Free The Queen's Mistake by Diane Haeger Page A

love, her mind said silently to her husband, dead
sixteen years already. He had been more of a companion in battle than a lover, but she missed his reassuring counsel most now. Yet she resented him nearly as much as she did her stepson, the current Duke of Norfolk, for making her a dowager. For making her feel so old.
    For making her vulnerable to young men like this.
    Francis pressed himself fully onto her, touching featherlight kisses onto her neck as though she were a mistress he actually desired. As though she were Catherine. Agnes pressed away her own sense of disgust, knowing what he likely felt by touching a woman of her years when there were so many willing girls upstairs in the dormitory. But age had its privileges. So did money and power.
    After he had pleasured her and she had done the same for him, he stood to refasten his codpiece and Agnes yawned. It was an audible sound.
    “You do not wish me to stay the night?” he asked, feigning a note of hurt.
    “I have never wished it.”
    “I only thought that perhaps now, with your granddaughter gone, a woman like you might be lonely.”
    “A woman like me?” she repeated, angry anew for putting herself in this position.
    She was useless here and slightly more than pathetic. Manipulating was the only aphrodisiac left in the world to a widowed woman of a certain age, and it had begun to occur to her only after Catherine’s departure that even that paltry joy was now escaping her.
    My house in London, she thought as Dereham smoothed back his hair, so predictable in his speed, so disappointingly like a colt rather than a stallion. He was more a bother now than the game piece he was when she knew she was sharing him with her own granddaughter behind the clueless chit’s back. Youth really was such a predictable
bore. As she watched him straighten his jerkin, Agnes realized, for the first time in years, that she missed court. She missed the danger. But most of all, she missed the sight of a man, his passion newly spent, gazing down on her with adoration rather than duty.
    London. Yes. To the city. To the activity.
    To the power.
    She would leave this boy behind because she could.
    Unlike Francis, her only duty was to herself. Pitiful fool, she thought.

Chapter Five

    May 3, 1540
Whitehall Palace
     
     
    C atherine woke to a shaft of sunlight in her eyes.
    As they fluttered open, she saw Lady Rochford looming over her, hands on her hips, gown in hand. Clearly, Jane was in no mood to tarry.
    “Well, come on then. We haven’t got all day. The queen is an early riser.”
    “Won’t the king be—”
    “I thought we made that situation clear to you yesterday.” Jane gave a small chuckle, then pulled back Catherine’s bedcovers. Catherine’s skin turned to gooseflesh as she lay in a plain cambric shift and no cap. “Bets are being placed as to how long the Cleves woman will remain queen. Other wagers have gone out as to whether she will actually keep her head if she objects to a divorce. And Boleyns do know a little something about that.”
    Catherine struggled to sit up, sunlight shining in her eyes. That seemed an oddly callous remark from someone capable of such kindness. Boleyns and Howards were indelibly joined by divorce and death.
    “They are married barely four months’ time.”

    “I am told the king calls that a lifetime. ”
    Then I am here for nothing, Catherine thought, feeling a little shiver of panic. Now that she had at last broken free, she dreaded an expedited return to Horsham, Manox, Dereham and the sour dowager duchess, which would certainly happen if there were no queen to serve.
    Jane helped her into her shift, stockings, underskirt and the new blue gown from the duke, cinching the pearl-studded bodice tightly. Catherine smoothed out the long, wide sleeves and skirts, thinking the silver thread-lined blue velvet was the most elegant thing she had ever touched. She tried not to think about the hard boning of the stomacher, which prevented