Free Dear Heart, How Like You This by Wendy J. Dunn Page B

best of men?”
    Anne laughed softly, lying gracefully and carefully on the grass. Her head rested on a hand as she gazed with eyes full of dreams at the clear blue sky.
    “Hal Percy,” she said softly. Those two words were said with such a depth of feeling I began to feel sick with jealousy.
    “Oh, Tom,” she said, rolling on her stomach and looking up at me with cheek leaning against a hand, just as she would do as a young child.
    “Hal is all I ever wanted. Gentle, sensitive, full of humour and pranks. He is so very, very beautiful. I just love to sit where he cannot see me and gaze at him and know him to be mine. All mine! I really do not know, Tom, why he loves me. I am so skinny! I do not believe I will ever grow in the places a woman is supposed to grow.” Anne sat up, placed her hands on her small breasts, shook her head, and laughed. “But Hal doesn’t care! He says I am all the woman he has ever wanted. The woman he wants to be his wife and the mother of his sons. Cousin, fortune has been so very good to me.”
    Inwardly I groaned. From the time of my thirteenth year I had known there was only one girl for me, yet circumstances and fate always saw fit to rob her from me.
    Determined not to show Anne any of my true feelings, I calmly (as best that I could) continued talking.
    “Hal Percy. Your father will be pleased. The heir to Northumberland no lest. But my father told me years ago that an arrangement for you had been made with the Butlers of Ireland?”
    Anna remained silent for a time. When I gazed at her, her face seemed tight with thought.
    “Anna?” I asked.
    She looked at me, picking off strands of grass from her dress and shrugged.
    “Yea, cousin, father still hopes to marry me to James Butler. It is the one sure way he knows to make sure that he procures what is his… but I hope he will see that to gain Hal Percy as his son-in-law will be the greater gain. Everything is very secret at the moment. Hal wishes us to wait until he has spoken to his mother, so she can speak for us to his father. I know I am no great prize for the heir of Northumberland, though Hal thinks otherwise. His mother, Hal believes, will be understanding and help us gain our great desire.”
    Nearby bells tolled, telling of a new hour now upon us. Anne got up, thoughtfully shaking off the grass from her dress. I stood too.
    “I must go Tom… I have been asked to play my lute and sing to Queen Catherine… I’m so very glad you are here, Tom; it will be so good to practice our music together like we used to as children.”
    With that she kissed me gently on the lips, and instantly sped off in the direction from which we had come, leaving me standing there alone, looking after her rapidly diminishing form.
    *
    Anne proved good at her word. For certes, over the next few weeks we did have many opportunities to make music together. But not alone. No, never alone. For at these times a tall, slender, dark-haired singer accompanied us. A young man whose dark blue eyes rarely left the form of Anne. Indeed, Anna’s eyes were likewise engaged, forever seeking out his.
    Painfully, I admitted the truth to myself: Anne and Hal were both struck by the same arrow. The Lord Harry and Anne were so much in love that the vibrations of their feelings almost conquered the vibrations of the music we made together. So much in love they were completely absorbed in one another. So much in love they were totally oblivious to the fact I played my lute only through a barrier of bitter pain and jealousy.
    But I could not really begrudge Anne her happiness—and she was so happy she brightly shone with its inner glow. Rather, I knew I could not offer her anything she would not rather gain with Hal. So, I took what there was for me to take: an occasional moment in Anne’s company, even if this company included that of Percy.
    One early morning I went with them out riding—so early in the morning the frost lay heavy on the grass and mist rose in heavy