Royal Mistress Read online

  “Mistress Lambert, I am pleased to see you come. I was afraid you would not.” He led her to the table and called for a cup of ale for her. He pulled up another stool opposite and asked about her health. Jane had noticed he had not touched her, not even taken her hand to kiss or to help her onto the stool. Being impatient to hear what he had to say, she had dismissed the omission and leaned in, anticipating a declaration of love, or at least of affection.

  “I have not stopped thinking about you since our meeting,” he began, and Jane’s pulse had quickened. “I was certain your regard for me was lost forever, and I must confess my conscience has been pricking me.”

  “As it should, Tom Grey,” Jane retorted. She smiled seductively at him. “And you are telling me that you have changed your mind.” She saw by his wide eyes that she had again surprised him and so gladly spoke her mind. “I do not require much of you to be happy, in truth. Not a fortune or a mansion. Nay,” she assured him, “I just want to be with you always and know what real love is between a man and a woman.” She wanted to reach out and touch his hand that was fingering his cup. “So, Master Grey, do you wish to court me?”

  Tom instantly regretted the meeting. Aye, he had had feelings for this woman, but only in the rarest of circumstances did people of his rank find love in a marriage contract. He had lost one child-wife and had no feeling for his second, and he was still only twenty. Jane could have been his lover and consolation. He tried to let her down gently: “Do you remember that I said I must not love you, Jane?” He saw her nod, but her face clouded. He plunged on, hoping she had understood. “You have guessed the reason, have you not?” he implored her, with his look saying the words for him. But she was silent. He took a deep breath. “I swear I did not lie to you, although I confess I was a coward not to tell you why then. The simple truth is, I am not free to love you as you believed, because . . . because I am a married man.” He turned up his hands helplessly. “And there is naught I can do about it. You would not have me unless I asked for your hand, so I had to withdraw my attention. But, please believe me when I say I was drawn to you, Jane.”

  Jane sat perfectly still. She watched him fidget with the ribbon tie of his gipon, his eyes avoiding hers while her stomach heaved and her heart constricted. She wanted to throw the remains of her ale in his face, spit in his eye, kick over his stool, run out into the cold evening air and scream. Instead a familiar children’s rhyme fell unbidden from her lips: “Tom, Tom the whoreson, Stole a heart and away he run,” she improvised bitterly. “You took me for a harlot, Tom, while I offered you my heart.” Her eyes glittered now like sun on the sea. “And if you understand nothing else, you should understand that a woman’s heart is not your plaything. You have sat here this evening and once again allowed me to reveal my heart, and then you rebuffed me—again. Dear God, how could I have been so foolish.” And she had run from the warm tavern all the way home.

  Aye, how could she have been so foolish, she thought now on her wedding day, looking out over London. And yet she knew if she had it to do over again, she would have given herself to Tom Grey—wed or unwed—and risked the consequences for love.

  A long stone’s throw over the city wall from The Swan, Tom Grey, staring out of the solar window of his mother’s residence, was still regretting Jane’s loss three months later.

  “Are your thoughts worth a groat, my son?” Tom’s mother teased him after failing to attract his attention on her arrival in his chambers. “You appear distracted of late. Is there anything troubling you?”

  Tom swung around and smiled at his mother. Going to her and bowing over her hand, he thought she must be the most beautiful woman in England. “Nay, Mother, nothing that should worry you. I was anticipating my journey to Lancashire, ’tis all. My lady wife has need of me.”

  “And when do you leave, Thomas? The king has asked that you escort me to Westminster tomorrow. We are summoned to a feast for the Burgundian ambassador.” She grimaced. “I wish I could decline. I am sick more with this babe than with any other, except you. You, as my firstborn, were the worst.”

  “I will gladly postpone my travel,” Tom said, grinning. “There is nothing up north that cannot wait. Besides, it will divert me to spend a day at court. It will be my pleasure to escort you, my lady.”

  Elizabeth smiled, and Tom noticed how childbearing increased her beauty; her skin glowed and the more rounded figure suited her. He was, if the truth be told, tired of the monotonous arrival of half-siblings—brats mostly, but his mother’s marriage to King Edward had brought more rewards than he had dared dream of, and so he tolerated the many additions to the nursery. Here was one marriage where passion played a prominent part, he thought ruefully. Edward plainly worshipped Elizabeth, when he was not out whoring with his chamberlain, Will Hastings, or indeed with Tom himself. Tom’s wife, on the other hand, repulsed him with her horse teeth, scrawny thighs, and pimply breasts.

  Tom held the door as Elizabeth Woodville exited and he went back to the window seat. He stared out on the city wall and fancied he could see through it to Jane’s father’s house on Hosier Lane. Why did she haunt him so? On many occasions since the meeting at The Swan, he had thought on the cruel words of her ditty. To be sure, he had sought and found other conquests and pleasured himself with them since then, but he could not forget the mercer’s lovely daughter.

  Tom, Tom the whoreson. Aye, he had deserved the crude moniker. He remembered watching the tear run down her cheek, and he had been so awed by Jane’s fortitude, he had not been able to stop himself reaching out and wiping it away with his thumb. As in the scene in the churchyard, he had felt something stir in his chest that disturbed him.

  What a churl he had been. “Jane, I am truly sorry. If I were someone else, I would give you my heart and my hand, but I cannot,” was what he had told her. Why he had hesitated to tell her more, he knew not. Why had he not revealed his identity? Would she have given in to the marquess of Dorset, son of the queen and stepson of King Edward the Fourth? Nay, it would have frightened her off, he was convinced, despite her infatuation for him.

  But all Jane knew was that he was married. What did it matter? If he had played her slow game of courtly love, would she have capitulated? As far as he was concerned, his marriage contract was simply that—a contract that bound two families together and would perhaps yield children to inherit the joined wealth. He had never denied his lusts, he admitted; one took one’s pleasures where one could when one was forced into a union for the sake of family, wealth, and power. His first wife had been indisputably contracted to him for her pedigree, Anne Holland having been the only child of the duke of Exeter and his wife, who in her turn was daughter of Richard, duke of York and Cecily Neville. Betrothed when they were both eleven, Anne Holland had died in childbirth five years ago along with their child, just as fifteen-year-old Tom’s sensual nature was awakening. After that, his mother, the queen, had chided him almost weekly about his dalliances with mostly unsuitable ladies.

  And finally, last year, Elizabeth had contracted a second marriage for Tom; this time the motive was money. Fourteen-year-old Cicely Bonvile, baroness of Harington, was the wealthiest heiress in the country, with extensive land holdings in Devon and Warwickshire. Her mother, Katherine, was a Neville, and, following Baron Harington’s death, she had married the king’s chamberlain and best friend, Will Hastings. Young Thomas Grey had gained not only a stepfather in King Edward, but a stepfather-in-law in Will, the two most powerful men in England.

  Tom smacked the casement shut. He refused to think he was pining for a woman just because she did not give in to him. And just today, he had been informed that Jane Lambert was to be married to a respectable mercer. She would be lost to him now, Tom was certain. Cramming his velvet bonnet on his head, he strode toward the door and told himself he would move on with his life.

  Back in Hosier Lane, Jane was still contemplating what life would hold for her. She shivered, partly from anticipation and partly from anxiety, and pul
ling a shawl around her shoulders, she put Tom Grey’s guilty face from her mind and forced herself to think about the man who would call her his wife in a very few hours.

  She did not know whether to laugh or cry when she thought back to William Shore’s clumsy wooing of her.

  “Dear Lord, protect my way forward and let William be warmer as a husband than he has been as a suitor,” she prayed fervently, but then unwittingly found herself smiling at one memory. She and her betrothed had walked to St. Mary-le-Bow side by side behind John and Amy when the banns were being read. Jane was certain that, from behind, the towering William and her own diminutive figure must have looked like father and daughter, and she had had a hard time suppressing her mirth. She had written a poem later in the day, and it was one of a very few of Jane’s verses that had not amused Amy.

  A couple walking arm in arm

  ’Tis custom’ry to see,

  Yet when Jane and Will are side by side

  Her arm begirds his knee.

  After supper, Bella had made Jane repeat it in the privacy of their chamber and had collapsed in laughter onto the feather mattress.

  Thanks be to the Virgin that her mother had not denounced her to John, she thought now, but the poem had mirrored her feelings. “God’s truth but I feel ridiculous with him,” Jane said aloud to London’s skyline.

  “What did you say, Lillibet?” Bella asked sleepily. “Who is ridiculous?”

  Bella was the only one who still called her by her baptismal name of Elizabeth, and Jane was unsure whether it was done to annoy her or because when the younger girl was learning to speak, Jane was still Elizabeth, and having trouble with the word, Bella’s tongue discovered the lilt of Lillibet pleased it more, and the name had stuck. It had been her mother’s idea to rename her Jane, all because an ancient dragon of an Aunt Elizabeth had come to live with them, and two in the same house became confusing as well as an irritation to the older owner of the name. Amy Lambert had wanted to please the well-heeled relative, who, she had guessed correctly, might well will the Lamberts property in the country. Jane hadn’t much minded and had taken the change with good humor, thus earning her mother’s gratitude but still only a grudging grunt from her father. It was then, at only age six, that Jane knew her father did not care about her one way or the other.

  “They say talking to yourself shows the mind is softening, but I think ’tis a sign I have no one to talk to,” Jane answered her sister with a laugh, and she tugged the rumpled linen off the bed. “If you would raise your idle bones, I could talk to you.”

  “Lillibet, you heartless wench!” Bella cried, trying to retrieve the sheet from the floor. “I shall tell Father on you, if you are not careful.”

  “Not anymore, you won’t,” Jane retorted. “Perhaps now you will know what the back of his hand feels like when he no longer has me to bully. I shall be a married woman and out of mind, praise be to St. Monica. I can snub my nose at him all the way from Coleman Street and you will have to find someone else to tattle on, Sister.” Seeing Bella’s head droop, she was immediately contrite. “Forgive me, you may find me snappish today because I am a little afraid . . .” She trailed off, wanting to avoid a delicate conversation and instead begged Bella to smile. “And so, I pray, help me into this gown.”

  Bella did as she was told and stood back to admire her lovely sibling. Despite Jane’s bossiness and lack of decorum, the girl knew she would miss her sister’s companionship. As Jane tucked a lacy plastron into the top of her bodice to cover her exposed skin, Bella picked up a fine ebony comb and began to ease it through Jane’s thick, gold-flecked, honey blond curls, the color enhanced with the help of lemon juice and chamomile. Try as she might, nothing would make Bella’s own mouse brown tresses look more than commonplace. Frustrated again that none of her physical attributes would ever outshine her sister’s, she tugged at a knot, causing Jane to cry out in protest.

  “Sorry,” Bella mumbled.

  “Sophie promised to make me a chaplet of flowers and ribbons,” Jane said. “I hope she does not forget. I ache to go a day without binding up my hair. In truth, I should marry more often.” And she laughed off the misgivings she felt every time she thought of William.

  The shimmering folds of her cream-and-blue gown spilled around her, reinforcing her choice of Venice silk. Knowing that his daughter would show off his merchandise to his guests at the feast, John Lambert had indulged Jane on her wedding day, and Jane, understanding the value of each and every bolt of cloth in his extensive stock, had indulged herself with the best.

  She would not have been surprised had she overheard the conversation between John and Amy about her choice. Instead of applauding her taste, John had opined: “Her love of luxury may put William in Newgate for debt. You would think you have not taught that girl anything about money, my dear, judging by the way she spends it.” He had patted his placid wife’s small hand. “Better William’s problem now than mine.”

  “Oh, forsooth, John.” Soft-spoken Amy had used her favorite disclaimer, refusing to be roused. “God knows I have tried to teach her manners, modesty, and duty, but money is your domain.”

  Upstairs Bella finished combing Jane’s hair and asked, “Shall I see if Sophia has called? And I will bring us back something to break our fast.” She threw a silken bedrobe over her shift and left Jane standing in front of the polished brass mirror propped up against her dower chest. In its reflection Jane caught sight of the crucifix on the wall behind her and promptly moved the mirror.

  Jane now looked at herself with curiosity. What was it that made men stare at her so? She recognized a pretty face when she saw one, certes, and hers was passably pretty. But the rest of her? She thought she was too small, her neck too short, and her breasts too big for her slender waist. Unbidden, Tom Grey’s face was conjured, and she frowned at her reflection. She had been so sure he would be the one to show her the ways of love: that love she had read about in the writings of Chaucer and her favorite Chrétien de Troyes poem about Lancelot and Guinevere. She touched her lips, remembering yet again his kiss that day and the sensation she had had when he had tongued her mouth open. Her hands dared to take the fullness of her breasts then sweep down to the curve of her waist and over her hips. How she had longed to feel Tom’s hands touch her thus; she felt certain he would know how to arouse her. She exhaled deeply.

  How would William look at her naked body? she wondered. He had never seemed much interested in it fully clothed, so she had little doubt he would care if she were flat-breasted and knock-kneed. Would he even care that she had preserved her maidenhead for him? Aye, tonight she would no doubt lose her virginity, but had it been worth saving for such an indifferent man as William? According to her confessor it was, and so perhaps she had remained intact to save her immortal soul. Never one to brood for long, she cheered herself up by recalling the scene in the confessional.

  Not long after the contract with William had been signed, she had made confession in her beloved St. Mary-le-Bow, and had barely listened as the priest droned on from behind the wooden grille about the sanctity of marriage and that a wife must please her husband and was expected to obey him in all things. And then he had shocked her out of her daydream by first asking if she were going to her husband a virgin. She had demanded: “Why must you know? ’Tis insulting to ask.” A sharp reprimand chastised her with a threat about eternal damnation for lying, and so she admitted she was indeed a virgin. She had not needed to ask whether a man must also be chaste; she could guess the answer would be no. Then he had asked: “Have you ever taken an animal to your bed, mistress?” Certes, she was not such a green girl from the provinces that she did not know about such unholy practices, but to hear it voiced by a priest truly shocked her into silence. The priest had had to repeat himself, and Jane had stammered an assurance that she had never even imagined such an abomination. She later found out to her disgust from Sophie that it was a routine question for women about to be married. Again she doubted it was also asked o
f men before they took a wife.

  Sensing his parishioner was becoming discouraged, the priest said more kindly: “Mistress, take heart. You should know it is a wife’s right to expect affection from her husband and to enjoy the . . . the . . . ahem . . . bedding together. You do also have the right to be a mother, so the law says.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Jane had said, shuddering at the thought of William touching her.

  She pondered this all now as she leaned toward the mirror to remove a wayward hair from her fashionably plucked forehead, and not for the first time did she tell herself that the world had been made for the benefit of men. Did it matter what women wanted? And even if a woman could express what she wanted, could she ever achieve it?

  “What is it that you want of life, Jane?” she asked herself aloud. “Do you know what you want, Elizabeth Jane Lambert?” Aye, a small but clear voice inside her said: I want to find real love.

  When she was a child all she remembered wanting was the love of her father, and when she did not get it, she turned to her older brother, William. He was happy to be adored by the pretty, merry little girl, so he spoiled her with ribbons and candied treats, and she learned that making a man laugh and call her his “sweet Jane” got her gifts that made up for the indifference of her parent. But then William went into the church and moved away, leaving her bereft, hurt, and no longer a child.

  When she had discovered her ability to win the admiration of the equally young apprentices who passed her on the streets or stood near at mass or winked at her in The King’s Head on Chepeside, she had had hopes of finding true love among them, but she had waited in vain for the much touted, blinding white flame of passion to engulf her.