“My thanks, Your Majesty.” Brandon nodded. This time when he looked up, his gaze met Mary’s. In the fleeting exchange she saw everything: concern, love and longing. She felt herself tremble. But she steeled herself solidly against that. His beard was longer, his smile slightly weary, his eyes held not quite the same youthful sparkle as they crinkled at the corners a little more now. “His Highness, King Henry, sends his greatest love and congratulations to you on your coronation.”
“It is a pity you missed the event. It was all such a magnificent spectacle.” Suddenly, Mary felt the king’s hand go around her waist and tighten with an odd familiarity. “Sadly, Her Majesty, the dowager queen, was required to miss it as well, due to her period of mourning.” Francois then glanced over at her with what was calculated to look like a great intimacy between them. “Of course, ma belle-mère was as much there in all of our thoughts as if she had been right beside me, as she is now.” His jeweled hand moved down to her hip just enough to ensure that Charles could not miss the small, important liberty, which Queen Claude, in her position on the other side, would be spared viewing.
Mary watched Charles’s jaw tighten. But he gave nothing else away. Francois was boldly baiting him, knowing that between the two men, he possessed the power, and never quite forgiving him entirely for what had happened at Mary’s coronation tournament.
“I assume,” Francois said, still not taking his hand from her hip, “that your delegation has come not only to offer congratulations and condolences, but to offer a proposal?”
“If it pleases Your Majesty, I have been authorized to discuss that with you.”
“Excellent.” Francois smiled disingenuously when he undoubtedly saw, as Mary did, Charles’s hands clench and then open at his sides. “Longueville!” the new king called out to the slim, silver-haired French duke who stood at the foot of the dais, along with a collection of other elegantly garbed French nobles. “See these gentlemen to their accommodations. I am sure they are weary after the long journey. But I invite you all, personally, to dine with us this evening once you have had a chance to rest and don more suitable attire.”
He made a little sneer then as he spoke the last few words, inferring unkindly, Mary thought, as the French always did, that the English had a boorish sense of style not appropriate for the sophisticated French court.
After the men had gone, Mary was dismissed from Francois’ presence as well, her usefulness, for the moment, at an end. She had not been returned to her own apartments for more than a few moments, when Anne Boleyn, in crimson silk slippers and a scurrying gait, brought her a small folded note, curtsied to her and withdrew. There were only four words written down. The note was unsigned but Mary recognized the small tight script as belonging to the duc de Longueville.
Third floor, second door.
By design, Charles had viewed the lecherous glance, the uninvited groping. It was meant as a taunting from one man to the other and, in it, was an open challenge. He stalked the length of the grand room, elegantly furnished, facing down onto the peaceful inner courtyard of Les Tournelles and the patchy snow-covered ground. He could not press the ugly moment from his mind. He wanted Mary, he physically ached for her, he loved her still. That would have been clear to any man, whether or not Henry had ordered him not to jeopardize relations in France upon his return. Even the well-being of the vulnerable dowager queen.
I should have killed him in that tournament when I had the chance, as he lay in the dirt, his eyes spiked not with rivalry but with fear, he thought with a building rage now. Whether or not, in his absence, the notoriously womanizing monarch had taken his pleasure with her was the only question. Mary had been like a hostage here. She would have had no choice. His mind understood that, even if his heart did not. I love you, wildly and forever, he thought. No matter what you have been forced to do in my absence. . . . I am returned now, returned for you. . . . He longed to say that to her, and so much more.
Charles stood at the long window and braced himself with both arms extended against the casement. And then he wondered, because he could not stop himself, if there would be a part of Mary now, one who had spent her company with, and been adored by, kings these past months, that would prevent her from going back again to a mere duke with scant lineage and little else to offer. She certainly deserved better.
He could never fault her for wanting that. Mary was everything to him, and if that had changed for her, then he would accept it. He must accept it.
She did not knock a moment later but let herself into his room silently. He heard the click of the lock, pivoted back and saw her standing near the door. The days, months separating them disappeared. The doubt dissolved with it. He went to her silently and drew her up very tightly into his arms. She smelled so sweet, freshly washed. There was the fragrance of sweet spring roses.
“It feels like an eternity,” Charles said gently into the soft red-gold hair that hung against the slim column of her neck.
“You know not the half of it,” she whispered against his mouth.
“But I do plan to spend the rest of what time we have entirely with you.” Her touch had told him what he had needed to know. The separation had only strengthened what was between them. He smiled at her, touched her face very tenderly and then kissed her.
“In this world, there is more against us than you know.”
“For the resourceful sister of the most clever Henry VIII?” He bit back a teasing smile, more happy to be this close to her again than even he thought possible before this moment. “Now, since you are no longer another man’s wife, or in need of your chastity, just for a little while, do show me how clever you can be,” Charles Brandon said, answering his own question before she could even respond.
“Yes, they are together clandestinely, Your Majesty,” Claude de Lorraine dutifully reported, standing, hands linked behind his back, just outside the king’s chapel in the moments after matins had concluded. They stood beneath the carved eaves and pillars that ringed the inner courtyard of Les Tournelles.
Hearing the confirmation, Francois swatted at the air to send his mother and Queen Claude on ahead as he stopped and faced the sleek, blond Lorraine. “Then she is the whore I believed she was. He is nothing but a pitiful duke.”
“It would appear so, sire.”
“Dieu! I could kill him with my bare hands! I meant to have Mary from the first moment I saw her!”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I thought that you intended the dowager queen for me.”
“In name only, bien sur!” he said dismissively. “You would not have made the right match for a firebrand like her in any other way!”
They stood still as the clerics began to file out behind them. Francois sighed heavily. “So now what?”
“Well, if the rumors from England are true, and the Duke of Suffolk is serious about Her Majesty, and King Henry knows of it, and has sent Suffolk to France to proceed with his suit for her hand, sanctioning it, Your Majesty’s . . .”
His words trailed off as he drew in a breath, considering more carefully how he meant to finish his sentence. “Your Majesty’s advances could conceivably jeopardize relations, and cause the English to attack again.”
“They would not dare. Old Louis was a very different king than the one I mean to be, and my good English cousin could not believe he would fare so well next time, since he would be going up against the court of Francois I.”
Lorraine tipped his head, shrugged. “They say Henry VIII is a bold ruler, sire, driven to match his father’s thirst for French land. Pressing that point could be troublesome to our own interests.”
“Oh, very well,” he growled. In spite of the bravado, Francois was a new and untested ruler, without the same lineage of warfare and the experience Henry had, and he knew it. “Then what the devil would you advise me to do about Suffolk and the dowager queen?”
“Perhaps you should confront him directly. If his intention is marriage, and the English king has indeed agreed to i
t, he will not deny it but boast to you of his good fortune.
Then at least you shall know how to proceed with Her Majesty.”
When Charles woke, Mary was sitting curled in the window embrasure, a blanket over her shoulders, knees to her chest.
The sunrise was a pale, shimmering pink on the horizon, heralding another dreary winter day. He went to her and saw that there were tears in her eyes. He could see by how she could not catch her breath and her face was patched red that she had been crying for some time. He sank down beside her and drew her tenderly against him.
“There now, my love. What is this? It is not exactly the response a man hopes for after a night like that.”
It was a moment more before she turned her tear-stained face up to him. “You have come to take me home for Harry, haven’t you? You are his best friend, so he trusts you. He has at last worked out my marriage to the Prince of Castile and has sent you to break the news to me.”
Charles laughed softly and brushed away her tears with his thumbs. “Where would you get a wild notion like that?”
“Wolsey’s men. He sent two friars to prepare me. By my faith, Charles, I cannot bear the thought! And if I do not comply, if I try to remain here hoping my brother will change his mind, remembering his promise to me as we stood on the dock at Dover, Francois will see me married to Claude de Lorraine in the interim! And that, only so that he can make me his own mistress!”
“You know that?”
“He told me so himself.”
She was weeping again now, her slim body wracked with sobs. “All my life I have done what I have been told to do!
You are a princess, they said! A Tudor, they said! You have a duty! You must comply! Well, enough, I say!” She bolted to her feet, wrapping the blanket and her arms around herself, her face crimson with a mix of anger and despair. “I tell you this, Charles Brandon: I would rather be torn to pieces than ever comply with either of those foul plans. I would truly rather be out of this world, dead and buried, and I mean to tell Harry every word of that!”
In all of the years he had known her, he had never seen such absolute conviction. She may be near hysteria, tears still washing onto her wet face, her shoulders still jerking, yet he could see that behind it was a coldly determined woman. For a moment, a dark, forbidding instant, he actually had a vision of her taking her own life rather than giving in one day more to the will of others. She had done her duty—difficult, objectionable duty, with her youth and her virginity. She would not do it again. He knew she meant every word exactly, because he knew her.
“Marry me, Charles!” she bid him, and the words came so suddenly and full of such anguished pleading that, for a moment, he felt as if his heart had actually stopped beating.
“Take me away from Paris, and far away from France, as your wife now before it is too late!”
“You know it is what I want more than anything . . . you know it. But something so dangerous dare not be rushed.
Besides, I promised Harry I would do nothing unexpected while I was here. And he trusts me.”
“I trusted him too, Charles, and look where it got me!
Widowed, alone and in danger of the gracious Lord knows what sort of second marriage alliance!” She crossed the room away from him and stood by the remains of the small red glowing blaze that they had lit themselves. Again she wrapped her arms around herself, then lowered her head.
She would not stop weeping, and Charles felt himself undone by it.
“I’ll not do it, Charles. Not again.” She shook her head.
“Harry promised me my own choice the next time I marry, and I mean to keep him to his word, even if I need to press him to the wall to do it!”
“You cannot ask me to go against him, Mary! He made me promise before I left England! I am not his beloved Mary, with the single key to his heart. Only you have that power!”
“I am meant to be your wife!” Suddenly she spun back around, hands dropping rigidly down to her sides, all of the conviction and Tudor fire coming alive on her face at that moment in the bedchamber of an apartment that held them both between two worlds.
“What are you asking me?”
“Choose, Charles. There must be an end to it! Either you agree to marry me, here and now in Paris—or I do swear to you, by all that is holy, that I will disappear into a French convent and spend the rest of my life there, because I’ll not spend the rest of the nights of my life growing old with another man like Louis! I’ll not do more than what I have already done for the sake of England!”
Outside there were footsteps. French spoken softly. In the echo of her ultimatum, Mary took up her dress, petticoats, shoes, and slipped from the room without another word. A moment later, a liveried servant stood before him.
“I come from the king, Your Grace. His Majesty wishes to speak immediately with you.”
The black oak table was long, highly polished, and forbidding. Charles sat alone at one end. The king, in black and silver, was at the other. The distance between them was intentional. Charles was made exceedingly uncomfortable as he sank formally onto the edge of the leather chair to which he had been directed. The whole scenario reminded him of the command visits to his uncle.
“Your Majesty wished to see me.”
Francois’ expression was stony as he took a long swallow from a goblet with rich gilt decoration. Charles could hear the rhythm of his own heart beating as the king settled the goblet back onto the table with a little clink. There could be no possible advantage to a sudden and private summons like this. Francois finally leaned forward, steepling his hands.
“So then. You have come to France with the traitorous intention of marrying the dowager queen without the permission of my good cousin in England, nor my own, have you not?”
“I assure Your Majesty, I came to France with no such intention,” he replied honestly. That much he could say and mean with absolute conviction. Of the many accusations he had anticipated in the long walk to this room, that was not among them.
“Surely my lord of Suffolk knows that a king has spies.”
Charles listened to the tick of the clock on the wall behind him. It seemed to match the rapid thud of his heart.
There was much he was here to do. Rescuing Mary, and perhaps risking his life to do so, was but a nuance of the greater plan. Before he left London, Henry and Wolsey had instructed him to ingratiate himself enough to the new French king so that he would have leave to bargain. Henry knew that Francois wished the return of Tournai, which he had so powerfully taken from Louis. In exchange for its return now, he demanded all of the jewelry, silverplate and anything else of value that Louis XII had given to his wife. Ironically, Henry had believed that, just because Charles had met Francois before, he would be in a position to negotiate with this lecherous king, one who wished to retain the great love of his life in France for himself.
Betray Henry’s expectation of his promise and he could lose his life. Betray Mary now and he would lose that heart forever.
“Then tell me, why have you come?”
“At the pleasure of my king only, Your Majesty, to discuss diplomacy and Tournai. Certainly not matrimony.”
Francois fingered his own short beard with thumb and forefinger. The silence seemed to stretch on forever as Francois studied him with a cold, discerning stare. “And the dowager queen? What would she say if asked the same thing?”
“Her Majesty would tell you the truth—that I had no intention to engage in such a dangerous folly as to come into a foreign realm and marry its queen without the authority of my master.”
“It would seem the ring she suddenly and permanently wears in place of the king’s wedding band—the one into which she gazes as if a mirror would tell a different tale than your own, my lord of Suffolk?”
Mary would never have divulged something to Francois so private and precious as his gift of the onyx ring. And spies were everywhere. Charles felt his anger flare again amid his defense of Mary, but he drew in deep
breaths to press it back. They could both find themselves in grave danger if Francois was not convinced.
“Surely you would not look at me, here at my private table, and try to tell me there is nothing of the heart between the two of you. A man in love is a difficult thing to conceal.”
Everything raced through his mind.
Mary . . . You have a choice, Charles. . . . Henry . . . I want your word, Charles, that you will do nothing. . . . Anne . . . She belongs to you. . . .
“Very well then, yes. Fate be damned—I do love her.”
The declaration was firm. Unyielding. From inside of his mind it sounded to Charles like someone else’s voice. “Our history is a long one. But I did not come to France to act upon that, or in any way to betray Your Majesty or my own king in it.”
“Is it your desire to marry her?”
“As I have told Your Majesty most emphatically, I would never have come to France with that in mind.”
“But in your heart?”
“I am a duke. She is a queen.”
“I was a duke, who now is a king,” he said, shrugging with a sly, slightly thawed smile. “From my own perspective, Suffolk, nothing is impossible. Tell me this: Do you believe she would marry you if it were your desire as well?”
“I believe she would, yes.”
“Well, then.” He leaned back, paused. “There is no reason I cannot aid and guide the course of true love.”
“As I said, I promised my master I would do nothing without his approval.”
Francois fingered the medallion at his chest. “Why not write to your Cardinal Wolsey, explain things as they are?
Explain that you have the best wishes of the King of France in your endeavor. That should suffice initially to smooth the way and at least prepare my good cousin for what quite likely is inevitable between his sister and you.”
It seemed a logical step, a way out of his predicament, but Charles knew well he must avoid a potential trap. There was nothing in the world he wanted so much as to marry her but he must be cautious in every step now.