Free Tarnish by Katherine Longshore Page B

find myself inhabiting with her. It’s a nice place to be. Watched, but protected.
    I pretend I don’t hear the whispers and titters behind me as the other ladies follow. I do glance back once. Only Jane looks at me and flashes an almost-smile.
    “I must ask you,” the duchess says, the corner of her hood’s gable preventing truly confidential whispers, “are the women in France very beautiful?”
    “Do you not remember, Your Grace? You were the most beautiful woman in the court when you were there.” Flattery will surely get me somewhere with the sister of the king.
    The duchess caused a fuss in both countries when she married the aging King Louis. After a year in the Low Countries, I was uprooted and sent to serve her. Until she caused an international incident when Louis died suddenly and she ran away with the up-and-coming and entirely unsuitable Charles Brandon. Despite his title, he had no royal blood and no connections and the match brought the king’s wrath down on them both.
    I had to admire her for marrying for love—and against the king’s wishes. But the Brandons were both soon welcomed back to his circle and have been there ever since. We can all pretend the discord never happened.
    “I have certainly not forgotten the kindness of a little girl I knew there,” the duchess says sweetly. “I spoke French so poorly, and Louis had just dismissed my great friend and translator Lady Guildford. I was eighteen and terrified. And heartbroken.”
    “Yes, Your Grace,” I say. Though she hadn’t cared a whit when she left behind almost her entire entourage. Including a lonely eight-year-old girl and her dangerously pretty older sister.
    “You are all grown up now, though,” she continues. “And looking for a husband of your own.”
    “Yes, Your Grace.”
    “And not that spiteful savage James Butler.”
    I jerk to stare at her, startled.
    “No, Your Grace.”
    I can’t see her entire face, hidden as it is by her hood, but I think I see her smile.
    “I understand being forced into an unsavory marriage, Mistress Boleyn. And I haven’t forgotten your kindness. I’ll keep my eye out for a lovely young man for you.”
    “Thank you, Your Grace.”
    Why is she being so nice?
    I hear a ripple behind me. I try to catch the ladies giggling, but their faces are impassive. Jane won’t look at me at all, her eyes only on the ragged skin around her fingers.
    “In the meantime,” the duchess continues, entering the donjon through a door that opens without her even having to touch it, and flicking a wrist at the usher behind it, “you might consider some other forms of assistance.”
    We enter her private rooms, and the duchess picks up a little gilded pot of Venetian ceruse, a paint used by some to lighten their skin. She, of course, doesn’t need it. She’s so pale I can see the blue blood at her temple. She’s offering the ceruse to me.
    I hesitate. It’s said that wearing ceruse can cause teeth to fall out and hair to thin to near baldness. It’s said it can kill. Slowly.
    “It will make you look less . . .” The duchess turns a pretty pink.
    “Swarthy.”
    I hear the word, sniped from behind me, but the duchess pretends not to.
    “Pale skin against your dark hair will make you look more dramatic,” she says. “It will accentuate the blackness of your eyes. It will be like a siren’s call to the eligible men of the court.”
    My eyes are not black .
    But tentatively, I stick a finger in the paste. It smells of beeswax and feels like clay on my fingers.
    “Let me help.”
    The duchess delicately smooths some across my cheeks, over my brow, right up to my hairline. She rubs it across the skin of my neck and where my jaw meets my ear. She even covers my lips and dabs it around the thin skin of my eyelids. A prickling burn in the corners of my eyes makes me squint and blink.
    “There.”
    The duchess stands back to scrutinize me.
    “Now you need red.”
    She finds another paste and daubs my