“I am no such thing,” I assured Queen Kathryn.

She addressed Sir Richard in a stern voice. “Have you signed a pre-contract?”

Sputtering, on the very verge of swearing in Her Grace’s presence, Sir Richard finally had to admit that he had not. I breathed a little easier. I had been afraid he’d counterfeit one. It would not have been difficult to forge my signature, or my father’s.

“A word with the young woman, Your Grace? In private.”

“I cannot permit you to hound her, Sir Richard. Her maid will accompany her and at least one gentleman, and that is only if she agrees to speak with you.”

Since I had a thing or two I’d like to say to Sir Richard, now that I felt he’d been put in his place by the queen dowager, I consented.

“Are you certain this is wise?” Jack asked. He’d been at my side throughout Sir Richard’s audience with Queen Kathryn. He’d followed at once when he’d learned from one of the Lord Protector’s servants that Sir Richard was on his way to Chelsea.

“You will be with me. And Edith.”

“Best take Pocket along, as well. If all else fails, your little dog can bite him.” Pocket had, quite sensibly, taken an immediate dislike to Sir Richard the first time he’d caught a whiff of him.

We adjourned to an antechamber. Sir Richard sent Jack a baleful look, having no doubt by now about who his son’s rival was. How long he’d known, I could not begin to guess, but it scarce mattered any longer.

“Ever the knight-errant,” he sneered.

“Jack and I intend to wed. You can do nothing to stop me from choosing my own husband. I know the law on marriage.”

I did not like the way he was smiling.

“I cannot stop you,” he agreed, “but there is one who can. The king is your half brother, Audrey. You know it and I know it and soon the king will know it.”

I could not see what difference that would make, but the pressure of Jack’s hand on my arm warned me not to speak, not even to deny that King Henry was my father, until Sir Richard revealed what he had in mind.

“His Grace has two half sisters already, Mary and Elizabeth. Legally, both of them are also bastards, since the late king’s marriages to their mothers were annulled. King Edward would regard your situation as no different from theirs.” He paused, to make sure I was following him. I was not, but when I said nothing, he continued, his tone that of a teacher speaking to a dull-witted child. “A king’s kinswomen are subject to his control in the matter of their marriages, no matter how old they are.”

This threat had teeth, but I had been intimidated by this wicked man for far too long already. “You are mistaken, Sir Richard, in thinking that King Henry fathered me. He did not.”

“Can you prove it?” He laughed, certain I could not.

I had the good sense not to answer him and, after a moment, still chuckling to himself, he left.

“Can you prove it?” Jack asked.

I threw my arms around him. “Yes! The wording of John Malte’s will proves I am his merry-begot, not the king’s. He even names my mother.”

“But Audrey, for all you know, John Scutt destroyed your father’s will. It has not yet been probated.”

“We have to convince him to produce it. Failing that, those who have read it must be forced to come forward.”

“Bridget?”

The reminder earned him a scowl but did not dent my certainty. “I will find a way. I cannot believe Master Scutt would destroy the will. There were too many witnesses to its making. And besides, it contained generous provision for Bridget and her son. If the estate has to be divided among Father’s heirs, as it will if Father is declared to have died intestate, then Bridget could well end up with less.”

“I will ask the Lord Admiral to lend his support. And you must talk to the queen dowager. She still uses Master Scutt’s services, does she not?”

“She’s had little need for them, being in mourning, but that will not last forever. In the meantime, the Lord Protector’s wife is his patron. She is the Lord Admiral’s sister-in-law. Perhaps—”

Jack cut me off with a short bark of laughter. “I would not look for help from that quarter. The Lord Protector and his wife have refused to return Queen Kathryn’s jewelry, even those baubles she owned before she married the king. For that reason alone, there is no love lost between the brothers.”

“Still, you will try, will you not?”

“I will do my best,” he promised, “but we must proceed with caution. The last thing you want is to remind Sir Richard of the existence of that will.”

I resolved to bide my time, but others saw no point in waiting for what they desired. The plans Jack and I had made were thrown into confusion by love. Not my love for Jack, but the Lord Admiral’s for Queen Kathryn and hers for him. Too impatient to let a respectable period of mourning pass, they wed in a private ceremony shortly before April turned into May.

The secret was ill-kept, at least at Chelsea. The servants and the ladies who attended the queen dowager knew that the Lord Admiral spent his nights in Queen Kathryn’s bed. Rather than be thought a whore, she told a select few of her household the truth and they spread the word. By mid-May everyone knew.

“You should follow our example,” Queen Kathryn advised me. “You are free to wed whatever man you choose, just as I was as a widow. Why not do so? Let the legal matters sort themselves out later.”

I saw the sense in what she said even as I recognized the irony of her words. There was a storm coming over her hasty marriage. At court, her new husband was just waiting his chance to speak with King Edward in private so that he might ask the young king’s blessing for their union. Without it, should the news break too soon, the Lord Admiral might even find himself in the Tower for having had the audacity to wed a royal widow without prior permission. Queen Kathryn, whether she was willing to admit it or not, was bound by the same law that controlled the marriages of the king’s half sisters. It was treason to marry one of His Grace’s kinswomen without first securing royal approval of the match.

“What would happen if we married now?” I asked Jack when he returned to Chelsea with a message from the Lord Admiral to his wife—a report that, as yet, he’d had no success in meeting with the king.

“I have been thinking about that. It is possible that the very fact of our marriage might push Master Scutt into producing the will. He knows I have powerful friends. I just wish we knew whether or not Sir Richard has had anything to do with Scutt since you slipped out of their clutches.”

“Mother Anne might know.” I felt a pang of guilt. I’d left a note telling her I was going somewhere safe, but I had not been in touch with her since taking refuge at Chelsea. For all she knew, I could be dead.

Jack went in secret to the house in Watling Street. He returned with Mother Anne’s blessing on our union and the news that Bridget had complained long and loud about Sir Richard’s failure to do as he had promised and send new business Master Scutt’s way.

“Southwell openly snubbed Scutt at court,” Jack reported, “acting as if he was too good to be seen associating with a mere artisan. He made a mistake there.”

“Bridget will never forgive him,” I agreed. “She’ll help me now, if only to spite him.”

As soon as the banns could be read in Chelsea church, Jack and I were wed. It was a quiet ceremony, with only the queen dowager and the Lord Admiral as witnesses. The next day, we paid a visit to my sister and her husband to announce the happy event.

Bridget looked down her nose at us. To her mind, I’d married a nobody. Jack had no profession and no fortune of his own.

A few minutes of conversation made it clear that Master Scutt knew nothing of Sir Richard’s latest threat.

“Once probate is complete,” Jack reminded him, “Audrey will be in a position to reward you for your services as Malte’s executor, and your own wife will be able to claim her inheritance.”

Scutt sent a fulminating glare Bridget’s way, making me think she had been the one responsible for the delay. She smiled sweetly back at him.

“I’ll see to it,” Scutt promised.

I hid my elation, lest Bridget turn against me again. If Scutt kept his word, there would be no more claims that I was King Henry’s daughter. Once John Malte’s will was properly entered into the official record, I would have documentary evidence to the contrary.

We went next to Mother Anne to announce our marriage, then visited my other sisters and their husbands. By the time we left London for Kelston, the largest part of my inheritance, I was at peace with all my kin.

We planned to live quietly in Somersetshire. Kelston was an idyllic setting for newly wed couple. Edith was with us, and little Pocket. Although the house had not been lived in for some time, it had been in the care of an industrious housekeeper. We settled in to wait for all the legalities to be settled.

The first good news to arrive was word that the will had been probated, thus rendering Sir Richard Southwell’s latest threat impotent. When he learned how he’d been thwarted, his first reaction would be anger and a desire for revenge. We resolved to rusticate awhile longer, giving his temper time to cool.

In July, news of the queen dowager’s remarriage became public. The Lord Protector was furious with his brother the Lord Admiral. Fortunately for the Lord Admiral, he had already succeeded in obtaining the young king’s enthusiastic approval.

“They are safe,” Jack reported, looking up from the letter that brought us this news.

“Thank the good Lord. They deserve their happiness.”

“As do we.”

I smiled at him. The weeks just past had been the most blissful of my entire life. Having established beyond a doubt that I was Audrey Malte, I was now quite content to be, only and forever, Audrey Harington.












44

Catherine’s Court, November 1556

The fire in the withdrawing room had burned down to ashes by the time Audrey stopped speaking, but she did not call for a servant to build it up again. It would do no good. She felt the cold deep inside herself where no flame could warm it. It was as she had feared. It hurt almost as much to relive moments of great happiness as it did to remember those filled with grief.

Hester stood and stretched. “I wish we could acknowledge being kin to the queen, but I am glad you and Father were able to wed.” She grinned. “I should not be here if you had not.” She headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

At the sharpness of Audrey’s question, Hester turned in surprise. “To the hall. I want to look at the portraits.”

They lined the walls—Audrey and Jack, King Henry, King Edward, Queen Mary. There were even small ones of the Lord Admiral and the queen dowager, a gift on the occasion of Audrey’s wedding to Jack.

With an effort, Audrey hoisted herself out of the chair and followed her daughter. There was more she needed to tell her, and perhaps seeing the likenesses of those she’d talked about would enhance her words.

Hester stopped first in front of the picture of Queen Kathryn. “I know what happened to her. She died in childbirth.”

In her innocence of such matters, she said the words easily. She had no idea how many good women perished just as they achieved their greatest triumph. Audrey herself had almost succumbed. After Hester was born, the midwife had told her she was unlikely ever to conceive another child.

Audrey indicated the likeness of Thomas Seymour, Lord Admiral of England. “It was not long after his wife’s death that Seymour attempted to break into the bedchamber of his nephew the king. He killed one of the king’s dogs, lest it sound an alarm.”

This elicited a horrified gasp from Hester, who was as fond of dogs as she was of horses. Audrey, too, had been appalled by the Lord Admiral’s act, the more so because, at the time, she had just lost, to old age and infirmity, her own longtime companion. She’d buried Pocket in her garden just a few days before news of the Lord Admiral’s arrest arrived at Kelston.

“You were not yet a year old when he was executed for treason by his own brother, the Lord Protector. As I told you, your father was in the Lord Admiral’s service. He delivered messages for him and therefore was privy to many of the Lord Admiral’s plans.”

The worried look in Hester’s eyes told Audrey that her daughter had an inkling what she would hear next.

“Jack was arrested, too. He was in prison for over a year.”

“But he was released. It all ended well.” Hester moved on to the portrait of King Edward and frowned.