Chapter 2
I fell in love with Thomas Seymour, now Baron Seymour of Sudeley, the moment I saw him. How I fell out of love with him again transformed me from na?ve child to wary woman.
Thomas Seymour was tall, strong, and athletic, with a full red beard and dark eyes that caught and held whomever he decided to turn his gaze to. When he smiled, or better still, laughed, whatever chamber he stood in warmed.
Aunt Kat and my Lady Elizabeth fell in love with him too, I saw in the softening of their faces whenever they beheld at him.
Catherine Parr had been in love with him well before she’d married Henry, and only a few short months after the former king’s funeral, she became Thomas Seymour’s lawfully wedded wife.
Seymour’s older brother, Hertford, who’d announced Henry’s death to Edward and then elevated himself to Duke of Somerset, was furious at the marriage.
He excluded Catherine from court, making his own wife the first lady in England, although Catherine, stepmother to the boy-king Edward and widow of Henry, should have had that right.
Looking back, I do not believe Catherine cared a farthing about losing her lofty position.
Court formality and playing nursemaid to a wretched, gouty, and aging man were now in her past. Catherine had landed the gentleman she’d loved for years, and now she divided her time between their large home in Chelsea and his castle in Sudeley.
Catherine invited Elizabeth to reside with her, to Elizabeth’s joy, as she was very fond of her stepmother. And so, the ladies of Elizabeth’s household, including myself and Aunt Kat, moved with her to Chelsea Manor.
In my eyes, the house was beautiful, with its many windows lighting the interior and its gardens stretching to the river, whose waters ran clean this far west and south of London. The property belonged to Catherine, bestowed on her by Henry at his death.
While I assisted Catherine’s ladies and Seymour’s gentlemen in waiting on the family at supper each night, I feared my bold gaze at Seymour would gain me dismissal. I need not have worried. All the ladies’ eyes were fixed on the queen’s new husband, and no one noticed my wanton stare.
Seymour was a man to be admired. After Edward’s coronation, he’d been made Lord High Admiral of England, which I was told meant he commanded the navy and the seas.
Seymour and his older brother, Somerset, ran the kingdom between them. Somerset, who was now Lord High Protector and flaunting it, gripped most of the power. Thomas Seymour was left to bedazzle this household of ladies, and he succeeded admirably.
Seated near him, Catherine smiled, pleased with her lot. At thirty-five, she was still stately and pretty. She drank wine, laughed, and made merry, ready to let happiness enter her life.
Uncle John had made it clear to Aunt Kat and me that he was one who did not admire Seymour.
“That man is trouble,” he said darkly one night after we’d been in Chelsea a few weeks.
The three of us had gathered as usual after the household’s supper, in a chamber high in the house, to partake of our own meal.
“Nonsense,” Aunt Kat answered. “See how fond the Admiral is of the queen. She deserves to marry for love. He is a breath of fresh air.”
“Fox in a hen house,” Uncle John muttered, then said no more of it.
Later that same night, I carried a pile of new cloth to Queen Catherine’s chambers.
Catherine liked my work and had asked me to assist her lady of the wardrobe in constructing new gowns for her as Lady Sudeley.
Catherine, for all she was a modest woman of the reformed religion, dressed well, and I looked forward to creating ensembles for her.
I had a love affair with fabric. Nothing else on earth, not even the eyes of a handsome gentleman, could make my blood sing and my skin tingle like a finely woven piece of cloth.
The moment I’d touched this velvet, I’d envisioned the perfect gown it would make for Catherine—a soft overskirt paired with a bodice of cloth of silver over an underdress of blue satin.
So infatuated was I with my velvet, that I never noticed Seymour until he was in front of me, filling the dark passage to the queen’s antechamber and blocking my way.
I started, and then warmed with pleasurable heat. First the velvet, then encountering the very handsome Admiral by himself, thrilled my girl’s heart.
I’d never stood so close to him and now realized how very tall he was. I had to tilt my head a long way back so I could take in all of him.
“Is that a pile of clothes with legs?” Seymour’s voice was muted but as rich as the velvet I held.
I curtsied, trembling, and nearly overbalanced my load. A broad hand landed on top of the pile, steadying it, then Seymour’s dark eyes danced as he peered down at me. His wide smile showed white but crooked teeth.
“What are you?” he demanded.
“A girl,” I stammered in surprise. A foolish answer, but I couldn’t stop my tongue.
“I see ’tis so. But you have the bosom of a woman. Where is your husband?”
My cheeks grew uncomfortably hot. “I am not married, my lord.”
“Ah, poor mite.” Seymour leaned over the fabric, his handsome face coming close to mine. “Would you like to be?”
I was thoroughly bewildered. Why such a highborn gentleman would even notice me—a seamstress and a governess’ niece—let alone speak to me so familiarly, was puzzling.
“I am too young to wed,” I said shakily.
“Indeed, you are not.”
Seymour moved a bit closer to me, and I backed a step. My retreat seemed to amuse him, because his smile broadened as he took another stride forward.
I repeated my glide backward. He likewise continued forward, and we moved on and on across the passageway until my heel connected with the stone wall.
“You are a woman.” Seymour’s voice dropped to a low rumble. “What is your name, lady?”
“Eloise,” I said faintly. “Rousell.”
“Es-tu francais?” he asked in curiosity.
“Non, mon seigneur.” I resumed speaking in English, as my French was sparse, though I was fluent enough to know he addressed me familiarly, or as a superior would an inferior. “My father had a French name, is all.”
My grandmother had vowed that the man’s name had been Russell, plain and simple, but he, a strolling player who’d seduced my mother with his charm, had changed it to the French spelling to make himself seem more important.
This was the story my grandmother told me after my father’s untimely death and my mother’s second marriage had caused her to lose interest in me.
“Ah, better still, a good English girl,” Seymour said. “The king, he is a good English lad, son of my English sister and the very English King Harry.”
“Yes, my lord.” At that moment, I think I’d agree if he’d said his sister had been a mad from Saracen lands.
“Where are you taking all those clothes, Eloise of England?”
Seymour’s breath smelled heavily of wine, and another smell clung to him that I could not identify—warm, sweet, and cloying. He was not drunk, but his eyes were heavy, his cheekbones flushed.
“To the queen’s chamber,” I managed.
“She is no longer the queen, you know. She is plain Lady Sudeley, my wife.” His eyes took on a strange glow. “Do you find her plain?”
“Of course not, my lord.” My eyes widened in astonishment. “My lady Catherine is most beautiful.”
“For her age, I suppose.” Seymour smiled as he said the disparaging words, as though it was a joke between us.
“She is no longer young, but . . .” Catherine had a dignified beauty that I admired. She was also kind, with a courteous manner she extended to all.
I could not decide how to express this while her new husband had me backed against the wall, smiling at me in an odd manner. I feared to offend him and be punished, so I kept silent. Gentle Catherine might grow angry at me for displeasing her beloved Admiral.
“Young, that is the thing,” Seymour was saying. “I like a young lady. What is your age?”
“Fourteen in September,” I managed.
“An excellent year. Ripe for marriage. The Lady Elizabeth, how young is she?”
“She will be fourteen as well, my lord. We were born five days apart.”
Seymour’s teeth gleamed in the half-light. “Now, there is a fact. I will remember it.”
“Will you, my lord?”
“I will. Fourteen is a woman, Eloise of England.”
Seymour reached for me. Before I understood what he was about, he slammed his palm to my left breast where it surged over my bodice and squeezed hard with his strong fingers.
In that instant, my childhood ended.
I saw myself, Seymour, the passage, and the velvet in my arms in new and brutal clarity. Lord Seymour was no longer a handsome gentleman to admire from afar. He was a man of licentious tastes, who thought nothing of accosting a girl of the household not ten feet from his wife’s chamber door.
I, small, innocent, and sheltered, faced him on quavering legs.
I’d encountered no other gentlemen in my life beyond servants, save my Uncle John and Master Grindal, Elizabeth’s tutor.
The conversations these two men had were serious and quiet, punctuated with discussions on philosophy and the scriptures, in which my Aunt Kat and Elizabeth took full part.
At Hatfield and in other houses where Elizabeth had resided, we’d never had the presence of a full-blooded male such as Seymour, a man who wanted life, power, desire.
A breath of fresh air, Aunt Kat had called him. I now knew him for a hurricane, a gale to flatten the unwary.
If Seymour forced himself upon me, he’d walk away without censure, but I’d be blamed for being loose and lascivious. Catherine would grow furious and turn me out of her house.
Even if I made Aunt Kat and Uncle John understand exactly what had happened, they likely could do nothing to help me, and I’d have nowhere to go. My mother and my stepfather, a man called Sir Philip Baldwin, did not want me in their home, and my grandmother would express her disappointment in me.