Omg NT trick or treat 🫣 pleasee
February 1536 Henry remembers the challenge, and the thrill, of Anne—she always could slap him out of self-pity, like a sheet of cold water. "Do you truly think I get to do whatever I want?" he had asked, that one meeting, that one fine June, after her self-exile, amongst the fat, jewel-toned roses of Hever, the matter in which she had finally agreed to something he had asked in one of his letters… "Sometimes," she had answered, mildly, seemingly still and impervious—imperious, even—to the rising flush of his temper, "to your wife's dismay." Jane had never voiced a word in his wife's defense, not like Anne had, of the Princess Dowager—then it must be very hard for her, she had said, softly, as he had addressed the pain and loss he felt over their lost children. He had felt a bit pricked, by that: Not hard for me? had been his thought, unsaid. And yet with Jane, it is always the same song: how difficult this must be for you, how hopeful you must be, for a prince, with a little, straying note of supercilious pleasure. And he wonders, if it would be the best kindness to marry Jane outside the circle of maidens in waiting, so that she need no more have right to residence in the maidens' dorter of the Queen's court. It is hardly fair, really, to stand his wife aside the Seymour girl…like planting a weed, next to a fulsome rose.
