Her eyes burned in her pale face; her beautiful lips were firm. She put on a gown of black velvet, and her flesh glowed as lustrous as the pearls that decorated it.
She went out to him, and he received her with breathless wonder. She was animated now, warmed by his admiration, his passionate devotion.
He led her to a table where they were waited upon discreetly; and this tte--tte meal, which he had planned with much thought, was to him complete happiness. Gone was her willfulness now; she was softer; he was sure of her surrender; he had waited so long, he had lived through this so often in his dreams; but nothing he had imagined, he was sure, could be as wonderful as the reality.
He tried to explain his feelings for her, tried to tell her of how she had changed him, how he longed for her, how she was different from any other woman, how thoughts of her colored his life; how, until she came, he had never known love. Nor had he, and Henry in love was an attractive person; humility was an ill-fitting garment that sat oddly on those great shoulders, but not less charming because it did not fit. He was tender instead of coarse, modest instead of arrogant; and she warmed towards him. She drank more freely than was her custom: she had confidence in herself and the future.
Henry said, when they rose from the table: “Tonight I think I am to be the happiest man on Earth!” Apprehensively he waited for her answer, but she gave no answer, and when he would have spoken again he found his voice was lost to him; he had no voice, he had no pride; he had nothing but his great need of her.
She lay naked in her bed, and seeing her thus he was speechless, nerveless, fearful of his own emotion; until his passion rushed forth and he kissed her white body in something approaching a frenzy.
She thought: I have nothing to fear. If he was eager before, he will be doubly eager now. And, as she lay crushed by his great weight, feeling his joy, his ecstasy, she laughed inwardly and gladly, because now she knew there was to be no more wavering and she, being herself, would pursue this thing to the end.
His words were incoherent, but they were of love, of great love and desire and passion and pleasure.
“There was never one such as thee, my Anne! Never, never I swear...Anne Queen Anne...My Queen...”
He lay beside her, this great man, his face serene and completely happy, so she knew how he must have looked when a very small boy; his face was purged of all that coarseness against which her fastidiousness had turned in disgust; and she felt she must begin to love him, that she almost did love him, so that on impulse she leaned over to him and kissed him. He seized her then, laughing, and told her again that she was beautiful, that she excelled his thoughts of her.
“And many times have I taken you, my Queen, in my thoughts. Dost remember the garden at Hever? Dost remember thy haughtiness? Why, Anne! Why I did not take thee there and then I do not know. Never have I wanted any as I wanted thee, Anne, my Queen, my little white Queen!”
She could laugh, thinking—Soon he will be free, and I shall be truly Queen...and after this he will never be able to do without me.
“Aye, and I wonder I was so soft with you, my entirely beloved, save that I loved you, save that I could not hurt you. Now you love me truly not as your King, you said, but as a man....You love me as I love you, and you find pleasure in this, as I do....”
And so he would work himself to a fresh frenzy of passion; so he would stroke and caress her, lips on her body, his hands at her hair and her throat and her breasts.
“There was never love like this!” said Henry of England to Anne Boleyn.
Happiest of Women
AT HORSHAM there was preparation for the Christmas festivities; excitement was high in the ladies’ dormitory. There should be a special Yuletide feast, they said, a good deal more exciting than that one which would be held in the great hall to be enjoyed by all; the ladies were busy getting together gifts for their lovers, speculating as to what they would receive.
“Poor little Catherine Howard!” they said, laughing. “She has no lover!”
“What of the gallant Thomas? Alas, Catherine! He soon forgot thee.”
Catherine thought guiltily that, though she would never forget him, she had thought of him less during the last months; she wondered if he ever thought of her; if he did, he evidently did not think it necessary to let her know.
“It is unwise,” said Isabel, “to think of those who think not of us.”
In the Duchess’s rooms, where Catherine often sat with her grandmother, the old lady fretted about the monotony of life in the country.
“I would we were at Lambeth. Fine doings I hear there are at court.”
“Yes,” answered Catherine, rubbing her grandmother’s back. “My cousin is a most important lady now.”
“That I swear she is! Ah! I wonder what Lord Henry Algernon Percy . . . I beg his pardon, the Earl of Northumberland . . . has to say now! He was too high and mighty to marry her, was he? ‘Very well,’ says Anne, ‘I’ll take the King instead.’ Ha! Ha! And I declare nothing delights me more than to hear the haughty young man is being made wretched by his wife; for so does anyone deserve who thinks himself too fine for my granddaughter.”
“The granddaughter of your husband,” Catherine reminded her once more; and, was cuffed for her words.
“How I should like to see her at Suffolk House! I hear that she holds daily levees, as though she is already Queen. She dispenses charity, which is the Queen’s task. There are those who storm against her, for, Catherine, my child, there will always be the jealous ones. Ah! How I should love to see my granddaughter reigning, at Greenwich! I hear the Queen was most discomfited, and that last Christmas Anne held her revels apart from those of Katharine—which either shocked or delighted all. Imagine
