The Secret Bride by Diane Haeger Page A

enough to keep pace with you.”
    He was still smiling. That alone irritated her. “Nearly so anyway.”
    She wanted to resist. She certainly meant to. Henry would not be pleased to see his older, married companion paying such attention to her. Yet suddenly for Mary there was something a little wild and slightly dangerous in returning the flirtation, after a lifetime of being protected. Mary finally felt, now that her father too was gone, like being just a little bit dangerous herself.
    “Very well.” She nodded, pushing back her chair and standing with a flourish, then tipping her chin just ever so slightly into the air. “The volte it is. But mind that you do not step on my toes.”
    “And you mind that you do not entirely step on my heart, for you shall soon reach an age where you very easily could,” he declared, that mischievous smile never fading, as he placed a hand on his chest dramatically, then stood beside her.
    They shared two dances after that, the volte and then a tourdion, and Mary completely forgot herself in the pure fun of the formal turns, sweeps and bows. The only men with whom she had ever been allowed to dance were Arthur and Henry back at Eltham during the long hours of dance instruction, the sour-faced instructor looking on critically, clap-ping his hands to help them keep time, and just to annoy them. Now, in this dizzying whirl of laughter, dripping candle wax, music and forbidden attraction that had taken control of her, Mary’s hand met Charles’s own. They dipped, then bowed, they nodded and laughed, then were back linking hands again. His hand was large and warm and powerful against hers, and Mary began to lose herself entirely in the rhythm of the music and his commanding gaze upon her.
    The air was quickly thick and warm and she felt little beads of perspiration work their way down beneath the velvet of her bodice. She reveled in all the new sensations—the freedom and the power, the heat and the attraction. In spite of the crowd, she felt as if they were the only two dancing . . . until a discordant commotion drew her attention to the crimson-draped platform upon which her grandmother Lady Beaufort had been seated, and where she had just now collapsed.

    Outside Lady Beaufort’s apartments, they paced the long, paneled hall, lit with torches in iron wall brackets, late into the night. Charles Brandon remained among the party who had come there to wait news of her condition. The fact that they waited at the other end of the very corridor where Charles had once defended her to the queen and Lady Beaufort was not lost on Mary. Despite the circumstances, she could not help gazing at him with new eyes as a man who seemed clever, dangerous and magnificent. Henry and Katherine had gone inside with the doctors, so outside Mary waited in silence with Edward Howard, Thomas Knyvet and Jane Popincourt.
    The great Lord High Steward, the Duke of Buckingham, had for a time lent his support, but near midnight he and the Earl of Essex had gone to bed.
    In an elegant dress of blue velvet trimmed in gold, with a twisted rope of gold and pearls at her waist, Mary slumped wearily back against the oak wall paneling, arms crossed. She could not help watching Jane and Knyvet, the slim and slightly gangly courtier who was married to one of the Earl of Surrey’s daughters, Muriel, and thus was as dangerously off-limits to Jane as Henry had been to her. Their own little silent dance of flirtation around the others was taking place nevertheless.
    Henry had wounded Jane, Mary knew that. Now she seemed to want to hurt herself with someone else. Mary wanted to speak with her friend—she must. Henry was a king; he could do as he pleased, hurt whom he pleased, without penalty. Knyvet would not have that excuse when he wounded her.
    Her thoughts were stopped by a waiting woman who opened the door and motioned to Mary with a nod to enter.
    She exchanged a little glance, first with Jane and then with Charles, both