The Last Boleyn(54)
“I am sure this amuses you!”
“No, sweetheart, it pleases me to have you so close and my captive. It is my fondest fantasy.”
She hated him for his mocking ways, but his voice seemed to be in earnest. She pushed out against him to free herself from his near embrace, but he did not budge and she felt his hard, flat stomach and muscular thighs press her back. Her heart began to pound distinctly from the strenuous dancing. He, too, seemed out of breath, breathing raggedly in her ear, standing close to her, touching her everywhere. His hands rested on the rough wood behind her against which her hips leaned. They stood silent while the music played on, and somewhere out there, Robin and his men searched the forest for their ladies. She wanted to threaten him, to say she would tell the king or her husband, but she did not. Her knees grew weak against his legs and she began to tremble from somewhere deep inside.
Then the music changed. The ladies and the sheriff’s men spilled out of the castle for combat, leaving only the sheriff and his prisoner for the outlaw hero to find a few moments later.
Neither of them moved, although the dim empty cavity of the castle now gave them room. Staff bent his head and his lips caressed hers once. “No,” she said. “No.”
He kissed her again, bringing both hands up behind her head to hold her still, and his hot lips slanted sideways across her open mouth. Her head spun crazily. She was dizzy. She could not breathe in here. She would fall in front of the queen. They would all know what he had done. There was no time left, surely. The castle portcullis would swing up, the door would be opened and His Grace would see them!
He pulled his mouth away and said against her flushed cheek, “I have never envied any other man his bed before this long, long week. Now two men will possess you and neither really loves you, Mary Bullen. Think of me when you spread your sweet thighs for them!”
He pulled away from her abruptly, and she almost fell. His words spun in her head, but she could not grasp the meaning. He tugged her by her wrist to the door of the castle just as it swung wide and the king stood there, his golden sword held aloft and his mask obscuring his face. Mary thought to yank down her mask just as she followed the beleaguered sheriff into the pool of light at center stage. She stood with her hands clasped in mock fear as they parried and thrust at each other amid cheers and applause in the ring of dancers. It was sometime then, during their fierce battle, that she caught Staff’s words and grasped their meaning. Undoubtedly, he did not really care for her, but was only amusing himself by chasing the mistress of the king. Surely he must detest His Grace for his handling of him all these years, even as Will Carey resented it.
The sheriff was beaten and his sword was dropped at the feet of the victor. Applause exploded and everyone bowed before Queen Catherine and the tiny clapping princess. Mary took her curtseys between Staff and the king, but none of them looked anywhere but on the smiling Catherine. Finally, she was presented to Her Grace, who said some kind words about her father and her lovely mother, and then the room emptied swiftly. Henry escorted his queen from the table, and carried his smiling, babbling moppet on his great arm.
Mary had not expected that. Perhaps she had misunderstood him. Her husband was gone and, thank the blessed saints, so was Staff. But Francis Weston was at her side taking her elbow gently. “May I escort you, Lady Carey? His Grace said he would be but a moment.”
Her apprehension ebbed, but then embarrassment flooded in to think that they all knew. Weston, her husband, Staff, they all knew. She dreaded what the queen would say when someone told her about why the young Bullen girl was newly come to court.
Sir Francis said not another word, and Mary briefly wondered if he had done this for His Grace before. Maybe with poor banished Bessie Blount. Weston’s own wife? She began to tremble again. She thought suddenly of another who had been sent to fetch her for a king—the cold, snake-like man in gray silk. What was his name?
“Good evening, Lady Carey,” Sir Francis said with a quick glance that rested on her white face and heaving breasts. He quietly closed the door to the small room.
She leaned on the door for a full minute, her hands pressed to her breasts. The room was all linen-fold paneling and the wood seemed to glow in warm shadows from the low burning fire. There was a table and wine, three chairs—were they expecting a third? she thought irrationally—and a huge bed, high with a deep crimson coverlet. She sat in the nearest chair and leaned back on the stuffed blue velvet pillow.
William Stafford was crazy or he just meant to hurt her. Perhaps he was angered he had not been chosen to wed her and so be given the revenue and lands from the king. Perhaps, in that sense, he was jealous. How she would like to think he was jealous! She was grateful the king had not chosen him to wed with her, or deliver her here tonight. She could never have faced that.
Resolutely, she pushed William Stafford from her mind and banished the bitter, pinched face of Will Carey. Tonight she was waiting for the King of England. Father, I will sleep with your king tonight, she thought. Please come home soon, so you will see how well I am getting on.
Then a tall Robin Hood filled the doorway, his hair glowing red in the firelight, his gleaming narrow eyes upon her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
September 22, 1520
Greenwich
The summer weeks flitted by on butterfly wings for Mary Carey at King Henry’s busy court—and in his massive bed. Will Carey’s honeymoon with her had lasted but a week; this one, with the loud and laughing king, went on and on. They hunted, they rode bedecked barges up and down the Thames, they laughed and danced and sported and held hands. For Mary, it was truly the first courtship she had ever had, and she was wholly in love with being loved, if not with the effusive lover himself.