Free The Boleyn Bride by Brandy Purdy Page B

glinting knife-edged with gilt, stained with Matilda’s blood and my furious tears. I kicked at them viciously, sending pages flying, scattering like the wings of a flock of frightened black, white, and gold birds.
    Thousands of words, centuries of wisdom, I in that moment rejected; I refused to squander it all on the likes of Thomas Bullen. I had spent my life learning to be perfect—for this! I felt so betrayed! I stood for a long moment, gasping and reeling amidst the ruins of my perfect life, and then I collapsed, weeping on my blue velvet bed amidst the wafting feathers of the pillows I had ripped and the gold fringe I had torn from the bedcurtains and coverlet.
    It was so unfair! I was born for far better things than to be the wife of Thomas Bullen! I deserved better than better; I deserved the best! How could life be so cruel and unkind to me when I was so beautiful? I was far above rubies and a silk merchant’s grandson!

2
    W e lingered in London long enough to attend the royal wedding, but with my own nuptials looming and Thomas Bullen by my side—gazing at me, the prize he had just won, with greedy, gloating, calculating eyes, tallying up the advantages, the prestige, and the connections my highborn pedigree would bring to him—I could not enjoy a single moment of it.
    We sat prominently amongst the privileged, as I, the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter deserved, inside St. Paul’s Cathedral and watched the gold-clad Prince Arthur and Princess Catherine, in soft, solemn voices, exchange vows, then joined the jubilant nuptial feast at Baynard’s Castle. But the food might as well have been ashes in my mouth. For once, I didn’t feel like dancing. When I must rise and leave the banquet table to take my part in the masques arranged in honor of the newly wedded couple, I felt as though some mechanics, like clockworks, were inside my body, guiding my velvet shod feet and graceful arms. My heart and head certainly weren’t in it. I didn’t even care about all the new dresses my father had ordered for me, telling me to spend whatever I pleased. Even the velvet-lined coffers the jeweler opened before me left me cold. It was as though some automated force guided my finger, compelling it to point and my mouth to utter the requisite word that as I made my selections. I was merely doing what I had to do because I had to do it. I didn’t really care about any of it.
    Even my lover’s kisses failed to rouse me, even when I closed my eyes and dreamed of Remi Jouet’s big, soft, warm, delicious dumpling of a body, still I felt like weeping, and frequently I did. I unloosed the tears and let them fall freely. I knew my time as Master Skelton’s muse was fast drawing to its inevitable end and that he would take my tears as affectionate proof that I lamented this. So I let myself have the comfort of weeping in his arms and being consoled by his kisses and the clever things his tongue could do. Sometimes it proved a good distraction, and sometimes I wept all the harder because it did not. And I feared that such pleasures would soon be forever behind me. I was certain I would never experience the like with Thomas Bullen; I doubted that clod even knew what to do with a woman.
    I felt like I had been sleepwalking through life and Thomas Bullen had awakened me with a sudden hard slap across my face. I recognized all these fantasies for what they were now—dreams destined never to come true. Were the doll maker of my dreams and I to meet again how could I even face him after my boast that I would soon be the greatest and grandest lady of the court? In truth, yoked to Thomas Bullen as his broodmare, I would be ashamed to face him. I would feel humbled in his sight. Even though I was a lady and he a tradesman, being Thomas Bullen’s bride would tarnish me and make me feel like a false coin of base metal dipped in gold paint. It was the worst blow my pride had ever been dealt.
    I took a perverse delight in slighting my affianced