Royal Mistress (65 page)

Jane had indeed been surprised to be summoned. The lawyer seemed nervous, she noticed, and her stomach lurched. He must have ill tidings for her, she imagined. Sweet Virgin Mary, what was to become of her now? That night she had dreamed of Will, that he had come into the cell and taken her in his arms when all of a sudden his familiar, lined face had dissolved into Master Lyneham’s more youthful one. She had awakened puzzled, but perhaps it had merely presaged his visit this morning and nothing more. Believing the lawyer had bad news, Jane decided to try humor.

“Master Lyneham, it cannot be that you missed your kerchief so greatly.” She hoped he saw amusement and not the wariness in her eyes, but she continued nervously in the same bantering tone, trying to calm herself. “I can assure you, I am keeping it safe. Or did you forget to say something yesterday?” She looked for any sign to verify her intuition, but as he was pacing in his usual measured way, she could not read him. “Am I to be punished, sir?” she finally
found the courage to ask, her fear getting the better of her. “I beg of you tell me quickly.”

Thomas stopped and swiveled back to her, and Jane saw only boyish embarrassment.

“I hope you will look on me as your champion, Jane,” Thomas began softly, toying with a ring on his index finger. “And you have guessed correctly. I did forget to say something yesterday.”

Jane stiffened. “Do you have another question? I assure you, I know no more about . . .”

“Nay, I am not here for that, today.”

“No?”

“No.” How was he to come to his point? She might laugh at him or be insulted he was not busy working for her release. He jammed the ring back on his finger and swung round to face the window. Had he lost his mind? Richard would never sanction him wedding the sinful Mistress Shore. He took a deep breath, his shoulders rising to meet his ears, and exhaled slowly.

“The reason is more personal.” He saw her stiffen and hurried on. “My work requires me to thoroughly research all of my cases, and thus I know you are now alone, without means of support. I have come to propose a solution, a way out of your dilemma. I was wondering if you would consider—”

“Becoming your mistress?” Jane cried, standing, her eyes blazing and her fists clenched. “Why, you hypocrite! You have led me to believe you and your king are determined to punish me for harlotry, when you have been planning to drag me back into it as soon as I am released. ’Tis monstrous! Aye, I was a concubine, but I have my pride. Do you think I cannot survive without any of you? You are wrong. I can and I will.”

Thomas was horrified. He held up his hand and tried to interject. “Nay, nay, you are mistaken, Jane. Hush, I beg of you,” he said, gently urging her to sit and hear him out. God’s bones, he realized, certes she would think first of that. It was what she had
come to expect of life—and of men. Seeing her so distressed doubled his resolve to end her dependence on the kind of man who had selfishly used her until now.

“You are wrong, Mistress Shore. I had no intention of asking you to be my leman. But I do wish to ask you to be my wife.” He was down on one knee, his face shining with his honest, earnest offer of an equality that Jane had never known with a man. “From the first day we met, I have not stopped thinking of you. I want you to share my life, become my partner, through the good times and the bad, and be together when God calls one of us to his side.”

Jane was speechless. His declaration had taken her breath away, and all she could do was stare at him in disbelief. Why would this upstanding, successful man be willing to wed a fallen woman? How could he be sure of his mind and heart so soon? His proposal was so dizzying, she wondered if she had dreamed it. “Tell me I am dreaming,” she finally stammered.

Thomas took her hand and kissed it. “ ’Tis no dream, Jane. Can you not feel the touch of my lips? In truth, I love you. The strength of my feelings took me by surprise, too,” he said, smiling wryly, “but please believe me, it has been growing in my heart unawares since we met in June. Only yesterday, when I saw you again, did I know it for what it was.”

Jane looked down at the hand holding hers and pondered this remarkable declaration of love. “First let me thank you for your generous proposal, Master Lyneham—”

“Thomas, my name is Thomas,” he interrupted. “Call me Thomas.”

“Thomas,” she echoed. “You must give me time to digest this extraordinary offer. I do believe you mean your words sincerely, but to take me to wife would surely sully your name and reputation. I do not know if I can bear such responsibility. You are too generous. Let me say, I have no doubt you would make a fine husband, but not for the likes of me. Not for the infamous Mistress Shore.”

“You think I have not considered everything, Jane? I have. As for your past reputation, it is simply that—the past—and I am talking about the future. I love you. I want to put the smile back in your eyes, the joy back in your step. I am serious when I say that I was smitten the first time I saw you. I do not understand it, but ’tis true. And me, a confirmed bachelor.” He held her hand in both of his. “I will work every day to prove my love is true, and I dare to hope that you will grow to love me, too, because I will defend and care for you for the rest of this life.”

Jane thought her heart would burst. She had waited for so many years to hear Tom Grey express such love, and yet before her stood a stranger, a man risking ridicule and rejection for love of her. Dear St. Elizabeth, she addressed her namesake, this would be no marriage of convenience or business proposition, as she had had with William Shore. Could Master Lyneham really be offering a marriage of equal partners, and if he were willing, why should she not accept him?

She placed her other hand on his and smiled at him. “You must give me time to absorb this, Thomas.” He nodded happily as she raised him up and stood before him. “While I await the king’s pleasure, perhaps we can find time to know each other better.” And she reached up and kissed his cheek.

His lips were on hers before she could take another breath, and had she not been so caught by surprise at his passion, she might have pulled away. Instead she allowed herself the luxury of once more feeling desired.

When he released her, she seized the moment. “I have one condition, however, Thomas.” She looked up earnestly at him and pleaded, “That you work to release me from this dreadful place as soon as you possibly can.”

T
he unusual courtship of the moral lawyer and the captive concubine had begun. Jane had been allotted an hour each day to
walk with Thomas around the courtyard of St. Paul’s when he was able to leave his work at Westminster to visit her. Even in the cold November drizzle, the couple kept to their schedule and would huddle in their cloaks close to the cathedral wall. For those precious minutes, Jane felt freed, and she counted the hours when she would breathe the fresh air and enjoy conversing with Thomas again. In those intense and condensed sixty-minute walks, she had learned to trust him, and she found herself revealing more and more of her fears and hopes to the sympathetic Thomas. For her part, Jane had discovered he liked poetry, and she would write little verses that enchanted him.

One day, she told him her name was really Elizabeth, and he was delighted.

“I have a sister of the same name,” he replied, explaining that she had lost her beloved husband early in their marriage. “She has two little boys, hellions to be honest, but she remarried and lives in York, and thus I do not have to overly suffer them,” he had told her, laughing. And then he admitted it was this sister’s advice he had heeded when he had come courting Jane.

“Do you not like children, then?” Jane had asked tentatively. “It has been my cross to bear that I have none of my own, although Sophie’s four look upon me as a second mother.”

Thomas cleared his throat. “Then I shall hope to have a daughter after witnessing what mayhem my nephews can cause.”

Those close to Jane would have been astonished to see her blush at the insinuation he wanted children with her. A woman who had bedded a king, a marquess, and a lord chamberlain was surely beyond modesty, they would have said. But Jane was feeling as though she had been reborn with this man. He was not afraid to talk to her of love, and not since Will Hastings had she enjoyed this degree of friendship with a man.

After the third walk together she had returned to her prison cell and admitted to Anne she might be able to love again.

“You deserve a good man,” Anne had declared, “especially after that bum-bailey Tom Grey.” Jane had used worse words to describe him in her thoughts but did not wish to shock young Anne.

One day Thomas told Jane he had to seek the king’s approval of the marriage. “He has honored me much, and I must do my duty by him. He should know my intention.” He admitted he was risking his position, and Jane cautioned him to think carefully about angering the king.

“Look what happened to me,” she reminded him, gently. “He may be moral, but he is not always kind.”

But Thomas thought he knew his master, and besides he was determined to win Jane.

R
ichard could not resist a small smile as he dictated the letter addressed to his chancellor, the bishop of Lincoln. He wondered if Russell would see the irony but doubted the capable but insufferably dour man would be anything other than astonished.

“Right Reverend Father in God,”
he began as John Kendall’s goose quill scratched on the vellum.

“Signifying unto you that it has been brought to our attention that our servant and solicitor, Thomas Lyneham, marvelously blinded and abused with the former wife of William Shore, now being in the Ludgate by our commandment, has made a contract of matrimony with her, as it is said, and intends, to our marvel, to proceed to effect the same.”

John Kendall could not help remarking, “Your grace, I see now why you were smiling. Is Thomas in his right mind? I have not seen the lady, but she has quite a reputation for beauty and—” He broke off when he saw the king’s smile fade, and he bent his head to the parchment.

Richard went on more seriously.

“We, for many causes, would be sorry that he should be so disposed, and pray you therefore to send for him and that you will have the goodness to exhort and stir him to the contrary. And if you find him utterly set for to marry her and none otherwise would be advertised, then, if it may stand with the law of the church, we be content (the time of the marriage being deferred to our coming next to London) that upon sufficient assurance that her demeanor is good, you send for her keeper and discharge him of our commandment.”

He paused, looking out of the window of the little manor house where he was temporarily lodged in Devon. “She needs to be housed somewhere suitable before her marriage—if Lyneham decides he must have her. Where should I send her, John? She has no residence, as far as I know.”

“Her father was an alderman, your grace. John Lambert is an upstanding citizen and mercers’ guild member. Surely he would take her?”

“Perfect,” Richard said, beaming at his secretary.

“And in the meantime committing her to the rule and guiding of her father or any other suitable at your discretion.”
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