Free My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes

man who had fostered it. “A nice piece of work, Cromwell!” he approved condescendingly. “Carry it to a swift conclusion for me and I shall certainly have to find you an earldom before I present you to my new queen!”
    In high good humor he dismissed them all, remembering to soften the losing Duke’s moroseness with a jest and to commend Wotton for his pains. But when all of them were gone except Suffolk he let fall the mask of omnipotence with which he faced his world.
    “It’s all very well for them, with their everlasting party squabbles,” he grumbled. “But I’ve got to live with the woman!” He carried Anne’s miniature to the light and seated himself on the wide stone window seat. “I would have preferred her a little younger—a shade more vivacious, perhaps,” he muttered broodingly.
    Suffolk, turning over a pile of new songs at the table, lowered his handsome head to hide a smile. It occurred to him that the lady might feel the same way about him. But, as always, he was touched by the urgent need for reassurance in the King’s off-duty voice. “She looks comely, and amiable,” he said. Long ago, even before he became the King’s brother-in-law, he had determined never to lose his own integrity by saying what Henry wanted him to. All the same, he recognized Holbein’s cleverness in attempting nothing grandiose, in painting Anne of Cleves as he saw her each day in her own home. The painting he had sent was essentially the portrait of a capable gentlewoman and as such was bound to appeal to the desire for sympathetic understanding and domestic comfort in a much married, middle-aged man with an over-sensitized ego.
    “The pink and gold of her against that celestial blue!” sighed Henry, as much in love with the artistry as with the woman.
    Suffolk stopped grinning and looked across at him with impatience. He had so often been called upon to witness the rising tide of the Tudor’s tremendous enthusiasms and then left to clear up the ugly wreckage left by their inevitable ebbing.
    “But only two inches of vellum on which to stake all your happiness!” he pointed out. “With the others, you knew them, saw them almost daily, first.”
    “And could I have been more deceived—in the second?” demanded Henry, his voice sibilant with self-pity.
    There was no answer to that.
    “Besides, this is different,” he went on. “With a diplomatic marriage one doesn’t expect—”
    “But that’s just the trouble. You do expect—everything…You know you do, you incurable old optimist!” Suffolk threw down the songs and came and sat beside him. “If you were content to consider it just as a thorn in the side of Francis and the Emperor it would be all right. You wouldn’t be risking a domestic tragedy if she disappoints you. But already you’re trying to turn it into a romance.”
    Henry laughed sheepishly and set down the exquisite little casket between them. “I suppose I am,” he admitted, and sat there with his hands loosely clasped between his knees staring abstractedly at the square toes of his great slashed shoes. Sunshine and stained glass conspired to bring out the warm lights in his thinning, reddish hair. When he looked up there was something at once gallant and pathetic about his forced smile. “I do so want it that way, Charles,” he confessed. “Just once before the fires of my manhood go out.” It was the best part of Henry speaking. All that was left of the adventurous knight, the ardent lover. “You’ve been married three times, Charles, and always happily. There’s peace and homeliness in your house. Something I envy every time I come. How do you manage it?”
    Suffolk might have said that he didn’t create dreams of ephemeral perfection and then expect his wives to live up to them. But he didn’t answer immediately. It was his turn to sit and stare abstractedly.
    “Two marriages,” he corrected softly. “And a brief taste of Heaven—with your sister.”
    Henry