He was immensely strong and easily able to hold her securely, and though this was not to be the tenderest of acts, being so spontaneous, it had all the excitement of which she had tried to convince Anna, and more. And since Anna’s dilemma was so recent in her mind, it occurred to Ginny also that this method would probably have sounded more off-putting than the one she’d heard from Mother Lowe. She thought Anna would now never experience the passion that was pouring through them in that most intimate of embraces and that she would be the poorer for not knowing. She felt his animal urges meld into her, giving her pleasure she had so much desired where she did nothing except cling and caress with her lips, and savour each delicious thrust as his body met hers. Grasping his head, she showered him with her kisses as he groaned and finished, finally falling back onto the bed, spent, laughing, and speechless. This time, it seemed not to matter that there had been no words, for neither sight nor sound were needed to describe the sweet lethargy that followed.
‘Well, my lady?’ he said, breathing the words into her hair. ‘Are you tamed now? Have I found a way to silence you?’
The best way to reply would be with silence, and Ginny was learning, on each occasion, that she would have to be patient with this enigmatic man who would not be pressured into telling her anything more about himself than was convenient. That he had some kind of secret, she understood, for she had felt it again in his energetic loving that had been for him a release of emotion only partly connected to desire. She had heard it in his breathing. A certain desperation. Was it a need to control? Revenge, perhaps? Or possession? Or some deep wound he was trying to comfort? He wanted her not to ask questions, particularly not from Culpeper’s set. He preferred not to discuss the welfare of his fatherless and motherless child. He preferred not to go into the specific dangers that lurked around her, of how to avoid Henry, or of how exactly he meant to protect her. She was to be silent on these matters, though they could discuss the queen’s problems in some detail. Apparently, he now assumed that this was what it took to make her pliant. And silent. It was something she would soon have to resolve in her own way, which would probably not be his.
Nudging his soft earlobe with her nose, she wondered whether he would know that, for her, his wonderful loving had fallen short of bringing her to that same place he’d reached when he’d groaned, and convulsed, and strained into her deepest parts. Would he ever take her there, she wondered? And if so, how soon? Or was it her own doubts that held her back?
To please him, she nestled closer before saying drowsily, ‘Take off your breeches, Sir Jon. They’re scratching me. I’ll embroider you a new codpiece tomorrow, if I find time.’
‘Bigger than Henry’s?’ he whispered.
‘No, he wouldn’t like that. Just more colourful.’
* * *
Ginny’s resolve to take matters into her own hands was given a boost early in March after a lecture from her father about the need to fulfil those obligations for which, in his book at least, she had come to court. Why had she not managed, he wanted to know, to get as far as Henry’s bed? What was the meaning of the delay? Did she not know how to go about it by now? Had Sir Jon taught her nothing?
‘Father!’ she said. ‘Please, not here.’
They had met by chance in one of the galleries that linked the older parts of the palace to the park where, although servants were not allowed to linger, privacy was rarely possible. Sir Walter took Ginny’s elbow, drawing her towards a recess, indicating that he was not about to let the matter rest. ‘Well?’ he said, presenting his back to the traffic. ‘What’s the problem? Has the king not asked for you?’
‘Not yet, Father. I think he’s more interested in Mistress Howard at the moment, but he’s not found a husband for her, so she’s not going to become his mistress any time soon, is she?’
Sir Walter’s sigh came out like a dying note on an organ. ‘Virginia, she’s related to the Howards, remember? The Duke of Norfolk is her uncle, lass. Norfolk is pushing her like a demented miller towards the throne, as he did with the Boleyn woman. He’s not going to allow silly Kat Howard to climb into Henry’s bed before she’s married to him. Don’t you see that? What Norfolk wants is the power, Virginia, that comes with having one of his family bear the king a son. A legitimate son. What I want is Sandrock Priory. What your brothers want is knighthoods. What Henry needs right now is a mistress, and he takes mistresses from families like ours, not aristocrats like the Howards. See? God’s truth, lass, do I have to spell it out for you again?’ His breath ran out as his complexion reached the same brick-red as the walls.
‘So if the king is not so interested in making Kat Howard his mistress, Father, I wonder why he goes across the river each night to visit her at Lambeth at the Norfolk residence before he returns to the queen?’ Ginny could see by his face that this was news to him. ‘You are not informed of that little detail?’ she said. ‘Well, if you remember, I told you and Mother that, from what I’d seen with my innocent eyes, the king’s fancy is both unpredictable and unreliable. So perhaps you should not have built up your hopes too high.’
‘I was relying on you, Virginia.’
‘And I find your morals too confusing for me, Father. For a man who professes to be disgusted by other men’s infidelities, like Jane Seymour’s father, for instance, you now want to know why I haven’t already been unfaithful to my husband. You must try to explain that to me one day. Preferably when Sir Jon is present. But you’ll be pleased to know that my manners toward him have improved, of late.’ She curtsied and skipped round him. ‘Do excuse me. The queen waits.’
After that, she felt as if a load had shifted from her shoulders, even if her father had been wrong about one thing. The king had taken a member of the Norfolk clan as his mistress in the form of Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne, who was Norfolk’s sister’s girl and therefore as much his niece as Kat Howard, his late brother’s orphan. Howard was the family name. It was a wonder, Ginny thought, how any outsider could fathom out who was related and who was not, with so much intermarriage and assorted step-parents. But Ginny was now aware, as she had not been before, that in his ambition for power, compared to her father, the steely Duke of Norfolk was like a warhorse to a Shetland pony. With the king’s ear and as a member of the Privy Council, Norfolk had only to keep his niece dancing in front of Henry in a way that Sir Walter could not do with her. He had hoped Sir Jon would do that, but Sir Jon had not so far obliged, and her father had noticed how, as long as she stayed in the queen’s company, the king would see less of her than he’d hoped.
Only moments later, it looked as if her brother Paul might have been drafted in to tackle the problem in his usual ham-fisted way. ‘Where’s my knighthood, then, Ginny?’ he said, catching up with her farther along the gallery. ‘The old man’s getting a bit hot under the collar. Thinks he’s going to miss out on Sandrock. So has Henry gone off the boil?’
‘I’m sure he’ll have you on his list of rewards, Paul,’ Ginny said. ‘Remind me again, what was the knighthood to be for? Services to...?’
‘Oh, come on, Ginny. Don’t be like that. You know what it’s about.’ He was like a child, as sure of a favour as he’d always been with their mother. Wearing the latest fashion in jewelled and plumed caps, he depended on his boyish humour as much as on his appearance, yet Ginny knew from Elion how deep he was in debt to his tailor and goldsmith, saddler and wine merchant, and how the allowance from his father was lost at cards each month. Now, however, she had learned a far more unsavoury report about him from Elion, which, although without proof, could not be discounted when he was in many other ways so irresponsible. She would rather not have believed it of him, but could not quite disbelieve it either.
‘Is that what you said to the park keeper’s young wife?’ she said.
‘What?’ he said. ‘What do you know about it?’ A deep pink stole up his neck and reached his cheeks while his knuckle p
ushed at his nose, this way and that. Momentarily stuck for an explanation, he watched his sister walk away without another word, hardly noticing that he was being jostled by passing shoulders.
* * *
Judging by the wave of shrieks and yelps that greeted her, Ginny could tell at once that the queen was not in her room. Kat Howard and two other maids, however, were taking every advantage of the absence by wading almost knee-deep in a pile of royal finery that Ginny had ordered to be made and which, if the concerned face of the tailor was anything to go by, had not yet been approved. ‘Mistress!’ he was bleating. ‘No, not that one, that’s delicate...please!’ Mistress Howard laughed at him, demanding that the laces be pulled tighter round her plump figure, careless of the stitched holes, the straining fabric and the hem that was being trodden on. He cast a pained glance at Ginny as she entered. ‘My lady?’ he said, waving a hand over the crumpled gowns. ‘Could you...?’
After what she’d just heard, Ginny would have to use some diplomacy, for she might just be about to give a dressing-down to the future queen of England. ‘Not quite your style, Mistress Howard, and by far too long,’ she said, removing the laces from the hands of the maid who pulled. ‘And the queen is on her way, so the sooner you get out of this the better. Come on, wriggle out! And you two, pick up these dresses and fold them. Hurry up or you’ll all lose your jobs.’
Mistress Howard complied, but was unrepentant. ‘They look better on me,’ she pouted. ‘I’m more petite. His Grace calls me his—’
‘Never mind what His Grace calls you,’ Ginny said briskly. ‘As far as Queen Anna is concerned, you’re still her maid. Take my advice, mistress, and don’t make too many assumptions.’ Cleverer women than you have done that, to their cost, she would like to have said, thinking of Katherine’s cousin.
‘I do believe you’re jealous, Lady Raemon,’ Mistress Howard said, making a grab for her own gown. ‘His Grace has not yet invited you to his bed, has he? Isn’t that what you’re here for, really?’
‘And who can blame him, mistress?’ Ginny said, smiling at the pert face with a good nature she did not feel. ‘With you here, why would he wish to see more of me? It’s the queen I feel concern for, not myself. She’s the sweetest of women.’
Picking up a gown from the floor, she had not seen the astonishment on the maid’s face, nor had she heard the door open, or the queen’s quiet entry. Anna pretended not to have heard the last remark, but her smile at Ginny showed that she had and that she knew what had been happening only moments before by the relief on the face of the tailor and the hanging laces on the Howard girl’s bodice.
* * *
If Ginny had been making her own assumptions about the king’s interest in her, both she and Katherine Howard were proved wrong that same evening when he sought Ginny’s company straight after supper, while the queen was deeply involved with a group of courtiers intent on teaching her the game of cent. Casting a scolding glance over the merriment where Anna had already been discovered cheating, Henry took Ginny to one side as if she were no more than a diversion. But Ginny found the king’s polite interest in her background something of a comfort, for it filled a gap left by her husband, who had never shown any curiosity about her capabilities, her love of nature and skills in languages. Taking care not to tell Henry about the new library bought from Sandrock Priory, she was at least able to talk with him in Latin and French, which she suspected would not be the case with Mistress Katherine Howard, for all her winsome ways. He appeared to enjoy it, although Ginny dreaded the conclusion that might be a request that she should go and take a glass of wine with him in his room at bedtime to continue their discussion. The glass of wine being, of course, a euphemism for something else. She would not be able to avoid it and Sir Jon would know of it, and the night with him to which she had been looking forward would not now happen. The thought of the king in his place was almost unbearable.
She was saved again when the king noticed the appearance of Mistress Howard with Culpeper, his two favourites, and Ginny’s conversation with him came to an abrupt and timely end as the king called them over. There was no invitation that night. But though she waited for Sir Jon until the early hours, he did not come, and Ginny could only assume that he was engaged in the king’s duty until late. Either that, or he had found some more enticing company of his own.
* * *
Next morning, unable to hide her discontent, she went to seek her sister Maeve, whose house was conveniently near to the Royal Wardrobe at Westminster where Sir George worked. For Ginny, the longing to escape from the royal court had never been so strong as it was at that moment when she saw the domestic warmth of Maeve’s house with its homely furnishings and the happy sound of children, the lingering baking smells and smiling servants. Bowls of primroses reflected yellow patches onto the polished tabletops and a tattered hobby horse leaned drunkenly into one corner, like the one she’d had as a child. When she told Maeve of her longing to be with Etta, Sir Jon’s child, Maeve’s reply was predictably sensible.
‘You’re not bound to the queen as the maids are,’ she said. ‘Take a few days off and go to Lea Magna. Sir Jon will not prevent you, surely?’
‘He need not know,’ Ginny said. ‘He’s going with Henry down to Greenwich for a few days to see some new ships. I could be there and back before they return.’
‘Sir George will give you an escort. I’d come with you, but there’s too much going on here at the moment. George is frantically busy.’
‘No coronation robes to be dug out of the Wardrobe, then?’
‘There won’t be one for Anna, Ginny. She’s not going to get that far.’
‘You know that for certain?’
‘They’d have started by now, if he intended to crown her. Come to think of it, poor little Jane Seymour didn’t get that far either, did she?’
Chapter Seven
It was poor little Jane Seymour’s sister-in-law with whom Ginny stayed overnight on the journey to Lea Magna, as she had done on previous occasions when the dark came too early to continue in safety. Elvetham Hall in Hampshire was a vast and impressive place owned by Sir Edward Seymour, Jane’s elder brother, a statesman and one of the king’s right-hand men, as ambitious as the rest of them. Having had a sister who reached the throne and produced a son before her untimely death, Sir Edward was in a position of influence that he took good care to exploit. Being uncle to a future king was no mean feat these days when the king was having trouble producing the required ‘spare’ heir.
His wife was not one whit less aware of her status than her husband. If anything, she was more so and strident about it. Not a popular woman with courtiers, she was far too outspoken and keen on her precedence above other more senior ladies, so she was glad to offer hospitality to a young neighbour on whom she could impress her superiority without fear of argument. Ginny knew better than to argue with one such as Anne Stanhope, Lady Seymour, aunt by marriage to Prince Edward. She was Sir Edward’s second wife and he had been trained from the start to do as he was told. It was as well, for while she exceeded expectations in managerial affairs, his first lady had not lived up to expectations in other respects, and Lady Seymour was determined that no breath of scandal should taint the family while she was in charge.
The hospitable Lady Seymour, however, had been tainted by association with the earlier story affecting her husband and his family, even though it had had nothing to do with her personally, and it suited her to talk in wary and mistrustful terms about men in general rather than to appreciate the benefits, dropping hints about their perfidy as if she had been the one to be affected. It was not what Ginny needed to hear, when she herself was wavering between trust and doubt in her own new marriage. ‘Men need careful watching, my dear,’ she said to Ginny as they sat together after a plain but generous supper. ‘Sir Edward is meticulous in his affairs, but I have to remind him sometimes what is due t
o his family as the king’s brother-in-law. One must keep up one’s standards these days, when it is so easy for men to go astray. Even your dear father, for instance, had to be reminded of his duties once, I believe. But then, that was a long time ago, and now Lady Agnes has your sister and the boys, and yourself, of course, to keep an eye on him while she is at home. Such a good thing to—’
‘I beg your pardon, my lady?’ Ginny said, wondering if she had heard correctly. Lady Seymour reminded her of a slim black starling with the sheen of iridescent feathers and a sharp-eyed stare too direct for comfort. She was always to the point in any conversation, but this point had passed Ginny completely. Sir Walter had always been the first to condemn any kind of marital misbehaviour, including that of Sir Edward’s late father, who had got two sons on his own daughter-in-law. The affair had been going on for years without anyone knowing, and the two young lads had been disowned by Sir Edward, his wife banished to a nunnery. It had been the scandal of the year at the time, though now the king had decided to let the matter rest, and to take the Seymours back into favour. He had chosen his third wife, Jane, from their family, which the second Lady Seymour had never let anyone forget. Now she pretended surprise at Ginny’s ignorance. ‘Surely you knew, dear? Oh, then perhaps I should say no more. ’Tis not my place after all. A long time ago, I believe. More punch before you go up? It’s going to be another cold night.’
‘Er...no, thank you. But tell me, if you please, what were the duties my father needed reminding of? He’s usually the most dutiful of men.’ She understood that Lady Seymour was eager to tell her something she did not need to know, some scandal that would show her own impossibly high standards in a better light. It was what she did so well.
‘Oh, it was just a fling, I suppose, taken when your mother was carrying. It’s what men do, my lady. It’s what the king does as a matter of course.’
‘A fling? You mean...a mistress? My father?’
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