The Virgin's Daughter (20 page)

“I suppose that is why you were at the inn the night you…fell ill?”

“Perhaps I was merely looking for adventure.”

Her lips curved and the atmosphere turned from tense and suspicious to tense and…playful? Flirtatious? It lightened his heart, though perhaps that was only the relief of sharing a secret that not a soul other than Walsingham had known. “Poor Charlotte. She thought she was bringing you here for romance. How disappointed she will be when you leave Blanclair with your heart intact.”

“Who says my heart is intact?” Those uncanny eyes of hers did not waver, fixing him with a gleam he had last seen faintly when he’d laid her down on her sickbed.

His own eyes narrowed, though his heart stuttered. “There are some things about which a Frenchman never teases. Hearts are one.”

“Julien,” she said softly, so that he had to tip his head closer to hear her. “Do you remember what you said to me the first day you took me riding?”

I have never in my life kissed a woman who has not asked it of me
. He remembered. He remembered the gloss of her dark hair, the gleam of her pale skin in sunlight, the organza partlet that covered her throat and shoulders, almost but not quite see-through…

She took a step, and then another, until he could feel it when she breathed out. “I’m asking,” she whispered. “Will you kiss me, Julien?”

He had not kissed a woman like her since Léonore. He’d had a lot of practice since then and thought himself hardened to feminine charms, using them to his advantage and enjoying the process without ever being swept away, but he was lost the moment she touched his cheek with her hand.

With all the skill he could remember to muster, Julien kissed her. And then he completely forgot every skill he possessed and simply let instinct guide him. Instinct—and Lucette’s innocent warmth. If he hadn’t already been certain she was a virgin, he’d have known it from the way she kissed. There was little experience there, and even less deception.

At some point Lucette drew back enough to whisper, “I don’t know if I’m brave enough for this—”

“Then I shall be brave for the both of us.” He cupped her face in his hands, smoothing the skin across her cheeks with his thumbs, and studied those bright blue eyes for a sign to stop.

But then, belying her words, Lucette kissed him once more and Julien’s last clear thought for some time was, Perhaps Charlotte will get her way after all.

—

After two nights at Portsmouth, the royal procession to Hampton Court was stately but not especially leisured. There was no reason to linger along the route, seeing as Philip and the Spanish had never been all that loved in England, and now that he was about to divorce their queen, why would people turn out to cheer? They did come out for Elizabeth, of course, and Anabel was warmed by the response she herself received. She had traveled so rarely in her mother’s company that she never failed to be thrilled by the love that poured out of the English people to their monarch and her daughter.

A good lesson, she marked, that however calculating her mother might be in person, she had the gift of inspiring her people and holding their love.

They rode into Hampton Court on June 28, where Lord Burghley and Walsingham waited with Elizabeth’s council to greet them. Though Anabel found this particular palace a little old-fashioned, it certainly showed its best with the red brick warmed by neat turf and a riot of wildflowers and more exotic blooms. They dismounted outside and walked across the moat bridge in procession. Anabel
looked up with fondness at the King’s Beasts that lined the bridge. As a child she had loved the whimsy that peeked out from behind their sometimes grotesque features—even when Kit claimed that the stone beasts came to life at night and gobbled up unfortunate children.

After a brief welcome, the English and Spanish parties went their separate ways into different wings of the palace to rest and prepare for the night’s public festivities. Tomorrow would begin the tedious and delicate diplomatic dance of ending one generation’s marriage and preparing for the next.

Pippa accompanied her to the chambers that had once been Elizabeth’s, and Anabel impatiently dismissed the other ladies. She admitted only Pippa into her bedchamber, where her friend helped her out of the tight overgown for riding. Perhaps not quite fair, for Pippa could not change or wash until Anabel dismissed her, but who ever said that being friends with royalty was fair? And just now Anabel needed her friend’s particularly intuitive brand of advice.

“So,” she said, throwing herself inelegantly into a chair and impatiently motioning Pippa to do the same, “who am I going to be betrothed to by the time my father leaves England for good?”

“You’re certain you’ll be betrothed?”

“As good as.” Anabel shifted impatiently and stretched. She looked up at the corniced ceiling, pretending an indifference she didn’t feel. “What are the odds my father will agree to James of Scotland?”

Pippa was silent, and Anabel took heart. Sometimes Pippa was quick and charming, but whenever she took her time it meant whatever she said would be truthful. Not just honest, but truth of the kind that John Dee offered.

Finally Pippa spoke. “In the end, Your Highness, it will only be your father’s decision if you choose to let it be. Possession, as they say, is nine-tenths of the law, and King Philip does not possess you.”

“So it is my mother who will get her way on my marriage in the end. I suppose I knew that all along.”

A long pause, the kind that made Anabel’s skin prick and kept her eyes turned away so as not to spook her friend. Then Pippa said slowly, “I did not say that. I rather think it will be you who gets your way. If only you can decide what that is.”

Anabel caught her breath, and swung her gaze to Pippa. “Are you saying that my husband will be whomever
I
choose?” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me who it is I’m going to choose?”

Just like that, Pippa lost her air of otherworldliness and her impish grin made her once more a girl. “Where would be the fun in that?”

Anabel studied her friend, the dark blonde hair with that single streak of black framing her face, the green eyes deep and knowing, dressed in a riding gown the colour of the midnight sky. Pretty, polished, self-sufficient…outwardly unremarkable in a court teeming with pretty and polished women.

But inwardly? Anabel could never quite make up her mind. Was Pippa truly visionary, or just very skilled at reading people and guessing their hopes and dreams?

Anabel supposed there was wisdom in people being left guessing. It was one thing for a scientific, respected man like John Dee to speak guardedly of what his star charts told him, but for a woman—especially a young and pretty woman like Pippa—the word
visionary
could all too quickly turn to the much more dangerous
witch
. No child of Minuette Courtenay would ever be so careless as to hand an enemy a weapon against herself.

“All right.” Anabel stood and straightened herself. “Go rest and make yourself beautiful for tonight. I shall need you to keep Brandon Dudley occupied later so my mother doesn’t grow too complacent in her plans for mischief.”

“Does that mean you have your own plan for mischief?” Pippa teased.

“I rather think Kit will be all too happy to aid me in mischief-making. You shall see.”

After all, what was the use in having friends like Kit and Pippa if you couldn’t count on them to fall in with all your plans? Anabel wouldn’t mind discomfiting her mother and making her father pause. If Pippa was right, then she would end by choosing her own husband. And she could not envision a future in which that choice would be James VI of Scotland.

—

“Stephen,” Mary Stuart asked, “tell me, are you very close to your mother?”

The young man had a way of slipping out of direct answers. “What do you consider ‘very close’?”

She pouted prettily over her embroidery of a ginger cat wearing a crown, her teasing jab at her cousin. Stephen was the only man she allowed into this chamber of feminine pursuits. Unlike most men, he did not seem uneasy or out of place, merely as though he were content wherever he was.

Considering his own question, she finally answered, “I mean a son who makes his mother his confidante. Who permits her access to his worries as well as triumphs. Who trusts her entirely, as the woman who gave him life and must surely be his fondest advocate.”

“I think, Your Grace, that such a paragon of a son can hardly exist. We are all human, after all, and thus flawed.”

No one could ever accuse Stephen Courtenay of stupidity. With a huff, Mary complained, “But the bond between mother and son is sacred and should not be lightly tampered with.”

There was a thoughtful pause, then Stephen ventured to address her real unease. “I am sorry that His Majesty displeases you when he writes.”

It was no great conjecture, for all Mary’s legitimate post came through the hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his men. And yes, her temper was being increasingly tried by James’s lukewarm attempts at affection. But this last letter had struck a blow that outdid in bitterness almost every other blow of her life.

“Do you know what my most unfilial son has written to me?” She asked it rhetorically; if Shrewsbury and his men were reading her letters, they were too polite to openly admit it. “He says that as I am kept captive, he has no choice but to disassociate his sovereignty with mine and must decline to treat me as other than Queen Mother.”

Stephen held his silence long enough for Mary to feel the prick of a single tear in one eye. She swallowed it down sternly. Self-pity would get her nowhere.

“That is unkind, Your Majesty. I should be sorry to cause such pain to my mother. But you must consider his youth, and that his companions since infancy have been those most opposed to you.”

It was more generous than she’d expected, and she extended her hand for Stephen to take. “Thank you,” she said. “Trust me, I know who my real enemies are and I shall not forget to add to their sins the charge of subverting my son’s love for me.”

She had already done so, writing a furious letter to Elizabeth against the boy who had transferred his traitorous affections to that bastard queen.
Without him, I am and shall be of right, as long as I live, his Queen and Sovereign…but without me, he is too insignificant to think of soaring. I refuse the claim of Queen Mother, for I do not acknowledge one; failing our association, there is no King of Scotland, nor any Queen but me
.

She had once thought to include James in the Nightingale plans, but now her wisdom in not doing so had been borne out. Soon she would have all the power she desired to take back Scotland and punish the son who had so traitorously abandoned her.

—

“No fresh concerns?” Elizabeth asked Walsingham. The two of them were closeted alone in her study early the morning after her return to Hampton Court. Last night’s reception had gone late, but Elizabeth had withdrawn after only two hours and left the younger members of court to entertain themselves. Might as well allow Anne a modicum of freedom.

“About Mary Stuart and Nightingale?” Walsingham responded to her question. “No, nothing new. That doesn’t mean I am not still sufficiently worried to press you to restrict her liberties further.”

“How much further do you suggest? Shall I bring her to London and confine her to the Tower? That is certain to send every Catholic in my realm into open revolt. And the last thing I need these next weeks is a further weapon for Philip to use against me.”

“It would not be provocative to increase the security around Tutbury. And keep her from riding out for the duration of the Spanish visit.”

Elizabeth sighed. “Honestly, Walsingham, do you expect my cousin to once again make a dash for freedom on the back of a horse? She may be a fine rider but she is no longer an especially young woman”—Elizabeth ignored the twinge that reminded her Mary was nine years younger than herself—“and she is always accompanied by at least a dozen armed men. Including Stephen Courtenay. You sent him there; do you believe he is at all likely to turn traitor now? Surely Mary’s charms are not still so great that she could twist that particular young man to treason.”

“It is the things we have not considered that worry me, Your Majesty. One cannot protect against a blow one has not anticipated.”

“Well, then, set your imagination loose and bring me your possible anticipations and I shall consider them. For now, our first concern is Spain and getting out of this marriage with as much advantage to England as possible.”

“Do you think you can persuade Philip to intervene with the pope against the Jesuit mission to England?”

“I mean to try. But I was thinking more of Anne’s future. Philip can cause trouble while he is in England. I do not want to be maneuvered into concessions that he can use against me or her later.”

“How serious are you about matching Her Royal Highness to James of Scotland?”

Elizabeth waved a hand, as though that thorny issue could be solved simply. “I am very serious about making Philip nervous. We
shall see which worries him more—a Protestant king or a Protestant English noble. I suppose Anne gave a good performance last night after I left?”

She was certain of it, for Anne had done very well in the earlier hours while her mother was in attendance. She had been seated with Brandon Dudley at dinner, and despite her protests behind closed doors, had acquitted herself with dazzling charm and smiles to turn any man’s head. It had unaccountably pleased Elizabeth that Brandon had remained steady and, perhaps, even cynical about the entire affair. Very much as his uncle Robert would have.

“If her performance was intended to flit from eligible noble to eligible noble, then she did well enough. Until she landed on Christopher Courtenay shortly after your departure. They did not separate for the remainder of the evening.”

Elizabeth laughed. “That is Anne being mischievous. And no doubt young Kit was all too ready to play the game with her. The two of them have always been irrepressible.”