LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Are all these really for me?” I asked.

      “Every one! And all chosen by me, just for you, my bonny Bess!” he declared proudly. “I meant what I said – it’s high time we got you out of mourning. Youth and beauty deserve colour, not crow black! So I have come to tempt you! Look at this one, Bess!” He reached out to caress a gown of pink brocade. “Cunny pink!” he said, causing all the women to giggle and blush. “What?” he protested. “It is very close to the colour of cunny lips; is it not, ladies? Here!” His hand shot out to snatch the sash from my dressing gown, causing it to fall open. “Let us compare!” He held a fold of the pink gown close to the cleft between my thighs. “Indeed it is!” he beamed. “Upon my soul, I declare, I have a fine eye for colour, haven’t I, ladies?” He looked round the room for affirmation and all agreed that indeed he did as I blushed furiously and gathered my robe close about me. “And look!” He held the skirt of the pink gown up. “Is there not something suggestive of the shape of a woman’s cunny in the pattern of the weave?” he asked mischievously, sparking another round of blushes and giggles all around.

      “This one!” he exclaimed suddenly, darting forward to snatch a gown of bright robin’s egg blue silk exquisitely embroidered with sunny yellow daffodils around the cuffs, bodice, and hem, with gold brocade under-sleeves and kirtle. “I want to see you in it now!” And so saying he shucked the robe from my shoulders, and even though Mrs Ashley protested that to be properly dressed I needed proper undergarments – shift, stays, and petticoats – he tugged the dress over my head, then set to work adjusting the ties that attached the sleeves and bodice, before turning me round and lacing up the back, while I found myself nearly swooning at the exquisite sensation of silk against my naked skin, without the lawn and linen of shift and petticoats, and the prison of the stiff leather stays, posing a barrier between. I blushed hotly as I felt a burst of wetness between my thighs and my nipples stiffen, making their presence known through the beautiful blue silk, and lowered my eyes, shamed by the knowing smiles, titters, and whispers of the serving maids and wished Tom would dismiss them.

      “There!” Tom beamed. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s high time you leave off those melancholy weeds; there’s no point in such vibrant beauty going around dressed like a storm cloud in black and shades of grey all the time!”

      And then he was on his knees before the clothespress, fishing out the black mourning gowns and sombre-hued satins and silks and damasks of ash and cinder, a whole gamut of greys from the most delicate to the darkest, and flinging them out.

      “Away with this! Away!” he ordered. “I hereby banish you from My Lady Princess’s wardrobe! In with the new and out with the old!” he said to the serving maids and they obligingly laid down their armloads of peacock finery upon my bed and began gathering up the discarded garments of grief and mourning. “And now” – Tom smiled at them – “out with you all!” He pinched and patted their bottoms as they obediently filed out, blushing and giggling, a smile on every face.

      “Now then.” He turned smilingly to me. He started towards me but then made a detour to my bed, where he snatched up a deep crimson satin gown trimmed with glittering jet spangles, beads, and black Spanish lace. “Wear this for me tonight, Bess. It reminds me of the dress your mother wore the night she danced in rose petals. Wear it for me tonight, Bess, and we too shall dance in rose petals!”

      Then he enfolded me in his arms and kissed me long and lingeringly, then let his lips trail down the curve of my neck, and over my shoulder, down my arm to my hand, to the fingertips, before he backed slowly out the door.

      “Oh what a man! A fine lusty fellow, is he not, Bess?” Kat enthused. “If he weren’t married already I am as sure as sure can be that he would look to have you, to be buxom and bonair in bed and at board!”

      “But he is wed already,” I reminded Kat and myself, though in truth it seemed not to matter. Indeed, I was often surprised by just how little I cared.

      That night, after supper, before he took the already yawning, bleary-eyed Kate’s arm to escort her upstairs, he brushed a good-night kiss onto my cheek and whispered one word – “Midnight.”

      At the appointed hour, I descended the stairs, wearing the crimson gown he had requested. He was waiting for me. And while his wife slept obliviously in a room above our heads, a lute player began to softly strum a pulsing, sensual Spanish melody and Tom led me out to dance. “You dance as light as a dust mote on a sunbeam,” he said as his manservant leaned over the banister and tossed handfuls of red petals down on us.

      I laughed, threw back my head, and spun round and round beneath the fluttering, fragrant red petal rain. Tom stood back and watched me, and then he reached out his hand and pulled me into his arms, and kissed me passionately, holding me so close it felt as if our two bodies had fused into one.

      Yet things were never quite the same after that day in the garden. Kate seemed to grow colder, to hold herself more guarded and aloof around me. A layer of thin but impenetrable frost had frozen over my warm stepmother – just enough for me to see that she was still the same person she had always been, but that her feelings for me had changed. And another seemed now to have replaced me in Kate’s heart – my nine-year-old cousin, Lady Jane Grey, a shy little scholar who loved learning above all things, who had recently come to live with us at Chelsea. Though I did not begrudge Jane, whom I knew to be much maltreated and beaten for the slightest mistake or most trivial imperfection by her cruel and ambitious parents; this child sorely needed affection, kindness, and encouragement. I confess, my stepmother’s coolness hurt me, and because of it I was not always as kind to Jane as I should have been. She looked up to me, in a kind of awe, as if she admired me, with her mouth agape, and I would snap tartly in passing that she had best close it before a fly flew in, and go on my merry way without a thought for her feelings. And whenever Tom gave the poor little mite so much as an iota of his attention I reacted harshly, meting out even more rudeness and unkindness, so jealous was I of his time and affection, and I would sulk until he teased me out of my dark, pouting mood.

      Though always proper and deferential, the servants’ behaviour towards me seemed also to be rimed with frost. Sometimes I would come upon two or three of them unawares, huddled together in conversation, and hear my name and my mother’s and such remarks as “bad blood will tell,” knowingly asserted. And tales of my mother’s trial and the crimes she had been accused of – adultery and incest – were dredged up again with gossipy relish and assurances that I was bound to go the same way.

      And Kat … Someone must have spoken sharply to my Mrs Ashley, for of a sudden a bolt of mighty lightning seemed to demolish the castles in the clouds she had built. She awoke from her dreams with the troubling realization that she had erred in her duties as governess to a royal princess by encouraging her virgin charge to dally with a married man, and set about trying to remedy the situation and scrub away the tarnish she had allowed to blacken my name and reputation.

      But against Tom Seymour’s fatal charm we were all powerless. Kat found herself in the same quandary as I did myself – her heart saying one thing and her head another. She made an effort to arise earlier to rush me out of bed and into my clothes before Tom came sauntering in for his early morning visits.

      “Must I sleep fully clothed to thwart him?” I groused at having to rise before the dawn.

      “Nay, lovey,” Kat said, her words contradicting her actions as she laced me into my gown, “you are even more comely in only your hair and bare skin. The Lord Admiral his naughty self told me that when you blush you are like a statue of pink ivory sprung to life!”

      And on mornings when she was loath to drag herself out of her warm bed, Kat did manage to come in before matters went too far, to shoo “that naughty man” out and to scold him for coming bare-legged in his nightshirt and slippers into a maiden’s bedchamber. “It is a most improper way to come calling, My Lord!” she chided as sternly as she could against that dagger-sharp deadly charm.

      I had yet to grant him the ultimate favour, and Kat was determined that my virginity, a woman’s most precious commodity, and vital to a princess in the royal marriage game, should be preserved

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