The Secret Bride by Diane Haeger Page A

she was being barred from doing so. As everyone stood collected in the corridor, talking in low tones about how well matched they were, even the normally stoic Joan Guildford, Mary stealthily slipped back near to the door, which still stood open. She glanced to see her brother was already holding the Spanish princess tightly in his arms. They were standing near the mullioned window, where the sun cast a buttery halo of light upon them. She pressed her hands against the doorjamb and leaned nearer, wanting to take in every romantic word.
    “My dearest wife,” he called her in a husky tone before he pressed a gentle yet sensual kiss onto her lips. “I have missed you. But you know how the king, not I, keeps us apart.”
    “I do know it, and I pray to God on my knees with each and every rise and fall of the sun that there is a way for us, Hal,” she said, calling him by the nickname that was hers alone for him. “When first I came here, I despised England for taking me away from Spain and my family. Then I hated it the more when I could not return after Arthur’s death. . . . Now I praise England with every fiber of myself, for it is the place that you are. It is the place I long with my whole heart and soul to remain.”
    Mary knew she should not be witnessing so intimate an exchange, but she could not help herself. She felt her own knees weaken at the depth of Katherine’s love for her brother, at their intensely murmured words . . . at the underlying passion between them. Would she ever know something so powerful herself? And if she did, with whom would it be?
    she wondered, as her own adolescent fantasy flared in her mind, then took hold. Certainly not the boy from Castile, with his long, gaunt face, jutting chin and owl eyes. Even a portrait painter set to flatter could not hide that.
    “Did your mother never warn you about eavesdropping?”
    Charles Brandon’s deep, firm tenor startled Mary, coming so close to her ear that she could feel his breath. Mary spun back to see him standing there with that same half smile as always, lighting his impossibly handsome face—the smile that made her angry for the confidence it bore.
    “Did your mother never warn you not to be impertinent?”
    “My mother died when I was born, my lady, just after my father.”
    By my faith! Of course . She had known that. It was why he had been brought to court by their father in the first place—why Henry said Charles struggled so hard to find his place, by marrying, and attaining ever more grand positions, because he had been left nothing and he knew he must make his own way in order to remain at court. The year before, in 1508, he had married his second wife. It was all so tawdry, no matter how handsome, or ambitious, he was, or how unfortunate his beginning. Still, Mary would never admit it, but Brandon challenged her, and it was great fun sparring with her brother’s friend. Even if he was older and too dangerously experienced for it to become anything more.
    “Well, I am greatly sorry that she was not there to teach you an adequate supply of manners,” Mary said more haughtily than she had intended. Yet she let it stand.
    “Not half so sorry as I, my lady Mary,” he responded, dipping into an overly exaggerated bow that forced her to bite back a smile.
    “I should like to meet your new wife one day, yet it seems you keep her well away from our happy functions here at court. Why is that?”
    “My wife prefers a quiet country life, my lady.”
    “And the company of your child?”
    He met her gaze directly, powerfully, as if he could answer Mary’s challenge with a single look alone. “She is a suitable mother.”
    “I should hope a friend of our future king would select no less.”
    Suddenly, she realized he had completely distracted her from Henry and Katherine, as he had meant to do all along.
    Yes, he was older, wiser—and he irritatingly reminded her that she was still only a girl. He could control her any way he