Read Online Just a Girl by Jane Caro - Free Book Online Page B

in marrying the man she had always loved. It suited me ill that anyone could forget a man like my father so quickly, no matter how old, smelly and querulous he had become, but what choice did I have? I was wounded, frightened and grief-stricken; I clung to my stepmother as the only family I had. My sister Mary, kind though she still was, had no interest in caring for me, and no doubt Hertford would have had much to say about the two princesses living cheek by jowl. I was in need of a guardian, I loved Catherine despite my sulking, and it suited Hertford well to keep me under the weather eye of his brother – at least at first.
    God’s breath, to this day I cannot think of the admiral, or of his wife, without shame. I was so young, so giddy, foolish, so unused to love or attention, to freedom, that I felt like a captive released, a bird escaped from its cage. Catherine was also freed from her servitude to my father and it had a similar intoxicating effect on her. We who were usually so solemn and considered, willingly joined the admiral in his rough-and-tumble romping games.
    The games began innocently enough. One morning,soon after Kat Ashley and I had taken up residence, I was woken by the curtains around my bed being ripped open. Shocked and a little frightened, I sat up clutching the covers to my chest. Clad only in his nightshirt, my stepfather stood at the end of the bed. Before I had time to protest, he had leapt onto the mattress and begun tickling me ferociously.
    â€˜So, my fine princess,’ he crowed, ‘if you are to be my daughter, you shall be treated as one – and about time, too.’ He was strong and I could do little except wriggle about, shrieking and giggling beneath his arms. I wanted him to stop – no one in my life had ever treated me so – and I wanted him not to stop. But I was not master of my breath long enough to form any words; I could do little but shriek and squirm. His hands seemed everywhere on my body, all at once: under my arms, on my stomach, under my ribs. The more I squirmed, the more delicate the places his fingers found. I looked up and saw the surprised face of Kat Ashley (hair askew under her nightcap) staring at us both as we rolled about.
    â€˜For shame, my lord, my lady,’ she began to say, but Thomas Seymour was having none of that.
    â€˜Aha!’ he said. ‘Just the woman I need. Here, Mistress Ashley, hold her legs down. They kick at me dangerously.’ And, used to being commanded by men who were used to commanding, she did as she was bid. Worse, as she gripped my ankles, her demeanour changed, from oneof trepidation to delight. She always has had an eye for a handsome man and I am sure she noticed the way his nightshirt slipped up and down his thighs.
    â€˜Beg for mercy!’ Lord Seymour laughed, his hard fingers digging into my bony frame.
    â€˜Aye, aye,’ chortled foolish Kat. ‘Beg for mercy and we shall cease.’
    But I could not beg for mercy. I still could not catch my breath long enough to speak. At that moment, my stepmother entered the room, awakened no doubt, by the ruckus, because my room was directly beneath hers. I saw the shock of what she saw, vivid in her face.
    â€˜My lord Thomas, leave the child alone!’
    â€˜Very well,’ he said and, with a great wink to me, turned the game on his wife. He swept her into his arms and onto the bed beside me. Now it was her turn to squirm and shriek, batting uselessly at his hands, trying as I had done, to evade his strong, intrusive, teasing fingers. For a moment, I could not believe what I was seeing: my solemn, much respected stepmother, Dowager Queen of England, on her back, in her nightclothes, kicking her legs wildly in the air, breathless with terrified laughter. I sat, still as a statue, catching my own breath, uncertain whether this was a great game or a great outrage.
    â€˜Help me, Elizabeth!’ he cried. ‘Don’t just sit there.