The betrothal on the steps of the chapel was followed by a mass, then a feast, generously provided by the King. And throughout the long day beside him, she was strangely silent. She said no words all day except the ones the priests required. She simply walked through the day, the silent, stubborn set of her lips speaking more loudly than words.
She acted out of duty and duty only.
As the feast began, the King rose and lifted his goblet. ‘To the marriage to come,’ he said, toasting them before he sat next to Thomas and smiled. ‘I will send a messenger to the Brunsons tomorrow, telling them to be here by Twelfth Night.’
Thomas put down his goblet. A directive like that was likely to end with the messenger dead and the Brunsons riding toward Stirling ready for a battle, not a celebration.
‘But that would interfere with your first Yuletide without Angus,’ he said. ‘Better to wait. I can resolve the contract and conclude the marriage later.’
‘You think you can be more persuasive than I?’
‘That is one of the reasons I suggested the match.’
The King nodded. ‘So be it. It is in your hands.’ He turned to Sinclair, sitting, somewhat sullenly, on his other side.
Time. He had bought more time. He would think of something. Something to save her. To save both of them from this union.
Bessie leaned in to whisper, ‘You told him you didn’t want our wedding to interfere with his plans. ’Tis a lie.’
‘No. It is just not the whole truth. It is merely a bit of flattery that turns his attention elsewhere and leaves us free to...’
He let the sentence trail off.
‘Free to what, Laird Carwell? Free to pretend to be wed?’
She meant the words cruelly, but instead, they lit a fire in his belly. And one in her eyes.
Free to pretend. But the fire that drew him was not imaginary and if he gave in to it, the betrothal would become a marriage in law.
This was going to be more difficult than he had thought.
* * *
After the feast, when dancing began, no one else reached for her hand. He ignored how much he liked that. He also ignored the temptation to take her on to the floor. But the King had honoured them with seats at his own table and poured French wine and it was easy to sit beside her, both of them looking at the hall and not at each other.
He sipped the wine, so superior to that she’d served at John and Cate’s wedding. A better wine for a worse wedding.
But the hall was warm and the wine plentiful and as the evening wore on, a smile graced her lips as she looked out on the dancers. He could not keep from looking over at her. In the new russet dress, her red hair, the golden chain, she looked as beautiful as any lady at the court, but also totally herself. Totally the woman grown from the earth and steadfastly attached to it. How could he think to take her from that?
* * *
Late in the evening, after the court dances were done, the musicians took up a more sprightly tune.
And he saw the recognition, and the homesickness, in her eyes as they began the reel.
He stood and held out his hand.
She rose, followed him to the floor and raised her arms to his. Now she was Bessie again. A smile lifted her face. One he had never been able to put there, as she heard the music of home.
They flung themselves around the floor, no longer in the choreographed artificial symmetry of the court dance, but to be in tune with the flow of each other’s bodies.
As they would be in bed.
He stumbled at that image. Wed her, don’t bed her. That was his plan.
He was already too close to this woman. Already wanted from her things he had forbidden himself to want. Holding her so near, seeing her hair swing behind her, her lips part to smile, her eyes alight with joy, these were enticements he had hoped to avoid.
When the dance ended, she was breathless and smiling, leaning against him. Her breasts, soft, pressed against his chest and he gritted his teeth against temptation. He wanted her in truth, now. Wanted more than her lips. Wanted—
‘Sir?’
He turned to the servant. ‘Yes?’ Bessie, beside him, looked around the hall, as if suddenly aware of an audience. She flicked her hair back over her shoulder, squared her shoulders and smoothed her skirt.
Good. That was the Bessie he knew. And could resist.
‘I will take you to your room now.’
‘Room?’ The word had no meaning. ‘What room?’
‘Why, the room you’ll share tonight. The King made special arrangements.’
Over the man’s shoulder, he could see the King smiling.
Beside him, suddenly, Bessie was not.
* * *
Bessie caught a breath as they were ushered into the room. It was small, but much closer to the royal quarters than the one she shared with the Marys. A tapestry, full of leaves as green as a forest, covered one wall. The bed, large, was hung with embroidered draperies to shelter against draughts.
She recognised her small chest, which servants had magically moved. Saw a carafe of wine and glasses by the bed, as if it were a wedding night in truth.
The door closed behind them.
She tried not to look at him, standing instead beside the bed, running her fingers over the embroidered flowers, run riot over the blue fabric. ‘Who has the hours to stitch all this?’
‘The King has broudsters. That’s what they do.’
Words to fill the air. Talk to fill the time. So she would not have to turn and face him. And face—
‘Bessie.’
Now she must turn. Now she must look.
Be strong. You can meet the man’s eyes without running into his arms.
And so she did. Because if ever she had thought she knew this man, her betrothed, seeing him stand before her, cast in shadows by the firelight, convinced her she knew nothing of him at all.
‘I told you nothing would change,’ he said. ‘It won’t.’
‘So we will not be...’ she looked at the beckoning bed ‘...intimate.’
‘No.’ A breath escaped.
She could not tell whether it was exasperation or disappointment.
She paced the room, but there was nowhere to hide, no way to escape his eyes. She looked across the room at the fire, remembering that first night. She had insulted him by suggesting he wanted to share her bed.
The body does not lie. It hears your doubts. Did it also hear her desires? His eyes, his smile, hid more than they revealed. But when the music started, the way they matched each other said things words never could.
Now, the heat rising within her did not come from the fire.
It was the flame of everything she had ever thought and never done. Every desire that had been smothered at sunrise day after day as she served the rest of them.
Blunt Bessie. That’s what he had called her. And he had tried to teach her the delicacies of speech that would serve her well at court. But he didn’t know what lurked in her silences.
Sentences that started I want.
Questions she had never been brave enough to ask herself. It was always what did the family want? What was her duty? What was necessary?
Never what do I want?
She had not asked because she was afraid of the answers.
Because what she wanted now was Thomas Carwell.
He stood, unmoving, near the door as she clung to the wall opposite, as far from him as the room allowed. Bring her home safe and untouched. That was what her brothers had charged him to do. But she had been touched. By this man. By this place. By being somewhere else, someone else. Not Bessie, but Elizabeth.
Outside, a full moon kissed the snow.
‘What would you say if I said...?’ She swallowed, still watching the hills.
Footsteps, then he was behind her, his hands firm, but gentle on her arms. ‘What?’
He turned her around to meet his eyes and in that moment she had no doubt what she saw there.
Desire. Strong as h
ers.
‘If I said I want you.’
Chapter Thirteen
His eyes darkened. Disbelief? Desire? ‘Do you?’
No more doubt. No more delay.
She threw her arms around his neck and threw her lips on his.
She knew little of kissing and less of what came after. But in the shocked moment when Carwell’s body met hers, she realised that there was more to it, much more than she had ever thought.
And that lips were the least of it.
Her body pressed against his, much closer than in the dance, but she had learned something of him during all those pavanes and galliards. Even without music, she sensed what should come next. His body spoke as clearly as his eyes had done, hips urgent in seeking hers, hands gentle in holding her head, lips eager in tasting hers.
And then, everything stopped.
He set her away from him, arms straight, his breathing as ragged as her own.
‘Nothing...’ He took a breath to try again.
She reached for his cheek, hot against her fingers, and he grabbed her hand, as if it had burned him. Then, with the deliberate reverence, he kissed her palm, let her go and stepped back.
‘Nothing will change.’
She looked down at her hand, hanging limp and useless at her side. Stunned, she stilled. Withdrew. Retreated to become again the silent, watchful woman she knew how to be.
What had she done?
Yet she knew what. And why. Her body still throbbed with want, with urges stronger than the hunger and thirst. So strong and deep they drowned thought and silenced speech.
Urges she had thought he shared.
Wrong. Wrong again about this man. She knew nothing of him, still.
He does not want me. No more than the other one did.
He, too, had acted from duty. To fulfil his promise. Or worse, perhaps from pity.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Then realised it was a lie. He might be a mystery, but she refused the protection of silence. She had swallowed so many words over the years they near choked her.
She lifted her head and met his eyes. ‘No. That’s not true. I am not sorry.’
Afraid, yes. Afraid as she looked in his eyes that she would be rejected again. But if that were to be, he would know the whole of her first.
‘I have spent,’ she began, not knowing why but knowing it was important to speak ‘my entire life in silence, in the shadow of Brunsons who roared or blustered or even those who used silence as a weapon.’
Blunt, he had called her. You must learn to watch and wait. Did he not know she had spent her entire life watching others? Her brothers and all the people of her tower; she was watchful of their feelings, even before they spoke, never allowing her own to intrude.
She took a breath. ‘Just once, I wanted...’ Hated tears gathered. This was why she had stayed silent, why she had buried what she wanted so deeply she could not feel it claw for the sun, why she had never dared stretch out a hand to reach for what she wanted.
Because it was always, always out of reach.
Here, at least, she thought things would be different. That she would be different.
No more dreams. No more imaginings. She was Bessie Brunson, the woman she had always known.
The tears were gone. The hurt safely buried. There would be no more. ‘Just once, I did what I wanted. I will not do so again.’
She walked past him towards the door. She must leave him. Now.
Before she made herself a liar.
* * *
Thomas reached out, grabbed her arm, feeling himself the world’s biggest fool. Nothing was working as he had planned. The man who could navigate shifting tides was sinking in the sands. ‘You think I do not want you, too?’
Her eyes did not waver. ‘You’ve made it clear you do not.’
‘I’ve made it clear I must not.’ He searched her eyes, unsure who she was, this woman was who had just kissed him, just confessed the deepest yearnings of her soul.
This woman, grounded and steady, the one he thought immovable—he had hurt her, all because he had tried not to hurt her. Now, through a few breaks in the fog of lust, he remembered the man who had kissed her and loved another. No doubt she thought him the same.
How could he explain without telling all? Things he had never shared with anyone.
And would not share with her.
By telling only the obvious truth. ‘This is for your protection. Later, when we leave the court and return to the Borders, if we have not...consummated the marriage...you could be free again.’
‘Free.’ She said the word as if she did not know its meaning. ‘And you, too, would be free.’
Free? No. But he would be alone. As he wanted to be.
Tempted, yes. But he would bury it, more deeply, if that were possible, than all the things she had buried. But more easily, since he knew how to hide his thoughts, from the English Warden, from the King, and even from her.
‘You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.’
Because if he slept next to her he could not be responsible for what his body might do in the dark.
* * *
The King, it seemed, could not imagine they had shared a room and not a bed, so he apparently asked few questions.
Thomas gave him no answers.
Feeling magnanimous, James let them keep the room.
For Bessie, nothing changed except the nights. Some nights, there was laughter in the hall. Some nights, the King disappeared, carousing in Stirling’s taverns, no doubt thinking himself disguised.
And each night, Carwell would escort her to the door of their room, kiss her forehead and turn away, leaving her alone until she had undressed and, presumably, fallen asleep.
Her ‘injured foot’ conveniently returned, so they no longer danced. She was grateful. Even the slightest touch of hands reminded her how much more she wanted of him.
She told herself it was for the best. Told herself he was right to leave them both free to end the marriage. Reminded herself that she had, as yet, no proof that he had not betrayed the Brunsons more than once. Scolded herself for being so weak-willed as to let desire overcome sense.
None of it helped. Her traitorous body ached with longing.
And despite a crowded court, she now slept alone. With neither husband nor family, the Marys had become her sisters, and she spent days, and even evenings, with them when she could.
One night, they gathered snugly around the fire in the Marys’ room while Long Mary plucked her lute.
‘So, how is it,’ Wee Mary asked, ‘being married?’
Her eyes asked more. Her eyes said how is it to be bedded by the man?
She swallowed the words she wanted to say. I want him and he does not want me. ‘I find,’ she began, wanting to say something true, ‘there is little difference from before.’
Mary’s eyes widened. ‘So you did bed him before your betrothal.’
Bessie felt her cheeks burn. Both Marys would think that meant they had been intimate before the ceremony, not that they had been chaste since then.
It was meant without judgement. Long Mary had shared the King’s bed, and Bessie was certain that Wee Mary had very private reasons to be pleased that Oliver Sinclair remained unwed.
She searched for Thomas’s talent of speaking on a slant. ‘What I mean is that, at court, there is nothing that is ours.’ Realising it was true. They lived in the King’s house, went about the King’s business, were entertained as the King wished. The things that married men and women did, making a home, protecting it, these were not things that could be done in the house of the King.
And making a family? Well, he had made it clear. That he did not want to do at all.
Long Mary looked up from her lute. ‘He was married before, I hear.’
‘Yes. She died.’ And looking at Long Mary, she held her tongue. No need to say she had been with child in front of a woman who would soon face the dangers of childbirth.
Well, there would be
no risk of that for Bessie as long as things continued as they had.
Childbirth.
Suddenly, everything Thomas had done had new meaning. His protective care. His refusal to share his seed. He said he wanted to leave the possibility of annulment, but the Dowager Queen’s marriage had been annulled after she had borne a child. This was something more.
He mourned his wife, yes. And she had died giving birth to his child. Did he think Bessie Brunson weak enough to be felled by doing her natural duty?
Women died in childbirth, yes. But no woman born a Brunson had ever been among them. Thomas Carwell ought to know that.
She rose, ready to confront him.
‘Where are you going?’
She opened her mouth to answer Wee Mary, and then realised how ridiculous it was to walk up to him and tell him Bessie Brunson was stronger than the wife who had died. Her steps slowed. ‘To the garderobe. I’ll be right back.’
She ducked into the corridor to collect herself. No, she must not stand before him and announce herself ready to bear his children. She must find another way to probe his feelings to be certain. A way less direct. More subtle.
Bessie Brunson had learned something in her weeks at court.
Or thought she had.
For the next few days, she had tried to coax him closer. Stayed near him as the dance started. Lifted her lips to his when he met her at the door.
But with each gentle step she had taken towards him, he had stepped back. Had come to the room later and later until she was afraid he would not come at all.
So the next night, she lay naked under the bedcovers, waiting. Kept her breathing steady when the door opened. Kept her eyes closed as she heard him moving around the room. He let the squires sleep when he came to bed so late, removing his own sword and boots, and finally settling on the hard floor, cushioned by no more than a blanket.
The fire died. The room grew cold. His breathing slowed.
Certain he dreamed, Bessie slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room to look down on him sleeping. He had turned and the blanket had fallen away, exposing his chest and the edge of his hip.
She caught her breath, caught her lip and swallowed. After what she was about to do there would be no turning back.
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