The Last Boleyn(86)

His voice mesmerized her, and the flickering flames, dancing in his dark eyes, entranced her. As she held to him, his hands went everywhere. This was far different from Henry Tudor’s rough caresses or Will’s swift, cold possessiveness. This was madness. How often, how many years in Henry’s vast bed or in Will’s narrow one, had she dreamed that Staff would seize her and love her. And now it was real.

He stripped off his breeches while she smiled deep inside for the pure joy of having him look on her that way. His body hovered over her like a warm, protective roof against the cold world. She reached up and encircled his neck with her arms.

“Your face is always beautiful, my love,” he whispered, “and that is why men desire you. But it is honest, too. Honest and so clearly lovely within. That is why this man has loved you and desired you all this time. Until the late winter dawn I am going to make love to you, and I will watch your face and know you love me too. You are mine, Mary Bullen, from this time on, no matter what befalls.”

Sometime later, minutes or hours or eons, collapsed against her, he raised his disheveled head and looked down into her eyes only inches away. He smiled.

“I would almost have to say that those few minutes were worth seven years of hell, sweetheart.” He reached down and pulled her discarded fur robe over their perspiring bodies. They lay with her head tucked under his chin as he stroked her hair gently. Her free hand rested in the curly hair of his chest.

She sighed. “I have never felt so safe and content. But I am old enough to know that the real world is outside there, outside that door.”

“Yes, my Mary. But there are many doors in His Grace’s palaces, and someday we may have a door of our own.” His voice broke and he hesitated. “Someday.”

She felt incredibly happy. Even if the king, her wide-eyed sister and screaming father beat down the door, she would not care —nor budge—one whit.





CHAPTER TWENTY


April 27, 1526


Hampton Court

The weeks, days and hours were precious now and not to be dreaded as Mary had feared: each meal, each walk through the wood-paneled and tapestried halls of Greenwich, Whitehall, Nonesuch, or Hampton—any moment she might see Staff.

Their times together were often fleeting and bittersweet, but Mary treasured each in her heart. The stares, rude barbs, and affronts to her as the king’s now-cast-off mistress bothered her not at all. Anne’s self-centeredness, the lack of her father’s goodwill which she had once coveted—what did that matter now that William Stafford loved her and she belonged, body and heart, to him only?

They had become as clever as the king’s court spies, Staff teased her. Sometimes Mary’s trusted maid Nancy went between them with information about when one of them was unexpectedly free or where to meet, but usually they managed unaided. When Will, as Esquire to the Body, fulfilled his duties as royal valet and companion to the king by sleeping within call of the royal bedroom, Staff sometimes dared to come to her, but often they met in the dead of night in some unoccupied bedroom or other empty chamber in reach of whatever palace the court visited. Staff seemed to know everything: Will’s schedule, what rooms in what halls were vacant, when to dare much, and when they must go endless days not chancing a tryst. Mary trusted Staff completely, as completely as she desired and loved him.

But it had been almost a week now, the longest they had not dared, and this chilly and damp late April day here at Hampton Court was starting to seep into her bones. After each time they had been together, she fed herself on warm memories of each embrace, each passionate caress, living his tender touches over and over until the memories cooled and she burned with desire for new lovemaking with him.

Mary leaned her flushed cheek on the cool pane of the leaded window overlooking the vast stretch of roofs at Hampton abloom with twisted brick chimneys in the early morning rain. This room was not a bad one really—spacious with a fireplace and a tiny sitting room attached. How the Carey living quarters had improved since they had returned from their year-long exile only three months ago! Their bouche too, the daily allotment by rank of candles, bread, wine, and beer sent to the hundreds of courtiers’ rooms, had increased. Probably the result of some comment of her sister to the Great Henry rather than His Grace’s true estimate of the Careys’ worth. But today, the red bricks of Hampton were glazed with chilly rain and a gray fog drifted in from the river with cold, clenching hands to dampen her precious memories.

She heard her maid Nancy come and she turned to see the girl’s arms full of the laundry she had gone to fetch and a bolt of shell-pink satin. “Good news, Lady Mary,” the sweet-faced, brown-haired girl beamed at her mistress as she laid the pile of goods carefully on the table. “The washer women had the linens all done and—look at this!”

Mary gazed with awe at the thick bolt of pale pink satin Nancy extended toward her. She hated to admit it, but she had longed for new gowns after a year away from court while her own sister’s growing influence over king and courtiers had changed the styles gradually until her older clothes looked much outdated. Long, tapered sleeves dripping with lace were now the rage and a more bell-shaped sweep of skirt than the padded ones Spanish Queen Catherine still clung to. Mary did not care for her own pride so much that some of her clothes were several years out of style from the heyday of the king’s bounty to her, nor for the terrible family pride her father espoused. But she did so want to look beautiful and fashionable for Staff and, of course, she could take no gifts or money from him or else her penurious husband, whose wealth went for Carey causes, would know.