He looks at my dress, particularly my stomach, before speaking again. “I must ask you, niece, are you yet with child?”
I look back at him with thinly veiled derision. He either doesn’t notice or isn’t bothered. “Not that I’m aware of,” I tell him.
He shrugs and glances purposely around the royal seating area, waving to someone farther down the row. “No matter. If you’re not, you soon will be. And you must notify me immediately when the event comes to pass.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
I’m hoping he’ll go join whoever he was waving to, but my gynecologically inclined uncle only makes himself more comfortable, crossing his arms across his chest.
“You’ve done well, Catherine. Far better than I anticipated when I brought you to court. Indeed, you exceeded all our expectations.” He smiles at me in a way that seems heartfelt, but it’s hard to trust a pimp in tights.
“If you are ever unsure of anything with regards to the king, know that you can always come to me. His Majesty’s happiness is paramount, as yours is now, to a certain degree. The higher you rise, so does your family. Howards stick together. And Howards want what is best for their family.”
“Wasn’t Anne part of our family?”
The duke looks at me with something close to morbid approval. “Remember,” he says, “the sooner you give the king a son, the safer we all will be.”
He stands and takes my hand, bowing over it before walking away. I’m a little thrown and plenty pissed off by our interaction. So much so that it takes a few seconds for me to notice that Bessie has taken the seat he just vacated.
“You look pale. Am I to assume that you’re not too keen to perform your wifely duties?”
I take in her question, and my gag reflex lodges a strongly worded complaint. “No comment,” I answer.
“If you’re nervous, I could make a tonic for you to drink. It would relax your muscles and steady your breathing. All my sisters requested it before their own wedding nights.”
I give her an astonished sideways look. Did Bessie just offer me the Tudor equivalent to medical marijuana?
I shouldn’t be surprised. In any other life, Bessie would be the department head at a thriving ER, but here, she’s an under-the-table healer with the smallest sprinkle of drug dealing. The more I consider her offer, the more intrigued I am by it—only not in the way that she proposed.
“Hey, Bessie?” I ask. “Just how good are you at making tonics?”
She follows my gaze, looking over at Henry, who is still talking to Archbishop Something-or-Other. When she turns back to answer, her eyes are fucking fearless.
“I’m very, very good.”
Chapter Six
Bessie’s room is a jewel box mixture of a brewery and a greenhouse. There’s a fire going, with an iron stand and a crossbar set up in the hearth and a hook for boiling. Different species of dried plants are hung upside-down along the windows, letting the sunlight filter in between them. She has something akin to a workbench pushed up along the wall.
“This is not what I was expecting,” I say as I keep looking over the mismatched space.
“You’re acting as if you haven’t seen my room before. Here, breathe in deep.” Bessie grabs a cup and a cylinder from her workbench and pushes them together against my chest. She lowers her ear to the end of the cup, and whatever she’s made looks very much like the starting prototype for a stethoscope.
“Do you know what that is?” I ask, amazed.
Bessie listens through her contraption before tossing it aside. “Just something I’m tinkering with. No matter. You have a rigorous heartbeat. That will help you during your obligatory nights with the king.” She fills a cast iron pot with water from a pitcher and sets it to simmer over the fire.
I look over the tools on her workbench and attempt to keep my tone casual. “About that. I was wondering... that tonic you suggested to help me relax on my wedding night... what if I wanted you to make it a little stronger?”
“How much stronger?” She purposefully doesn’t look straight right at me, instead drying her hands off with a nearby cloth.
I take a steeling breath. “Let’s assume that I want to sleep through the entire process.”
Bessie folds the cloth and places it on a chair near the fire, playing it so cool that I get the feeling this may not be her first rodeo. “I suppose I could facilitate that,” she says.
A spark of adrenaline ignites in my veins. “That’s good to hear. And the ingredients you would use... would that depend on my size?”
“I would obviously tailor the draft to your height and weight. Otherwise, the effects would be ineffective or too effective.”
