Read Online Queen of This Realm by Jean Plaidy - Free Book Online

with me. He will come out in a moment. He will look longingly at your window. Perhaps he will climb the ivy. Shall we let him in, my lady?”
    “Sometimes I wonder whether I am your governess not you mine. If it were known what a frivolous creature you are and the mischief in which you try to involve me, you would not stay a day longer in this household.”
    “I'll try to be sober, my lady, but with such as you, with such a gallant admirer…it is not easy.”
    We waited at the window for quite an hour but no one emerged.
    I told Kat she had been carried away by her fancies.

    THE WEEKS BEGAN to pass quickly. Spring had come and it was beautiful at Chelsea. I used to ride with a party in the fields and gallop along by the river. People came out to see me ride past. They would smile and curtsy and some shouted: “God Bless the Princess.” That was sweet music in my ears. The people's approval was very precious to me. I loved the sun on the river and the green fields. England! I thought. My country! To be Queen of England! I could ask no greater prize from life than that.
    Once I met Thomas Seymour at Blandel's Bridge, which was also known as Bloody Bridge because it was the haunt of robbers who thought nothing of slitting a traveler's throat for the sake of his purse.
    Thomas bowed low and gave me such a look that there could be no doubt of his feelings for me. I asked him if he was on his way to the Dormer Palace and he said that he was but since he had met me in the fields, might he be permitted to ride with me?
    I knew this would be dangerous and if we were seen, which we almost certainly would be, it would give rise to gossip, and what if that reached the ears of the Council? So I haughtily refused permission. He bowed his head in submission and I whipped up my horse. I had thought he would pursue me. Surely that was what one would expect of a reckless admiral. But when I looked round he had disappeared.
    I was tingling with excitement.
    It was a few days later when my stepmother and I were seated over our needlework and she dismissed all her attendants so that we were alone together. She began to talk to me about her life in a strange sort of way, telling me things which I knew already.
    “I am not an old woman,” she said, “and until now I feel that I have never been young. I was little more than a child when I was given in marriage to Lord Borough of Gainsborough. He seemed very old to me. His children were older than I. I was his nurse until he died. You would think, would you not, that I would have been allowed a free choice. But I was given to Lord Latimer. He, too, was elderly, and I was a wife and stepmother all at once. It seemed to be my fate… until now. I suppose I seem old to you, Elizabeth. You are so young. Imagine, not yet fourteen years old! Oh, I think back to the days when I was fourteen. I had my dreams. And then my first marriage. I was terrified, Elizabeth. Can you imagine a girl little more than a child to be given to an old man? But my Lord Borough was kind to me … so was Lord Latimer. I had my stepchildren but none of my own. It was something I longed for—a child of my own. And when Lord Latimer died I was thirty years old and I told myself, I am free.”
    “Then you married my father.”
    She nodded and I wondered afresh why she should be telling me thiswhich I knew so well. There was a reason I was sure. She was leading to something which she was finding rather hard to tell me. I listened patiently.
    “I thought,” she went on, “now I shall marry for love. There was one man, and I was not the only one who considered him the most attractive man at Court. There is really something rather magnificent about him. We would have been married. But the King chose me… and because of that Thomas had to leave Court.”
    “Thomas,” I repeated.
    She smiled tenderly. “Thomas Seymour and I were all but betrothed before my marriage to the King. But I became the Queen. Sometimes I dream of