As she slumped against the trunk of an old oak tree, snoring softly, Tom stealthily removed her hood and plucked the pins from her hair so that it fell down about her shoulders. Next he took off her shoes and, reaching up under her skirts, with a sly wink at me, rolled down and peeled off her stockings. It struck me, like an arrow in the heart that, as he lifted her foot to his lips and delicately nibbled her little pink toes, that Tom’s eyes never once left my face. Indeed, his eyes fixed on mine, almost tauntingly, as if he meant to torment me by behaving thus with his wife right in front of me, as if he were flaunting privileges that were hers by right could never be mine.
Kate awoke with a cry at the feel of his teeth nipping at her toes, and Tom leapt up, laughing like a madman, brandishing her shoes and stockings high above his head, shouting if she wanted them back she would have to catch him as he took off at a fast run across the park. And I was treated to the most unlikely spectacle of the barefoot Katherine Parr, a woman renowned for her dignity, racing after him like a barefoot peasant girl shrieking and shouting with laughter as she ran across the grass, with her skirts bunched up about her knees and her hair streaming in the breeze.
I kept telling myself he was my stepfather and that it was wrong that I should have such thoughts about him. I kept reminding myself that he was Kate’s husband. Kate who had been the kindest woman in the world to me, taking me under her wing and nurturing me as if I were her own natural-born daughter. And yet . . . his behavior toward me contradicted the facts. He behaved like a boisterous young swain hell-bent on wooing and winning me.
One morning, just as the sun’s gentle butter-yellow fingers were beginning to whisk the dawn away, and I lay still in slumber, safe and warm inside the dark haven of my bedcurtains, I heard my door creak open. Drowsily, I thought I must remember to ask Mrs. Ashley to have the hinges oiled, then rolled over, burrowing deeper into the feather mattress, and thought no more about it.
Suddenly, my bedcurtains were wrenched open wide, and there, to my astonishment, stood the gardener, with the old battered wooden bucket he used to carry manure to fertilize the roses that bloomed so beautifully at Chelsea.
I bolted up in bed, outraged, clutching the covers over my bare chest, as I often slept naked in those days, and my dressing gown was draped over a chair, nearby, but still beyond my reach. A sharp retort was primed to blast like a cannonball from my mouth, when suddenly his lips spread in a wide pearly smile that I recognized instantly as Tom’s, and he tilted back the brim of the battered old hat that had cast a dark shadow over his face. I gasped and braced myself as he raised the pail and flung its contents at me and I found myself sitting in the midst of a flurry of red rose petals.
Carelessly, he flung the pail aside, the bearskin on the hearth muffling the thud, then dove onto the bed right on top of me. I gave a little startled cry as I lay pinned beneath his weight, but his hand clapped quickly over my mouth stifled it newborn.
“Lady,” he said smiling, “I come to you in the guise of a gardener to tend my rosy buds.”
And with those words he raised himself and pulled the bedclothes down to my waist, pinning the down-turned covers with his knees, and holding my arms pinioned at my sides to prevent me from pushing him away or covering myself.
“Slow-blooming posies need nurturing and encouragement in order that they might grow and thrive,” he explained in a mockingly sage tone, ignoring the blush that dyed my face as red as the rose petals he had spilled on my bed, and the tears of shame that shimmered in my eyes. He ducked his head down and began to kiss the pallid pink nipples that sat in pools of rosy flesh upon my flat white chest.
Though I was thirteen, my body was indeed slow to blossom; my courses had only begun to flow and were as yet an irregular trickle rather than a full-blown crimson gush, and only a few sparse red tendrils curled around my nether lips.
I squirmed and struggled beneath him, caught between resistance and surrender. One moment I gasped and struggled hard, and the next I arched my back, offering up my paltry bosom for more of his exquisite kisses, sighing at this newly discovered delight.
With a lascivious grin and a last serpentlike flicking little lick, he abandoned my little pink paps, now throbbing and stiff, no longer pale but flushed a much rosier hue, and left a trail of meandering hot kisses down to my waist. Then he tore back the covers and let loose an exclamation of surprised delight.
“Pink petals amongst the red!” he cried, and promptly lowered his mouth to kiss my nether lips.
I nearly swooned as I squirmed and sighed beneath his questing, teasing tongue, exploring every nook and cranny of my most intimate parts, which no man had ever seen before. I was lost in a new world of bliss, a dream from which I never wanted to awaken, when suddenly a scream pierced the dawn, jolting me up in a rude awakening.
Mrs. Ashley stood in the doorway of her room, which adjoined mine, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.
With laughter twinkling in his eyes, Tom raised his head and winked at her.
“Careful, Mistress Kat, remember, curiosity killed the curious cat!” he chided playfully as he leapt off the bed and bounded out the door, pausing only long enough to pat her plump posterior and provoke an indignant cry from her.
I lay taut, in dead silence, too stunned and ashamed to even cover my nakedness, and Mrs. Ashley stood likewise stricken as we listened to his footsteps and laughter retreating down the hall.
“Bess!” she exclaimed, an expression of horror spreading across her round, full-moon face. “How could you?”
“Get out! Go away!” I cried, the spell suddenly broken, yanking the covers up over my head, and turning onto my side, turning my back on my beloved governess, and wrapping them tight about me, as close as I could, like a cocoon, as I burst into angry, confused tears.
“Oh my darling girl!” Instantly contrite, wringing her hands and looking as if she too were about to cry, Kat wailed as she ran to me and tried to take me in her arms. I struggled free and refused to let her embrace me and, finally, she let me be, saying only that we must talk soon, for there were things that she, in a mother’s stead, must say to me. And at those words I wept all the harder.
Tom was a man brimming over with charm and winning ways and he began to woo Kat too, to overcome the rightful objections a governess should make when amorous advances are directed at her charge, especially one of royal blood—and a princess’s virtue and virginity must never be in doubt. He brought her bouquets of flowers, and baskets of berries he picked himself. He kissed her cheeks and twirled his fingers and stuck violets, pinks, and daisies in the frizzy, flyaway brown-gray curls escaping from the prim prison of her black French hood. Oftentimes he would creep up behind her and smack and pinch her ample bottom, saying he liked a full-hipped woman with great pillow-plump buttocks, and give her gifts of cakes and candies to further fatten them up. “I am fattening Mrs. Ashley’s great buttocks as if they were a Christmas goose!” he would jestingly declare, making her giggle and exclaim, “Oh, you are a naughty man!” waggling a finger at him as if he were a naughty schoolboy, and he would playfully snap his fine teeth at it as if he meant to bite it, and make her laugh all the more. There would always be an affectionate undertone to mar the severity of the scolds and reprimands she addressed to him. “A very naughty man!” she would repeat as she simpered and preened, blushed, and giggled, before she fluttered away, putting a little more sway into her steps and swing into her hips, darting a furtive glance back over her shoulder through coyly fluttered lashes to make sure that he was watching.
But Tom had achieved what he set out to do—he had won an ally—and Kat began to sing his praises to me at every turn. And every night thereafter when she tucked me into bed with a peck upon my cheek she would wish me “sweet dreams of the Lord Admiral, my pet.” She seemed to forget that she was a governess, not a matchmaker, and that Tom was