Princess. Suppose Katharine were to die, which she might well do, bearing a child at her age, and suppose the Admiral wished to marry the Princess. Suppose he asked the King’s consent. The King would refuse his beloved uncle nothing that he asked.
Her husband, the Duke, was too occupied with his parliaments and his matters of state, thought the worried Duchess, to realize what was happening. But matters of state were often decided in bedchambers. It had been so with the last King. There was no doubt that the Admiral would try for the Princess…if Katharine Parr were to die.
She would give Joan further instructions. The woman must become even more friendly with the servants in the Admiral’s household. Nothing that happened there must fail to reach the ears of the Duchess of Somerset.
BOTH ELIZABETH AND THOMAS felt that this strange, exciting and most piquant situation could not continue as it was. It must change in some way.
Katharine, who was now heavy with her child, moved about ponderously and some days kept to her bed. The glances between the Princess and the Admiral had become smoldering; each was waiting for the moment when change would come.
It happened on a hot summer’s day when they found themselves alone in one of the smaller rooms of Chelsea Palace.
As Thomas stood watching her, a deep seriousness had replaced his banter. They were no longer merely stepfather and daughter; they were man and woman, and neither of them could pretend it was otherwise.
Elizabeth was a little frightened. She had never sought a climax. She wished to go on being pursued; she wanted to remain provocative but uncaught.
She said uneasily, as she saw him shut the door and come toward her: “There are rumors about us two.”
“Rumors,” he said lightly. “What rumors?”
“They are whispering about us…here…at court … in the streets. They are saying that you and I are as we should not be… and that you come to my bedchamber.”
“What! By morning and in the presence of the Queen!”
“You must desist…or it will be necessary for me to leave your household.”
He caught her and held her fast. “I will not desist. I mean no evil.”
“If you will not desist, I must leave here.”
“You shall not go.”
“My lord …” she began weakly.
But he interrupted passionately: “Elizabeth, why did you say me nay?”
She was alarmed, and she sought to hold him off. “You loved me not,” she said shrilly. “If you did, why did you go straightway to the Queen on my refusal? Did you not turn over in your mind whether or not you could hope even for little Jane Grey? Did you ask my cofferer the extent of my possessions?”
“You know I love you,” was his only answer, “and you only.”
“I thought I was to you but a wayward child.”
“You lie, Elizabeth. You know full well what you are to me.”
“And all the rompings and teasings?”
“Were just that I might be near you… touch you… put my lips close to yours.”
She felt weak—no longer Elizabeth the Princess with her eyes on the throne, but Elizabeth in love.
She put her arms about his neck, and they kissed fervently, passionately.
Katharine had quietly opened the door and found them thus. She stood, incredulously listening to the words of love.
Suddenly they were aware of her.
Katharine, awkward in her pregnancy, her hands hanging at her sides, her eyes bewildered, stood there trying to understand this sudden disintegration of her happy existence.
Thomas was abashed; but already he was planning what he would say to her.
As for Elizabeth, even in that moment of fear and humiliation, she knew that this discovery had saved her from herself and the Admiral.
THE QUEEN PACED her apartments. She seemed almost demented. She wept, and there was nothing Thomas could say to soothe her.
She despised herself, marveled at her folly; she, who had known the agony of life with a callous murderer, had allowed herself to be deceived by a lighthearted philanderer.
“Sweetheart,” declared Thomas, exerting all his charm, all that plausibility which had never yet failed him, “’ twas nothing. ’T was but a moment of madness.”
But she would not listen. She looked at him sadly and remembered so many occasions when the truth had been there for her to see. She had held the Princess while he had cut her dress; she had helped him pull off the bedclothes; she had laughed, simply, foolishly… like a child, while those two had deceived her. And that was what they did when she was present; she had now discovered something of what they did when she was not with them.
It was too much to be borne.
Once, when she had lived near to death, she had passionately longed for life; now that she had tasted the perfect life—which had been quite false—she longed for death.
Her feelings for her husband were in a turmoil. Poignant love and bitter hatred alternated.
