The Boleyn King (28 page)

Lord Rochford stayed longer at his sister’s side than I would have expected, staring at her while she slept after a prolonged convulsion. Before he left he laid his hand on her cheek and kissed her lightly on the forehead
.

I have sent Elizabeth to her own bed, and watched until she slept. Tomorrow there will be things to do—arrangements to make and business to carry on. Tomorrow we will lock away our personal loss and move upon the stage of public mourning
.

Tonight is the hour of private grief
.

Somewhere between Hastings and Hever it began to rain. William rode on, driving straight through Sussex for hours as rain and wind buffeted them and early shadows fell in the gray twilight.

It had taken longer than it should have to cross from Le Havre. The winds had been all wrong, and when William had ordered the captain to set out of harbour regardless, they had been forced to put straight back in. While they waited for more favourable weather, William had paced the length of the ship more times than he could count, measuring his memories with every step. Although he had hero-worshipped his father, it had always been Anne who inspired him, who urged him to study hard, know his role, and rule wisely. Though her sight had weakened, her personality had never diminished, and he wondered what he would do without her.

Action drove memory away, so on this sustained dash from Hastings his mind was clear of everything but movement. He almost wanted to keep riding forever, if only to continue in this state of clean blankness.

An hour after sunset, the first straggling cottages of Hever village came into view. He turned his horse toward the castle, his anxiety rising at the sight of the familiar square towers. He was a quarter mile from the castle when he heard the first bell. He checked his horse, which complained with a whinny at having his head jerked hard to the side but came to a quick halt. William sat motionless in the middle of the lane, surrounded by his guards and focused on counting each toll of the bells, as though he could make it be wrong through sheer force of will.

The bells rang fifty-one times.

The courtyard of the castle swarmed to damp, dark life when he rode in. He dismounted and moved with a single thought. Shrugging off the innumerable people surrounding him, William went straight to Lord Rochford.

“Where is she?” he asked.

His uncle hesitated. “Should I summon Elizabeth?”

William flexed his hands at his sides, as if the action would help control his words. “I didn’t ask for my sister. I didn’t ask to be shown my room or to be given time to change. I know I’m too late. Now I want to see her.”

Rochford led him to his mother’s rooms. When he opened the door he paused, as if debating whether to enter with William. He thought better of it.

The room was empty of the living. The shutters stood open to the rain, and beneath the fresh, cool air, William could smell the lingering remnants of illness. He swallowed and moved nearer the bed.

His mother lay with a rigidity that never could have been mistaken for sleep. Her face and hands were the marble white of a statue, as if death had drained not only spirit but blood from her. Her dark hair, with the strands of silver that had appeared only in the last few years, was brushed neatly back from her forehead.

He felt only an echoing emptiness where surely thought and emotion should be. He closed his eyes hard, but when he opened them she still lay there, motionless and silent forever. Stumbling to the window, he breathed in shakily, letting the rain fall on his face, cooling his hard and swollen eyes.

An increase in light caught his attention. He looked over his shoulder to the half-open door where Minuette stood. They stared at each other over the trembling, flickering candle she held. Then she gave a sudden cry and set the candle down upon the dressing table near the door. Wax had dripped on her hand.

William watched as she rubbed her hand where the wax had fallen. When she looked back up, she said softly, “I’m sorry, William.”

He had to turn away from her then—from that voice and those eyes that knew him too well. He put one hand on the stone edge of the window. He heard her footsteps moving across the room. She stood at his shoulder, so that he could just see the top of her head out of the corner of his eye.

“How bad was it?” he asked.

She must have anticipated this, for her answer came quick and steady. “She was mostly unconscious at the end. Had you been here, she would not have known.”

“Did she ask for me?”

The answer was in her hesitation. “Yes.”

He tilted his head to meet her eyes. Slowly he looked beyond the familiar green-gold swirls in her hazel eyes and saw the purple shadows of exhaustion, the lines marking her forehead and mouth.

“Why are you wandering the halls alone?”

“Elizabeth is asleep. I heard you ride in and didn’t want you to be alone.”

To his surprise, William found that he could still feel a little happy. “What would we do without Minuette to watch over us?”

In a tone that aimed for briskness, she said, “You’re soaked through. You must get into something dry at once.”

“I will. I just … I had to see her first.”

Her face softened into sympathy once more, but William could see the tremble in it, the effort to subdue her own grief in the face of his. Reaching her hands to his cheeks, she pulled his head down.

She kissed his forehead, brief and warm. When she would have stepped away, William caught at her wrists with his hands, to keep her long, cool fingers curved on his face, and he rested his aching head against hers. It took him a minute to realize that Minuette was crying. Only the shaking of her hands alerted him, for she cried soundlessly. Ignoring his wet clothes, he wrapped his arms around her while she clung to him, her hands moving to grip the front of his shirt.

It was impossible to say what happened next. All William knew was that, as he held her, he became gradually aware that she was wearing only a loose gown of thin silk that did little to disguise the contours of her body.

He tensed—a slight movement, but it penetrated Minuette’s tears. She raised her face to his.

It might have been as long as two minutes that they stood there, staring, though William was in no condition to notice time. With her hands clinging to his wet shirt and his arms locked around her, he studied her face as if he had never seen it before. The straight line of her nose, the arch of her brows above hazel eyes that looked back at him unblinking, the fullness of her mouth, so achingly near his own.

He moved without thought and came to himself in the midst of a kiss. And suddenly he was aware of everything, every inch of him alight with her touch. He kissed her again, his hands moving up her back to twine into her heavy, loosely plaited hair. She returned his kisses with a hunger that might have started in grief but changed rapidly to desire—he knew the signs well enough. Her hands swept through the tangle of his wet curls, keeping his head pulled firmly down to hers.

As his body stirred into fierce life, he pulled his hands free of her hair and trailed them down the curves of her waist to her hips. He shifted her against the wall and at last released his lips from hers, but only to kiss her throat while one hand found the neckline of her gown.

“William.”

He froze when he heard Elizabeth’s shocked voice, one hand on Minuette’s hip, holding her fast against the wall, the other resting on the curve of her breast.

With a control greater than any he had ever exercised, he managed not to jump guiltily. Minuette buried her head in his chest, like a little girl who thinks that covering her own eyes will keep her unseen by others.

Moving both hands safely up to her shoulders, William met his sister’s gaze. There was no judgment in her eyes, only shock and exhaustion. She glanced briefly to the bed where their mother’s body lay and back to William.

He thought he sounded remarkably normal considering the situation. “Go back to bed, Elizabeth. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He half expected her to refuse to leave the room, at least until Minuette was gone as well. Instead, very slowly, she shook her head once. She could not have been more plain if she’d dragged Minuette away by the arm.

She did not close the door behind her.

Uncurling his hands from Minuette’s shoulders, William stepped away to the other side of the window. He kept his back to her, struggling to get himself under control. Over the sound of the rain and wind, he could hear his own breathing, harsh and uneven. He was flooded with a mix of shame and revelation—at what he had nearly done and at what the wanting of it might mean.

When he had achieved the nearest thing to calm that he could manage, he drew a deep breath and turned around.

Minuette was gone.

Minuette shut her door with shaking hands and leaned against it, as if her weight would help lock out the memory of what had happened. Her entire body trembled violently.

Feeling her way across the dark room, she found the bed and pulled the velvet coverlet off to wrap around her. Sitting on the bed with her back to the wall, she buried her head in her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. But complete darkness only made it easier to feel the aftereffects of William’s touch, the buzz along her skin where his lips and hands had strayed, leaving lines of fire in their wake.

At first, when he had so surprisingly and thoroughly kissed her, the intoxication of it had dizzied her out of all thought and she had welcomed the blotting out of sorrow and exhaustion. When he had slid practiced hands down her body—just how practiced, she did not care to consider—she had known that she should stop him, but her body seemed to have a will of its own, one that wanted desperately to know what came next.

She covered her face with her hands and felt her cheeks burning with shame. What kind of woman was she, to allow William such liberties? Not just allow—she had positively encouraged him. She had always loved William. Had she now fallen in love with him? Part of her said,
Yes, of course, I must be in love or I never would have behaved so shamelessly. I am no Eleanor, ready to hand over my body to any man
.

But another, more insistent voice, whispered,
No, I cannot possibly be in love with Will
.

I am already in love
.

She had not dared name it before, but the hope of it had sung through her every day since Dominic left. Was it not love she had cherished since he’d walked away from her, leaving the touch of his lips imprinted on her wrist? Was it not love that had steeled her to tell Jonathan that, much as she cared for him, she could not possibly marry him?

Despairing, she lay down, keeping the velvet cover wrapped around her like a cocoon. Maybe this was her punishment for having refused Jonathan. Perhaps God preferred that she live a placid, restrained life, without any of this trouble and turmoil.
Perhaps
, she thought with a twist of humour,
if I flutter my eyelashes just so, I can get Jonathan to propose again
.

But as she drifted into sleep, it was not Jonathan she thought of, but the two men she had always loved best in this world.

It was still raining at dawn when William went downstairs and ordered his horse readied within the hour. His uncle was sitting before the fireplace in the hall, looking as if he’d spent the night in his chair. With a wine bottle for company.

Rochford received his orders without comment, though William could see the question in his uncle’s eyes. It was, to say the least, highly unusual for William to be leaving less than twelve hours after his mother’s death, but he didn’t care for appearances this morning. He wanted away from Hever.

He had thought he would be well away before the women stirred, but he had underestimated his sister. She found him in the courtyard, with several men already mounted and ready to ride with him. His jaw tightening at the sight of her, William took Elizabeth by the arm and steered her out of earshot to the edge of the damp and forlorn-looking rose garden.

In spite of her drawn face and shadowed eyes, Elizabeth sounded perfectly herself. “Leaving so soon?”

He met her eyes steadily but did not answer. She gave a little shake of her head. “William, what are you doing?”

He deliberately chose to misunderstand her. “I need to be in London. I need diplomats and couriers. Rochford will see to the details at this end. He knows what to do, better than either of us.”

“You can’t avoid her forever.”

After a heartbeat’s pause, in which he decided further evasion would be pointless, William said, “I don’t intend to.”

“What do you intend?” Elizabeth shot back, as if she were interrogating some clerk caught overreaching himself with a lady.

The flare of anger overrode a little of his guilt. “This is nothing to do with you.”

“Minuette is everything to do with me, particularly if you intend on setting her up in Eleanor’s apartments as quick as you can empty them of your former whore.”

If she had been a man, William would have hit her. As it was, he had to clench and unclench his hands several times before he trusted himself to speak. To her credit, Elizabeth looked nearly as shocked as he felt at the word she had used, but she did not apologize.

Pronouncing each word with even emphasis, William said, “If you know me so little as to need assurances, very well. You may trust that I will do nothing to insult Minuette or our long friendship. She is as dear to me as you are, and I would not injure her for the world.”