The Queen's Governess (21 page)

“You know they do not get on. Mary likes you, but she and Elizabeth will be like cats and dogs. Besides, you would be much farther away from me.”

But to my dismay, for the first time I could recall, Elizabeth gainsaid my suggestion we leave. “How romantic!” she cried, jumping up from her writing desk and clapping her hands. “A secret courtship and wedding after all that time they had to be apart! Remember, Kat, he was courting her before he probably thought he had to propose to others ere he could follow his heart back to her. I think that is so lovely, and he is handsome and, I hear, a brave fighter of pirates, to boot. No, I am not budging from here, especially not to live in the country with Mary. But why are you so overturned and adamant, especially when you would be forced to live farther from your own dear love? There is nothing wrong between the two of you, is there?”

I could only shake my head. Nothing wrong between John and me—yet. But everything was wrong with my living in a house Tom Seymour commanded, and one where the two most important women in it were all dreamy-eyed about the ravishing—in more ways than one—whoreson wretch.

CHELSEA HOUSE

 

 

 

O
ur staying with the Queen Dowager became torment for me when Thomas Seymour came to live with us. What made it worse was that every other woman in whatever house we stayed in—Katherine’s Chelsea or Hanford, Tom’s properties of Seymour House in London or Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds—was ecstatic to be near the man.

Queen Katherine plainly adored her new husband. She blushed at his hotly whispered remarks and turned misty-eyed when he left the room. Lady Jane Grey, a cousin of Elizabeth, who had also been in the household off and on, obviously thought her guardian was delightful company. Even serving women watched the exuberant, tall and handsome Lord Admiral with awed expressions.

At least his brother and the Privy Council, on which Tom, too, now served, were outraged at his daring to covertly marry the former king’s new widow without permission and in such haste. The Council had reprimanded him soundly, though he had stood up to them and cursed them. In his own domain, only I avoided him like the plague.

About a fortnight after Tom had come to live openly with Katherine, I had started toward the manor house to fetch a book that Master Grindal, Elizabeth’s tutor, needed. He, the princess and Lady Jane Grey—though Jane was shy and quiet, Elizabeth enjoyed having a friend near her own age—were sitting outside beyond the rose garden in deep debate. I had been sitting long enough anyway, so was glad for the excuse to stretch my legs. But on my way up to the house, in a shaded bower of plaited, arched rose canes, Tom stepped out ahead of me and blocked my path.

I spun to stride back toward the river, but his hands clamped onto my shoulders; he pulled me back so hard my skirt bushed out from his boots.

“’S blood, and I had hoped absence all these years would make the heart grow fonder,” he said with a chuckle, turning me back toward him. He tipped his head to one side with a mocking, beseeching look.

“Unhand me, my lord.”

“’S blood, do you not think others might notice your frosty demeanor when everyone else falls all over themselves to please me, especially our little princess or my wife? Or are you yet playing Anne Boleyn’s old game of
noli me tangere
just to get me hot for you again? You have told John Ashley that I was your first love, have you not?”

“Love!” I said as if it were a curse word. I spit, just missing him. I shrugged his hands off and managed to take a big step back from him, though that put me head to hems in the rose thorns. “I used to be a fool, but you cured me of that,” I told him, brushing myself off where he had touched me. “As for your wife and Her Grace—Lady Jane, too—if you told them the sky was green, sad to say, they would agree with pleasure.”

“ ‘With pleasure’—a lovely motto.” He grinned but I only glared back. How he had changed from the young man I had first beheld on a barge to Hampton Court twenty years ago. He had filled out with meat and muscle. No longer clean shaven, he had a full beard, as was the fashion. His gaze still rudely assessed my body, but now white crow’s-feet perched at the corner of each eye, and frown lines furrowed his high forehead.

His booming voice was much the same, but he swore even more stout sailors’ oaths as if they made him more dashing or important. Most of his curses, it seemed to me, insulted the Maker of the Universe by trivializing His holy name with things like ’
s wounds
or ’
s teeth
or even ’
s nightgown.
Sometimes he put in the word
God’s
and sometimes not.

“’S precious eyes, Kat, do not think I have forgotten you. Why, I still have all the love letters you sent me back then, prettily written, too, and if you turn your back on me now . . .”

“I do not need your threats, indirect or blatant, or your brutal handling.”

“Brutal? Hell’s gates, I had no brutality in mind, but just the opposite,” he said and dared to reach out to cup my chin. I hit his hand away. “’S precious soul, Kat, you’ve done well—risen high, even as I,” he said, trying another tactic. He hooked his thumbs in his wide belt and tilted back on his heels. “You must admit we keep good company these days, eh? And did I not tell you once that you would never forget your first love? Here we are, together again. Have you not noticed how many secret, shady bowers abound for trysts on my properties?”

“Leave off, sir, and leave me. You insult me, your wife—even yourself, if that is possible.”

Bristling, he straightened to his full height. “In a way you are my servant now, and they obey orders or are dismissed,” he clipped out. “’S bones, if that is the way you want to play it, let me lay my cards on the table. Do not gainsay me or get in my way here, and I will not tell the Council of your checkered past—”

“My past? That you brutally raped me during Elizabeth’s mother’s coronation feast?”

He seized my wrists so hard I felt my hands go numb; he leaned down to put his face near mine and gave me a single hard shake. “Have you not noticed that I get my way now?” he demanded. “The king adores his uncle Tom who gives him money and gifts while his cold uncle Edward keeps him isolated at his studies and runs the kingdom. That needs to change. Much needs to change. Do you want me to see to it that Elizabeth’s governess is changed?”

His handsome face had contorted to a gargoyle mask, one I had seen only during that nightmare of a night he took my virginity. Was this the fun-loving, easygoing man who played cards with his wife and her guests, regaling them with stories of chasing pirates and the latest gossip and bawdy jests?

He finally loosed my wrists. “If you are not for me, Mrs. Ashley, you are against me. And if I see a sign of that, I swear—”

“Yes, you do swear. All the time.”

I thought he would strike me, but he plunged on. “God as my judge, I swear I will have you dismissed by my wife or the Council, no matter what sordid tales you concoct about me. I have heard and seen that John Ashley is a good and moral man, so he does not need to learn he has wed cheap baggage who wrote those lusty letters and spread her legs for me off and on over the years.”

Lusty letters? He must have had them amended to suit his needs. Over the years? I was sure, thanks to his travels and my assignments, I could disprove that, but he could still do me irreparable damage. As he swept me a mocking bow and left me standing there snagged in the thorns, I wanted to scream
Liar!
and every horrible name or curse I knew. But then I would be stooping to his level.
God as my judge,
indeed! I hoped this dreadful man would meet his fate and soon. I could summon no more words to tell him how much I hated him. But I feared him too. I would rather have had clever Cromwell back to threaten me. What if he besmirched my name so that my dear Elizabeth was taken from my charge? My only hope was that Tom would destroy himself—but would he take the princess and me down with him?

 

 

 

If I thought
Tom’s actions were bad then, soon the darker days began. I felt sick to my stomach to see him flirt with Elizabeth. Oh, not blatantly at first, but a special smile, a wink, a quick touch on her back or arm or shoulder, seducing her affections. Her cheeks blazed color when he was near, and she moped about when he was gone, no doubt reliving moments with him. Oh, yes, I knew well those signs. The girl actually seemed glad when Jane Grey was taken back by her family, as if she had been some sort of rival for Tom’s attention.

I took to always referring to him as “the Queen Dowager’s husband,” though that seemed not to sink in. Finally, I said, “Although you turned the Lord Admiral’s marriage proposal down, he will think you are still interested.”

“Interested in him only as a friend and guardian, of course,” she said, intently regarding her hands as if she were looking for a chipped nail. Anne’s ruby ring glinted in window light. “I find him kind and cheerful, and I enjoy his company—his wife’s, too, of course,” she assured me.

I could not help myself; I turned sarcastic [and did not know until much later that a clay-brained man supposedly in Tom’s employ but evidently spying for his brother Edward was eavesdropping and took each word I said for gospel truth]. A hand on my hip, I said to Elizabeth, “If the Lord Admiral was not wed and all the Council agreed, would you want him for yourself, for he would then be the highest, noblest unmarried man in the land?”

“No, Kat, no,” she whispered. “Do not think such or say such!”

I leaned down to whisper in her ear, as harshly as I could manage, “Then do not look as if you desire such! His lordship obviously would have no qualms about a hasty, secret marriage after a spouse’s death, but it would ruin you! If you ever plight a secret troth or look like you would, you will regret it, my girl! We all will.”

She hugged me out of my vile mood, but I began to trust her not. Soon after, when I saw her and Tom walking in the gardens with his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist, I pressed my knuckles against my lips and cried. The next morning, I told John what I saw happening. I almost told him all, but my stomach was tied in such knots I could not say more. What if he would believe Seymour’s lies over my protestations of truth? My John was a reasonable man but very protective of me. I could not risk one of his honesty—and humble rank—taking on the deceitful Lord Admiral and royal uncle. So I told myself that in omitting my past with Tom, I was protecting him as well as myself.

“You must talk to the Queen Dowager,” he advised me after I met him on the riverbank and his oarsmen rowed away. “Perhaps she can rein him in. And, if she throws you both out, that will settle things and you can go live with Princess Mary, or if not that, your foster sister, Joan Denny, at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, for she is with child while Sir Anthony is at court.”

“Elizabeth would never forgive me.”

“You will never forgive yourself if he steps over the line with her.”

“But he is married to a beautiful, wealthy and high-ranking woman who adores him, a woman who has made him the second—or first, I do not know—man in the kingdom!”

“Sweetheart,” he said, pulling me close, “this is not like you. Be your rational, calm self. Do not let them panic you. Perhaps you need to lay the law down a bit more to the princess or, as I said, even ask for support from the Queen Dowager.”

I nodded and thanked him, but I was prepared to do neither yet. Elizabeth had turned stubborn on this, and if I told Katherine, it would be like telling Tom and he might find a way to have me dismissed. But I thought, with his wife in the house and my keeping a sharp eye on Elizabeth—I took to trailing her day and night—surely nothing could accelerate.

Then one morning, the door to our bedchamber, for I slept in a truckle bed myself at her feet now, banged open. Groggy with lack of sleep from worrying all night, I rolled over but saw only two big, bare male feet and hairy lower legs beneath a nightshirt hem. Was I dreaming or were we at Hatfield and John had come to spend the night? I blinked and saw no one then.

Perhaps Elizabeth had waked me up, for she was giggling at something, then she squealed. I heard a smack as I clambered to my feet, nearly tripping on my night rail. Tom was bending over between the parted bed hangings, leaning far in, saying, “Get up, get up slugabed. Get up or I will have to tickle and even spank you!”

“My lord, for shame!” I cried. “Get out—out!”

“Ah, two lovely ladies in
dishabille,
nectar to my sore eyes!”

“This is most unseemly, and you know it!” I told him, and pointed at the door. “Take your leave now, my lord.”

My fourteen-year-old charge had dived under the covers and was still giggling. He dared to swat at her bottom, then, roaring with laughter, made for the door. He winked at me, swept one or both of us a bow and was gone with a slam of the door and a loud guffaw.