No response other than a denial. Always courteous, always efficient, always as distant as the moon and as unresponsive as a plank of wood. I failed to rouse any response other than that of an immaculate servant who knew his position and the courtesy due to his lady. I imagined that if I had said, ‘Master Owen—would you care to share my bed for an hour of dalliance? Of even chivalrous discourse? Or perhaps an afternoon of blazing lust?’ he would have replied: ‘My thanks, my lady, but today is not possible. It is imperative that the sewers are flushed out before the winter frosts.’
Calm, cool, infinitely desirable—and utterly beyond my reach.
I tapped my fingers against the arm of my chair as we dined. It was like trying to lure a conversation out of the untouched stuffed pigeon in the dish in front of me. Bowing again, the Master turned to go. Not once had he raised his eyes to mine. They remained deferentially downcast, yet not, I thought, in acknowledgement of his status as one employed in my household. I did not think, after watching him for the past hour, that he gave even a passing nod to the fact that he held a servile position. I thought Master Tudor might have a surprising depth of arrogance beneath that thigh-skimming dark tunic. He carried out his tasks as a king in his own country, with ease and a certainty of his powers. He was…I sought for the word. Decorous. Yes, that was it: he owned a refined polish that overlaid all his actions.
I would discover what invisible currents moved beneath the courtly reserve.
‘Master Tudor.’
‘Yes, my lady?’ He halted and turned.
A breath of irritation shivered over my nape. I would make him look at me, but what could I say that would not make me appear either foolish or too particular? ‘I am thinking, Master Tudor, of making changes to my household.’
‘Yes, my lady?’ There he stood, infuriatingly straight and numbingly deferential, as if I had asked him to summon my page.
‘I have been thinking of making changes to those who serve me.’
His features remained unyielding as I rose from my chair and stepped down from the dais so that I stood before him.
‘Are you quite content in your position here, Master Tudor?’ I asked.
And at last, finally, Master Tudor’s eyes looked directly into mine.
‘Are you dissatisfied with my service to you, my lady?’ he asked softly.
‘No. That was not my meaning. I thought that perhaps you might choose to serve the Young King instead. Now that he is growing, he will need an extended household. It would be a promotion. It would allow more scope for a man of your talents.’
I stopped on a breath, awaiting his response. Still he held my gaze, and with no hint of self-abasement he replied: ‘I am quite content with my present position, my lady.’
‘But my household is small, and will remain so, with no opportunity for preferment for you.’
‘I do not seek preferment. I am yours to command. I am content.’
I let him go, infuriated by his demeanour, angry at my own need.
‘Give me your opinion of Master Tudor,’ I said to Alice when she visited my rooms one morning with Young Henry, who was immediately occupied in turning the pages of the book he had brought with him.
‘Owen Tudor? Why do you need my opinion, my lady?’ she asked, folding her hands neatly in her lap, and with something of a sharp look, as if settling herself for a good gossip.
‘I think I have underestimated him,’ I replied lightly. ‘Is he as efficient as he seems?’
‘He is an excellent man of management,’ Alice replied without hesitation, but her expression was disconcertingly bland. ‘You could do no better.’
I considered what I wished to say next. What I ought, or ought not, to say.
‘And what do you think of him, as a man?’
Alice’s smile acquired an edge. ‘I’d say he knows too much about flirtation than is good for any man. He could lure a bat down from its roost with his singing.’
‘He does not talk to me,’ I admitted sadly. ‘He does not sing to me.’
I knew he was not always unapproachable. I had seen his ease of manner, smiling when the maids passed a coy remark, making light conversation with one or another of my household. Neither was he slow to come to the aid of even the clumsiest of servants. I had seen him leap to rescue a subtlety—a device of a tiger, accompanied by a mounted knight holding the tiger’s cub, all miraculously contrived from sugar—the work of many hours and much skill in my kitchens—with no remonstration other than a firm hand to a shoulder of the page who had not paid sufficient attention. My cook would have laid the lad out with a fist to the jaw if he had seen the near-catastrophe, but Owen Tudor had made do with an arch of brow and a firm stare.
As for the women…Once I saw him slide a hand over a shapely hip as he passed, and the owner of the hip smile back over her shoulder, eyes bright in anticipation, and I knew jealousy, however ill founded.
‘Owen Tudor knows his place, my lady.’
I read the implication in the plain words. ‘Do you think that I do not?’
