My Lady Jane(18)

There it was again, the doomed look, on Gifford’s too-handsome face. “Have I a choice, Sire?”

“Do any of us have a choice where destiny is concerned?”

Gifford lowered his head. “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm,” he said, his voice building in intensity.

Edward stared at the young lord for a few long minutes. “I assume that means you’ll tell her.”

“Yes, Sire,” the young lord mumbled, and took his leave.

Edward watched from the window as, below in the courtyard, Gifford mounted his horse and galloped off the palace grounds. Edward felt good about how the conversation had gone. Then he crossed to his bed and slung himself down into it.

Pet came over to lick at his face.

“Off with you, traitorous dog,” he said, pushing her away playfully, but then he scooted over to make room, and she jumped up beside him.





FIVE


Jane

The wedding day was upon her.

The ceremony was being held at Durham House, the Dudleys’ London home, which meant on Saturday afternoon Jane was taken across the city by carriage and deposited, along with her mother, the seamstress, and Adella, her lady-in-waiting, into the Dudleys’ family library, which was to serve as a dressing chamber. (Only it didn’t seem as much of a library as it did an unused storage room, somewhat cleared in hasty preparation for the wedding.) Light streamed through the windows, thrown open to let in the breeze. There were bookcases (Jane could almost feel them calling out to her), a stack of wooden trunks, and The Gown waiting on a wire frame.

“This is so exciting,” chirped Adella as she fluttered around the sunlit room, touching everything as though it were all good luck. Puffs of dust flew up at her fingers. “You’re finally getting married!”

“Finally,” Jane said, staring at The Gown. It was gold-and-silver brocade, embroidered with diamonds and pearls. (Recall that these were the days before Queen Victoria famously wore a white gown for her wedding and forever changed matrimonial fashion.) It really was a lovely creation, and expensive, no doubt. Perhaps she’d even hear just how expensive if she were to protest this match even further.

But Edward had asked her, and she would do this for him.

A knot tightened in her stomach when she thought of Edward.

Once, when she’d lived with Katherine Parr, when she and Edward had been hiding in the back of the library of Sudeley Castle all afternoon, which they often did, and after she’d started complaining about her many terrible engagements, which she often did, Edward had poked her in the ribs and said, “Such high standards, Jane. Well, I suppose you could always marry me.”

Back then marriage had seemed to her like a silly game rather than a cage to be locked in, as it was starting to feel now. “That’d be quite a risk you’d take, getting engaged to me,” she’d replied. “You know I bring about the ruin of all of my potential suitors. Besides, I don’t think I’d like to be queen. Too many rules.”

“Oh, come now, it wouldn’t be so bad.” Edward had tapped her upturned nose and smiled. “We’d have a jolly time together.”

They’d both laughed like it was a joke, and never spoken of it further, but Jane had thought about it later. That he might have meant it. She’d suspected for a while that Thomas Seymour and her mother were plotting that very thing—sending her to live with the dowager queen to be educated and refined, on the off chance that one day she’d marry Edward and become queen herself.

He was right, too. It wouldn’t have been so bad, even if it was difficult to think of Edward as anything more than her friend. She’d read about romance, about how your heart was supposed to pound in the presence of your beloved, your breath was supposed to catch, etcetera, etcetera, and she’d never felt anything like that around Edward. But she could think of worse things than marrying her best friend. Far worse things.

But then Katherine Parr had died in childbirth, and Thomas Seymour had committed treason and lost his head. Jane had been sent back to Bradgate, and her mother had started looking for eligible husbands again.

And now Edward was dying, and Jane was getting married tonight. Probably.

Unless some kind of miracle happened.

Afternoon transformed into evening, and it seemed less likely that a horrible catastrophe would befall the Dudley family and save Jane from her fate. The Gown went on, the green velvet headdress went up, and Jane’s hopes went down.

The worst part?

No books.

Between all the hair plaiting and gown adjusting, Jane let her fingers drift across the book spines on the shelves of the library. History, philosophy, and science: her favorite things. Things that would save her if the wedding got boring.

“No books.” Lady Frances smacked Jane’s hand away from the gilt-lettered spines. “I will not have my daughter say her vows from behind a dusty old book.”

“They’d be less dusty if the Dudley family took care of them.” Jane gazed longingly at the literary cornucopia. Indeed dusty, but certainly still in fine enough shape to read a hundred times. “Maybe you’d prefer I brought my knitting.”

“Watch your mouth. No one likes a sarcastic wife.” A strand of Lady Frances’s brown hair turned gray, as if by magic. (Not actual magic, mind you, but the magic that daughters possess over their mothers. As we all know, the only actual magic is E?ian magic.)