Love, Remember Me
Page 46
She waited a long moment before answering him, but then she said, “Aye, Grandfather, I will come.”
“You have forgiven me then,” he said gruffly.
“Once,” Nyssa told him, “I thought that you had taken all my dreams from me, Tom Howard, but I am older and wiser now than I was then. You did not take my dreams from me, you gave them to me. I just did not know it at the time. Aye, I forgive you for me, but I will never forgive you for Cat. I know that you can understand that.”
“I do,” he said.
Nyssa stood upon her tiptoes and placed a kiss upon the grizzled cheek of the Duke of Norfolk. “Good-bye, Grandfather,” she said to him.
The two men embraced, and then the duke hurried from his apartments, but Nyssa had seen the tears in his eyes and heard the catch in the old man’s voice.
Together she and Varian left Whitehall. There was no need to take their leave of the king. He was aware of their going. It was Monday, the thirteenth day of February in the year of our Lord, fifteen hundred and forty-two. With luck they would be at RiversEdge in time for the twins’ first birthday, and then they would go on to Winterhaven. The weather held, and within just a few days’ time the Wye, silver-green in the winter sunshine, stretched below them as they viewed it from the London road. Almost home. Almost home. The horses’ hooves seemed to drum that cadence as they cantered along the hard, snowpacked road.
“We will be at RiversEdge in just a little bit,” Varian de Winter told his wife. “We will have to think of some wonderful gift for the twins. They will not even known who we are.”
“They are young, and will never remember that we were away from them for so long, except that we will tell them the tale one day when they are old enough to understand it,” Nyssa replied. “As for a gift, I already have it.”
“You have a gift for the twins?” He was surprised. “How could you have a gift for the twins?”
“Because, my lord,” she said, snuggling against his shoulder and nibbling upon his ear, “you and I made them their gift last autumn before I joined poor Cat at Syon. I was so wrapped up in serving her in those last awful months that I only just realized it a few days ago myself. I am going to have a baby, my darling! We shall give Edmund and Sabrina a brother come Lammastide!” And she laughed happily.
“And this son is to be Henry, is he not?” the Earl of March said to her.
“Nay,” she answered him. “I am not pleased with the king’s behavior as of late. Besides, there are too many Henrys in England.”
“It could be another daughter,” he teased her. “What shall we call a daughter, madame?”
“It is a son,” she said firmly. “A woman knows these things. This child is a son, Varian, and I shall give him my estate at Riverside for his own. He shall be a propertied gentleman.”
“But what is his name to be, madame?” her husband demanded.
“Why Thomas, of course,” she told him, surprised he had not known it. Then leaning forward, Nyssa de Winter spied RiversEdge. “Look! Look!” she cried excitedly. “It’s Mama and Papa before the front door, and ohhh, Varian! They have the twins in their arms! Dear God! I do not even recognize them. Oh, my darling, I shall never leave our children or our home again!”
Varian de Winter looked at his wife, and then pulling her into his arms, he kissed her. He had never loved her as much as he did now. “Love,” he said, “has remembered me, Nyssa, and I am so thankful for it!”
“Why did you say that?” she asked him, startled as their coach came to a stop.
“Say what, sweeting?”
“Love, remember me,” she answered him.
“I do not know. It was just a thought I had, my love.”
The doors to their vehicle were pulled open, and stepping out, Nyssa felt a shiver run up her spine. Love, remember me. The words echoed in her head. Godspeed, Cat, she thought to herself. May you find that love with God that you could not find on earth. Then, smiling at her family, she hugged them and gathered both of her children into her loving arms, looking up at her husband happily even as she did so. They were so fortunate in each other. This was what was really important in life. Love had indeed remembered them all. She would be grateful for it as long as she lived.
Afterword
Henry VIII was not expected to marry again, although his Privy Council importuned him to for the sake of the succession. Both he and they, however, knew better. He would father no more children. Still on July 12, 1543, seventeen months after Catherine Howard’s execution, the king married Katherine Parr, the widow of Lord Latimer. Although the conflicting religious powers that were attempting to gain the ascendancy in England tried to pull this queen down too, she survived the king, who died on the twenty-eight of January, 1547. She was a devoted and loving wife to Henry, bringing his family back together and convincing him to restore his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to the rank of princess, wiping out the stigma of their bastardy.
As for the Howards, Henry forgave them all, and restored their possessions to them within a few months’ time. The old dowager duchess Agnes was released from the Tower on the fifth of May, 1542. She died three years later. Duke Thomas managed to keep his position as Lord Treasurer, but he never again really regained the king’s favor or trust. He died in 1554, at the age of eighty-one.
Anne of Cleves remained a good friend to the royal family. She lived out of the remainder of her life in England, enjoying her personal freedom and her generous income. She died in 1557, a year before her favorite of Henry’s children, Elizabeth, ascended the throne.
Bishop Stephen Gardiner became Lord Chancellor under Mary I. He had spent most of Edward VI’s reign in the Tower. He died in 1555.
Thomas Cranmer, the gentle Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake on March 21, 1556, during the reign of Mary I. He was in his sixty-seventh year.
Henry VIII was succeeded by his only son, Edward VI. Edward was nine and a half years of age, and lived into his sixteenth year without marrying or producing issue. On his deathbed he was convinced to alter the succession as his father had ordered it, and settled it upon his very Protestant cousin, and former playmate, Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister. Jane Grey reigned nine days before being ousted by the angry English, who considered Henry’s daughter by his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, Princess Mary, the true heiress.
Mary I became Queen of England in 1553. Popular upon her ascension, she lost favor quickly by first marrying her cousin, Philip of Spain, and then bringing the Inquisition to England. Her fanatical passion for her faith was marked by soaring intolerance and the never-ending smell of the fires from Smith-field, burning those condemned by the Inquisition. She died in 1558, childless, abandoned by her husband, who had returned to Spain. She was forty-two.
Of all Henry VIII’s children, the second surviving child, Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth, was a long shot to become queen, and yet on November 17, 1558, she did. She died in 1603, in her seventieth year of life, having reigned forty-five years, longest of any British monarch.
As for the Wyndhams of RiversEdge, and the de Winters of Winterhaven, they are my own creation. Rest assured, however, that they lived happily ever after, and may one day appear in the pages of another of my novels.
I hope you have enjoyed Love, Remember Me. As always, I invite you to write to me about my books at P.O. Box 765, Southold, NY 11971-0765. I’m slow, but the mail is eventually answered. So, until we meet again, I remain your most faithful author, Bertrice Small.
BETRAYED
Don’t miss this breathtaking novel from Bertrice Small, the undisputed queen of sensual romance.
When Fiona Hay offers Angus Gordon her virtue in exchange for a dowry for her sisters, she so intrigues the rogue that he demands higher payment: She will be his mistress. Thus begins a sensual battle of wills and carnal delights that draws these ardent lovers into the turbulent court of King James. Thrown into a
dangerous game of political intrigue, the indomitable Fiona holds the key to a country’s future—a key that could destroy her one chance at everlasting love.…
Passionate … compelling … powerful …
Available in bookstores everywhere.
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