Shorter chapter this time, sorry. Next one will include Catherine's POV again!

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June, Greenwich Palace

Charles

The May Festivities were long over and the court would soon start its summer progress, from county to county, from one wealthy manor to another, from a banquet to a feast to a hunting trip. The Queen was no more than a shadow at her own court but Anne was as dazzling as the sun. This summer was hers and she allowed no one to doubt that. The Boleyns had risen higher and higher, there was talk of a new title for her father, an earldom perhaps, and many important posts and prestigious offices.

They were in the gardens when word reached them that the Sweating Sickness had broken out, not only in London but in all greater towns all over the country, an outbreak of hitherto unknown dimensions.

"The sweat?" Henry had gone as pale as milk.

"No doubt about that, Your Majesty." The messenger was as scared as the king, though not of illness.

Charles knew well what plagued his king: Death had always been his greatest fear. Not only for himself, no, he would leave behind no legacy and only a sickly little girl to take his throne that his own father, Henry VII., had fought for so hard and at such high cost.

"We will depart within the hour." The king decreed and Anne Boleyn at his side said nothing for once.

Only when the messenger had left, she turned to her lover: "With your leave, I will go to Hever Castle with my brother and father."

Henry nodded. "I will write to you, my sweetheart, every morning, every noon, every night." He kissed her in front of the attending courtiers.

Henry loved this lady much, desired her more than he had ever desired any other woman, but the English Sweat took precedence even over her. Instead of the great summer progress, the king would flee from the sickness all alone with only a few courtiers in attendance, would spend whole days in front of the fire that was said to ward the disease off, would eat ten oranges every day.

The last outbreak of the sweat had seen the death of William Compton, one of Charles' closest friends. This time, he prayed, the sweat should not take someone he held dear. His gaze fell upon her, more than beautiful all others in a gown of light green, her pale face gave nothing away. We will go to Suffolk. Not to Westhorpe, it is too big, has too many servants. He would use one of the small houses, perhaps one of those that had been granted to him after Buckingham's death. She might like it to be home again.

"Catherine." He called over to her. "Pack your things. Be ready within the hour." For once she did not object and put a calming hand on Talbot's sleeve.

The sweat can take him for all I care. Fate was rarely that kind though.

He sent all servants away, those that waited on her as well. It was too dangerous to return to their house in the city, the dirty streets were full of people and the Thames was stinking and slow at this time of the year. If anything happens to her… He did not want to dwell on it.

Within the hour, his things were packed and his horse saddled. She waited for him in the yard in a riding gown of sky blue silk that made her look younger and sweeter. Charles spied Francis Talbot not far from the stables but she gave no sign that she had seen him.

Charles helped her mount, savoured the feeling of her skin on his even in a moment like this.

They left the castle quickly, via the country road to the east, only the two of them and a handful of guards.

"Where are we going, Your Grace?" Her tone was almost respectful.

"Kentwell Hall. It was your Father's house once." Charles said, suddenly doubtful that she would appreciate it.

Catherine wore a fashionable riding hat that shielded her face from the sun and he could not quite make out the look in her eyes.

She said not another word though as they rode through the green fields under the burning midday sun.

They reached Kentwell before sunset, the red brick building was bathed in golden light, the shadows had grown longer by now and the air had cooled noticeably.

The house was surrounded by a moat, water lilies swam on the green water and the frogs had started an evening concert. Not far from them, a swan slid gracefully over the water's surface. It was an idyllic place, and beautiful.

"My mother loved this house." She said suddenly, and reined her horse on the stone bridge.

The servants were already in the yard, unpacking. Charles had chosen the house because it was far away from a village, there was no staff but the old man and his toothless wife in the gatehouse, a cook, two serving wenches and a handful of stable boys and servants. He had left the guards at the gatehouse, where they would sleep as well. She would not leave the property. The house and its gardens were vast and offered entertainment enough and she would be safe here, at least he hoped so.

"It is lovely." He admitted.

"It is yours." She pressed her heels into the sides of her horse and Charles was left alone on the bridge. Brilliant.

The days passed slowly in Kentwell Hall. They broke their fast together every morning, though their table was sparse in comparison to th buffets and banquets at court. Eggs and bacon and fried bread, a cup of light mead. After breakfast she walked through the gardens for hours, from one bush to another, walked along the brick wall at its end, smelled the climbing roses and the violets in the flowerbed. There was a huge, old weeping willow by the small pond and she spent her afternoons in its shade, sitting on a stone bench with a book or a quill and paper. Charles grudgingly allowed a messenger in, though the man did not come into the house but took the letters she had put on the steps and left her some in return.

She sent more letters to her friend Anne than she had ever spoken words to him, Charles noticed. Once he even saw her writing a letter to Talbot, starting with "Dear Lord Talbot". At least she does not call him 'Francis'.

Charles himself was horribly bored. He tried to read some of her books but they did nothing to entertain him and there were no musicians or games or hunts to distract him. He stared at her from his bed chamber window for an hour sometimes, to his shame, watched her reading and writing and walking. She had not complained once. She knows how dangerous the sweat is. Not even the plague was as contagious, though it was more fatal. Her brother in Flanders was in danger too, and her sisters, although the sweat rarely made it that far North. She is as safe as it gets though. He had built a fortress, like Henry always did, and the king had rarely been ill. He had sent Charles a letter too, full of useful bits of advice to keep the sickness at bay, to fight it, to ward it off. Fear clung to his every word. The Queen was with the Princess Mary now, far away from London in the cold hills of Wales. Henry had fled to Yorkshire, a draughty manor close to the coast, where the air was fresh and the people were few. Charles was not a godly man, admittedly, but he prayed every morning and every night to the mother Mary and every saint he could remember, to end the sickness and to keep the king...and them, here at Kentwell. Her.

They ate dinner together again, though she seemed to lack appetite. Only the cook's pastries and cakes could cheer her up. Soon, Charles ordered applecakes for breakfast as well, something she acquiesced in with a gracious dinner they retreated to a comfortable parlour on the first floor. There were books there, a harp and a clavichord and she played for him a few times. She did it as she did everything: With grace and expression, and without any mistake. It was maddening.

"This was my mother's." She traced the carved initials on the clavichord. ES.

"Do you remember her?" he asked, suddenly intrigued. He knew much about her father, the boisterous, arrogant, slow-witted but quick-tempered, with fine manners he did not make use of very often and a demanding attitude that endeared him neither to the king nor to his peers. His daughter Elizabeth, Norfolk's wife, had taken after her father, so had the flirtatious, witless, short-sighted Mary. Charles did not know Catherine's brother well but as he had fled the country, he took him for as much of a coward as his father. Catherine was brave though, spirited and quick-witted, charming if she wanted to be and wiser than her lord father had ever been.

"I was eight when she died." Her voice was thin in the silence of the parlour. "She was kind and had soft hands, a sweet singing voice. She always told me to do my best, to make my father proud. She was always overseeing my Latin." Now Catherine smiled. "Whenever I had done exceptionally well, she would allow me to accompany her on her morning ride. She was a skilled horsewoman, wise, soft-spoken and an obedient wife." Now, an edge had crept into her tone. She has too much of her father in her to ever be an obedient wife. That was what he liked about her. And that was also what Henry liked about his Mistress Boleyn.

"What about you? Do you remember your parents?"

"My father died when I was still a little boy but my mother lived to see me grow a beard. I have a sister too, Ann, she lives in Dorset with her husband and children." They were not at all close though. Ann was far older than Charles and had never shown any interest in her younger brother until he had risen so high in the king's favour.

She only nodded. She had two sisters and a brother, but one sister had decided to positively ignore her, apart from a few curt nods and stilted words, her brother had not talked to her since he had fled the country and the other sister sent her a letter every day, begging her for gold or land, a jewel or a house, a cloak of velvet or a saddle of leather and gold. She replied to every single one, Charles had found out, and sent her sister gold and jewellry as much as she could spare. She had reduced her own wardrobe expenses to help her sister.

They went to bed soon after moon rise, early nights and early mornings. Their chambers lay on the same corridor. Every night, they walked there together, he bowed in front of her chamber door and waited until she had closed it behind her. Tonight, she curtsied as well. The corridor was dimly lit, her eyes were large and soft in the yellow light.

"Good night, Your Grace." she said, her voice a feather.

"Good night, Catherine." She smiled when he said her Christian name, only for a brief moment. Then she closed the door in his face and he was alone with the tallow candles. She smiled. It was silly but it made him feel like a boy again, and his heart raced as if he had just played a game of tennis. He felt light-headed though and fell asleep thinking of her.

There was only awkwardness left the next morning, though: She pulled her hand back when he wanted to give her the butter and the clay butter dish fell to the floor and broke into a hundred pieces. She apologised profusely at least twenty times, though without ever looking him in the eye.

He spent his afternoon in the house once again, far away from the windows. Charles sat in the downstairs library, just off the entrance hall, polishing his sword at first, then writing a half-hearted letter to the king. His hand hurt afterwards. He had just pressed his seal, the Brandon's lion rampant on a striped field, into the hot red wax, when he heard the messenger at the door and the maid who took the letters. She knocked respectfully before she entered the library.

"Two letters for you, Your Grace." She never lifted her head but kept her eyes lowered demurely. She was pretty, with blonde hair and pale skin for a maid, and in his days as a standard-bearer's son, he would have considered to show her the haystack in the stables. Now, though, he was a duke, widower of the most beautiful princess of Christendom, warden of the most wayward, most wilful, most bewitching creature in the whole of England, perhaps the entire world, and this maid was only a daisy.

"Are there letters for the Lady Catherine as well?" he asked. These were his servants, not hers. The maid could not read, no doubt, but the messenger had sorted them into two stacks.

"Four, Your Grace."

"From whom?" He had asked the question before he had thought about it.

The maid tried to remember the messenger's words: "Two from a Lord Francis Talbot, one from a Mistress Boleyn from Kent and one from Northumberland, from a Brother Phillip."

That is not good at all.

"Good. Thank you. Bring them to her at once."

He gave Catherine half an hour to read her letters. Then he stepped out into the gardens. The afternoon sun was blinding and bright but it could not lighten up his mood. She sat on the stone bench under the willow in the corner of the main garden and seemed quite composed. When he came closer, he saw tears on her cheeks though.

Suddenly, he was not sure whether it had been such a brilliant notion. Surely, he was the last person she wanted to see. I am the only one here though. She raised her head.

"Mary is dead." Her voice was thick with grief. "The sweat took her life, hers and that of her husband and two of her children as well." Charles sat down next to her. Her eyes were swollen. Mary would not have shed a single tear for her. Catherine was half a girl still that had been forced to grow up quickly.

He felt sorry for her, although he did not share her grief, to his great shame.

Her lashes left wet traces on her skin, her eyes were swollen and there were two red spots on her cheeks. She was beautiful even in her sorrow.

Charles did not know what to do. They were not so familiar that he could take her hand. Neither could he say something like 'They are with the Lord now'. So, he just sat there silently and listened.

"Their eldest son survived, he was at the local priory to study Latin, and two daughters were spared too, a girl of five and a babe still in the cradle. Elizabeth and Katherine. She named the little one for me." There were already enough Elizabeths and Katherines to plaster a road from here to Edinburgh but Charles did not say it. Neither did he say that Mary had surely hoped for a generous gift in return.

"Poor little orphans." Tears rolled down her cheeks again and she started to sob. "They are all alone now. Their uncle won't have them all, only the boy, for the lands and income." Her voice was barely understandable.

Her fingers clutched a handkerchief of white linen, edged with pale blue crochet lace. Without thinking about, he took it from her hand and gently dabbed the tears away that covered her reddened cheeks. He realised what he was doing when she looked at him with blank astonishment in her shiny green eyes. Suddenly embarrassed, he wanted to give her the handkerchief back. Her hands lay in her lap, palms up. They were white and her veins blue, the skin soft and her fingers long and slender. His hand hovered over hers, her could feel the heat that radiated from her skin. Drawn to her like one of Thomas More's magnets, Charles's fingers grazed hers ever so lightly when he placed the kerchief in her hand. She looked at his face as if there was nothing else in the word, and he held her intense gaze. When his fingers touched hers, her eyes widened for a moment, the fracture of a moment, in surprise. Then, Charles felt her responding to his touch: Her thumb caressed the side of his hand so lightly that he almost thought it was a breeze. But all of a sudden, she seemed to be roused from thoughts, looked down at their hands, joined on her lap, and pulled her own hand back as if she had burnt herself.

She rose from the bench, her cheeks flaming red. "Thank you." she muttered and rushed off with long steps, leaving him alone in the shade of the weeping willow. Her handkerchief lay in the grass only a few steps away from the bench, she must have dropped it in her haste to get away from him. Charles picked it up, sighing. He should not have touched her. But he had never been a man that found it easy to resist temptation, and with her, temptation was so strong. It did not matter. She would never appreciate his touch, for all the things she knew about him, or thought she knew. He could put tell her the truth, but what good would it do? He would betray a friend, a king, and gain nothing. She would still despise him for all the other things, his past, his family and upbringing, his intellect and education. And he despised her too, for her haughtiness and pride. He did, truly. So why did he feel so empty now that she had left? Why was he so gravely disappointed that she had practically fled from his touch?

He was not in the mood to dwell on it. Soon enough, the sickness would be over and they would be able to flee the secludedness and each other's presence. For that was what they both wanted, wasn't it?


Lady-Finwe: Thank you! I will definitely continue!

Grace: I liked Catherine Willoughby at first, but I agree, she was just super judgemental and did nothing to ease Charles's guilty conscience. And in real life, she was like thirty years younger and betrothed to Charles's son, and that did not make for a great love story in my eyes^^.

Danielle and Lily: I am a huge Anne Boleyn fan, although I acknowledge her flaws: She was too much like Henry to make him happy forever, I fear. But I find her intriguing and fascinating.

I know that Talbot is horrible and I'm happy you all hate him^^. He won't hang around for too long, I promise. This is a kind of Darcy/ Wickham contrast ;)