Читать книгу The Sixth Wife - Suzannah Dunn, Suzannah Dunn - Страница 5

A week or so later, when I was back home, Thomas’s brother turned up at my Barbican house. ‘Cathy,’ he said, and gave me a cold kiss on the cheek, somehow both diligent and absent-minded. Offered a drink, he requested warm milk and I suppressed a smile: England’s most powerful man, sipping warm milk. Bella fetched our drinks and a bowl of roast almonds, and Ed and I spent a while exchanging the usual pleasantries and making enquiries after family and mutual friends. Not Kate or Thomas, though: my best friend, his brother. Notable absences. Looming absences.

Presumably there was something that he felt would be best said if and when we were alone. So, I suggested a stroll in the garden. I’d probably have suggested it anyway because Ed is rather dull – he’d take no offence at my saying so, it’s something he seems to cultivate – and half an hour in his company is improved by there being something else to look at. Even a wintry garden. He hunched himself back into his luxurious cape and down we went to the terracotta-tiled terrace, then further down into the garden. At the bottom of the steps he launched in with, ‘My brother’s a bloody fool.’

So much for no one knowing.

He explained that he’d learned the news from the little king, who’d learned it from Thomas himself.

‘No one’s supposed to know,’ I said.

Ed’s smile was a sneer. ‘Thomas doesn’t keep secrets about his own good fortune.’

I asked how little Eddie had taken the news.

‘Thinks it’s nice: his favourite uncle and his beloved stepmama.’ Then he dropped the sneer and worried, ‘It’s just…too soon,’ touching his forehead as if placating a pain. His velvet cap didn’t disguise that he was more grey than when I’d last seen him, which was only weeks ago. No longer greying, but grey. The same thick, sleek head of hair, though.

‘Yes, I know.’

He gave an apologetic shrug: of course I knew. But then a double-take: ‘Did you…?’ You didn’t know beforehand, did you?

‘No! No. I’d have told her…’Told her what exactly? Any number of things. I voiced my doubts, or, more accurately, my incomprehension: ‘It’s not just that it’s too soon, is it. It’s that it’s him.’

He stopped, almost smiled.‘But I thought you’d have been all for that.’

‘For what?’

‘Marrying “for love”.’ He handled the words with a show of reluctance but it was clear that he enjoyed saying it. Probably the biggest thrill he’d had in ages.

I’ve never made any secret of my opinion. And if anyone fails to understand quite why I object to arranged marriages, a good start would be to have a look at Ed’s wife. Nasty piece of work. Or, indeed, look at Ed himself: pallid and shadowed.

‘It helps,’ I said, sarcastically,‘if both parties feel the same.’ We walked on, alongside joyless, brittle lavender.

‘So, you don’t think my brother is in love with Kate?’

‘Do you?’

Wearily: ‘I suspect he’s up to his usual tricks.’

I brushed my fingertips against a rosemary bush – the dusting of flowers, tiny knots of brightest blue – and enjoyed the sting of its deep, dark scent in the air. ‘What was all that with Elizabeth?’

‘Exactly what it looked like, I should think: an attempt to marry a princess.’

‘Has there ever been any other interest in women?’

He admitted, ‘That’s what puzzles me. If it wasn’t too premeditated for my brother – who’s nothing if not impetuous – I’d suspect he’d been waiting for the princesses to grow up. We’re lucky that his faults don’t include being Catholic.’ Mary would never have him.

I said, ‘It’s Kate who’s the mystery here, though, isn’t it. Not Thomas. What is Kate doing, marrying Thomas?’ Sensible Kate. Probably the most sensible woman any of us have ever known. Strong-minded Kate, though: it did fit, in that respect. And Kate who keeps her own counsel, likewise.

Ed nodded. ‘It’s Kate I’m concerned for. You know that.’ He was fond of Kate; she was his kind of person. ‘It’s not that I’m objecting to their being married. In fact, there’s probably no one I’d rather have as my sister-in-law -’ He stopped, gave me a look that meant Besides you, of course, although he didn’t mean it – he thinks I’m trouble. I laughed, but actually something serious occurred to me. I was remembering how Kate had said cheerfully to me, ‘But I don’t have to explain this to you, do I. You of all people.’And how I’d thought, Yes, but I’m me, Kate, and you’re you. Possibly, just possibly, this was something I’d do: marry someone whom others saw as unsuitable, and marry him quickly because I considered myself in love. Even though I had never, in fact, done any such thing. Had never had to. But Kate? Had I led her astray? By giving her ideas? She’d been the one giving me ideas, all my life: that’s how I saw our friendship. It felt odd to me that it might be the other way around, for once.

As we walked past my sunless sundial, Ed broached something else: ‘If there’s an heir soon, there’d be a question as to whose,’ and he clarified, unnecessarily, ‘Thomas’s, or the late king’s.’

‘Ed, there hasn’t been an heir in all these years. She’s been married three times since she was fifteen. To men who’d already had children, so there was nothing wrong with them’

He checked: ‘So, she isn’t…?’

‘Is that why you came here? Not to talk this over – two friends putting their heads together, concerned for a mutual friend – but to try to press something out of me?’

His turn now to take offence. ‘No. No. Don’t bite my head off over this.’ He sighed. ‘It’s genuinely that I don’t know what to think. Don’t know what to make of this.’

‘Yes, well,’ I said, ‘that makes two of us.’