Queenbreaker: Perseverance (The Queenbreaker Trilogy Book 1) by Catherine McCarran

my advantages, my music, poetry, dancing, and needlework were yoked to the
cart of my one and only living purpose: a good marriage. And where once they
might have counted for very little against those of Mary Howard and Margot,
cousin Anne had turned the standard on its head.
    Could
I marry a king? Not our Henry, of course, but why not the King of Scots? I now
knew his half-sister. I must consult Madge. Would I find Scotland agreeable?
Would I mind living so far away from my kin? Was King James handsome as I was
told King Henry had been in his youth?
    A
crown. I wanted one too. Is it a sickness of the Boleyn female, I wondered?
What if I hated Scotland? Could I remain at the English court as Queen of
Scotland? I would hold the same status as cousin Anne. Would she hate me for
it? I might.
    “Mary
Shelton!”
    I
jumped.
    “Are
you addled?”
    Madge
towered overhead, casting me in her dark shadow.
    “The
Queen has gone to hear Mass. Why do you dawdle?”
    I
leaned around her. Sure enough the Presence Chamber was almost empty. Even the
musicians had gone.
    “They
forgot me,” I marveled.
    Madge’s
knuckles rapped the top of my French hood. “You forgot yourself, mistress.
There is only one lady, court and King wait upon.” Her eyes raked me. “I warned
your mother. You are not suited to Court life. You should have been raised here
from a child like Lady Margaret Douglas and the Lady Mary Howard—they
understand what is expected of them.”
    Mayhap
it was the abrupt end to my musings, mayhap the cold partridge Madge had shared
out to break our fast—I hate cold bird—had undone me, but I felt my
temper ripping free of my mother’s carefully stitched restraints.
    “They
are fortunate then in their breeding. Had I been born a Douglas or Howard, I
should be what they are now. As it is, I am only a Shelton out of a Boleyn.”
    Madge’s
eyes thinned in the same chill way my mother’s did whenever I grew pert.
    What should I do? What would Margot do?
    Heart
missing every second beat, I raised my chin just enough to look down my nose at
her flinty face.
    Madge
snorted. “Aye, I see the Boleyn in you. I doubt I am the only one. Now take
yourself to Mass.”

Chapter Eleven
    Greenwich
Palace, Greenwich
    April
1533

 
    Mrs.
Marshall, Mother of the Maids, culled me from the crowd streaming out of the
Chapel Royal after Mass. She looked exactly as Madge had described: pinched
face, silver-gray hair, sharp, cat-green eyes that could probably see through
the dark. Her whippet thin frame sliced through the gaggle of junior ladies
straight for me.
    “Follow,”
she said.
    Caught
mid-curtsey, I fell a full three steps behind her. She never turned around and
the distance between us grew. How would I ever explain losing her?
    I
hiked my skirt and ran. I caught her up at the top of a stairwell that took us
to the second floor.
    “You
will share lodgings with Lady Joan Percy and Mistress Elizabeth Holland.”
    Lady
Joan Percy must be a member of the Percy family who were the Earls of
Northumberland. Elizabeth Holland or Bess (as the whole world knew her) was the
Duke of Norfolk’s mistress. What would Mother say of my lodging with a whore?
    My
foot tangled on my skirt, sending me bumping against the wall.
    Mrs.
Marshall didn’t slow. “Keep up Mistress Shelton. I have a dozen other things to
attend to this morning.”
    I
clutched my little Book of Prayer in both hands.
    Jane Seymour is a witch. And so is Mrs.
Marshall.
    Mother
had warned me. Mrs. Marshall had only received her place to please her cousin
Lady Bridget Wingfield. Lady Bridget, one of Anne’s oldest friends, had served
with her in France when Mary Tudor was Queen. There were other ladies proposed
for the post—all better bred, better looking, better deserving, but Lady
Wingfield’s friendship had prevailed.
    “Here
is your chamber.”
    Mrs.
Marshall tossed open the door. Two narrow windows illumed a room smaller than
my chamber at Shelton House. The whitewash