The Last Boleyn(85)

When she slid her feet into the icy sheets she wished desperately for a warming pan to dump the charcoal embers into and run between the smooth linens. She lay there curled up stiffly for a moment and got up to don her robe again. It was then she heard the quick knock on her door. Her heart leapt at the sharp sound in the silence of her thoughts.

“Who is there?”

“It is Staff, Mary. I would talk with you.”

She pulled the robe tight around her hips, but her feet would not move.

“Mary.” He pushed the door slowly open and his shoulder and head appeared far higher up the door than where she stared. She had forgotten to shoot the door bolt. She had forgotten he was so tall.

He did not wait for words from her, but took a huge step in and closed the door quietly behind him. “I had to see you, Mary. I am sorry I startled you.”

“At least you still remember my name,” she heard herself say shakily.

A swift grin lit his features. “I remember a good deal more, Mary Bullen.”

She turned away so he would not see the fear on her face, the longing, the bitter anger. “My name, as you well know, William Stafford, is not Bullen nor has it been for a long time. I believe my husband, Lord Carey, is a dear friend of yours.” She looked down at the tiny mirror she had left on the drop leaf table.

“I did it all for you, Mary—for us, holding his position like that.”

“How considerate and noble.” Her voice caught as though she were on the edge of tears. She spun to face him and was terrified to see he had come much closer. “How considerate, just like all the visits you paid us at Plashy the last five months we were there.” She stared at the tiny throbbing pulse at the base of his bronze throat. How was he always so brown in the winter months? He had changed clothes too, and how did he ever find this forsaken room?

“When I saw Will’s bitter suspicions for our feelings,” he went on, “I knew it was foolish to cause you pain when I was there and much worse pain after I left. I knew he would take it out on you, and it was the only way I could protect you, even a little bit. I missed you, too.”

“I did not say I missed you.”

“You did not have to, sweetheart.” He took another step forward and, like a coward, she pressed back against the rough plaster wall next to the window. “I was so happy when I knew His Grace would allow you to come back. And when I saw you with Will tonight, I thought, what for? For the delicious torture of seeing you daily and not being able to touch you, to make love to you?”

“Please, Staff, you have to go.”

“I will. Later. Then I thought, I have to forget you and marry as the king wants....”

“The king wants you to? Whom?”

“One of the Dorset lasses he wants to come to court. I have only seen her once. But then, I realized I cannot forget you because I have desired you ever since I set eyes on you in the dusty old Bastille in Paris and knew that the blonde beauty with the smothered fire in her eyes was for me. And I have loved you almost as long as that, Mary.” He leaned close to her, not touching her tense body but placing his hands carefully on the wall on either side of her tousled head.

She closed her eyes treasuring his words, his soothing voice she had thought she would never hear again and had desired so desperately in the long hours away. She felt tears squeeze through her lashes. He was so close she could smell sweet wine on his breath.

“I kept Will’s position for him, Mary, and I stayed away from his wife, whom I love and he does not, damned fool that he is, and now he owes me. He owes me that I can be near you and I will be, I will be.” He nuzzled her hair and bent to kiss her throat. A little stifled cry escaped her as he leaned gently against her. He raised his head and stared down into her wide eyes. His lips descended upon hers. He was so warm and strong. All the loneliness and pain flowed out of her as she returned his caressing, probing kiss. His kisses deepened and she felt his breath hot against her cheek. She forgot she was pressed to a cold wall in the slums of vast Greenwich and that her husband did not love her and she had fallen far from the good graces of her king. Here was all that mattered.

She lifted her arms to his broad shoulders and pressed him close in return, arching up against him. Her robe fell open but she no longer needed its furry warmth. He moved a half step away, parted it slowly and put his hands to her waist, covered only by the thin chemise. The span of his hands nearly encircled her. His thumbs moved slowly over the tiny swell of her belly. He lifted her, his arms like metal bands around her. The heavy robe dangled straight down from her shoulders to the floor. He laid her in its warm folds on the bed, strode to the door and shot the bolt. His boots thudded on the floor beside the bed and he yanked his doublet and shirt over his head as though they were one garment.

“Staff, we cannot. Will might...”

He silenced her with a hot kiss, and his hands went to her waist again. “Hush, love. Will is thinking of the king and the Carey name. None of that has anything to do with us.”

Her limbs felt like water, and a hot pulse raced low in her stomach. She wanted this so much. She wanted him and had for years. She went limp as his hands crept up to her pointed breasts and his knee rode intimately across her legs.

“I told you once that I was not a very patient man, Mary. I—and we—have waited quite long enough, but if you choose not to submit, I shall take it on myself, and you may blame me in the morning. I want you, sweetheart, to make up for a lot of lonely hours, and countless advice, and worry that your kings and father would totally ruin your life, and for a lot of your own tart words. And for the wasted years. Tonight we are going to begin catching up and it will take a long, long time for us to be even.”