“I approve, Mary, really. I cannot tell you how desperately I have wanted to hear something like that from you. Only, if it means you will choose to do without me, my first impulse would be to kidnap you for myself and never let you free.” He heaved a stone into the pond, and it skipped four times in the moonlight before it sank.
“Then it would be just like always, with some powerful man making my decisions for me,” she reasoned aloud.
“I know. I know, damn it!” He turned to her and pulled her gently away from the willow tree. “But the difference, my Mary, is that I love you, and I believe you truly love me. Do you deny it?”
“No,” she drawled slowly as memories mingled with the griefs she had felt without him at Plashy and the joys she had felt so often with him. “I think I do love you, Staff, but, you see...well, my life has been so confused, and I have been so unhappy with Will and His Grace and so, maybe I...”
He gave her a rough shake and she stopped speaking. “I asked you once if you loved Will and you said ‘I think I do.’ I told you then that if you think you do, you do not. Do you remember? I do not want you to ‘think’ you love me. I will have you and your love, lass, and you will know it is love or I might just as well marry at the king’s whim or bed some court lady who catches my moment’s fancy.”
Tears came to her eyes, and the tiny hurt grew that always came when he spoke of bedding others. The grip of his hard hands hurt her arms. She smothered the desire to tell him how much she loved him.
“I know it has all been a shock to you, Mary, and I trust you to reason it out, if you can keep out of your father’s clutches long enough. But since you are a little muddleheaded now, and since we have always had to seize our moments together as we found them, I will tell you how it is going to be between us while we are here.”
She stared at his white shirt open at the neck. It seemed to glow in the dark as did the lilies, fireflies and stars.
“I will not force you to submit in bed if you do not choose to. But you must know a man in love wants more than that from you. We will have this night and tomorrow morning together after Stephen and Nancy set out. And then I will take you safe to Hever as I promised. But until then, we are close, and there can be much healing in that. Come on.”
“Where?”
“I thought we could take a row in that little fishing skiff over there,” he said, pulling her toward the bank of the pond. “It will be a gentle ride after four hours in the saddle.”
She traipsed after him holding his hand. There was a flat-bottomed boat shoved high on the bank. He pushed it backward into the water and held her elbow while she lifted her skirts and stepped in. As soon as she was seated on one of the two rough boards which served for seats, he shoved off and the boat rocked under his weight. He rowed several strokes and let the oars hang at the side in their wooden locks. The pond was so small that the boat floated nearly in the middle of it, adrift among the lilies on the silent surface. The boat was short and their knees touched, his long legs spread and his feet under her seat on either side of her skirts.
“It is a beautiful night,” she ventured in the quiet between them. “Drifting at night on a pond—it seems unreal.”
“Yes, sweetheart.” He sighed. “Can you imagine having all the time in the world here without the king calling?” His voice drifted off as though he regretted his words.
She remembered how Will had thought His Grace was calling before he died. Did the king dominate all of their lives so much then? She felt suddenly terrified that they would never be free from him.
“This little boat must be a far cry from the Mary Rose or the Golden Gull for John Whitman,” she said eventually. “Does he miss the sea very much, Staff?”
“He misses the beauty and freedom of it, but he had a hard master, one he could not tolerate on the Mary Rose, and when he saw his chance for a life he could control, he took it. He may never see the channel or the ocean again and not be so very poorly off for it.”
He stretched his arms and leaned forward on his knees, and that brought his face much too close.
“May we pick some lilies?” She turned her head to the side. “They are easy to spot even in the dark.”
“Yes. They are.” He wheeled the boat about to bring them closer to a small floating carpet of them, and she reached gingerly for a stem.
“Oh, they are slippery and they go down forever,” she observed as she yanked one free and lifted it, dripping, over the side of the boat. “It does not smell, see?” She extended it toward him, but he did not even try to sniff at it. He only closed his hand around her wet wrist, pulled her farther toward him and leaned over to meet her lips with his. The kiss was tender and warm. She felt balanced in space with him, floating in a trembling moment which she dared not lose. The kiss deepened and his other hand stroked the slant of her cheek and moved softly through her loose hair. When he pulled back, she stared into his eyes lit by moonlight. She thought she saw his lips tremble, but it must have been reflections from the water.