Free Mary & Elizabeth - Emily Purdy by Brandy Purdy Page A

death! It was as unexpected as it was scandalous. Who would have believed it of Kate? I had always thought of Kate as such a practical, prim, level-headed, decorous lady, altogether lacking in passion, but apparently she had hidden depths. Even though her beliefs about religion and education were newfangled and excitingly bold, I never once thought of her as the sort of woman who would fling herself into a lover’s embrace, especially not before the official period of mourning for her husband had expired.
    My dearest, darling Kat, my plump, fussy, mother hen of a governess, Katherine Ashley, and I would crouch on the window seat in my bedchamber at night, bundled in our velvet dressing gowns, and watch by moonlight as Kate crept out cloaked and veiled amidst the night blooming jasmine to the gate at the back of the garden to let him in, a tall, dark shadow stealthy as a phantom.
    He would take her in his arms, bend her over backward, and kiss her with a scorching passion that even we, sitting there watching from the window above like a pair of giddy, giggling housemaids, could feel as we tried to guess his identity. Then she would take his hand and lead him to the house and, presumably, up the back stairs to her bed.
    And with the dawn’s first faint light, when Mrs. Ashley still slept soundly, snoring in the small room adjoining mine, I would sometimes creep from my bed, the stone floor cold beneath my naked toes, making me shiver, to watch them, arms about each other’s waists, leaning into one another, as they walked slowly back to the garden gate, pausing to steal one last, lingering kiss before he took his leave, as the jasmine closed its petals for the day.
    And then came the day when it wasn’t a secret anymore. I received a summons bidding me to come to Kate’s chamber. And there he was—the rash and reckless, hotheaded and handsome, Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour of the winning smile and ready laugh. Handsome beyond words and measure, with sun-bronzed skin, wavy auburn hair, a long luxuriant beard, twinkling cinnamon-brown eyes, and a voice like a velvet glove on bare skin, he moved with a bold, larger-than-life, confident swagger that suggested he had never in his life known a moment of self-doubt, and wielded his charm like a weapon. Every woman who crossed his path seemed to succumb to that charm. Even staid and proper matrons were reduced to giggling, giddy schoolgirls simpering and blushing in his presence, with hearts aflutter and knees like butter, hanging on his every word, and men were enraptured and enthralled by his tales of adventure and derring-do upon the high seas and his dealings with the pirates who plied the Scilly Isles. He was the complete and contrary opposite of his icy, calculating, meticulous cold fish of a brother, the Lord Protector. Tom Seymour was the man every woman wanted to wed or bed and every man wanted to be.
    When I walked in he was standing before the fire in Kate’s bedchamber, stretching his hands out to the welcoming warmth of the fragrant applewood logs as raindrops dribbled from his cinnamon velvet cloak onto the bearskin rug upon the hearth.
    The moment I saw him my heart felt a jolt as if it had been struck by lightning and unaccountably I began to blush and tremble. I could not speak; my lips could not form the words to utter even a simple greeting. I felt as if my tongue had become a useless pink ribbon all tied up in tenacious, impossible knots. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why. Then he was crossing the room. His hands were on my waist and he was lifting me up high, my feet dangling uselessly above the floor. My long red hair swung down over my shoulders to tickle his face as I gazed down at him and he in turn fixed me with an intense, penetrating gaze. Then, very slowly, he lowered me, and pressed me close against his strong chest—I felt sure he could feel my heart pounding as if there were a wild, bucking horse trapped inside my breast—and then . .