A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews and alerts. Here is next chapter. Enjoy!
To Anne, the three hour train ride had compressed itself into the blink of an eye. By the time the train stopped at Boston's South Station, she had learned a great deal about Henry and she had given some things to chew on. She didn't reveal everything to him, however, because some things had to be kept back from him so that he would ask for her number or her e-mail address. He did and she gave them to him. He then asked her where she was staying and she mentioned the name of a small hotel in the theater district. "Don't stay in that dump," Henry said as they got off the train onto the platform. "Come to Whitehall. We've got plenty of room."
"I'll think about it," Anne gave him a shy smile.
They walked away from each other in opposite directions. She watched as he marched towards a uniformed limousine driver and a porter whom he greeted with firm handshakes The three men began moving and then Henry slapped both of them on their backs. It was a sign Anne knew well. It was the same thing that her father did back home when she and Mary accomplished something that he could be proud of.
She turned around and continued walking through the station carrying her bag in her right hand. She felt blood rushing towards her face, her carrying her forward, and her eyes looking at the signs for the one that would leave her to the street level above. Yet her mind was still fixed on him. Although he was probably a mile away from her in a penthouse suit with his wife, she couldn't rip herself away from him no matter how hard she tried. Her mind was obsessed with his oval face and those blue eyes that kept drilling into her body towards her very soul.
She marched up the escalator towards the street above. She managed to find the hotel, told the clerk her name, received a key, and then marched towards her room.
It was small and smelled of a cigarette smoke. The window looked out on a brick. The telephone was disconnected from the single wall jack and the television took five seconds to turn on.
She took off her clothes, opened her bag, and took out toiletries. She marched towards the bathroom, turned on the light, and locked the door behind her. She turned on the water and filled up the tub. When she lay down in it, it scalded her skin. Her slowly closed, her mind wandered towards Whitehall as the heat entered her every pore and caressed her Medusa-like locks.
She imagined herself standing in the middle of one of the numerous she had seen in travel magazines. The wallpaper was a combination of mauve and navy blue, a canopy bed in the center with Egyptian linen and a navy cover that matched the wallpaper, a dressed made out of mahogany which neatly framed her.
She forced herself to touch every object in this daydream. To feel the smoothness of the wood underneath her fingers, to see her reflection in the mirror, to brush her own hair there. Yet she could see the dream slowly dying as she opened her eyes. She was still lying in the same bath tub in that hotel.
She smiled as she drained the water and showered. She kept replaying her dream over and over. As she dressed, she kept rearranging the furniture as if she were playing a computer. Instead of a canopy bed, she would have a sleigh bed. Rather than a boring mahogany dressing table, she would have something even more extravagant and she would have him. That was the most important thing. She would have him and he would have her and they would be happy together.
As she powdered her face and curled her eyelashes, however, she realized that possessing Henry was a goal that seemed almost as impossible as climbing a Himalayan. Before she could every claim him as hers, she would have to overcome one obstacle after another. There was the wife, Katherine, to whom he was still attached because she reminded him of his long dead brother. There was the little girl, Mary, whom she would also have to win over. Let alone his parents, his friends, his advisors, and everyone else that mattered.
All at once, as she zipped up her navy blue dress and put black headband in her hair, she realized that securing the prize was much more difficult than either he or she had ever imagined. She was a lone Boleyn woman, the daughter of a London judge, who was competing for the heart of one of the richest men in the world. She hoped that she would be able to claim him, but she needed a plan.
She tossed the idea around as she stood in the elevator. She moved it around like a pinball from gate to gate and hole to hole. She schemed, she planned, she visualized. Yet neither forcing Henry to murder his wife or doing something else as dramatic would work. All of this required stealth and secrecy and then, little by little, she would batter all of his defenses and obstacles until there was none left.
She walked towards The Elephant and Castle as these thoughts finally drifted out of her mind. She opened a glass door and entered a room that seemed to have come out of someone's macabre nightmare. Everything inside was pure darkness except for the candles that flickered on the tables. She could see the silhouettes of the waiters and waitresses as well as the customers, she heard their voices. However, she could not completely make out the tone of their conversations.
She walked up toward the host, a tall Middle Eastern man with curly hair, and told him that she was meeting Thomas Howard.
He led her towards a VIP room in the back where a tall, dark-haired man was puffing on a Dominican cigar.
"Uncle Tom," Anne greeted as she sat down across from him.
"Ah, there you are!" Thomas smiled in recognition. He leaned over the table and planted a wet kiss on her cheek. "I almost thought that you wouldn't come."
"I'm sorry. I had to switch trains."
"Switch trains?"
"Yes. The one I was supposed to take from Pennsylvania Station here was delayed in Washington. I transferred to the express."
"And how was the express."
"It was excellent. They upgraded me to first class."
"Ah," the old man's eyes widened. "I suppose you got one of those cushy leather seats with a cup holder, eh?"
"Yes and I met someone."
"You met someone?" A tinge of sarcasm entered his voice. "Isn't that lovely?"
"Yes, it is," Anne whispered through her teeth. "As a matter of fact, it was Henry Tudor."
"Henry Tudor? How on earth did you manage that?"
"It was an accident. He just happened to be in the same compartment as me."
"Oh, I'm sure that Henry Tudor didn't just happen to be in your compartment, Anne. He's not stupid. He probably saw you getting on the train, followed you, and decided to take his seat in your compartment. He's not stupid, Anne."
"I know he isn't. We had quite the conversation on the ride here. As a matter of fact, he invited me to stay at Whitehall."
"The Whitehall Hotel?"
"Yes."
"Then why didn't you go?"
"Because," Anne hesitated. "I suppose because I didn't want to be too much of a bother."
"Too much of a bother," Thomas chuckled. "What kind of a bother would that be?"
"The man is married," Anne hissed. "I would get in the way of his marriage."
"So much the better. He hasn't had sex with Katherine in months. He doesn't love. You might as well go up there and…"
"And be turned into the laughingstock of the family? The little Boleyn girl that became Henry Tudor's whore."
"I didn't imply that," her uncle backed up. "I was actually thinking of something different."
"Like what?"
"Well," Thomas stroked his grey goatee. "You are a journalist and there are newspapers that are willing to pay you good money…"
"No thank you, Uncle. I don't write for the tabloids."
"Oh come on. You could tell the whole world about what goes behind the closed doors of Whitehall and the world would get a kick out of it. Imagine how famous you would be once the scandals got out."
"You mean infamous, Uncle?"
"I'm only saying that it would be good for your career and the family."
"Did you talk to Dad?" Anne asked as she blanched in surprise.
"He called this morning."
"And what did he tell you?"
"Well, he told me that you're perfectly miserable in your freelance job."
"I'm not poor."
"No, but you're not rich either. If you go and report on the happenings at Whitehall, you could make good money and, in the end, you would be happy."
There was something tremendously convincing in her Uncle's words. As he continued to explain the plan in the dim candlelit interior of the restaurant, she began to understand that it would be a fool proof way to meet Henry, talk to him, and, eventually, win him over.
That night, as she walked back towards the hotel, she felt elated. As she threw herself on her bed, she pulled out her telephone and typed out a text message to Henry: "Where are you? I want to talk to you."
As soon as she pressed Send, her blood rushed to her head. "What on earth am I doing?" she reproached herself. "What if he has forgotten about me? What if he is with somebody else?"
The thought tortured her for what seemed like hours. It flew around her mind like a moth. It disturbed her as she looked at the latest design in her issue of Vogue. Every time she saw a woman in a flowing white nightgown she would imagine Henry lying in bed with someone else. Perhaps, it was Katherine. Perhaps, it was some cheap hooker that his driver had installed in his limousine so that he could amuse himself as they made their way towards Whitehall.
She knew a great deal about these nagging doubts and this guilt which seemed to stain every part of her soul. She had been born and raised in the Catholic Church. Her father had sent her to St. Anne's, a boarding school outside of Paris, where the Dominican nuns wore long black and white habits and instilled into their charges a sense of order.
She remembered how she and her classmates would sit in the hard pews on Saturday afternoons, their hands on their aquamarine tartan skirts, while the nuns sat on thrones on either side of them. One by one, Reverend Mother would call each of her charges to stand in front of the chapel facing a marble altar surmounted by a life-size crucifix with a Christ who was so beaten and bloody that not one of the girls ever dared look at him when they knelt down for Communion.
As each girl knelt on the hard marble floor, Reverend Mother would turn towards the nuns and ask them, "Of what do you accuse this young woman?"
One by one, each of the nuns would make her accusation. Mother Catherine regularly pointed out the girl's patent disregard for biting her nails, bespectacled and arthritic Mother Agnes mentioned how she had quarreled with her in class over evolution. After each nun had had her say, Reverend Mother would give the girl a penance: scrubbing the hallways of the school with a toothbrush, ironing the priest's vestments for the week, working with Mother Sophia in the laundry room where the temperature was routinely in the nineties or the hundreds.
This chapter of faults was supposed to make the girls aware of their imperfections, but it turned more than one into a narcissistic, obsessive neat freak who observed every rule to the letter and then indulged herself on the weekends whenever the nuns had their backs turned by smoking marijuana in her bedroom or going out to Paris for an evening and returning at an obscene hour in the morning without notifying Mother Marie, the house mother, that she would be out of the house.
Anne remembered all of this, but more than anything she recalled how every time she committed the least demerit, the guilt would stick to her. Until she walked into a confessional and told the priest her sins, it would become an extension of her own physical makeup. A mark that she wouldn't be able to wash away no matter how hard she tried, something a though that constantly kept reoccurring until she finally shoved it away by telling someone else about it.
Lying on her bed still fully clothed, she kept looking at the white screen of her telephone and wondered if he would ever call. The phone buzzed softly and a white enveloped opened up on her screen reading: "I'm almost there. What is your room number?"
She rose from the bed and went to the small upright mirror on one of the walls. She tied her hair behind her head and applied some more luscious red lipstick. She went to her bag, retrieved a velvet jewelry box, and put on an antique sapphire ring that had belonged to one of her ancestors who had been a king's mistress five hundred years before. Anne's mother claimed that it was good luck charm; Anne didn't in the least believe her.
As she put it on, she heard someone knock on the door twice. She hurried and looked through the peephole. He was standing there completely alone with his suit coat thrown over his right hand.
She opened the door quietly and closed it silently behind him. Before she did so, she placed a "Do Not Disturb" sign.
"Well," Henry said surveying his surroundings and sitting down in the only chair. "You asked for me and now you have me."
"Thank you for coming to see me," Anne sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry if it was rather short notice."
"That's fine," Henry nodded. His tone betrayed his amusement with the situation. "I didn't have anything better to do."
"Would you like something to drink?" Anne asked as she opened the mini refrigerator located on the same wall as the bed.
"Do you have any whiskey?"
Anne looked through the small bottles on the shelves and shook her head no.
"Beer then?"
She pulled a small green bottle of Warsteiner out and handed it to him. He poured it into one of the glasses and gave her a slightly sarcastic glance. "I shouldn't have called this place a dump," he noted. "They have exquisite taste in beer."
"I'm afraid that's all they have taste in."
"Clearly," he scanned the yellow, peeling wallpaper and sniffed the air. "You don't deserve to live in a dump like this."
"I'm not going to be here long. Only three days or so and then…"
"And then?"
"I will go back to New York. I'm only here for an interview."
"Don't go back to New York so soon," Henry implored her. "Stay a little while longer. Amuse yourself. Amuse me."
"My apartment is in New York. My work is there."
"You said you were a freelance journalist. You could do your work anywhere, couldn't you?"
"I suppose so," Anne shrugged indifferently.
"Then why don't you do it from Boston."
"Because I can't."
"That's an awful excuse," Henry scoffed. "Only children use because to get away with things."
"Well," Anne pursed her lips. "There are certain other things that I have to consider."
"Such as?"
"For one thing, it would be much easier to travel to other places from New York than Boston."
"Please," he rolled his eyes. "We have one of the finest airports around."
"All right then," Anne smiled. "I think that the intellectual climate would be better for me down there."
"We have universities with vast libraries here, Miss Boleyn. I'm sure that they would be more than willing to accommodate your taste in literature."
"If things are as you say," Anne lied knowing full well that they were and staring him straight in the face. "I was wondering if I could have suite at Whitehall."
"Done," Henry answered. "You can have any that you want. You can even have mine."
"Also, would it be possible if I did some reporting on Synergy for some of the larger national newspapers while I was there?"
"I don't see why not," Henry nodded. "Although all of that doesn't go through me."
"Really? Who do the journalists talk to?"
"Wolsey."
"Wolsey?"
"Yes, Wolsey. He's actually chairman of the board at Synergy. Runs the thing all by himself. I just sign off on things, travel around the world, and do the usual things. Sometimes, I hire and fire people. Wolsey does much of the company work. You can talk to him and I'm sure that he won't be able to resist you."
"I'm sorry," Anne smiled, "but are you able to resist me."
"I don't know," he moved towards the bed. "Are you?"
He leant in to her and kissed her on the cheek. At first, she recoiled slightly. Fear paralyzed her every limb. She didn't move. Instead, she allowed a moan slowly to escape from her lips and disappear into the air.
He moved in closer to her kissed her on the neck. He moved down to her collar bone. He placed his hand on her thigh and moved his head down towards her stomach.
With each kiss, Anne felt herself being pulled closer and closer to him. She allowed him to move her body like putty. She didn't offer resistance. She didn't scream. She didn't yell because it was what she wanted. From time to time, she would smile at him and he would smile back at her. She would softly moan his name and he would repeat hers in her ear like an incantation. As their voices became intertwined with each other in a ceaseless duet of soft constants and syllables, their limbs joined together until they formed the four roots of a tree.
Eventually, they fell asleep on top of each other. She heard his heart beating like a hammer against her ear, while he felt hers softly pulsating against his chest.