“Trouble?” Henry glanced into the privy chamber as the door closed, at the courtiers standing subdued for once. “The yeoman guards were right to interrupt us?”
“They are to be commended. Boleyn was drunk. He sorely insulted Mistress Horenbout, dragging her by her hair out of the chamber.”
The King’s expression sharpened on Susanna’s face. “Are you harmed?”
Parker saw her hesitate; then she nodded. Her face was white, her eyes overbright.
“My head is pounding.” She massaged her scalp. “It would have been much worse had Parker not come to my aid.”
“Boleyn must heed the warnings he’s been given. I’ll speak with him myself. A woman should be safe in the King’s own privy chamber.”
Boleyn would feel the chill of royal displeasure, which would hurt him more than anything Parker had done to him. The King might have many mistresses, but he believed in discretion. And he was in thrall to the notion of courtly love.
Boleyn’s actions tonight could not be considered courtly in any way.
“If it pleases Your Majesty, I would have Mistress Horen-bout remain in the room with us.” Parker would not stay if the King refused him, no matter the consequences.
Henry hesitated. “Our business concerns secret matters.”
“I can wait outside.” Susanna’s voice began on a tremble but finished strong, and she drew herself up.
Parker waited for the King’s pronouncement, excruciatingly aware that his future depended on His Majesty’s answer. To walk out on the King would most likely get him banished from court. To leave Susanna alone outside was not possible.
He turned his gaze from Susanna and found the King staring at him.
“You take your duty of safekeeping very seriously,” he said.
“I take all my duties for you very seriously, Your Majesty.” Parker spoke the truth, though even if the King released him from his duty to watch Susanna, he would not leave her.
“Very well. She can sit at my desk and illuminate some writs and title deeds I finished this afternoon while we conclude our business.”
Parker opened his mouth to protest that Susanna had been violently attacked and could not be expected to work, but she gave an infinitesimal shake of her head.
“I do not have my paints with me, Your Majesty, but I can work on the designs now and paint later.”
The King nodded, and gestured Parker toward a suite of chairs near the fire.
Susanna was already sitting at the King’s desk with a quill in her hand, tracing a design, by the time they settled themselves.
“So, what news for me, Parker?” Henry shifted in his chair to get comfortable. “I broke off my evening entertainments and called for you because my spies bring nothing but disturbing rumors.” He hunched away from Susanna and lowered his head. “I heard you are legend for the attacks you have fought off in the last two days.”
“Who knows of the attacks?” Parker’s voice was hard. If the King’s spies had been there, why had they not given him aid?
“Again, it was told me as a rumor. What is the truth?”
“Mistress Horenbout and I have been attacked four times since we left your closet almost three days ago.”
The King looked thoughtful. “The reason?”
“The reason becomes harder to grasp the more I uncover. I can only say it seems connected to de la Pole. But even that may not be the truth.” He withdrew the letter he’d retrieved from Harvey’s widow and held it out.
The King took it, and there was no mistaking the horror, the rage on his face. “I burned this. How …” A vein throbbed at his temple, and Parker handed him his cup of wine.
“It is a copy, or perhaps a draft. See the lines scored through? The lack of a seal?”
The King swallowed his wine in a single gulp and brought the letter closer to his face. “You are right. Where did you come by this?”
“Harvey.” This was a most delicate moment. How much to implicate Harvey’s widow, how much to leave vague?
“It was on his body? Who found it?”
“His widow gave it to me.” That was the truth, without going into detail.
“She read it?” The King lifted his cup and scowled at the lack of wine within, and Parker filled it from the jug at his elbow.
“She says not.”
“Thank God she gave it to you, of all people.”
Parker looked across at Susanna. The King still had cause to feel threatened by what she knew. Time to swing the balance in her favor. “You can thank Mistress Horenbout. Had she not insisted on going to speak to Mistress Harvey of her husband’s last words, we would not have known of the letter.”
The King sat back. “There are many who would have told me some untruth to reassure me or to advance themselves.” He snorted. “There are some who would have kept this for leverage at a later time. You never fail me in that way, Parker. And because of it I will support you, even though you may find yourself annoying powerful men.” He gripped the letter in his fist, crunching it into a ball, then threw it straight into the fire.
The message was clear. If the de la Pole conspiracy led to the highest levels of court, as it surely must do, Parker could question or harass whom he would to get to the truth. There would be no repercussions for him.
A surge of triumph gripped him. Now he had the means to go for the throat.
And he intended to use it.
The bells of St. Michael’s were ringing the curfew as Parker let himself into the house. The horse was brushed and stabled, and it was only ten o’clock on the longest day of his life.
“Parker?”
He whirled. Susanna stood in the doorway to his study, one hand pressed against the door frame as if it were the only thing holding her up.
He’d thought she would go to bed while he settled the horse. He’d wanted to ask her to wait for him, but one look at her pale, drawn face had quelled that impulse.
He had no more expectations of sweet kisses before the fire; the King and Boleyn had seen to that. But he would like to talk. He was too keyed up to sleep just yet.
“Is all well?” He could think of nothing else to say.
She nodded. “Thanks to you, all is well.” She stepped back into the study and he followed her. She had poured them wine and laid out a platter of food Mistress Greene must have left for them in the kitchen.
He let out a contented sigh.
She smiled, the first smile he’d seen since Boleyn attacked her.
“My sighs amuse you?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow, because he wanted the glow of that smile to keep warming him.
She did not answer, but her smile deepened and she sat beside him. For a while, they sipped wine and took slivers of cold lamb and sliced apple from the platter.
It was a balm to his soul.
“Will you be out of favor? After tonight?” She spoke quietly, as if the thought had been wearing her down.
“I was never in favor. Not with those wasps.” Suddenly he felt bone-tired.
“Why do you call them wasps?” Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.
“Not as nice as bees around the royal honeypot. They don’t produce anything useful, and they’ll sting you to death if they get the chance.”
She laughed, a delightful burst of sound that roused him from his half-doze.
“There are a few who think well of me. They will approve of my actions tonight. And the King gave me even more trust after tonight—and fortunately for me, he is the only one who counts.”
She leaned back in her chair, as if released of her tension, then reached out for the same piece of apple as he. Their fingers brushed, and his fatigue disappeared as quickly as morning mist under a hot summer sun.
He was fully, vitally awake.
He lifted his head to look at her, and found she was already staring at him.
“I thought …” His words were not as steady as he’d hoped. “After Boleyn—”
She leaned forward
and placed a trembling finger on his lips. It was the boldest move she’d made in the dance between them, and he was seared by a lightning surge of heat. “Boleyn can go to hell,” she said.
Parker’s thoughts exactly.
He took hold of her finger and kissed the tip. Then he took it in his mouth and gently bit down.
She drew in a breath, sharp as the hiss of the sea on a sandy beach. The sound undid him.
He must have leaned over and lifted her into his lap. He only knew that she was suddenly in his arms, her thighs straddling him as he tasted her neck and her shoulder, as her hands moved clumsily to untie his shirt.
He jerked down the neck of her gown to release one hard, pink nipple, then took it in his mouth. As she arched back with a cry, he wondered, his heart stuttering at the thought, how he could ever let her go.
19
The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier: To fellowship him self for the most part with men of the best sort and of most estimation, and with his equalles, so he be also beloved of his inferiours.
Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman: To have the vertues of the minde, as wisdome, justice, noblenesse of courage, temperance, strength of the mide, continency, sober-moode, etc.
Parker was taking her to a place she had never been. The smallest movement, even the act of drawing breath, somehow drove the fever higher.
She heard her quiet, breathy moans as if they were coming from someone else, and reveled in the sound of them. They stoked the fire, along with Parker’s fingers under her dress, sliding between her legs, and his teeth on her neck.
Her head was back, too heavy for her neck to hold up, and she was panting, on the verge of some wonderful revelation.
She had thought to allow Parker a few more kisses this evening, but that was before Boleyn. Before she’d seen the look in Parker’s eyes in the antechamber.
“Parker?” Was that sob from her?
His hand no longer rubbed beneath her skirts, but when she saw it was to fumble with his breeches, she could think of nothing at all except that he hurry.
He muttered a curse and she lifted higher off his lap to give him room, wanting, wanting, more than she had ever thought possible to want.
A heavy knock on the front door froze her with shock.
Parker seemed not to hear it at all and, with a groan, tugged the last of his laces free. He grabbed her hips, and despite her fright, the feel of his blunt, hard head nudging her made her shiver with reaction.
“Parker. The door.” She tried to hold herself back, but somehow let him nudge in deeper.
“What?” He spoke as if in a dream.
“The door,” she gasped, wanting nothing more than to inch down, now that he was right there, where she needed him.
“Door?” He stiffened as the knock came again, louder and more frantic. “No.” He surged upward, sheathing himself deep inside her, and rested his forehead against hers, breathing deeply.
She was stretched, filled. Taken.
She felt a tremble deep within, a strange ripple, and moved, just once, against him. She bit back the scream that lodged in her throat as she convulsed in delicious shudders, and then again when Parker surged upward a second time on an explosive groan, shuddering himself.
When the eddies of pure feeling subsided, she lay limp against Parker’s chest.
The knock on the front door came a third time, this time accompanied by a shout.
“They’ll wake the house,” she muttered. As the reality of that struck her, she jerked up. “Mistress Greene,” she breathed to Parker, the thought of the housekeeper finding them like this mortifying.
She knew she looked a wanton. Her hair was disheveled, her dress up around her hips, her breasts overspilling her neckline.
But Parker moved languidly, his eyelids half-closed, his eyes drinking her in as he tucked her breasts back into her bodice, his hands lingering over the job.
She felt her skin heat under his gaze, her breasts responding to him all over again.
“Careful now,” he said as he lifted her off his lap, easing her off his cock slowly. She felt as if a piece of her was suddenly missing.
“Gods,” he whispered with violence as she stood weak-kneed before him, tugging at the skirts of her dress.
Susanna looked at him wide-eyed, saw he was retying his breeches. A tiny smear of blood, of her virginity, smudged his bare thigh.
“It should have been slower. …” He stood, his face anguished, but she shook her head. Hard.
“Regret nothing. I don’t.”
He looked her over, as if assessing their readiness for company, and lifted a hand to her cheek, brushing her hair off her face with gentle fingers.
Then, as the knock came again, he turned with a vicious curse and strode into the hall to answer the door.
An icy wind blew in with Francis Bryan, like a premonition. It chilled the heated air of the study and leached the coziness from it.
Worse, Bryan knew he had interrupted a tryst. Susanna could see it in the way he slid sly glances her way.
He even seemed amused by Parker’s ill temper. He’d looked subdued when he first walked in, but his gaze had sharpened on Susanna, on her hair, and she saw the tension lift from his tight-drawn face.
She avoided his eyes and concentrated on the wine in her cup, swirling it in patterns and watching the red liquid cling to the sides.
“Your very life had best be in danger, for this interruption,” Parker said, and Susanna had to fight a smile, he was so furious.
“It is.” Bryan’s amusement faded. “Whoever slammed the door while you were with me was waiting at the side door to my rooms.”
“How did you escape them?” Parker had not offered Bryan a seat, and had not taken one himself. He crossed his arms, glowering.
“I am not without use as a sword arm.” Bryan sounded so offended that Susanna coughed on her wine.
Why was everything so amusing all of a sudden?
“No. You’re one of the best, but I was outside moments after you, and there was no sign of swordplay.”
“My passage does not exit through the side door, but the kitchen,” Bryan explained. “But I saw them lurking before I fled. They saw me too, and I assume tried to follow, but I know my neighborhood well.”
“Then let us get back to what you were about to say in your rooms.” Parker moved to stand behind her chair, as if he could not be away from her a moment longer. She twisted her head to look at him, but his gaze was on Bryan.
“A month or so back, I received a note at court to the effect that I would find information advantageous to me at the docks.” Bryan shrugged at his own stupidity. “The note told me whom to meet and where, and a man unloading a ship from France slipped me a heavy coin. It was two pieces screwed together, and when I opened it, there was a letter inside from de la Pole.”
He ran a shaking hand over his brow. “I almost perished on the spot when I realized how I’d been tricked into betrayal. My first thought was to burn it without reading it, but I wished to know what plan was afoot.”
“And what plan was that?” Parker leaned forward above her, his eyes locked on Bryan.
“De la Pole spoke of a new treaty allying France and the Pope against the Emperor Charles. He had King Francis’s assurance it would mean papal backing of his claim to the throne. He wanted to know if I would be with him, and he named the titles that would be mine should I stand beside him.”
“Why would he take such a chance, if he did not know where your loyalties lay?” Susanna spoke for the first time, and she was aware of Bryan’s sudden, sharp focus.
“That is the beauty of this trap. Who would believe de la Pole would be so careless? No matter whom I showed the letter to, they would wonder the same as you—including the King. And where would I be then?”
“Your open contempt for the English court and your behavior with Francis all those years ago has come back to haunt you.” Parker spoke with no relis
h, but Bryan flushed crimson.
“Damn you, Parker. Have you never done something stupid in the high spirits of youth?”
Parker did not reply, which only enraged Bryan even more. He lifted his head and drew in a deep breath, trying to gain control of himself.
Something told Susanna that Bryan still did things he liked to put down to the high spirits of youth. The excuse was most likely beginning to wear thin.
“What will you do, Parker? I was told you had audience with the King this evening, and decided to throw my lot in your hands.” Bryan sat down in Parker’s chair, his hands shaking on the armrests.
Parker reached out and carressed the back of Susanna’s neck. “I seek whoever is trying to kill me and my lady.” His thumb brushed against her skin. “And I have vengeance in mind.”
Bryan was a superb actor, but surely even he could not pretend such agitation. The man had gone from abject fear to anger more times than Parker could count since his arrival.
Beneath his hand, Susanna stirred in her chair, and he felt the warmth of her skin like a glow against his. Damn them all. He wished for nothing but the time to woo her.
“Your mission is personal?” Bryan broke through his thoughts with words heavy with hope. “The King has not yet sent you?”
“The King knows only the broadest details.” He began to trace tiny circles on her nape. “And this evening, he gave me full authority to discover all.”
“Parker, please, you must help me get out of this. I had no intention of betraying the King. Now I’m in an impossible situation. I’m ruined if I come forward, and I’m ruined if I don’t.” Bryan leaped from his chair and went to the window, peering through the glass and the wooden slats as if a spy lurked outside.
Parker considered Bryan’s tale. If he was telling the truth, it was a magnificent trap, startling in its brilliance. His respect for his enemy grew.
How many others were caught in the same bind as Bryan? How many greedy, self-advancing idiots at court would have fallen for a similar letter to learn something to their advantage at the docks?
In a Treacherous Court Page 12