Read The Secret Bride for Free Online Page A

leather, welted in blue velvet and lined with lynx fur, he pulled the reins just before the front door. He sat astride a gray gelding, borrowed from the Earl of Essex, from whom he had found favor as his esquire. It was the sort of position he had worked toward for years, a position of power through affiliation.
    Charles had achieved much in his time among royalty through ambition and drive. He was also, along with several other young courtiers, a member of the Company of the King’s Spears, of which Essex was lieutenant. It was an expensive affiliation requiring sums of money Charles did not possess, but membership in it was absolutely essential if he meant to continue his rise at court. After losing his parents, Charles believed he had been given one very powerful opportunity by the king, and he was absolutely driven to make something of that, and of himself.
    Earlier in the year, through his ever deepening friendship with Prince Henry, Charles was also made an Esquire of the Body, a highly regarded position in the king’s privy chamber. It was another key rung on the ladder of courtly success, as it was a ranking among the gentry that set him one rung below knighthood. But with all of the promise so tauntingly at his feet, Charles did not possess even the worth of estates required to make him eligible to receive the honor. It was a reality that frustrated him, and only made him want it the more. Marrying the wealthy, older Lady Mortimer had been the sole means of acquiring even some of the funds that were so essential to merely exist among earls, dukes and princes at court but it had not brought him enough property.
    He leaned forward now on the pommel of his saddle and exhaled deeply, trying not to think too much about all of that. He had come to this area of Southwark alone. The errand he was on was degrading and he did not wish or need to make it in polite company, as there would be pleading involved.
    Finally, Charles swung his leg over the saddle and leapt to the gravel-covered ground. He gave the reins over to a waiting stable boy who knew him well but paid him little mind as the impoverished nephew of the master of the manor.
    Sir Thomas Brandon’s own position at court was great, as a prominent counselor to the king, yet he had little inclination to assist his ambitious nephew.
    Charles stood in the entrance hall, richly paneled in oak and hung with tapestries. He was left there to cool his heels intentionally, he knew, in order to keep him in his place. Sir Thomas had introduced him at court when he came of age, and that was all he intended to do. Charles squeezed his leather riding gloves and fought the mounting frustration. If there had been any other way out of his current dilemma he would have taken it.
    What felt like an eternity later, a stone-faced groom formally announced, “Sir Thomas will see you now.”
    Charles knew the tall, spindly-legged man, William Fellows, as the gentleman who virtually ran the estate, yet Fellows always treated him like a stranger. He treated Charles precisely as his own uncle always had.
    The room into which he was finally shown beside the entrance hall was formal and suitably elegant. One wall was taken up with a large black-oak sideboard with exquisitely polished silver plate on display. A clock hung on the wall beside it, and nearby stood a long table hung with fringed green cloth and several high, leather-covered chairs. Charles sank into one of them and exhaled again even more deeply.
    His wife would be furious if she knew he had come here again, hat in hand. She possessed ample wealth for them both and could clothe him appropriately enough for the gen-trified circle, in the rich silks and velvets and the latest hats and chains. But this was very different. His wife would not understand. The money about which he had written his uncle this last time was not for him. It was for Anne and the children, in whom Margaret had little interest, for Anne had no tie at court