“Ma...marriage?” Sir Brandon Cavendish, gentleman of the king’s bedchamber, stammered out the loathsome word. His stomach twisted into a hard knot.
Even though he was winning the set, Brandon lowered his racket. A tennis ball whipped by him, missing his ear by inches. He barely noticed its passing. “Me, your grace?”
His opponent, Henry, the eighth of that name and king of England, roared with glee. “My point, Cavendish! Ha! Have I ruffled your fine feathers at last?”
Brandon flexed his broad shoulders. “Nay, sire! I see you are jesting to put me off my game.” At least, Brandon hoped that was the king’s only motive for introducing such a vile subject on such a lovely day.
Henry’s answering laughter reverberated around the dark green wooden walls of Hampton Court’s tennis hall. “Aye, I would put you off your game, my lord, but we do not speak of tennis. Look you, second service!” With that barked warning, the king drew back and fired another buff-colored d all at his victim.
This time Brandon managed to return the serve, but without his usual strength. God’s nightshirt! What piece of deviltry was the king up to now? His Grace seemed to be in unusually good spirits, even if he was down by two sets. Brandon mopped the perspiration out of his eyes with the loose, frilled sleeve of his shirt, then ran his fingers through his damp blond hair.
“This game is mine, sire, though I warrant you took that last point most unfairly.”
“How so, Cavendish?” The king crossed to the side gallery where a page waited with silver goblets and a pitcher of chilled wine. “I think you are growing fat with old age.”
Brandon bit the tip of his tongue lest he point out that the king was both older and more stout than he. Brandon knew just how far he dared to go when speaking to the large, perspiring man next to him. Great Harry played the part of the bluff and hearty sportsman, but underneath that smiling exterior, there lurked a vain and vicious temper. What was the loss of a game or two of tennis to the loss of one’s place in court—or worse?
Brandon drank deeply from his goblet. The crisp white wine cleared his throat of dust, and of the sour taste that the mere thought of marriage always left in his mouth. He knew he was poor husband material; his interest in wooing a woman never lasted longer than a fortnight. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “’Tis unfair to speak of wedded bliss to a man when he is at serious play, your grace,” he remarked mildly.
The king’s gray eyes twinkled behind the narrow folds of his lids. “Aye, but in this matter, I am serious, Cavendish.”
Taking a deep breath, Brandon tried to clear the humming in his ears. “If you speak to me of marriage, sire, I fear you toss your words into the wind.” I would tire of a wife in a month’s time.
The king’s thin lips pursed under his red mustache. “Ha! This bachelor state does not please your father.”
Brandon groaned inwardly. What had his sire done now?
“Last week, Sir Thomas sent me a long letter, begging my assistance in a grave family matter.” Henry signaled the page to pour another round. “It seems that you have turned a deaf ear to all his entreaties concerning your future.”
A very unfilial thought crossed Brandon’s mind. Why couldn’t his well-meaning father have left him alone? “My future is to serve your pleasure here at court, your grace,” he replied, picking his words with care.
“Aye, and so you shall—but not at court.” With a roar of laughter, the king whacked Brandon between the shoulder blades.
Brandon nearly slopped his drink on the king’s brown suede shoes. He licked his dry lips. “May I know what boon my father has asked of you, your grace?” Do not saddle me with a wife, I pray.
“Aha! Now you have hit upon the subject of my speech, you wily rogue!” He gave Brandon another bone-crunching whack. “The good Earl of Thornbury has grown tired of waiting for his firstborn to choose a bride and settle down. He has grown weary of requesting you to do so. In his wisdom, he has turned to me, his king and liege lord.” Henry’s brow furrowed and his countenance grew dark. “How well I know the yearning for an heir!”
The nearby spectators in the gallery went deathly still. Not even Brandon dared to respond to such a dangerous statement. The king’s frantic desire for a son to succeed him had sent the saintly but sonless Queen Catherine to a distant manor in the midlands. In her place, Viscount Rochford’s younger daughter, Lady Anne Boleyn, kept Henry and his court dancing to her tune with her promise to give the man she married a house full of sons. The subjects of marriage and heirs constantly played a raucous tune in the king’s besotted mind. Henry’s Great Matter, as he called it, obsessed him.
Now, thanks to the prompting of Sir Thomas Cavendish, that obsession had turned outward, and Brandon did not like the direction in which it was aimed.
“The choosing of a wife is not a thing to be taken lightly,” Brandon murmured, not daring to look the king in the eye. He twirled the handle of his racket in his hand. “And certainly not when there is still one more game to be played.” He prayed that Henry would drop the uncomfortable subject.
“You speak the truth, Cavendish.” The king’s mood brightened again. “And your last game draws apace.”
Licking his lips again, Brandon wished for a third cup of wine. The wicked gleam in Great Harry’s eyes unnerved him. “A game of tennis, your grace?” he bantered.
The courtiers in the gallery, including many of the ladies with whom Brandon had flirted over the years, leaned forward to hear the king’s reply. Lady Anne Boleyn and her companion, Lady Olivia Bardolph, smiled openly at Cavendish’s discomfort.
“A pox on tennis, you clodpate!” roared the king, his voice shaking the rafters of the tennis hall. A wide grin spread across his thin lips. “I speak of the marriage game—for you, my fine friend. Since you have danced out of Cupid’s way for many years now—” the king swept a glance over the colorful, bejeweled company in the gallery “—much to the disappointment of many a fair lady here, we have taken it upon ourselves to arrange a match.”
Brandon gritted his teeth as he heard a breeze of female tittering behind him. “A wife for me, sire?” His heart thudded within his chest. “You have so many affairs of state, your grace. My father’s request will take up too much of your most valuable time.”
“Let your fears take flight, Cavendish! ’Tis done!”
“The match is already arranged?” The humming sound grew louder in his mind.
The king’s laughter drowned out everyone else’s. “Aye! And to a fine lady with a fat estate in Sussex. Lady Katherine Fitzhugh of Bodiam Castle! By my command, Cavendish, you shall wed her on Midsummer’s Day. The banns were proclaimed this morning at Lambeth Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. This week, you will ride into Sussex to woo your betrothed.”
The laughter, which filled the cavernous tennis hall, could not drown out the hammering of Brandon’s heart. Marriage to an unknown lady in less than a month? An end to his freedom? Why had his father decided that he needed another heir? Several children already scampered around the family home at Wolf Hall in Northumberland. Brandon saw no reason to take a wife. He had enough domestic responsibilities as it was.
Belle, his daughter, would turn the household into a merry hell if Brandon brought home a new mother. And what of Francis Bardolph, his page? Brandon cast a quick glance at the boy’s self-absorbed mother who sat in the gallery. Francis didn’t suspect his true parentage as yet, but daily he grew to look more and more like a Cavendish. How could Brandon present an unsuspecting bride with two love children?
“What ho!” cried the king to his amused court. “Regard my Lord Cavendish! He looks like a great, goggle-eyed turbot caught in a net. Perchance you have won this tennis game, knave of hearts—but methinks, I have won the match! Ha!”
“Sweet angels!