Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (13 page)

67

Susan Kay

exploring hand. His touch sent a violent spasm through her body and

deep in his mouth he felt her gasp. His finger worked with practised skill.

Warm, moist, ready—oh, very ready.

He bunched the skirts high about her breasts, burying his face in her

taut, bare skin; and it was there that Katherine found them, just in time

to stop that moment of wild surrender.

He sprang up, as though her gasping exclamation had stabbed him in

the back like a knife blow, and his bronzed face was crimson beneath its

golden beard.

“
Katherine
!”

“Yes,” she said, in a strange, flat little voice. “Katherine,” and went

out of the room.

The Admiral ran after her and Elizabeth was left alone on the floor,

burying her face in the dirty rushes, hiding from a shame that was too

great to be borne.

t t t

Katherine said, “She’s fourteen—scarcely more than a child and just old

enough to bear you one. Were you out of your mind?”

He was silent, shamefaced as a little boy caught stealing from his

mother’s purse.

At last he said awkwardly, “It meant nothing.”

She stared at him.

“You think it nothing to despoil a girl second in line to the throne?

You think your
brother
will call it nothing?”

“She’s still a virgin,” he muttered. “I give you my word on that, Kate.

It’s the first time I’ve ever let it go so far.”

“Then give me your word that it will also be the last and I too will be

more than grateful to call it nothing.”

As she watched, a slow flush mounted to his forehead. He stared out of

the window at the brick-walled garden and was stubbornly mute.

“Then you leave me no choice,” said Katherine dully. “I must send

her away.”

“You asked me to give my word,” he pointed out grimly. “It would

have been easier for me to lie and spare you the truth.”

She conceded the point wearily. She was great with child now and

it was several months since he had shared her bed. At such a time, any

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Legacy

woman in the household would have been happy to accommodate him.

There was no need for him to have chosen Elizabeth unless—

“You love her, don’t you?” she whispered.

Abruptly, he turned on his heel and went to the door.

“Just send her away, Kate,” he said harshly. “And send her quickly. I

don’t want her in this house a moment longer than necessary.”

When he had gone, Katherine sank into a chair and let the tears roll

slowly down her grey face.

It was all the answer she needed.

t t t

Torches were already blazing in their wall brackets, despite the evening

sunshine, when Elizabeth closed the door of the Queen’s room and

trailed wearily over the rushes in the Long Gallery. It had been a quiet

interview, without harsh words, bitterness, or recrimination, but it had

been hurtful to them both, leaving them like spent swimmers, gasping on

some alien shore. The dignity of Katherine’s generous spirit had humbled

her, searing her with a remorse which made her squirm and want to hide

away in shame. Nothing she could say or do would ever make amends

for the wicked mess she had made of all their lives. And the memory of

Katherine’s anguished face would follow her into her lonely exile, feeding

her gnawing sense of guilt, that most self-destructive of all emotions.

She stood still for a moment, grinding her slippered feet into the

rushes and watching the cockroaches scatter. The thought of returning

to her own apartment, to Kat Ashley’s anxious questions and reproachful

platitudes, was unbearable. She did not need the ruffled governess to tell

her that she had only herself to blame…

At the end of the gallery there was an arched bay with a cushioned

window-seat. She sank into it with relief and leaned her hot head against

the thick glass of latticed panes, glad of its cool touch against the sick throb-

bing in her right temple. The pain was unfamiliar and intense; it seemed to

be growing in severity, obscuring her vision, and it frightened her a little.

She had been too proud to tell Katherine or Kat, lest they assumed

it to be a play for sympathy; now she nursed the acute discomfort with

a touch of self-pity and fiercely hoped she had the plague. How much

easier it would be to face death than to go away, alone, and in disgrace,

with everyone knowing why she went…

69

Susan Kay

A heavy hand fell on her shoulder, causing her to jump and start

round. Beyond the window the sun was setting in a great red ball behind

the trees, and a thin shaft of brilliant light cut at a low angle through the

greenish glass, making a glory of the Admiral in his russet doublet.

“Has the Queen spoken to you?” he asked brusquely.

“Yes,” Elizabeth swallowed hard. Hot colour was flooding into her

pale cheeks; she could not look at him.

He frowned. “Did she—speak harshly?”

Elizabeth shook her head slowly. “She was very kind. I almost

wish she had been angry. She made me feel like—like an ungrateful

hedge-drab.”

“It was no one’s fault,” he began uncomfortably. “When something

like this happens we all have to be—sensible about it.”

“As sensible as my father perhaps?” She fixed him with a look of

contempt which struck him to the heart. “What would the Lord Admiral

do, I wonder, if he found his wife on the floor with another man?”

Goaded to the limit of endurance, he dragged her out of the window

and shook her violently.

“Do you think I’m proud of this day’s work, you taunting jade? I

swear by God’s precious soul I never meant to hurt her. Is it a crime to

love two women?”

“No, it’s not a crime.” Her lips were curled in a bitter smile. “Merely

a damnable inconvenience to you. And what did poor Uncle Tom ever

do to deserve that?”

“You bitch!” He slapped her smartly across the mouth. “Don’t you

ever call me that again!”

Both hands flew to her head; she moaned and crumpled up in the

window-seat in a dazed stupor. The colour drained out of her face before

his eyes and for a moment he was afraid he had knocked her senseless. He

had hit her hard enough to hurt, it was true, but not that hard—surely

not that hard.

“Bess!” Frightened by her colour, he lifted her up and touched the

flaming patch at the corner of her mouth with remorse. It was the first

time he had ever struck a woman—the first time he had ever felt either

the need or the desire to. In all his light love affairs, he had always been

the master, carelessly in command, conferring his virility with casual

superiority on an enchanting but decidedly inferior breed. In Elizabeth

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Legacy

he had met his match—perhaps more than his match—and her taunt was

like a burn on his manhood.

But his savage blow now seemed unforgivable to one who looked

suddenly so small and forlorn and wretched.

“You have to go away,” he said slowly. “There is no alternative. If

you stay, I couldn’t answer for what might befall you. It’s too dangerous.”

She said on a little strangled sob, “I don’t care about danger.”

“No,” he muttered, looking at her strangely. “Your mother never cared

either. And you’re like her—too much like her. You fey a man worse than

a quart of aqua vitae—you too could brew murder—as she did.”

Elizabeth leaned against the wall and drew a shaky breath.

“Then it’s you, and not Katherine, who is sending me away.”

“Katherine would keep you here if she could,” he said hoarsely. “If

you were her own daughter, she couldn’t love you better.”

Elizabeth bit her quivering lip.

“She said we were not to blame, you and I—that you had a man’s

appetites and that I was too young to resist them. She begged me to

guard my reputation with the people. She said one day—I might be

Queen of England.”

“So you will be,” he said quickly. “A great queen.”

“And a great catch!” Her voice was suddenly soft with venom. “That’s

why you asked me first—what a fool I was not to see it before now.”

She tried to push past him, blind with rage, but he caught her roughly.

“Listen to me—
listen
—”

“I don’t want to hear your lies,” she sobbed, fighting free of him.

“I won’t be used—not by you or anyone else. I’ve lost my home for

nothing. Oh, why did you have to come here and spoil everything? I hate

you! I hate a
all
men.”

He let her go then, appalled by the pulsing violence in her voice. If she

had had a dagger in her hand he would not have given a farthing-piece

for his own life in a further struggle. Suddenly he felt he didn’t know her,

that he had never known her—the real Elizabeth—and he was shocked

by the discovery. This morning a woman had sprung to life in his arms,

but now that woman had gone, perhaps for ever. It was a child who ran

away from him down the narrow gallery of Chelsea Palace; and as he

stood and watched that reckless headlong flight he had the morbid fancy

that she would go on running for the rest of her life.

71

Chapter 5

E
lizabeth’s immediate future was settled quickly and without

dispute, both guilty parties being anxious to humour the injured. Sir

Anthony Denny, a close friend of the Dowager Queen, agreed to take the

Princess and her entourage under his own roof at the manor of Cheshunt,

and if he was startled by the unprecedented nature of the arrangement, he

was sufficiently a courtier to give no outward sign.

They were difficult days for everyone, those few before Elizabeth’s

departure, hours of feigned gaiety on both sides, alternating with tense,

moody silences; tedious meals accompanied by equally tedious conver-

sation. The old, jolly informality of the household was sealed for ever

beneath a layer of ice which could not be broken no matter with what

goodwill it was attacked; little Jane Grey sat crushed by the atmosphere,

fervently wishing her tempestuous cousin were gone.

And at last, a week after Whitsun, she was gone indeed. Jane stood

in the arched doorway beside the Queen and waved to the trim figure

in the green riding habit, as she cantered down the drive at the head of

the great, rumbling retinue of carts and pack horses, riding off into the

still green countryside and out of their lives. Long after the drive was

empty once more, Katherine stood there, watching the white dust swim

and settle behind the tramping hooves and Jane knew, without daring to

look, that tears were running down her haggard face. Jane’s Greek and

Latin were equal to many a Cambridge scholar’s but the harsh emotional

repressions of her childhood had left her tongue-tied in the presence of

other people’s distress.

Legacy

“If it please Your Grace,” she said uneasily, “my tutor will be waiting

in the library.”

“Of course.” Katherine turned and smiled down at her absently. “Run

along to your studies, my dear.”

Jane hesitated.

“Will Your Grace not come inside out of the heat?” she ventured

timidly.

Katherine’s preoccupied gaze still roamed down the empty drive.

“I think I should like to walk a little in the gardens,” she said slowly.

“Run along now, child. I need no attendant.”

Jane ran up the wide staircase and knelt in the window-seat, watching

that sad, shapeless little figure trail away across the lawns until she too was

out of sight. Then the grounds were still and silent once more, like an

empty stage at the end of some dramatic performance. It would certainly

be peaceful with Elizabeth gone, but strange, as though some of the

colour had gone out of the world in her absence. And people would miss

her—even those like Jane, who did not particularly like her.

Jane leaned her head on her arms and thought sadly: If I were to leave

here, it would be a week before anyone noticed I was gone…

t t t

When Elizabeth arrived at Cheshunt, the Dennys were waiting on the

steps to greet her, hiding their curiosity beneath a civil mask of welcome.

Some very ugly rumours had preceded her coming—it was even said in

some quarters that the Princess was pregnant.

Certainly she was pale enough, thought Joan Denny as she rose from

a curtsey and surveyed that slim, rather arrogant figure, but if she was, it

was too early to tell by her external appearance. Faintly disappointed, Lady

Denny went down the steps to greet Mrs. Ashley, who was her sister.

“Well, Kat,” she said with muted disapproval. “Here’s a pretty state of

affairs, I must say, when the King’s daughter has to be sent away in disgrace.

What were you about to let such a thing take place under your very nose?”

Kat stiffened and returned a perfunctory embrace.

“I hope you’re not going to take
that
attitude, Joan, or our stay here

will be most disagreeable.”

“Well, I’m not blaming you, of course,” added Lady Denny hastily.