Ladies in Waiting by Laura L. Sullivan

made a formidable fluttering phalanx as they marched through the palace to the waterfront.
    Like actors in the wings, they waited out of sight for their cue, then gathered up their skirts to trip down the freshly scrubbed jetty and step onto the royal barge.
    Beth looked better than she had in the years when her mother had her dressed like a freshly slaughtered kid for the marriage market. Gone were the garish paint, the false high color, the breasts hoisted to their most globular protuberance. Her face was its own clean white and pink, with a single crescent-shaped black patch perched piquantly high on her cheek. Upon entering her service, Catherine had promptly ordered Beth’s shoddily provocative gowns burned (Beth actually smuggled them out to her mother, who sold them to secondhand dealers for two months’ rent) and had a half-dozen new ones made up for her, simple and luxurious and lovely. Beth, in her weak way, had tried to refuse, but in truth she was so happy to be rid of her harlot’s costumes that she accepted the charity.
    That day she wore a draped and tucked gown in sprightly apple green and cream, the low-set sleeves gathered four times in alternating colors to her mid forearm. Beth was hardly aware of her own appearance—she was too happy to see her queen riding in triumph with the king at her side. In public, he treated her as if he were very much in love. Only those close by would notice the pained anxiety in Catherine’s face, her pathetic eagerness to please, her knowledge that she wasn’t enough for him.
    “What a fresh little bud you are,” Catherine said to Beth as she passed before her attendants.
    Flustered by the praise, Beth stumbled and caught herself just before her knee touched the ground. A collective gasp rose from the crowd, followed by a myriad-breathed sigh of relief when she recovered. Beth looked up and saw a thousand eyes on her.
    She’d never been bashful in crowds before. On the contrary, they had always been her best protection, for who, she thought, would ever notice her when there was anyone else to look at? It was only in intimate interviews that she quailed.
    Suddenly, she knew what it was to be singled out. It didn’t matter that male voices now praised her well-turned ankle (exposed briefly in the mishap) or asked who the pretty little jilt in green might be. The mere fact that she was noticed, even positively, by so many people, oppressed her so that she trembled. Zabby had to take her hand and help her aboard, where she crouched at the queen’s feet, shaking, afraid to look up.
    Mother will be out there, somewhere, watching, Beth thought. She’ll think I’m being wanton, and beat me.
    The only bad part about returning to Whitehall was that her mother would be there too. Out of their minuscule income she had taken lodgings nearby, and as a countess she had right of entry nearly everywhere in the palace—except the queen’s own chambers. At Hampton Court, Beth had been left to her own devices, for her mother couldn’t afford the hackney ride, but once they returned to Whitehall she would resume her Janus-faced persecution, pushing Beth at men while ferociously guarding her virginity, so that rather than risk her formidable wrath, Beth (and the men too) chose to do nothing at all.
    She felt the rocking, heard the dip and splash of oars as they got under way, but still wouldn’t look up. She’s there . . . but he could be too, she thought. What if this is my chance? What if I miss him?
    The more her mother schemed to concoct a marriage for her, the more Beth’s dreams were filled with Harry Ransley, the boy grown, a shadowy figure with laughing eyes, strong enough to lend her his strength. When she slept, he took her away from her mother to a remote castle. When she daydreamed, and guilt invaded her happy fancy, he took her mother too, and the woman spent her declining years embroidering before a fireplace, peaceful and content.
    Beth had never seen his grown-up