The Virgin's Daughter (21 page)

“Yes, Your Majesty. But there were definite concerns paid last night. I would say King Philip did not look particularly pleased at his daughter’s rather…affectionate behavior.”

“If King Philip knew his daughter better, he would not be concerned. Kit is merely a convenient piece for Anne to use. If it unsettles her father, all the better for England.”

Elizabeth could not deny, however, that Walsingham’s report left her slightly unsettled as well. Surely Anne was only playing. But when royals played with hearts—particularly Tudor royals—disaster tended to follow.

TWELVE

W
hen Lucette woke the morning following Julien’s surprising revelation, her body luxuriated in remembered pleasure. Desire danced along her skin as she remembered the softness of his lips mixed with the roughness of his not-quite-shaven cheeks and chin. His hands were every bit as strong and steady as she’d guessed, and her own had gone from the solidity of his shoulders to where his hair curled slightly against his neck.

But marching along with those memories, her mind demanded that she pay attention to what he’d told her before those kisses. She was inclined to believe Julien about his working for Walsingham, but that didn’t mean she thought he’d told her anything approaching all of it. And nor had she in return.

And then there was the a priori puzzle: why had Walsingham sent her to Blanclair without all the necessary information? As she’d said to Julien, that might imply that Walsingham had cause to doubt Julien’s current loyalty. Or it might simply mean that he’d told her only what he thought she should know.

But of one thing she was certain: Nightingale was a true Catholic
plot, with ties between Spain and France, aimed at depriving Elizabeth of her throne and setting Mary Stuart free. And she was also certain that Blanclair was part of that plot. Not because Walsingham had sent her here, but because of what she’d felt since her arrival. Things were not entirely as they seemed at the chateau, and she had that sense she got when she was on the verge of solving a puzzle: that all or nearly all the pieces were in her hand, and waited only for the last bit of information to tilt everything into its proper place.

Lucette spent the morning alone in her chamber, telling Charlotte she wanted to make sure she was strong enough for the upcoming ball but instead reviewing everything she’d gathered into the ledgers of her Memory Chamber. The time had come to sift out the important from the trivial, a process that she could not have explained if she tried. It was simply instinct, honed by Dr. Dee’s training in puzzles and logic and mathematics and even history. With little effort, the essential information appeared to her from among the rest.

She began with the servants.

The maids—five of them now, including Anise—who’d left Blanclair with little or no notice paid, were particularly troubling. Why would a young woman with few options for work leave a situation as stable as Blanclair? There could be a man involved, of course, a sudden elopement without wanting family to know, or a determination to seek out opportunities in a larger city. Orléans was only twelve miles off, or even Paris, which must exert the same kind of pull on French country girls as London did on English ones.

Lucette might more easily have believed any or all of those reasons if there had only been two or three maids vanishing—five was somewhat alarming. Had they come too close to a knowledge they should not have? But Nightingale was a relatively recent plot, according to Walsingham. What other secrets might be harbored here? Whatever they were, she was certain a connection to Nightingale existed.

Then there was the surly groom who apparently answered only to
Nicolas and who was noted for coming and going at odd times and with no one else the wiser. What did Nicolas use him for? And last (or first) among the servants: Felix’s tutor, Richard Laurent. He of the impeccable Catholic credentials and thinly veiled contempt for everything English. Including her. On her second Sunday at Blanclair, she had thoroughly searched Laurent’s belongings while everyone was once again at Mass and found only what would be expected of a man both religious and scholarly.

The only item that had given her pause was a religious tract written in Spanish. The contents were no different from those in Latin or French or even the English ones scattered through London, but written in Spanish? Lucette remembered that narrow, nebulous thread she’d seen in Walsingham’s notes connecting France and Spain. Other than that, she admitted that she simply did not like Laurent and the open hostility with which he treated her.

Thus far, everything mysterious at Blanclair tied itself more to Nicolas than Julien. The tutor, the groom…and even the maids. Julien might have dallied with several of them, but the last three had gone away after Nicole LeClerc’s death, and he had not been anywhere near Blanclair in that time.

Turning the mental page of her ledger, Lucette confronted the family members. Felix was out, and so was Charlotte. (Charlotte not so much for lack of opportunities at Blanclair as because her entire being was open and outward. She would make the worst spy in the world.) Neither Andry, Charlotte’s husband, nor Renaud had been absolutely ruled out of Lucette’s calculations, but she considered them highly unlikely. She did not know Andry well, but nothing about him suggested duplicity or fanaticism. Besides, would he have the power at Blanclair to make housemaids disappear? As for Renaud—well, she could as easily believe that Renaud would resort to secrecy and plots as she could believe it of Dominic. Both men were painfully honest. Whatever they did, they would do openly.

And that left, as always, Julien. Either he was part of Nightingale,
or he wasn’t. If he wasn’t, then there were further options—that Walsingham was being paranoid and checking on him without reason, or someone had been making it look to the English as though Julien were involved. Lucette knew it was impossible to prove a negative. Thus, it would be a waste of time trying to prove that Julien
hadn’t
done something. The only way was the most straightforward (that being a relative concept in espionage): to uncover evidence of actual guilt in whomever it attached to.

And do it before she went home in two weeks.

She emerged from her chamber to the chateau’s public rooms in the early afternoon, wearing a gown of lightweight silk embroidered with flowers and vines in a riot of bright colours, deliberately chosen to catch a man’s eye and attention. If her body hoped it would be Julien thus drawn to her, her practical mind was pleased enough that it was Nicolas. His face lit up with a genuine smile of warmth and pleasure when he saw her.

“Ma chère mademoiselle,”
he said, getting to his feet and coming to greet her. “How very well you are looking! We were all so sorry for your illness. Are you sure you are quite recovered?”

“All I need to complete my cure is fresh summer air. Would you care to join me?” She knew how to pose the question flirtatiously—if she wasn’t quite as naturally charming as Pippa, she could imitate it quite well.

In his gentle way, Nicolas replied, “Nothing would be a greater honour.”

They went around the water garden, enjoying the splash and play of the fountains, then descended to the Garden of Love, where Nicolas pointed out the roses, which he said her mother had loved. “She brought you here nearly every sunny day,” Nicolas remembered. “I think the roses reminded her of England, if not our French sunshine. I am so glad to be able to show it to you.”

“You have all been so kind. Much more than mere family sentiment demands.”

“I confess,” he said hesitantly, “that I did not expect to be more than polite to you this summer. When you were merely theoretical, with my last memories of you as only a child, I could not envision how very much I would…well…”

“How very much you would…?” she prompted.

“How very much I would like you.”

His simplicity was such a contrast to Julien’s demanding convoluted teasing. Lucette felt a stab of shame at her duplicity, but only for a moment. Nicolas might present a more straightforward face than Julien, but she wagered he, too, had his secrets. The maids, the groom, Richard Laurent and his inflammatory religious tracts…many threads traced back to Nicolas. The task was to tease out which had specific bearing on her quest.

Her next question, broached delicately, was the first salvo. “Thank you, Nicolas. It is very kind of you to say. I, too, have been unexpectedly caught by liking here.”

“Julien can be very engaging when he wishes.”

She was quite sure she did not imagine the dark undertone to his words. Did it mean he was jealous? “I was thinking of Felix, actually. I don’t know when a boy has so stolen my heart.”

That pleased Nicolas. “It is mutual, Lucette. I do not know how Felix will be content to let you go. My son has had so little of a woman’s love in his life. Charlotte is busy with her own family, and since my mother’s death, I fear the boy is often lonely.”

He was practically leading her to where she wanted to go. “How sad that his mother could not live to take joy in her son. You both must miss her very much.”

Nicolas was silent, and seemed to be studying the gravel at his feet as they paced sedately through the summer flowers. “It is a great loss to a child not to know his mother, but I confess that, for myself, the loss was…less.”

He met her eyes then, and said almost urgently, as though desperate to make her understand, “Célie was very young, you see, and the
match was made by our parents. Pretty and pleasant, but we had little time together to approach anything like my parents’ love for each other. I think I bewildered her, and I confess I was not the wisest of husbands. I should have made more of an effort. But I thought we would have many years to get to know and appreciate each other. And then she was gone.”

“I do wonder why you have not given Felix a mother since,” Lucette ventured, knowing she was on delicate ground. There could be no excuse for this impertinence.

But rather than take offense, Nicolas answered thoughtfully, “Do you? It was not for any great loss of love for Célie. Guilt, perhaps, as much as anything. And also…”

“Also?”

“I was in Paris during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.”

It was so unexpected, especially coming on the heels of Julien’s revelation, that Lucette could think of nothing to say. She tried to look encouraging, and it must have sufficed, for Nicolas continued. “It was a horrific experience. I was somewhat—”

He broke off. Lucette bit her tongue, sensing that he would stop if she gave him any reason to.

Finally he continued, almost angrily, “I was injured, rather severely, in the violence. A difficult recovery, compounded by Célie’s death and the shock of becoming a father to a motherless son, meant that I had little reason to leave Blanclair at first. And then it became a habit.

“But habits can become crippling.” He stopped walking next to a rosebush that was nearly as tall as she was, starred with creamy buds of ivory and yellow. Lucette was only slightly surprised when he took both her hands in his and fixed her intently with his eyes. “More than anything, Lucette, your presence here has shown me that life goes on. And perhaps even joy.”

For several breaths she thought he was going to kiss her. She did not pull away, but nor did she move closer. She left it to him, and in
the end he dropped her hands with a wry smile. Lucette could not ignore her relief; Nicolas was handsome enough, but he wasn’t Julien. His hands were softer, his body thicker, and though she knew it for shallowness, Lucette felt not the slightest physical attraction.

“We shall see,” he said cryptically. “But I hope that coming here will end in bringing you joy as well.”

As she worked out what best to answer, the sound of booted feet on gravel came from behind. They both turned, and there was the groom that ran so many private errands for Nicolas, looking straight at his master.

“What is it?” Nicolas said with a touch of impatience at being interrupted.

“Apologies, sir,” the groom said in a manner not at all apologetic. “I was down the river’s edge just now and found something.”

“Found what?”

With a glance at Lucette and then away, as though dismissing her presence, the groom said bluntly. “I found a body. A man. Stabbed through the heart, looks like.”

Nicolas attempted to send Lucette back to the chateau, but not very hard. So she was on his heels, as he was on the groom’s, as they approached the river’s edge. The corpse lay tipped on its back, looking like nothing so much as a loosely jointed doll cast to the ground by a careless child. But it had been no child who had thrust a blade into his chest, leaving a mass of bloodstains hardening around the edges of the torn cloth of his doublet.

But it was his face that struck Lucette, and she inhaled a little sharper than intended. Nicolas said, “You should not be seeing this. My father would be furious. Come away now.”

As he took her by the arm, issuing low orders to the groom to have the body removed to the stable block and to alert Renaud and Julien, it was not horror or disgust that occupied Lucette’s mind. It was confusion.