So Mary wrote to Elizabeth, suggesting that she should come and stay with her, for she was sure that she must be most unhappy living in the house with a lady who had so recently been the wife of her father and was now the wife of another.
“See that the Lady Elizabeth receives this letter with all speed,” she said to her messenger. “I think she will welcome it. We will prepare to receive her here at Wanstead.”
But when Elizabeth read the letter she was a little perplexed. She did not wish to offend Mary by refusing the offer, yet how could she accept it? How could she shut herself away with pious Mary, spending her days in study and prayers and the working of embroidery, when life at Chelsea, or Seymour Place, or Sudley Castle offered so many delightful possibilities?
On no account could she bear to accept her sister’s invitation, and yet on no account must her refusal offend. Mary might yet be Queen and, as heiress to the throne, Elizabeth’s position would not be an easy one to hold.
I should accept, she told herself. I dare not take the slightest risk of offending Mary. Yet how can I go when every day there is a possibility of meeting Thomas?
Desire for excitement, on that occasion, triumphed over sober sense. She told herself—and perhaps this was the way in which her royal father would have reasoned—that it would be unwise to offend Thomas Seymour by suggesting she was willing to leave his roof. There was a possibility that he might be Lord Protector one day. A little accident to the elder uncle, and who would be more likely to step into his shoes than the beloved younger uncle?
No! said Elizabeth to her conscience. I must not run the risk of offending the Admiral.
She wrote a carefully worded letter to her sister, in which she said that she must submit with patience to what could not be cured. She deplored this marriage as much as did her greatly honored and well loved sister; yet she felt that to offer any objection—which her abrupt departure from her present home might appear to offer— would only make matters worse. They must not forget—her beloved sister and herself—how defenseless they were and always had been; they must remember against what a powerful party such behavior would set them. No, the only thing which they could do was to suppress their pain at the disrespect which had been shown to their royal father’s memory; and, deeply as she regretted her inability to join her sister and share the felicity of her roof, she feared that her place was here with the Queen whom her royal father had appointed as her guardian.
She smiled as she sealed the letter. She was well pleased with life. She was beginning to understand herself. She was glad Seymour had married. Unmarried, he was a menace to her prospects of power; as a bachelor he put temptation in her way, while as a married man it was quite impossible for him to tempt her to the indiscretion of marriage.
There was still left to her the pleasures of flirtation, the dangerous interlude which never quite reached the climax which he desired, and which she believed would mean little to her. She wished to travel indefinitely along erotic byways, and the only way in which she could do this was by never reaching the end of the journey.
THERE WERE HAPPY DAYS at Sudley Castle—that ancient and noble building which had come to Seymour with his title.
The surrounding parklands were enchanting, and during the summer months the bride and bridegroom dallied there. It was to be a honeymoon, so the Princess Elizabeth had not accompanied them.
Seymour was glad that she was not with them. It enabled him to give his full attention to Katharine.
They explored the castle, the park and the beautiful countryside of Gloucestershire which surrounded it.
“Did you ever dream you would be so happy in a marriage?” he asked his bride.
“Perhaps I dreamed,” she answered, “but I never knew till now that dreams came true. Thomas, I was always afraid that you would find the waiting too long… and marry someone else.”
“I would have waited ten years for you, Kate. I would have waited the whole of my life.”
He believed it. He believed that the love of the moment was the great love of his life. He had forgotten Elizabeth. Katharine was his love; he had waited years for her; he had been faithful to her; he had never thought of marriage with another; lands and possessions meant nothing to him. Thus thought Thomas Seymour during summer weeks at Sudley Castle.
They discussed their plans as they lay on the grass away from their servants and attendants—like a pair of country lovers, he said, simple people without a care in the world.
He talked to her of his plans. “We will get the jewels from my brother and his wife. We’ll not allow them to treat us so.”
“I would we could rest here for ever and never go back to court.”
“Aye, that would be a great joy to me.” But even as he said that, he could not help looking ahead to the time when he hoped to be in his elder brother’s place. “That woman rules my brother,” he went on. “She has persuaded him in this matter of the jewels.”
“And I have said that I am happier now, without the jewels, than I ever was, wearing them.”
“You are the dearest creature in the world, and I love you, Kate. You are right. What do we want with jewels… with rank…with ambition? What do we want but this?”
Then he kissed her and they lay on the grass, marveling that all this joy had come to them.
But he could not stop talking of his plans.
“The King will be thinking of marrying soon,” he said. “I cannot contemplate a happier union for him than with the Lady Jane Grey.”
“Indeed no. I had always meant her to have him. She is the dearest of girls—learned, kindly and of gentle birth. She will wear the crown with grace.”
“And she loves us…even as doth the King. But my brother and his wife have a plan of marrying their daughter to the King.”
“To little Jane Seymour! No, Thomas, that would not do. It must be Jane Grey for him.”
“So think I!”
