Disguisings, Nan thought. And a Lord of Misrule to preside over the Yuletide festivities. She longed to be there.

“He is still in mourning for Queen Jane,” Jane Arundell objected. “How much celebration can there be?” Then she saw something in the earl’s expression that made her light gray eyes go wide. “Who?”

Nan watched the earl’s expression change as he glanced around the circle of eager faces. He seemed to be debating with himself, but in the end he relented. “No doubt you will hear of it soon enough. The election lies between Mistress Mary Shelton and Mistress Margaret Skipwith. I pray Jesu that the king will choose the one who will give him greatest comfort.”

“You cannot mean he intends to marry one of them!” Kate Stradling exclaimed.

“He is supposed to wed a foreign princess,” Nan added.

The earl shook his head. “It is a mistress His Grace is after from among the gentlewomen of his acquaintance, not a wife.”

“MARY SHELTON,” JANE Arundell mused when the earl and countess had retired. “Well, well.”

“Do you know her?” Nan sat with her legs curled under her on a cushion on the floor.

Isabel, whose pregnancy weighed heavily on her, had claimed the window seat that overlooked the garden, while Kate occupied a stool. Jane took the countess’s chair.

“I have never met the woman, but I know who she is. One of her sisters, Margaret, was at court when Anne Boleyn was queen. Madge, they called her. That one was no better than she should be.” Jane paused to glance over her shoulder at the door, making sure there was no one else listening. Then she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Madge Shelton warmed the king’s bed throughout one of Queen Anne’s pregnancies.”

Isabel fanned herself with her embroidery hoop. “Oh, my! Well, I do not suppose His Grace minds tupping sisters. He has done so before.”

“There are some who say that the two children Queen Anne’s sister bore during her first marriage were really fathered by the king,” Jane explained, noticing the puzzled expression on Nan’s face.

More tales of Anne Boleyn’s sister, and other women who had reportedly been King Henry’s mistresses, followed hard and fast. Nan was fascinated. Her mother had told many stories about people at the English court but, with one exception, she had not included illicit liaisons in her lessons. She had mentioned a woman named Bessie Blount, but only because Bessie had given birth to King Henry’s bastard, Henry FitzRoy, a boy who had died about a year before Nan arrived at court.

“The first mistress anyone knows by name,” Jane continued, preening a bit because she had been a maid of honor long enough to know, “was the Duke of Buckingham’s sister. That was way back in the first year of King Henry’s reign. The duke very nearly caught them together and afterward he had his sister confined to a nunnery for her sins.”

“Is she still there?” Kate asked.

“Not likely,” Nan interjected. “Most of the nunneries have been dissolved.”

“And the Duke of Buckingham is long gone—executed for treason years ago.” Jane lowered her voice again, obliging the others to lean closer. “But his wayward sister, as you suggested, Nan, did not remain long in confinement, and these days she is the Countess of Huntingdon!”

“Whatever happened to Bessie Blount?” Nan asked.

“She was married off to Lord Talboys, and after he died she wed Lord Clinton.”

“So one former mistress has married an earl and another became a baroness twice over,” Nan mused aloud. “It would seem that the king’s castoffs do not fare too badly.”

“Not all of them married peers. Mary Boleyn was wed to a mere knight and her second husband is the same.”

Jane’s answer only piqued Nan’s curiosity. “And Madge Shelton? What happened to her?”

“I’ve no idea,” Jane admitted.

“Have there been others?” Nan persisted.

Jane’s eyebrows rose. “Surely we have enumerated quite enough for one man! Any more would be excessive.”

“Not so,” Nan said with a laugh. “Why, the number of mistresses the king of England has taken pales beside the legions of women so honored by the king of France.” Finding herself the center of attention, Nan regaled the others with stories of King Frances and his conquests until it was time for supper.

That night Nan dreamed she was at court. King Henry walked right past shadowy figures that Nan somehow knew were Mary Shelton and Margaret Skipwith, and chose Nan instead. And not just to be his mistress, either. It was a crown he offered her, and his hand in marriage.

Nan could not help but feel chagrined a few weeks later when she heard that the king had made Margaret Skipwith his mistress. She took care to hide her reaction, but Constance knew her too well.

“Why do you care what Mistress Skipwith does?” the maid asked as she dressed Nan’s hair for the day.

“She won the prize before I even knew there was a contest,” Nan muttered. They were alone in the bedchamber. Kate had risen early and was already in attendance upon Cousin Mary.

“You cannot have wanted to be the king’s mistress. Not after knowing Master Ned. The king is old and getting older. Fat and getting fatter. What pleasure would there be in going to bed with the likes of him?”

“A great deal if he could be persuaded into marriage,” Nan replied.

“You want to be queen?” In the mirror, Nan saw the girl’s eyes widen.

“A woman can aspire no higher,” said Nan. “And surely a king would be a superlative lover.”

Nan did not mention the way King Henry affected her. She did not think Constance would understand that she had been drawn to the king’s person every bit as powerfully as she had been to Ned’s. True, Ned was younger and better looking, but Nan had no difficulty at all imagining herself in Henry Tudor’s bed.

Constance snorted and pulled a little too hard as the comb caught a snarl. “Climb too high and a fall from that height will be the death of you. King Henry has killed three wives already, one by neglect, one by beheading, and the third in childbed. Where’s the pleasure, or the profit, in joining that company?”

Nan considered for a moment. “There’s pleasure, profit, and power, too, just in being at court, and to have the king’s attention means more of all three. Whatever woman he takes as his mistress has more influence than other women at court, at least for a time. A wife would have even more.”

“For a time,” Constance amended under her breath. Satisfied with Nan’s hair, she went to the wardrobe chest to collect kirtle, bodice, sleeves, gown, and shoes. Nan was already wearing her stockings and garters and chemise and petticoats.

“Perhaps I aim too high.” Nan heaved a gusty sigh. “Even to dream of replacing Mistress Skipwith is likely presumptuous. And foolish, as well,” she acknowledged, catching sight of Constance’s expression. “And yet I do know one thing—I will never be content to spend my life living as a poor relation in a wealthy cousin’s household.”

Most assuredly she could do better than that!

FOR THE NEXT few months, Nan busied herself making baby clothes, attempting to learn to write in English, and planning the garments she would have when she was once more a maid of honor at the royal court. She was least successful with the writing, since she had little true interest in acquiring that skill. Given that her own mother corresponded with dozens of people, always employing a secretary to write for her, Nan had no real need to make the effort. Nor did she have anyone to whom she had a great desire to send a letter. Except, perhaps, for Ned. But she knew that was not a good idea.

But if she had written to someone, she mused, she might have said that Isabel Staynings had been delivered of a healthy girl and that Cousin Mary, the Countess of Sussex, still awaited the birth of her child. Mary had taken to her bedchamber in mid-February. Since Nan was not obliged to stay with Mary all the time, she could take walks in the garden, despite the cold weather, if she so desired. For some reason, however, she found she lacked the energy to venture outside.

She’d felt listless for several weeks—she blamed the weather—when John Husee arrived on the fifteenth of March with letters and tokens from Nan’s family in Calais. The news that he was accompanied by Ned Corbett made Nan’s heart flutter with anticipation, but she was determined to show no weakness where he was concerned.

Jane Arundell remained with her half sister while Nan and Kate went to greet their visitors. Since the king had left off wearing mourning on the third day of February, the day after Candlemas, thus permitting his subjects to do the same, Nan had on the gown of lion tawny satin turned up with velvet of the same color. It was one that Master Husee had supplied against her return to court as a maid of honor. With it she wore a flattering French hood. Her headdress still lacked an appropriately rich decorative border, but she had already begun a campaign to amend that lack.

“Has Mother sent the pearls?” she asked before Husee had a chance to say a word beyond his greeting. She pretended to ignore Ned entirely.

John Husee was a stolid individual in his early thirties, plainly dressed. There was nothing memorable about his brown hair and brown eyes. His other features, including a short, neatly trimmed beard, were equally unremarkable. He was skilled at effacing himself and eager to please without being obsequious. He had been in the employ of Lord and Lady Lisle since Nan was twelve and deferred to her just as he did to her mother and stepfather. If any of them asked for something, he procured it, whether it be goods or information. He always knew the best places to find both.

A pained expression on his face, Husee shook his head. “It grieves me to tell you, Mistress Anne, that she has not yet done so.”

“I need them by Easter.” Easter Sunday fell on the twenty-first day of April, only a little more than a month away.

Although Nan could feel Ned’s intense gaze boring into her, she refused to look at him. He’d no doubt try to steal a moment alone with her, but she did not intend to let him succeed. She did not dare allow him close to her, not when just knowing he was in the same room shook her resolution to avoid him.

“What news of the king’s search for a queen?” Kate cast a flirtatious look Ned’s way. Nan frowned at her, but Kate took no notice.

John Husee answered, “The king has sent Master Hans Holbein abroad to make portraits of several noblewomen considered worthy to be queen of England.”

“Including Christina of Milan?” Kate wanted to know.

“Including Christina. Wagering at court favors her five to one over any other candidate.”

“There is news closer to home,” Ned cut in impatiently. He stepped in front of Nan so that she was forced to meet his steady gaze. “Your eldest brother, John Bassett, has married your stepsister, Frances Plantagenet.”

Nan kept her expression carefully blank. “That is no great surprise. They have been betrothed ever since my mother married Frances’s father. I imagine they were only waiting until John reached his eighteenth birthday.”

“I suppose you do not care, either, that your youngest sister, Mary Bassett, has been ill. She was sent home to Calais last week in the hope that your mother could nurse her back to health.”

Nan stared at him with concern, but said nothing. She felt as if she barely knew Mary anymore, having seen her only a handful of times during the last four years.

Master Husee hastened to assure her that her sister would recover.

“In spite of her ill health,” Ned remarked, “she is quite the beauty, by far the prettiest of Lady Lisle’s daughters.”

Nan went rigid as a fireplace poker, but she refused to be baited. She would not oblige Ned Corbett by quarreling with him.

“Perhaps,” Ned continued, as if unaware of her irritation, “you will soon be able to judge for yourself. It has been suggested that when she regains her health, Mary should join you here in the Sussex household.”

Caught off guard, Nan struggled to find a polite reply. “It would be pleasant to see my youngest sister again,” she said after a moment, “but I would not want her to make such a long journey if she is not well.”

“We have news of your sister Catherine, too.” The hard glint in Ned’s eyes belied his casual tone of voice and reminded Nan that he’d once shown a marked interest in Cat. “There is talk of a marriage for her with one of Sir Edward Baynton’s sons.”

“Baynton,” Nan mused aloud. “He was vice chancellor to Queen Jane. No doubt he will assume the same post under the next queen.” Baynton had wealth and influence, but he was merely a knight and his sons lacked even that distinction. Still, Cat must be well pleased at the prospect of such an alliance. Plain as she was, she’d never have much choice in a husband.