The girl smiled at him gratefully. She had found comfort where she had sought none. It was only then that Charles Brandon, English gentleman, and as fine a connoisseur of women as he was of horses, felt the full impact of the maid’s youthful beauty and her magnetic pull beneath the naive face. Her mature looks to come would serve her well at the English court when they were allowed to return—if they were allowed to return.
“Mary, please fetch my enameled jewel box. I wish to show my lord some of my royal regalia.” Mary Tudor laughed musically as though there were some clever joke spoken, but Lord Suffolk only narrowed his eyes over his glass of burgundy.
Mary knew well the three-tiered white, deep blue and gold box to which her mistress referred. Too, she knew well the jewels nestled there on peacock blue velvet, for she had often plucked one out for her queen’s toilette or seen her ponder over them lately. Poor dead King Louis had popped them at his youthful queen as though they were bon-bons or mere baubles. Once, when Her Grace bathed, Mary held up a massive strand of pearls across her own newly developing breasts covered with golden brocade, and held sapphires next to her sky-blue eyes and imagined that...
“Thank you, Mary. Leave the door ajar so you can summon us at once should the ambassador, your father, arrive.” Their dark heads bent together over the cache of jewels as Mary curtseyed and departed the chamber. She slept now in a small anteroom since they had moved in state to Francois’s palace and Mary Tudor bedded with her new husband.
She picked some needlework from the chair and gazed at it guiltily for a moment before tossing it on her narrow bed. She was much too busy lately for such placid work. What a bore it was anyway unless one could chat or trade juicy palace gossip to help forget the endless threading and pulling and knotting.
Mary settled her rose-hued velvet skirts carefully as she sat, for her mistress had ordered her this new gown and another for after royal mourning, and she intended not to have it wrinkled should she see her father, when he came today. Came here, but not to see her. She readily forgave him his busy life but, by the saints, she missed him and suffered that he never sent for her, visited or even sent a gift. Just notes dashed off, notes to properly serve the king’s sister and be grateful for her fortunate station at the court and be worthy of the Bullen and Butler and Howard blood that flowed in her veins. Flowed? Rather, beat passionately, if he only knew! Beat and coursed and cried for her mistress, and now that she was happy, for her, for Mary Bullen, herself!
She pushed her head back suddenly, willfully against the carved high chair back. But she adored her father so, and would above all else make him proud of her.
The low voices of Mary and Charles Brandon floated clearly to her in the silent room. Were they indeed arguing over a mirror? The Mirror of Naples, no doubt, that huge teardrop cut diamond on a pendant that sparkled like fire when it hung between Mary Tudor’s two full breasts above the deep oval velvet or brocade of a bodice.
“It is yours as widowed queen, is it not? They will never ask for it. The Cardinal says such would help to change His Grace’s ill temper at us for the marriage without his permission. My pet, it is a very small price to pay, and Ambassador Bullen would be the safest channel.”
Mary Tudor murmured low words of reply but her usual lilting voice was more muffled than her lord’s. They must be planning to send a gift of the queen’s jewel to King Henry then, and her mistress hesitated to part with it. For the favor of the great King Henry it seems a small price, mused Mary Bullen.
Three piercing raps suddenly resounded from the door in the next chamber and the girl hurried to answer it. She hoped she looked pretty and dignified and proper. It was her dear father standing tensely, his fist poised to knock again, an anxious pageboy with a lighted link behind him in the gloom of the passageway.
“Father? I am so pleased to see you.” How desperately she wanted to throw her arms about his furred shoulders, but she stood stock-still as he pushed the door open wide and entered.
“The princess and Lord Suffolk are here, Mary?” His swift sidelong glance took in the whole room instantly.
“Yes, father. There, father, within.”
“Awaiting me?”
“Yes.”
“Close the door, girl. And announce me. Also, Mary, do not leave. I would see you afterwards. You and I have business to settle.”
Her heart leapt. Business to settle? It was obvious he was angered. At her? But he had told her to serve the princess well, and maybe now she would return with the Tudor rose to the English court. Surely that had been his ultimate goal for her.
Automatically, she closed the heavy door and slipped past her silent father into Her Grace’s bed chamber. To her astonishment, her mistress had been crying, and the duke was endeavoring to comfort her. He looked up nervously, and his dark eyes squinted at the girl standing in the dusk beyond the sunny pool where they sat.
“Your Grace, the English Ambassador, my Lord Bullen, wishes to see you. He awaits.”