Royal Inheritance by Kate Emerson

Indeed, Hester’s tender years argued in favor of an expurgated version of the past.
    On the other hand, Hester was an intelligent child. Her lessons had begun when she was still on leading strings. Besides that, from an early age, she observed those around her and learned from what they did. It had been more than a year ago when she’d shocked her mother with an account of watching the milkmaid couple with one of the stable boys in an empty horse stall at Catherine’s Court. She had pronounced the experience “interesting” and had seemed to grasp the power of the attraction between a man and a woman even though she was still far too young to experience it for herself.
    Better to tell her all of it, Audrey decided, even the painful parts.
    That evening, Audrey joined Hester in the child’s bedchamber and sent the servants away. She tucked her daughter into bed with the pillows plumped behind her head and positioned herself at the foot, her legs folded under her. This was the way tailors often sat, their work in their laps. Audrey kept her fingers busy with a piece of embroidery but her mind was not on her stitches.
    “Tell me more about you and Father,” Hester demanded as soon as she was settled. “You promised you would tell me everything!”
    Audrey smiled. “Some of it you have heard already. There is no secret about your father’s background.”
    “Father came from an impoverished gentry family,” Hester related, happy to show off her knowledge, “but he had a gift for composing songs and writing poetry. The king admired that talent and rewarded him. Is that what giving him the commission to teach you was? A reward?”
    “I suppose it was. As a gentleman of the Chapel Royal he had an annuity of thirteen pounds, eight shillings, and nine pence and the king paid him another ten pounds a year to teach me. That does not seem a very great sum to him now that he is a wealthy man, but back then, Jack was grateful for every crumb.”
    “Were you good at your lessons?” Hester asked.
    “I had a natural aptitude for the lute. I found other instruments more challenging, but none of them defeated me. In time, I mastered the virginals, the recorder, and the viol.”
    A wicked gleam came into Hester’s eyes. “How did Aunt Bridget fare?”
    Audrey’s sister had never shown much interest in her niece, but they had met on several occasions. These days, Bridget and her husband and their son lived in Somersetshire, although she was not fond of life in the country. Her envy of Audrey was never more apparent than when she visited Catherine’s Court.
    “Bridget never learned to carry a tune or play well on any instrument. But, to be fair, she far surpassed me in her ability to perform the intricate steps of the pavane and the galliard. Her accomplishments on the dance floor eased her resentment of me and made her a trifle less likely to give me privy nips.” Those sly pinches had hurt, and sometimes they had left ugly bruises.
    “What other tricks did your sister play on you?” Hester asked. “Did she put frogs in your bed?”
    “What a notion! No, for she slept there, too.”
    Hester’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Did she pretend to trip and spill the contents of a chamber pot all over you?”
    “Hester!”
    “Well? Did she?”
    “No, she did not. Although, if I must be honest, she might have if she could have reasoned out an excuse to be carrying such a thing. We had servants to empty the night soil.” That task had most often fallen to poor, half-witted Lucy.
    “Only pinches, then?” Hester tried to hide her yawn, but sleepiness overtook her. She watched her mother through half-closed eyes.
    “Pinches and cutting remarks about my appearance, especiallythe sallow cast of my skin. Bridget’s complexion was as pink and white as that of any great lady at court.”
    “Did you go back there?” Hester asked. “To court?”
    “I did. And that sparked Bridget’s envy all over again. In time, I