The Intended Page 31

  As Jaime looked with unseeing eyes into the looking glass, feeling anxiety and anger struggle for dominance. She drew in a long breath, and then stared at her hands’ reflection. They were trembling. Jaime tucked them deeply into the pockets of her dress and watched Caddy tuck the last unruly wave into the thick blanket of hair trailing down her back.

  “Let me go after Lord Malcolm,” the older woman said gently, pinning the starched linen cap into her mistress’s hair. “He might be able to help.”

  “I can’t have him show his face before the king, Caddy,” Jaime answered. “He’d be in great danger. He mustn’t know.”

  “But what of you?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Jaime argued. “Lady Frances only said that the king wishes to have me presented. That’s all. There is nothing more to it.” If she could only make herself believe her own words, Jaime thought.

  Finishing her hair, the old woman started straightening the puffs of Jaime’s sleeves. “He’ll be so angry when he finds out that you left your chambers—while still being so weak. Are you sure you don’t want me to go after him? He returned to his chamber not an hour ago. He won’t be sleeping before his supper is brought up to him.”

  “Nay, though I thank you,” Jaime said softly, smiling inwardly at this newly developed affection that Caddy felt for Malcolm. “So long as the king and his men are roaming about, Malcolm puts his life in the gravest danger each time he steps into the corridors.”

  “But he didn’t want you to be left alone. I gave him my word, mistress. Let me go and at least tell him.”

  Jaime shook her head. “I forbid you to go to him, Caddy. There is nothing he can do for me that I cannot do myself.” The young woman stood up from the chair and gently laid her hand on her servant’s arm. “All will be well.”

  “But you are so pale.”

  The woman’s loving concern brought a faint smile to Jaime’s lips. “Please go and tell Lady Frances that I am ready.”

  Chapter 40

  With a heat only men accustomed to great power can generate, the King of England continued to relentlessly blast the three men standing before him, and Jaime stood motionless by the great bedchamber’s closed door. The room, lit by a dozen candles and lamps, seemed to resonate with the energy of the monarch’s fury. She and Lady Frances exchanged a furtive glance, both of them happy that Henry Tudor had chosen to ignore the fact that they had even entered.

  Jaime glanced again in the direction of her friend, gratefully acknowledging with a nod the small smile that she knew Frances meant to instill confidence in her. How would she ever thank the woman for not leaving her at the door to face this man alone.

  This man! Jaime glanced in the direction of the raging king. Her father! As her eyes studied his portly features, livid with anger, his eyes snapped away from the men and focused on her face. Matching his gaze, a sudden and uncontrollable anger of her own flared. The king paused only fleetingly in his tirade before turning his attention once more to the men. She suddenly wondered at the furious battle of words raging in her head, and how she could restrain her tongue from uttering them.

  Even with his age showing in his ponderous bulk and the sagging flesh of his face, Henry Tudor was still a formidable man. And watching these men openly flinch at his sharp dismissal from the room, Jaime couldn’t help but wonder whether her mother had been thrown out so brutally. Seething with more hate than she thought herself capable of, Jaime glared at the king. This man had been responsible for the deaths of her mother and her aunt, Anne Boleyn. And now she, too, stood so vulnerable before him. She knew that as far as he was concerned, she would be nothing more than yet another undesirable Boleyn.

  With fittingly careful deference, the disfavored ones humbly bowed out of the room.

  “Countess.” Henry glared at Jaime as he addressed Lady Frances, his voice conveying a note of impatience. “There is no longer any need for you to remain.”

  Frances curtsied and glanced doubtfully at Jaime. “Sire, if it pleases you, I would be happy to stay in case Mistress Jaime’s illness returns.”

  Henry stared at the two women.

  “Your Majesty,” Jaime added, with a curtsy. “I have only left my sickbed today. If Your Majesty might indulge us?” Anger and disappointment stung her inwardly, for her excuse sounded cowardly even to her own ear. But despite the hostility she felt toward this man, she knew that Frances’s presence offered the protection of civility, and she didn’t want to throw away Malcolm's and her chances when they were only a day from realization.

  Glancing back at the king, she searched for a sign in his expression. A long moment passed before he nodded his assent.

  Turning to Lady Frances, Henry’s words were gentle as he invited her to approach and take a seat. But Jaime, still standing by the door, found herself the target of two piercing eyes. She wondered if there was a resemblance that he was searching for. She knew her mother was much shorter in height than she herself was. From the paintings her aunt had done, Jaime also knew Mary had been more voluptuous in bosom and hip than she. Jaime looked more like Elizabeth than she did her own mother. Perhaps that was one reason it had been so much easier over the years to pretend to be her daughter. But that could all be for naught, now.

  For though she hated to admit it, as she studied the king’s features, she saw something in his countenance, in the curve of his cheek, that she knew could be found, even by the light of these candles, in her own face.

  The edge in Henry Tudor’s voice cut through the air when he finally spoke again. “I hear that you are a granddaughter of Thomas Boleyn.”

  “That I am, Your Majesty,” Jaime answered quietly.

  “It is peculiar that we never heard of you while your grandfather was at our court.”

  “I was brought up elsewhere,” Jaime answered. “It wasn’t until much later in his life that I had a chance to spend some time in his company.”

  The king’s eyes again dwelled on Jaime’s features. Then, abruptly, he reached over and picked up a chain from the corner of the table. The bright green emerald flashed in the light of the room. “What is your age, mistress?”

  “Nineteen,” she answered feeling the hackles rise on her neck at the sight of her ring in the king’s possession. As much as her curiosity—and her rising temper—stabbed at her to inquire how he’d come by her ring, she fought back the question.

  Henry’s eyes seem to notice Jaime’s gaze on the ring in his hand. “Is this... this bauble yours?”

  She paused, her eyes studying another ring—one encircling the king’s finger. One identical to the ring dangling at the end of the chain. “Aye, Your Majesty.”

  “And how is it you came to possess it?”

  Henry began to swing the chain back and forth, allowing it to wind around his fingers and then back. Jaime’s eyes, drawn to the action, riveted on the ring that adorned his finger.

  “The ring was a token, given to me by my parents,” she whispered at last.

  Dropping the ring carelessly on the table, the king moved across the room to where she stood.

  Jaime glanced uncomfortably in the direction of Frances, who sat quietly with her hands in her lap, her eyes on the king.

  “We haven’t asked you about your parents. Your mother would be daughter to Thomas Boleyn.” Jaime felt her palms begin to sweat as Henry approached her.

  “She was, Your Majesty.”

  Henry came to a halt only a step away. As he loomed over her, Jaime suddenly felt all the courage of a few moments ago drain out of her soul, and she lowered her gaze from his face to the large medallion hanging about the king’s neck. A long silence followed as she felt his eyes studying her face.

  “You have her dark hair, her fair complexion.”

  The way he spoke the words left no doubt in Jaime’s mind that he was speaking of Mary Boleyn. And when his hand reached out, she had to fight hard not to flinch as he took a loose tendril of her hair between thick fingers. She stood, motionless, holding her b
reath until, after a moment, his hand dropped to his side. She was certain now. The faraway look in his eyes had told her so much—he knew the truth. He knew she was Mary’s daughter.

  “And Jaime has also been blessed with some of her artistic nature, as well.” Frances’s voice swung the king’s head around. Stunned, Jaime looked on her friend, realizing what Frances was trying to do. “Being the great connoisseur of music that you are, sire, you would be charmed, I am quite certain, if you were to hear Jaime play and sing her music.”

  Gathering her wits about her, Jaime quickly wiped her wet palms on the smooth linen of her dress. “If a person’s friends will not overstate her talents, Your Majesty, who would?” She smiled serenely as the king turned back to her. “But in all humility, being raised in a house finely attuned to the arts, having the finest scholars and artists of Europe as regular guests, a young woman could hardly avoid developing her talents to the best of her ability.”

  Henry’s eyes were probing when they glanced from Frances back to Jaime. “We don’t recall your mother having any great talent.”

  Bastard! she cursed inwardly, thinking of her poor mother lying dead in the ground. She struggled to retain her composure.

  “But, sire,” Frances put in. “You yourself are the possessor of several products of those talents.”

  “Eh? What’s that?”

  “Paintings of Queen Margaret and her family, I believe.”

  “What, my sister?”

  “Aye, Your Majesty,” Jaime added, noticing that his eyes had rounded in surprise. “But Elizabeth Boleyn’s talents were of the kind that she couldn’t and wouldn’t practice in the open. At least, not until your sister, the Queen Mother, invited her to join her court at Linlithgow. Why, the portraits of the royal family adorn every royal castle in Scotland. If I might say so, Your Majesty, their exquisite use of color and texture are now rivaled only by your own Holbein’s best work.”

  It seemed to Jaime that Henry had hardly listened to anything she had just said. Finally, he addressed her. “You are daughter to Elizabeth?” he asked, incredulity in his voice.

  There was no pause in her response, nor any doubt in her mind when Jaime opened her mouth in reply. “I am, Your Majesty.”

  The King of England ran his fat fingers through his beard as he considered her statement. Jaime pondered the lie she had spoken to her own father. But somehow she knew that this was the way her mother intended it to be.

  “Elizabeth. I always wondered what happened to her.” Henry turned and wandered pensively across the chamber.

  “She went to Florence, Your Majesty, mastered her art in the studio of Michelangelo himself, before going to Scotland and settling there.”

  The king reached down and picked up the chain and the ring again. “And your father?” he asked, turning toward her.

  “Ambrose Macpherson.”

  “Aye, the Scottish diplomat,” Henry put in. “Of course.”

  Jaime’s knees suddenly wobbled beneath her, and the king and Frances were beside her in an instant. The relief of having him accept her story delighted her and yet made her light-headed. They sat her in a chair beside Frances, and her head cleared immediately, though the king insisted on pouring out a cup of wine for her.

  She watched him as he settled his great weight into a chair facing her, and again picked up the ring.

  “Did you know that this bauble once belonged to us?”

  She shook her head. “Nay, Your Majesty.”

  Henry’s eyes glinted as they stared at the dark green of the stone. “Then we assume you do not know how your parents came to have it.”

  She shook her head again.

  “Your father won this ring in the tournament we held at the Field of Cloth of Gold. He downed the best of our English knights in a joust to win this token.”

  Jaime stared at the ring. She knew it had been there that Ambrose and Elizabeth had first met.

  “But now, meeting you and...knowing your age...” A smile was breaking out on the king’s face. “We would say the prize he earned was worth far more than this bauble.”

  She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  “Your father is too fearless, too blunt to be a very good diplomat. No really good diplomat can be respected...or even trusted, you see. But where were we?”

  “The tournament, sire,” Frances suggested.

  “Ah, indeed. We recall that after the Scot collected this prize, he approached none other than the daughter of our French ambassador, Sir Thomas.” He turned to Frances with a rumbling laugh. “He gave her the ring.”

  “A generous gift!” Frances added.

  “Wouldn’t you say that the return exceeded his investment, Lady Frances?” Henry placed a hand on Jaime’s shoulder as he smiled at the countess. “You see it now? This young woman is, we believe, the finest thing produced by that Field of Cloth of Gold.”

  As Frances rose from her chair, Jaime stood, as well, unsure of how to respond.

  “Lady Frances, we thank you for this visit,” the king said, leading them toward the door. He detained Jaime with a light touch of his hand. “And the next time you visit your father, send my regards to him. Even though twenty years ago I was ready to draw and quarter him for foiling my plans regarding France, over the years I have learned to value such talent.”

  Jaime dropped a small curtsy and turned toward Frances waiting by the door.

  “And your mother,” Henry added.

  Jaime swung around to face the king.

  “She was the smartest of the three. Send her my best.”

  She paused for an instant. Elizabeth was the only survivor of the three, and Jaime wondered if that was what he meant. But she didn’t dare stay and ask.

  “Oh, you’ve forgotten something.”

  Jaime opened her hand as the king dropped the ring in her palm. As he turned and made his way back across the room, she stared for a moment at the emerald and then at the man who would never know the truth.

  Chapter 41

  “I will be grateful to you for as long as I live,” Jaime whispered, gently squeezing the hand that took hold of her arm at the great oaken door of the king’s chamber.

  Relying on Frances’s physical support now, Jaime felt as if each step she took was made with the weight of hundred tons dragging at her feet. She realized now that it had taken all her strength to face the king. But she didn’t think she would ever have been able to go through with it without Frances’s help.

  “Let’s just hope that it is a long life that awaits you...and me...considering what we’ve just done to ruin the duke of Norfolk’s plans.”

  Jaime turned her head and looked at the other woman’s resigned expression.

  “Oh, as well you should know.” Frances shrugged her shoulders. “Edward is being held prisoner at Nonsuch Palace awaiting the High Steward’s Court to convene.”

  Jaime looked steadily at her friend. “What does that mean, Frances?”

  “The accusation may be one of treason.” Frances said simply. “From what Surrey has heard, someone has come forward with the rumor that Edward has held back booty he captured in the king’s name at sea.”

  Jaime kept silent. She knew this to be the truth. Many times since arriving here, she had heard Edward boast of his cleverness in this matter. “So what does this news have to do with us? What plans have we ruined?”

  Frances looked into Jaime’s eyes. “Your sudden summons to appear at court...”

  “Aye?” Jaime whispered.

  “Surrey and I discussed this, and we decided that the king must have had no knowledge of...another daughter, which now we know to be the truth.”

  “I think the king was relieved to think that I was not Mary Boleyn’s daughter.”

  “True. The Crown Prince is a sickly little fellow. If, God forbid, he should die before the king, another daughter would only complicate the succession.”

  “But what of the duke’s plans?”

  “The duke and Edward s
ummoned you to marry Edward in haste—before presenting you to His Majesty. Once he was married to the king’s daughter, a royal pardon for Edward would be assured.”

  “And we have prevented that by going to the king.”

  “Of course, we had no choice when he sent for you.”

  Jaime’s heart pounded joyfully at her good fortune in not going to Nonsuch Palace when she had been summoned. Then a thought occurred to her. “But if the earl knew so much from that letter...”

  Frances patted Jaime on the hand. “Surrey deserves your trust, my dear. He did not learn everything until you were bedridden. The Archbishop of Norwich sent a messenger to Surrey—naturally assuming my husband was in on his father’s scheme—seeking some information in order to draw up the papers on your betrothal with Edward.”

  “Drawing papers without ever having my consent.” Jaime stopped and looked worriedly into her friend’s eyes.

  Frances nodded. “Aye, they are dated two months back.”

  “But how could they?” Jaime brought a hand to her brow and leaned heavily against a carved wooden panel.

  Frances led her to one of the window seats. Looking up and down the empty corridor, the countess waved a hand dismissing Jaime’s fears. “I don’t think you need worry about what has been done. Leaving His Majesty’s chambers, I have no doubt that he was convinced that you are Elizabeth’s rather than Mary’s daughter. So the duke can say all he wants. You have already given the king enough reason to disbelieve the claims. Norfolk will not be happy, though.”

  Jaime touched Frances gently on the arm. “You knew all of this and still helped me. I should have thought, being married to a Howard, your first loyalty would be to them.”

  Frances smiled. “It is, Jaime. But I am devoted only to Surrey, for he is a man of honor, and truly the most worthy of them all.”

  “I see that.” Jaime smiled, but then her face clouded over. “He is a far cry from his brother.”

  “True,” Frances replied. “Not since Cain and Abel have two brothers been so different.”