Read Online The Boleyn Bride by Brandy Purdy - Free Book Online Page B

jest reflection shows they were— I can tell by his eyes, his hand around my wrist, and the way he kissed me! But of course I didn’t. John Skelton may have been my first real lover, in the sense that I took all my clothes off and permitted him greater liberties than some hurried fondling and a few stolen kisses, but already I knew better than to discuss one lover with another. Any excitement or adulation I might have felt at being caught between two rival admirers would have soon been transfigured into annoyance. I like excitement, it’s true, but I also like things to be peaceful, free of conflict, fear, and argument.
    “I cannot pierce you, Bess”—he always called me Bess even though he knew I loathed it—“ ’twould be the death of me if I, a common poet, deflowered the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter.”
    The apology and regret in his voice only made me angrier, and it was all I could do not to kick and pummel him from the bed. “But you are not a common poet; you are the poet laureate of England!” I whined, even though I knew a sulky demeanor ill became me.
    “But”—sensing my simmering frustration, he lay full upon me and soothingly stroked my hair, as though I were a lapdog frightened by thunder and he was trying to calm me— “I rather would thy lippés bas, than Saint Peter his gates y-pass . ” He recited one of his most famous lines, the one wooers often resorted to, as he bent his head and kissed me long and deep.
    I wrapped my arms around his neck and thought of Remi Jouet and wished that he were kissing me instead of John Skelton. If only wishes were enough! What I wouldn’t have given at that moment to feel the delicious weight of him upon me, skin against skin, and his lips devouring mine! But at least someone was kissing me, and, for now, that had to be enough. Life often, I find, boils down to making the best of things.
     
    The next morning, as Matilda was finishing lacing me into a black velvet–banded buff velvet gown, while I leisurely sipped the last of my breakfast ale and nibbled daintily upon a honey-drizzled oatcake crowned with succulent, fat raisins, my brother knocked brusquely and came in without waiting for me to call out my permission.
    Though only two years older than myself, Thomas, my father’s namesake and heir, was one of those men who even when young seem old. Pinch-faced and crotchety, humorless and dour, stingy with his smiles as well as with his coins, my brother loved full money boxes and worldly honors, like dukedoms and deeds to rich manors, more than he ever did flesh and blood. Even his mistresses were a luxury equated with velvet robes and gold-embroidered slippers; he wanted only the best and discarded his women the way he did old or worn-out shoes. In years to come, when his wife complained of the humiliation she suffered because he had left her bed for her own coarse, red-handed laundress, “a blowsy strumpet,” my brother stripped her bare, bound her wrists and ankles to the four posters of the bed, and donned full armor and rolled upon her naked body until she spat up blood and was bruised all over. She never dared complain about his infidelities again and was naught but the soul of graciousness to her laundress.
    Miserly with his words as well as his money and any kindness that might have been lurking, buried deep, within his soul, Thomas merely said I must come with him and took my arm so quickly I scarcely had time to turn back and hand Matilda my nigh empty tankard and snatch up the black velvet hood I had worn the day before.
    Without benefit of a mirror, I was still struggling to set it properly on my head and make myself presentable as I hurriedly followed Thomas along the palace corridors, grumbling all the while at his tight-lipped, straight-backed silence.
    “You might have the courtesy to tell me what this is about!” I fumed, wishing he were Matilda so I might kick him without fear of repercussions; but kicking their brothers was