34

THE COURT TAKES ON A HUSH—WHICH COULD BE CONFUSED with expectancy, but probably has more to do with inebriation—the morning after.

I feel like I am holding my own breath. Waiting. For Father to return. For Percy to acknowledge me.

Except for a dense, aching feeling and a bit of blood, I am not physically different. I am treated no differently. I can act no differently.

But I am different. I am better.

And somehow, I am worse.

Early in the afternoon, Wolsey gathers his cardinal’s robes, his papers and seals, and his hangers-on and returns to York Place.

Percy goes with them. My husband.

I watch them leave from one of the towers overlooking the river. I can smell the sweet herbs burning in the barge, but they do little to dispel the stink of the Thames. At least not from where I stand. The choppy tide knocks the men together like tenpins as they step from bridge to boat, and I see Percy look up to the palace. If he sees me, he does not acknowledge it.

I leave the galleries and confining rooms of the donjon and go into the orchards. The trees are covered in ripening cherries, the thin hips of growing apples, the promise of apricots.

I suddenly want to climb one of the trees. I want to sit on one of the branches, eating unripe fruit the way I used to do with George when we hid from Father. From his disappointment. We claimed we would stay in the trees until we were forgotten. But George always ate too much, stuffing the hard bitter fruits into his mouth until he was sick. Mary would find us hiding in the grass, surrounded by the reeking evidence of our degeneracy. And then George would lean on me as we walked back to the cold and heartless house of our childhood, Mary clucking all the way.

“Worrying about your father’s arrival?”

Wyatt is walking toward me. Weaving between the trees as if dancing with them. In and out of sunlight. In and out of shadow.

“You know me too well,” I say. My voice catches a little. He’s the only one who knows me. And I have to sever that.

“I know you well enough to see that your father’s hold on you can’t prevent you from achieving greatness.”

“Such flattery.”

I know him, but I no longer know how to talk to him.

“It’s true!” he cries, twirling me straight into an espaliered apple against the garden wall and holding me there. “Look. This tree is bound, pinioned to the wall, but still bears fruit. It still strives for the sun. Can you not do the same?”

My hands are over my head—held in place by his right arm, his left still around my waist—my senses, like strings, pulled taut to him.

“Dare I not reach and ask for more?” His voice is barely more than a sigh.

The moment spins between us like blossoms on the air. He neither moves away nor kisses me, and I find I want him to do both with equal measure. Until I remember.

“But don’t you see?” I slip out from beneath his arm, the summer breeze suddenly chilling. “As a man, you can do what you like. And all the court will admire you. It will not matter if you sleep with your wife or a hundred others. It will be forgiven. For me, it is not the same. Court gossip is a tarnish that cannot be wiped away.”

“No, Anne,” he says, reaching for my hands. “You will be great, too. Your life will be poetry, the very way you live it. And they will all forgive you because it will be beautiful.”

“You have a sugared tongue, Wyatt, and a knack for poetry and flattery. I think you will go far.”

“And you, my dear.”

“Yes.” My throat constricts. “I will be a countess.”

He drops my hands.

“What happened?”

I want to tell him everything. About Father. George. How Percy’s mouth is so unlike his. My stomach squirms at the thought of telling him about last night.

“He asked me to marry him.”

“And he has his papa’s approval?”

“Don’t be snide.”

“I don’t have to be, Anne. That whipped puppy can’t take a piss without his master’s permission.”

“He can!” Somewhere in me Wyatt’s words strike a chord of truth. I silence it. “He does. And he has.”

He waits. Stares.

“Anne,” he says hoarsely. “What have you done?”

I hold his gaze, willing him to understand. I can say nothing. There is nothing I can say.

“Jesus.” He covers his face in his hands and rubs vigorously. “Shit.”

“It’s done.” My tone is flat. “No one can change it.”

He turns and strides up the hill toward Duke Humphrey’s Tower. The angle of the morning light sets him ablaze.

“Northumberland can change it,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Not even God can change it, Wyatt,” I cry as I struggle to catch him up. “Don’t you understand?”

“I understand all too well.” He stops again, and I nearly run into him. We stand an inch apart, and yet the gap between us feels unbridgeable. “If the earl didn’t endorse it, it never happened. A match not made in the circle of power is no match at all.”

“It’s a love match,” I say. “Even the king would honor it. He loved Queen Katherine.” Once. “He married her even though his father had broken off the engagement.”

Wyatt doesn’t speak for a moment, his disbelief carved into the hard lines of his face.

“How can it be a love match if you don’t love him?”

I don’t want his doubt, and I don’t want his pity, so I square up to him, stick out my chin, and let my eyes blaze with challenge.

“Maybe I do.”

He looks at me for a moment.

“Then say it.”

But I can’t. Say it. I’m not even sure I can feel it. I spread my hands on my skirts.

Wyatt watches pointedly and then continues.

“You’re just like your father. Scheming and manipulating to get a place as close to the center as you can. All head and no heart.”

I will not let him see how much that hurts.

“So which is worse?” I ask. “Being the head that gets to the center? Or being the hand that gets others there?”

“You’re a fool.”

“No. I’m not foolish. I have chosen my husband. I have made a difference in my life.”

“You’ve traded one tyrant for another—your father for a boy who isn’t half the man, despite his lands and titles.”

“At least I didn’t allow myself to be whipped into a wretched marriage. At least I made my own decision. Not like you.”

I spit the last words out and watch them land like poisoned barbs on his face.

“True,” he says. So quietly I almost can’t hear him over the sough of the trees and the plaintive call of a hawk in the mews. “Not like me. But because of my own situation, Anne, I know you will never be happy. Not with him.”

“Not happy? I’m ecstatic. This is what I’m made for. To be a countess. To escape my family and their limited vision. To be here.” I stamp my foot on the ground of Greenwich.

“You will not be happy because you don’t love him. And he doesn’t love you.”

“And love is so important?”

Wyatt doesn’t hesitate.

“Yes.”

“So maybe it can be learned,” I say quickly, and look away to where St. Paul’s points accusingly at the sky. “And you don’t know. Maybe he does. Love me.”

I think about Percy’s kiss. About how quickly it was all over. Surely that meant something. Surely it meant he at least desired me.

“Love and sex are different things, and should not be confused.”

As if he knows what I’m thinking. He always knows what I’m thinking.

“What do you know? You’ve said yourself that you never loved your wife.”

“That’s how I know. I have a son with her, but I do not love her and never have. Nor she me. But that doesn’t mean I have never loved.”

His words grind a hole in my heart so deep I feel I will never again see the sun. So I try to claw my way out.

“Well, I’ve never had that luxury. My family doesn’t beget love, no matter what they pretend. And I don’t know how to love in return. Your concern is misplaced.”

I can’t stand the pity in his eyes, so I turn away.

“You lost the bet, Wyatt. Your services are no longer needed.”

I leave him there. High on the hill, with nothing but the desolate cry of a hawk for company.