would not say that it was a great marriage.

  In this knowledge, she went through a curtain into a passage that led out of the duchess’s chamber proper. At that moment, she heard footsteps behind her, and turned, in time to see Mary Lassells with pursed lips and an expression of great disapproval, standing right behind her. Since the last time the woman had been that near had been while she’d grabbed at Kathryn’s hair and slapped Kathryn’s face after catching her in the church with Manox, Kathryn was discomfited enough to step aside.

  Noticing that the woman was holding a large basin full of steaming water—probably the remnants from helping the duchess’s night grooming—in her hands, Kathryn leaned forward, to open the door, but for the second time that day, she was accosted with very odd words, “If you please, Mistress Kathryn Howard, I would have words with you.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Kathryn asked. “What can you have to say to me?”

  “Only this. That on a recent errand for my lady into Horsham proper, I came across that Henry Manox with whom you used to be so pleased.”

  “It was a long time ago, and I knew nothing. I only tried to make him stop besieging me,” Kathryn said. “I have told my grandmother everything.”

  “Yes, milady, and so you say,” Mary made no move to put down the massive basin, but stood there holding it, as though it were no encumbrance at all and she could not feel the weight of it. “And you might be telling the truth at that, but I’ll have you know I accosted Manox and asked him why he’s playing the fool.” She frowned. “For you must know that more than once in the past months I heard rumors that he was talking about you and saying that he intended to marry you, and I told him he couldn’t be that foolish, for if he tried to do any such thing, your relatives would very quickly end his life. And then he told me that perhaps it was so, but it did not matter as his intentions toward you were strictly dishonorable. That he meant to have you, without ever marrying you, and that you’d promised him that he could have your maidenhood, though it hurt you, for you knew he’d be good to you afterward.”

  Kathryn felt as though the air escaped her lungs. She put her hand in front of her mouth to stifle a scream that was more than half frustration and rage. “What means he by this?” she said at last. “Has he run mad? For in the church that … that day you found us, he told me this, and I told him that I did not wish him to have my maidenhead and that—”

  “Yes, milady,” Lassells said, and it was of a sudden clear to Kathryn that the woman wasn’t angry at her, but rather angry at Manox and afraid for Kathryn and Kathryn’s reputation. “I know, I heard. My Lady and I went there almost as soon as you did, only delayed because she got the letter about … about Queen Anne, and we went in through the back, but I heard you say that to him clear as day, and it was clear to me, too, that he had been practicing the grossest deception on you, and that you had been doing nothing but trying to get him to stop importuning you, only you did not know how to do it.” She sighed. “But I thought you should know what he’s been saying. It is my opinion that he’s mad with rage at failing to engage your affections and distraught that you didn’t, indeed, pledge your troth to him. And when a man is like that, he can do or say anything. And now that my lady is trying to arrange a marriage for you … and such a marriage, too … Well, then, I think that you should meet with Manox one final time, and arrange it so that he knows if he continues speaking, you have friends as will avenge your honor. For I’m sure,” Lassells went on, earnestly, “that anyone of Her Grace’s gentlemen will do that.”

  “I … yes, I will meet him,” Kathryn said. “If you think it will help. Only not in the chapel and not under the stairs.”

  “Oh, no, madam,” Mary said. “I will send word that you will meet him in the orchard, tomorrow after supper, and if you be willing, I’ll stay in the shadows a little far off, not close enough to eavesdrop, but close enough to rescue you should you need my assistance.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The riding lesson was after breakfast, a breakfast of bread and cheese and ale of which Kathryn hardly partook, because she was thinking of the interview with Manox. She tried to put it out of her mind, for what use was there to thinking about it all day? And she was not supposed to see the man till the evening.

  But worry lingered. She could tell herself that she was not worrying, but she could not actually banish worry as such. She could simply make it hide under a blanket of normalcy.

  “So sad, Milady?” Francis Dereham asked her, as he helped her onto her horse. “It seems to me what you need is a good run through the paths in the preserve.”

  It seemed to Kathryn that, on the other side of her, Waldgrave sighed deeply, but she smiled at Dereham, showing her dimples. A wild ride through the forest was exactly what she needed, and she was glad he had realized it and made her realize it, too. “Indeed, sir,” she said.

  Once the horses had warmed to their paces, Dereham spurred his horse, and Kathryn too spurred the horse she was riding, and they hurried along faster and faster till Dereham slowed, as he had the day before. Only this time, as they came to a stop deep in the forest, he jumped from his horse and tied the animal to a nearby branch, then led Kathryn’s horse, with Kathryn still on it, to the same point, and likewise tied it to a tree.

  Then, without warning, he reached up, his hands around her waist, as he had done dozens of times before, and pulled her down from horse. Only this time, unlike the times before, instead of setting her on the ground, he pulled her close to him before setting her down, so that she was standing as close to him as a woman could be to a man when her feet touched the mossy floor of the forest.

  “Master Dereham,” she said, only her voice came out all breathy and odd, as if pronouncing her name made her dizzy. As though the thought of him were claret poured directly into her mind. “Master Dereham,” she said again, and lest it be taken for a reproof, stretched her little hand and grabbed hold of his doublet and made as if to pull him closer, were that possible.

  He smiled at her and put both arms around her, his dark, dark eyes seemd to shine with an interior light, as his eyelids descended halfway upon them. “Ah, Mistress Howard, you don’t know how long I have wished to do this.”

  “Do what?” she asked, and then squeaked as he brought his lips down upon hers and kissed her hard, his tongue pushing its way between her unresisting lips and teeth, and playing with her tongue as though it were a snake dispor
ting itself in its den.

  She’d never felt anything like it. Oh, she’d done this, or very much the same, with Manox. But the feelings that went with it were all different. Kissing Manox had been fun, in the way that being touched was fun, and because she was the absolute center of Manox’s attention.

  Kissing Dereham was something wholly different. She wanted him as much as he wanted her—she could feel it in their kiss, and in the little moan that escaped her and caused him to hold her yet tighter and kiss her yet more passionately. He moaned back into her lips, and his arms pulled her hard against him.

  She could feel his manhood, hard and hot against her stomach, but she did not wish to pull back nor ask him what he was about. Instead, she threw back her head and willed herself to enjoy this kiss. Dereham’s mouth tasted of the best ale, and like the best ale it felt as though it would turn her head. And his mouth and hers felt as though they should be linked, as though only then would they feel complete.

  When his tongue withdrew, her tongue followed his, into his mouth, and he made a sound of surprise at it and let her kiss him, taking the lead in the game in which, until so recently, she’d been the prey.

  “Mistress Howard, I didn’t know you could kiss,” he said.

  “Master Dereham, neither did I. It only … it only feels natural.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her, forming two perfect dark semicircles against his broad forehead. “Indeed, it does, Kathryn Howard. I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, and that I was born to kiss you and to be kissed by you.”

  “They told me,” she said, panting a little, with lack of breath and with her own daring. “That you were courting Joan Bulmer.”

  “Oh, that was so long ago,” Dereham said, and smiled disarmingly. “And I was but a fool who knew no better. I didn’t know you, Kathryn.” He paused. “And they told me you were betrothed to Henry Manox.”

  “Oh, no, sir, I never was. Only he cried so much for my love and told me he would die without it and in common charity, I let him kiss me, but”—she hastened to add—“it was not, you know, the same as kissing you. For I had no joy in it.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her but smiled at the same time, giving the impression that he was tempting her to some exquisite pleasure. “But you have joy of my kissing, have you not?”

  “Oh, so much,” she said, and with that, rose on her tiptoes to kiss him again.

  She didn’t know how many times they kissed, or how hard, because like time in paradise, time spent kissing Francis Dereham was perfect and without form or struggle. At last, it seemed to her she heard, very distantly, the sounds of hooves, and Francis pulled back from her.

  “Hark,” he said. “It is Waldgrave that approaches. Not that he’ll tell on us, but all the same, this might not be the best of places to kiss you, for you see anyone might spy us at our pleasure.”

  As they pulled apart, Waldgrave had indeed arrived next to them and was sitting on is horse, patiently, waiting while Francis Dereham helped Kathryn up on her horse and then, after unfastening the animals from the branch to which they were tethered, mounted his own horse. “No, this is not the best place, Mistress Howard,” he said, and grinned at his friend. “I shall have to ask Waldgrave to teach me his way.”

  Waldgrave scowled. “An’ the trellis is sturdy enough,” he said, and spurred his horse on and out of the way. It wasn’t till they’d got to the stable and after making sure no stable hands were near that Kathryn, as Francis helped her down from the horse, dared to lean closer and ask, “Pray tell … the trellis?”

  “Indeed. My fellow Waldgrave is mad in love with your bedmate, Alice. Nightly he climbs the trellis so that he may enjoy, as it were, paradise at the top.”

  “But …” Kathryn said. “She is my bedmate. They can’t be meeting upon my bed. I do not sleep that soundly.”

  Francis laughed. “No, no. It is not like that. As I understand, there is another room or closet to which your room leads, and which was quite empty before Waldgrave and Alice managed to pull a mattress in there—one of the straw mattresses that was supposed to be discarded last year when the new ones were stuffed. The only thing you missed, Mistress Howard, was that your bed mate is not always there the entire night.”

  Kathryn remembered times of waking up in the middle of the night with Alice slipping back into the bed, her cold feet sliding in alongside Kathryn’s body, and of sleepily asking Alice what she’d been about and being told that Alice had only been using the chamber pot. Now she knew better and felt an utter fool to have been thus led astray.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t feel bad to be taken in by Alice,” Francis said, as though reading her mind. “For I am to understand she’s the most accomplished little liar and thief. Edward Waldgrave brags that every other night at least she gets hold of the key from the duchess’s own room, so she can let him in through the dormitory door all right and proper, and spare him the trouble and danger of climbing the trellis.”

  “How odd,” Kathryn said. “And I never suspected any of this. It is as though I never knew Alice at all.”

  “Aye,” Francis said, and there in the stables, it was clear that he didn’t dare kiss her, but it was equally certain, from his gaze, that he longed to. “Aye, but you see, by learning all the contrivances we may use, they have paved the way for us. And now we shall enjoy the fruits of their labors. I can’t promise, Mistress Howard, that I’ll make it up the trellis tonight, but I will do it as soon as it is possible.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Master Manox,” Kathryn said, as soon as her former music teacher met her in the orchard.

  It was obvious he had dressed in his best—a doublet that looked brand new and was made of brocade, slashed through to show silk at sleeves and body. And he had a brand new cap upon his hair, and he approached her with a smile on his face.

  The face itself looked deeper, and the eyes more deeply carved than when she’d last seen him. It seemed to Kathryn that Master Manox must have slept badly since he’d last seen her or, perhaps, slept not at all.

  The way he looked at her was hungrier than ever, and for just a moment, she was afraid he’d embrace her or kiss her or take hold of her hands. After the bliss she’d known in Dereham’s arms, she wasn’t sure at all that she could take the more common and coarser touch of Manox’s hands.

  “Kathryn,” he said, and extended his hands to her, then, noting that she clasped her hands behind her back, let his own fall. But his eyes still burned with feverish hunger, and his voice shook with passion as he said, “Oh, I have missed you.”

  She didn’t know what to answer to that, so she looked at her feet, and she said, “I have heard you’ve been telling lies about me.”

  “Lies!” he said. “What lies have I told? And who told you so? I sent you a letter through Waldgrave, but he said that you wouldn’t even accept it.”

  “I don’t like reading,” she said. “Or at least I don’t like reading letters where the handwriting is formed whichever way, and besides, Master Manox, we have nothing to say to each other.”

  He put his hands forward again, as though he would hold her by the shoulders, and she stepped back hastily and said, “Do not touch me, or I shall scream.”

  “But, Kathryn! You met me under the stairs to the upper level of the chapel. And you met me in the chapel itself, behind the altar. How can you now pretend we never knew each other? And what could make you scream at my touch?”

  “I never wanted to meet you,” she said, hearing a faint note of hysteria in her voice. “You know I didn’t. I only did it because you told me you were suffering and that my allowing you to touch me would relieve you. But it never did, and you just demanded more, and my grandmother said it was all a ruse, of the sort that men use to get women to let them into their beds.”

  “How can you say that?” Manox asked, his eyes blazing. “How can you say that, Kathryn, when you know what we were to each other.”

  “What we were, Master Manox? Have
your wits gone begging? Didn’t I tell you often that you were nothing to me nor could you be? That you could never marry me?”

  He shook his head, as though by shaking it, he could deny the words she said. “But it is not like that,” he said. “You enjoyed our kisses and embraces. I remember. I remember the sighs that escaped your lips and the moans—” Again he took a step forward, as though determined, once more to show her she could enjoy it.

  And once more, Kathryn stepped backward, trying to avoid his hands. “We are not here for that, Master Manox, nor do I wish you to touch me or kiss me or hold me ever again. I’ve been brought to the grave conscience of my error, and all I want now is to keep myself pure and honest for my husband.”

  “Pure and honest!” he said, as though the words rankled. “My cousin tells me that Dereham is mad over you and that you encourage him.”

  “I don’t know what your cousin tells you, nor is it any of your business whom I may be mad over. My aunt’s chamberer, Mary Lassells, tells me that you have been telling everyone that I had pledged my troth to you, which you know well I’ve never done; and also that I had told you that you could have my maidenhead, even if it hurt me, because I knew you’d be good to me after; and also that your intentions were strictly dishonorable and you had no intention at all of marrying me, but only wished to see how far you could take your affair with me.”

  At these words, boldly spoken, Manox stopped. A wave of color came up from his neck into his cheeks, and it told Kathryn, clearer than anything else could, that Manox had indeed said those words to Mary Lassells. Whether he’d meant it or not was something else, something that Kathryn had little interest in knowing.