The Last Boleyn(108)
“Sanctuary needs to be free too. He needs a skillful rider who cares for him, and he will respond beautifully. I am planning for things to be the same for us,” he said.
Her arms went around his waist and they did not move. “Now I understand that Sanctuary is a good name, Staff. Has His Grace ever heard it? I would think it would take the wind from his sails if he understood.”
“He has heard it. I have made certain of that. Now the only thing that has been puzzling me is how I am going to explain to your golden-haired moppet what ‘Santry’ means.”
She began to laugh but he lifted her chin with his hand and covered her mouth with his. The kiss was neither passionate nor gentle, but determined, both giving and demanding. He finally raised his head and stared down into her half-closed azure eyes. “We had best join your mother in the garden as we promised, before it is too late. I am certain they would notice the straw in our clothes and hair, and anyway, your sister would probably come poking about to ask how things ‘truly are at court.’ I would much rather tell her than show her. Come on.”
Her laughter floated to Sanctuary’s alert ears as they left the stables. It is so wonderful, Mary realized, to have Staff here at Hever.
Lady Elizabeth Bullen had spent an hour each morning and each afternoon in the room where William Stafford was recuperating since he had ridden to Hever with Mary. The first days she had talked low to Mary while he slept, and the last two she had talked to them both. She took Staff’s hand each time she entered or left the room. And Mary, who could never recall similar actions from her mother with any other visitor, was puzzled. She had decided it was because he had saved her daughter from rape or death at the hands of the brigands in the forest. But now she was coming to believe it must be more. Perhaps it was like an instinctive trust, whereas she herself had disliked him when she had first known him and trust had come later.
Mary watched them through her lashes as they spoke low to each other on the bench in the rose garden. Catherine threw a leather ball back and forth to Semmonet on the other side of the hedge, and Anne dared to sit and read the bawdy Heptameron, authored by no one less that Marguerite du Alencon, sister to King Francois of France. It was even rumored that now the king’s poor Queen Claude had been dead three years, he showed more open affection to his sister than he had before, and that some of the heated passion in the text of the book was flamed by that love. Mary was not sure she even cared to read it if some of Francois du Roi’s passions were laid out for all to see. But Anne, clever, witty Anne, loved French things.
“So I am hoping the king will let Anne marry soon,” Lady Elizabeth was saying to Staff. “Perhaps her old friend Sir Thomas Wyatt would be a good match, but her lord father does not show any interest in the lands adjoining Hever, which the Wyatt lad is heir to.”
Anne’s dark eyes darted up from the pages of her book. “I can hear what you are saying, mother. I do not believe I will be getting married, at least not in the near future. Anyhow, if father had cared a fig for the Wyatt estates, he could have easily married George to his long-desired Margot Wyatt.” She bent her head to the book again. “I hear she is in childbed with her first child to Pierce, Lord Edgecome from Devon, anyway, so that is that. Oh, it is too hot to read out here, even in the shade. There is a good deal more shade at Eltham, I warrant.”
She stood and her green skirts swung in a gentle arc as she paced in a circle around them. “Perhaps I should join you when you ride back to Eltham, Staff. Then father would be shocked, His Grace would be elated, and you could save me from several bands of thieves with rape on their minds on the way back to break all this boredom of waiting, waiting!”
Mary thought Anne looked like a slender, lovely flower among the rest of them dressed in black. But she was so pent-up with hopes and schemes she would not share but only alluded to—much like father. Yes, she was getting to be more and more like father.
“Mother, Staff promised me he would catch me up on all the news at court and you and Mary virtually keep him your prisoner, though a willing one, I grant you.” She spun toward Staff and her skirts belled out in a perfect graceful cup. Her voice was teasing. “You never did tell me, for instance, how you coerced His Grace into letting you leave Eltham when you heard poor Will Carey was dead. You told him you wanted to bring Mary back here and he let you go at once? ’Sblood, I would have liked to have seen that.”
“Anne, sit and cease this foolishness,” came Lady Elizabeth’s voice as Staff was about to answer. “Thank God, His Grace did let Lord Stafford go or Mary would not be here now, one way or the other.”
“Perhaps, Anne, the king reasoned that Staff could then see how you are behaving and report back to him,” Mary put in, hoping the tone of her voice would make Anne stop her insinuations where she and Staff were concerned.
“All right, I will sit in stony silence, if I must. I do not need all of you teasing me, or I shall have to seek my desolate room alone!”
They all laughed at her, for her buoyant mood beneath the testiness was contagious. Mary stretched her legs, smiled in Staff’s direction and stood to join Semmonet and Catherine. But then Michael, the gangly gardener, came striding across the grass followed by a stranger, and she sat again.
“This be Lord Bullen’s lady wife,” Michael said to the man and they both bowed to Elizabeth. The man presented a folded parchment to her outstretched hand and bowed again.