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find pleasure here?” she had boldly asked the queen as they strolled together beneath an arbor with pale pink roses tumbling over the sides of a painted lattice.
    “I find I miss the peace of a simple life. Especially now,” she
added, folding her hands over the large swell of a royal child beneath her breasts.
    “In truth, Your Grace, I think a country life is overrated.”
    “As court life most definitely is as well, believe me.”
    Again they exchanged a glance as they walked, each biting back a slight smile.
    “Seymours are not to find pleasure in the company of Howards, you know,” Jane said so softly that no one but Catherine could have heard her for the sound of the birds trilling from the lacy canvas of trees around them, and the brush of a delicate spring breeze over the gently rolling emerald landscape beyond.
    “Nor are Howards to find friends among Seymours.”
    “Doubtless you are told that, and wisely so. There is something unique about you, though, Cat. May I call you Cat?”
    “Your Grace may speak to me as you wish in all things.”
    Jane smiled again as she turned to look straight ahead. “I would enjoy having you about me to speak of the country idylls, which you know so well, and to remind me from time to time of them. I will speak to the king on the matter.”
    “Respectfully, Your Grace, a Howard girl come to court, one who looks so much like Queen Anne as they tell me I do? The king would not want me in your company, I should not think.”
    “She was never the queen; remember that, Cat,” Jane replied with a surprisingly firm tone. “The marriage was never truly valid, the courts found. His Majesty came to see that after the bloom of his passion for Mistress Boleyn had faded.”
    After my cousin could not give him a living son, was more to the point, Catherine thought.
    “I shall speak of you to him presently, though.”
    Again, Jane Seymour pressed her hands to her rounded belly—the pride in that gesture nearly as obvious as the pregnancy. “Just now I do
believe the king would give me the moon and the stars if I asked them of him. What is a simple duke’s niece compared with that?” She softly chuckled. “He shall grow fond of you once he knows you, as he is fond of all my ladies, Cat. I know he will see you are nothing like Mistress Boleyn once he knows you.”
    But Queen Jane’s desire was never fulfilled. The child, Edward, had brought about his mother’s death within three months of her offer to bring Catherine to court.
    Catherine had never seen Jane Seymour again. Nor had she ever forgotten her.
    “You’ve still not told him you are to leave, have you?”
    Mary Lassells’s question brought Catherine back to the present, and she again looked around the room strewn with her belongings. It was a moment before she realized the stout, malcontent girl had meant Francis Dereham. In a place like Horsham, with little to do but trifle, then gossip about it later, Catherine was surprised he did not know already. It seemed nearly impossible that he would not.
    “I imagine he knows.”
    “The only person who might have dared to tell him, out of spite, is Master Manox, and your music instructor seems quite mute on the subject.”
    There was judgment in her voice, something Catherine had heard before, but never so fervently.
    “You’ve taken his heart and used it, Catherine. A most uncharitable thing to do before God.”
    “Francis took other parts of me, Mary, so I trust before God it shall be viewed as an even exchange.”
    Mary looked away. “I shall pray for you in it.”
    “Your prayers sound like pity, and I do not need that, since I am going to court.”
    Catherine glanced over at the new headpiece, symbolic of so
much promise and duty, and the next moment she noticed the hem of Mary’s dress, which was frayed and worn. The disparity seemed glaring in this odd moment when the stout, homely girl had revealed more of her envy than ever before. Catherine watched Katherine