Read Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her for Free Online Page A

shake.
    “You shameless little minx. You really are just like—” He broke off
    unexpectedly. “It’s a bargain,” he continued, and was suddenly serious as
    he put her down.
    Something, he could not have said what, had sent a chill jangling
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    Legacy
    through every nerve in his body, making him for a moment inexplicably
    sad. They walked on down the gallery in silence and he was glad when
    they joined the crowds in the chapel.
    t t t
    Elizabeth, at the age of four, was seriously smitten with a puppy’s blind
    adoration for “Uncle Tom.”
    The moment the christening was over and she was released from
    Hertford’s odious guardianship, she bobbed through a sea of hose-clad
    legs and swaying skirts in Queen Jane’s airless bedchamber, seeking the
    flamboyant garter which marked him in her memory.
    At length she found him.
    “I have to go to bed now,” she confided urgently. “Will you bring my
    gingerbread boys tomorrow?”
    “What an avaricious young lady you are!” he remarked, looking down
    on her from a smiling height. “Remind me never to owe you any money.”
    She looked at him anxiously, suddenly suspicious.
    “You will come, won’t you?”
    “If I can remember the way.”
    “ Elizabeth !”
    They both looked round with a start, and Tom swept a mocking
    bow to Mary Tudor’s unsmiling figure. Reluctantly Elizabeth bobbed a
    curtsey and went to take her sister’s stiffly outstretched hand. The look
    she gave him over her shoulder, the oddest mix of trust and coquetry he
    had ever seen, was enough to decide him. He determined to find his way
    back to the nursery at the earliest convenient moment. He considered
    teasing Ned with his new conquest, but looking round saw, with a frown,
    that his brother was with the King. Henry’s great voice boomed around
    the crowded chamber, trumpeting victory like a cockerel, and Hertford
    stood there, looking so smug, one might have thought he had borne the
    brat himself. It was insufferable the way Ned pushed himself forward,
    grabbing all the honours because of a few years’ seniority! Automatically
    Tom began to elbow his way towards the Queen’s bed. At some point in
    the night, between making his royal brother-in-law bellow with laughter
    and his own brother glare with jealous envy, he spared a glance for his
    sister and saw with a shock of horror that she looked half dead.
    t t t
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    Susan Kay
    Less than a week later they buried her, and for a while both Seymours
    feared they might be burying their influence on the King with her.
    Slowly, in the months that followed, they began to realise that this was
    not the case. For once, a woman had been taken from Henry before he
    had had time to grow tired of her charms, a woman, moreover, who had
    martyred herself to give him the one thing he had wanted and lacked
    all these years—a legitimate son. He was maudlin and sentimental and
    enjoying a certain degree of reverent self-pity as he strolled one afternoon
    in his privy garden with the brothers of his late wife.
    “Your sister was the only woman in this world I ever loved,” he said,
    and waited for the tactful words of condolence which bolstered his ego.
    “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Your Majesty,” said
    Tom, and the sarcasm with which he said it took his brother’s breath
    away like a blow in the crutch.
    The King halted, examining the young man with eyes grown hard
    and shrewd with ruling. He had strolled in this same garden earlier with
    some pretty little nobody, whose name he had already forgotten, hanging
    on his arm and on his every word. His ministers were already combing
    Europe for a suitable bride. They were simple facts of life that no one else
    at court would ever dare to draw attention to, except this arrogant young
    devil who had as good as told him to his face that he made a remarkably
    merry widower. And slowly the corners of Henry’s thin mouth curled
    into a smile of grudging admiration.
    “God works in a mysterious