I felt the most peculiar feeling then, a breathlessness that left me reeling, as if the breath had suddenly been knocked violently from my lungs. I couldn’t understand it then, my mind churned with confusion, but knowing that he was married made me feel as if a crushing blow had been dealt me and made me want to rage against fate, to shriek and strike out with my fists and tear with my nails. “He can’t be married!” I kept wailing despairingly over and over in my mind, “He just can’t be married!” I cried without understanding why the news should so distress me. Tom Seymour was a grown man about to cross the threshold of forty; he had remained a bachelor long past the age when most men are many years married, and the gossips had long wondered why he tarried so long without taking a wife. Now he had only done what society had always expected of him. So why should the news leave me reeling and ready to burst into tears? God’s bones, I hardly knew the man, so why was I ready to curse and shriek at the Fates that he should have been mine?
He took a step toward me, reaching out, as if he would draw me back into his arms again. I stepped back, even as I longed to run forward and hurl myself into them. I stumbled as my limbs tangled in my skirts, and only the quick grasp of his hand around my elbow kept me from falling.
“Tom!” a soft, gentle voice behind me said, and I started, unaccountably feeling a hard jolt of guilt, as if I had been caught doing something illicit, as my stepmother quietly entered the room and stepped past me to lay a gentle hand on her husband’s arm.
“For shame, Tom! You have broken the news too abruptly! Can you not see you have nearly felled her with the shock? Tut, tut, you are too impulsive, My Lord Husband! And take off that wet cloak, before you catch a chill; I want to be a wife this time, not a physician in petticoats. Sit down, please, Bess”—she turned back to me, smiling gently, encouragingly—“and I shall tell you all about it.”
Seeing me rooted there, my distress plain, Kate instantly took pity on me and guided me into the chair nearest the fire and knelt down before me, rubbing my hands.
“Please, dear, do not think unkindly of me—of us—for marrying in haste. I assure you no insult was intended to the memory of your father. I know many will think we have done wrong by not waiting a full year, until the mourning period had ended. But, dearest, the truth is, we were in love and planned to marry before your father’s eye lighted on me. But when it did, I renounced my own desires and did my duty to my King and country, and now . . . I am a woman five years past thirty and I long to be a true wife, and a mother, if God will so bless me. As you know, Bess dear, I was married twice before I wed your father; my youth was spent caring for husbands far older than myself with children older than I was. I thought it was my lot to go through life as a caretaker for the old and infirm and other women’s children. When I married your father and met you and Edward, and your little cousin Jane Grey, all in dire need of a mother’s love and guidance, it reawakened my desire for motherhood, to have a child of my own, and stirred such a longing in me I know not words great enough to convey the urgency and strength of it; there were times I wanted it so much it hurt me, as I thought it was a hunger that would never be sated. Please, judge me not too harshly, Bess, for grasping greedily at my last chance to fulfill my heart’s most ardent and deeply felt desire. Few of us are fortunate to marry where our hearts lie; do not condemn me for grasping at Fortune’s blessing, the chance to have happiness in this life, to not have to wait, to live in expectation of Heaven’s promise.”
“I . . .” I shook my head to clear it as I struggled vainly for composure; I heard her words but I was having trouble putting them together in coherent fashion. “Indeed, Madame, I . . . I do not blame you! I . . . It was just a surprise, that’s all,” I said abruptly, snapping my mouth shut and lowering my eyes as I could not bring myself to meet her loving and concerned gaze for fear that she might divine the truth that even then I was still floundering and grappling to understand. “Have I your leave to retire now, Madame? The surprise has brought on one of my headaches.”
“Of course, my dear!” I surrendered gladly to her gentle ministrations and let her help me from my chair and put her arm about my shoulders to guide me to the door.
Then he was there again, bounding in front of us, barring our way.
“But I’ve not told you how the deed was done!” he protested, taking my arm and leading me back to my chair.
“Tom!” Kate protested. “Let Bess go; there will be time aplenty for you to tell your tale later!”
Laughing, he wrapped his arms around her waist, scooped her up, and spun around and plunked her down into the chair opposite mine.
“Sit you down too, woman, your Tom has a tale to tell, and he’ll not be thwarted!” He chuckled as he plopped himself down beside my chair and his fingers began to play with a loose silver thread on my black damask kirtle.
“Now, Bess, how do you suppose I came to marry your fine stepmother?” he asked.
“I daresay you petitioned the Council, My Lord,” I said, surprised that I was able to speak so coolly when inside I was a raging inferno.
“The Council!” he sneered. “The Council? I, Thomas Seymour, petition that bunch of mutton-headed dolts?” He slapped his thigh and threw back his head and laughed. “A pox upon the Council, and that includes my dear brother, Ned, the Lord Protector of the Realm! The Council can kiss my fine white arse and thank me for the honor! Nay, pet”—he patted my knee—“I’m a man who knows how to get what he wants; and, as a rule, I shoot straight for the heart, of the lady or the problem. And why should I waste my time with that bunch of fools and knaves? Nay, Bess, the King himself gave our marriage his blessing; did he not, my buxom, kissable Kate?”
“Indeed he did, My Lord.” Kate smiled softly, indulgently, her cheeks rosy and her hazel eyes radiant and full of love. She was clearly a woman so deep in love she risked losing herself and drowning in it.
“Now, let me explain how I did it.” He gave my knee another pat. “My fool brother Ned has no more idea of how to win friends and make himself liked than a fish has. He dares to short the King of pocket money through some fool notion of teaching him economy and restraint! Fancy that, Bess. Did you ever hear such a foolish thing? Economy and restraint! God’s wounds, the boy is the King of England! Economy and restraint be damned. We are not talking about some lowly clerk who has to pinch his pennies to make ends meet!”
I sat up straighter in my chair, acutely aware that a war was raging inside me. My mind saw full plain that this man was a braggart and a fool, a complete stranger to common sense, who thought himself above and exempt from all the rules. But he was a handsome knave, a reckless rascal, with a winning smile, and a way with him that made me want to fall at his feet and offer myself to him like a pagan sacrifice. I felt my body, and my heart, lurch and tremble, wanting to be possessed by him, while my mind tried to pull them back, as if it were yanking on the reins of a runaway horse. No good can come of this, I told myself; but the parts of me that needed to listen were deaf to reason. The moment I had seen Tom Seymour standing before the fire, I too had cast common sense aside and embraced danger even as I embraced him. “Step back from the precipice and save yourself while you still can!” my conscience warned; but my rash, passionate, impetuous side shoved reason over the cliff to silence it.
“So I decided to step in and save my nephew from penury,” Tom was saying. “Since Ned had already cast himself as the bad uncle the stage was set for me to play the good one; jolly Uncle Tom, with his pockets always ajingle with coins, who never comes to court without a gift for His Majesty! I put my man Fowler at the King’s service, to keep little Neddy in ready money in my absence, and praise me to the skies whenever he can, and I had him ask a favor on my behalf. I had him say to the King that I was of a mind to marry, and asked him if he would do me the very great honor of choosing a bride for me. I thought the poor little puppet would relish the chance to name the tune instead of just dancing to it. And I was right, I tell you, Bess. It gave his pride such a puffing up, plumping it up fat as a new-stuffed