“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.
Seymour had me flat against the wall, his hand still upon me. I could not twist away. Screaming would only bring the queen from her chamber to see me beguiling her husband in the passage.
As I could go neither backward nor forward, I dropped straight down to the floor. I bumped my nose on Seymour’s hard thigh, my forehead on the crease of his tall boot. The cloths fell from my hands as I went, flowing across the stones like streams of dark water.
Seymour stepped back with a startled grunt and tripped on a piece of velvet, then he snarled and lunged for me.
I scuttled out of his reach, snatched up what cloths I could, and started to run, trailing fabric. The beautiful blue velvet snaked around my ankles, and I tumbled to the floor again. Heart racing, I rolled to right myself, my hands scraping on the cold, rough stone.
Seymour stood in the middle of the passageway behind me, his lips curled in rage. Then his swift smile returned, as did the gleam in his eyes that terrified me.
I scrambled to my feet. Abandoning my precious cloth, I fled.
Seymour’s laughter followed me down the cold corridor. “Scamper, little kitten. One day, come back and find your Tom-cat.”
He continued laughing, a sound that carried down the passageway and up the stairs as I sprinted for the safety of my rooms.
The next morning Aunt Kat seized me by the ear as I emerged from my tiny chamber and pulled me to the middle of our eating room.
“Whatever came over you, Eloise?” Aunt Kat demanded. “Leaving costly fabric lying on the floor?” She pointed at the pile that now reposed haphazardly on a bench. A servant must have retrieved it and returned it here. “That velvet is as good as ruined. What were you thinking?”
I hesitated. If I told Aunt Kat the truth, I knew she’d never believe it of Seymour, as she thought him the nearest thing to perfection. To add to this, she always took the word of a higher-born person over mine.
I feared she’d blame me for enticing Seymour and perhaps even force me to relate the entire episode to Catherine. Best that nobody knew what happened but me.
“I saw a ghost,” I said in a near whisper. “It frightened me.”
Aunt Kat released her hold and darted a superstitious glance upward. “What ghost?”
“I could not see,” I extemporized madly. “I heard her screams.”
Aunt Kat shook herself. “Nonsense.”
“No, Aunt Kat. It is the truth. It came from the upper gallery. I heard her wailing and shrieking.”
I closed my mouth before I could over-embellish. I did not actually believe in ghosts, being much too hard-headed for such things, but Aunt Kat was convinced that sorcery was real and there were ghosts a-plenty. Besides which, the upper gallery of this house, dark and windowless, could be unnerving.
“Mention none of your ghosts to our Lady Elizabeth,” Aunt Kat said in a severe tone. “She sometimes has bad dreams, and I do not wish to worry her.”
“’Tis the ghosts that send her the bad dreams,” I murmured.
