My Lady Jane(10)

“One of his ladies?” she managed to squeak.

“Surely you didn’t think you were the only one. But I’d thought he usually preferred brunettes. Taller. With more . . . shape.”

Jane gasped. This was outrageous. Who did this Stan fellow think he was? Why, Jane was of royal blood (her great grandmother was a queen, after all), cousin and friend to Edward VI. She had the king’s ear, and it would not be long until that royal auricle heard all about the rude, impolite, presumptuous, rotten man—

She was saying none of this out loud, she realized. Instead she was standing there, slack-jawed, while the mouth beneath the Dudley nose continued to guess her name. There were so many names. At least one for every letter of the alphabet. Did Gifford have relations with all of these women? Or was Stan simply being mean?

“All right,” Stan said. “I give up. I’ll tell him you came by, if you tell me who you are.”

She mustered the strongest tone she could. “I am Lady Jane Grey. His fiancé.”

Stan went still for a moment, and then hurried into a bow. “Oh, I see. My lady. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize. I should never have said all those things. It’s just you have such red hair for a highborn. I mean . . . I would never have mentioned the other ladies. Because there are no other ladies. Anywhere. In the world. Except my wife. And you. Gifford will be a faithful and loyal husband to you. Like a dog! Well, not like a dog.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything—”

Jane just glared at him. Well, at his nose. It was hard to see much else.

“Please accept my sincerest apologies, my lady.” Stan Dudley made several feeble attempts at reparation, mumbled something about leaving her to her thoughts—which were surely as pure as the whitest blossoms of the most virginal tree—and then he was gone.

So. Her husband-to-be was a philanderer. A smooth operator. A debaucher. A rake. A frisker. (Jane became something of a walking thesaurus when she was upset, a side effect of too much reading.) No wonder no one had seen him, since the libertine was too busy with the horses during the day—allegedly—and too busy with the strumpets at night.

This was not acceptable.

Jane stomped back to her carriage. She imagined all the things she would say to Gifford, Edward, her mother, and whoever else had arranged this marriage for her. Angry, angry things.

She’d thought this engagement would ruin Gifford’s life. But for the first time (in, perhaps, ever), she’d been wrong: the engagement to Lord Gifford Dudley would ruin her life.

Unless she put a stop to it.

Jane straightened her spine. She was not going to marry Gifford Dudley. (And what kind of name was Gifford Dudley, anyway? Honestly!) Not Saturday. Not ever.





THREE


Gifford (call him G!)

The worst part about waking up when the sun went down was the distinct grassy taste of hay in his mouth, an unfortunate side effect of actually having hay in his mouth. But the affliction of unwanted-hay-in-the-mouth-itis (or “hay-mouth” as his mother referred to it, like someone else would refer to morning breath) was not to be avoided when one ended each day as an undomesticated horse and began each night as an undomesticated man.

Almost man, his mother would say. At nineteen years of age, he was almost a man. Definitely undomesticated.

As he pushed himself into a crouching position, and then into a standing position, G (please call him G, and avoid referring to him by his terrible given name, Gifford Dudley, the second—and therefore insignificant—son of Lord John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland) stretched out his haunches, which were now hips.

He reflected on this morning’s jaunt across the countryside. He’d gone northwest this time, running at a flat-out canter over green hills and lush forests for hours before he had to search for water. There was nothing, he imagined, that could compete with the feeling of a life without boundaries or borders, and the wind running through his hair. Mane.

He hadn’t asked for this power. (If he had, he definitely would’ve requested the ability to control it as well, even though it would be rather missing the point for a curse to come with an on/off switch.) Still, there was an upside to it. He belonged to no one. (Who would want a half horse/half man?) He could pick a spot on a map and then go there the next time the sun was up. (Provided his horse brain remembered the way. G would argue that horses were not known for their sense of direction, instead of the likelihood that he—even as a man—could get lost in his own closet.) Best of all, he had no human-ish responsibilities.

After the freedom he enjoyed during his days, nightfall was usually a bit of a letdown. G searched out the pail of water his servant always left for him in the corner, and once he spotted it he galloped over (in a human way, but probably resembling a horse more than any other human could) and ladled a cupful of water into his mouth.

The transformation always left him dehydrated, and tonight he needed his wits about him. Due to an entirely nighttime existence, there were only so many activities in which the human G could participate. With the casual, often brash way G spoke, and his general rambunctious demeanor, it was easy for his parents to assume he spent his human hours in the boudoirs of questionable ladies or getting tipsy in brothels. Lady Dudley was often overheard lamenting, “That boy and his dalliances . . . What are we to do?”

G let them believe that; in fact, he often boasted of his conquests with different ladies in order to play along. If they thought he was something of a Casanova (although they of course couldn’t equate him to the literal Casanova, who wouldn’t be born for another two hundred years), it left G the freedom to do as he pleased. Besides, the truth of how he spent his nights was far more humiliating. He would rather his parents believed he was carousing with the ladies.