The Virgin's Daughter (38 page)

“Set out where?” This was slightly dizzying. Where was Walsingham in all this? Was Exeter so powerful that he could release Tower prisoners on his own demand? Hadn’t he been a Tower prisoner himself years ago?

The tumble of thoughts came to a halt at the man’s next words. “Your brother has taken my daughter hostage at Wynfield Mote, along with the Princess of Wales. They are leverage for the release of Mary Stuart. You and I are riding back to Wynfield to try and bring this to a peaceful end.”

“Nic?” Julien asked numbly. “I don’t understand…”

But he found he did understand, all too well. Julien felt as though he were spinning, but recognized that it was not his body but his world spinning off center. If Walsingham had suspected Blanclair, he’d had good reason. Julien had been so caught up in Lucette that he hadn’t troubled to decipher the obvious—there were men at Blanclair besides himself. And his badge maliciously planted on the body of the man who’d tried to poison Queen Elizabeth? Who could—would—have done that but Nicolas? For eight years he had existed in a world of guilt—for Léonore’s death, Nicolas’s castration—guilt that had sent him to Walsingham, guilt that drove him through violence and occasional mercy, guilt that had kept him away from home. Guilt that had kept him from telling Lucette how he loved her until it was too late.

And at the thought of Lucette, his world stopped spinning and settled on a new axis. For she remained unchanged. Lucie mine, he thought grimly, I’m sorry. And I’m coming for you.

Julien started for the open door. “What are we waiting for?”

Dominic stopped him with his single, powerful right hand square on his chest. “One thing you should know, son. The government’s concern is the princess. Mine is my daughter. Whatever else happens, Lucette comes out of this unharmed. Is that clear?”

“I assure you, Lord Exeter, I have no greater interest than in seeing Lucie safe.”

If Dominic narrowed his eyes at Julien’s familiar use of her name, the duke seemed to accept it for the promise it was. “Even at your brother’s expense?”

“Nicolas and I have a debt to settle, I believe. But he can go to hell before I’ll see Lucie hurt.”

Dominic dropped his hand and his expression lightened just a shade. “Oh yes,” he murmured as if to himself, “you and I are going to have a very long talk when this is over.”

TWENTY-TWO

I
t was with the greatest triumph that Mary received Francis Walsingham at Tutbury. She met him seated in the nearest thing to a throne her prison could provide, a pretty enough chair of gilded wood and ornamental cushions beneath the arms of Scotland and France. She wore a black velvet gown over sleeves and kirtle of striped grey silk and a black velvet cap.

“Master Secretary,” she said coolly. “Am I to take it you will ride with me to the coast?”

The Earl of Shrewsbury was not present, presumably having been told by Walsingham to keep away. But Stephen Courtenay was at her side, and a young man next to Walsingham who was apparently Stephen’s younger brother, Christopher.

“Yes.” He bit the word off, clearly furious at having been outmaneuvered at last.

“Why so dark, Master Secretary?” she asked blithely. “Your queen is unharmed. And soon you will be free of a troublesome guest. I thought you would be pleased.”

Stephen had been watching them both, clearly bewildered. “She is to be released?” he asked Walsingham.

“We’ll ride with her to King’s Lynn, where Her Majesty awaits. It is necessary to move swiftly, so I hope, madam, that you are prepared for hard riding.”

“I have been prepared these twelve years.”

“Why?” Stephen demanded to know. He did not sound as pleased as Mary would have thought, given all the care he had taken for her.

“Nicolas LeClerc has taken Anabel and Lucie hostage at Wynfield,” Christopher Courtenay burst out, obviously smoldering. “The French bastards have stooped to threatening an innocent to free
her
.” He jerked his head at Mary with disdain. She would have liked very much to slap him.

“I did not know what means would be used, and in any case the girl will not be harmed. If my cousin had only listened to reason—”

“Enough.” Walsingham’s tone brooked no dissension, and Mary shut her mouth sourly. “We leave in an hour. You may bring one lady with you, and your confessor. The others will be allowed to leave Tutbury on their own when the princess is safely in our hands once more.”

Mary turned to Stephen. “You will ride with me to King’s Lynn, will you not?”

She meant it as a mark of favour, a reminder that she would remember his kindness and service to her when she was free.

His face had never been so difficult to read, which was perhaps just as well with the disapproving Walsingham standing by, not to mention the fuming younger brother.

His words, like everything he did, were spoken with care. “I will ride to King’s Lynn for my sister’s sake, not yours.”

The venom in his tone was all the worse for its control. Mary flinched. “I thought we understood each other, Stephen.”

He was no longer the silent English nobleman, nor the handsome young man who had flattered her. He sounded at once older and
harder. “I understand you very well. You are the center of every story you weave, and no one’s life matters as much as your own. You use people, Your Majesty, and you should have taken care to be certain of my allegiance before giving me access to your secrets.”

She drew back, stung and furious. “You insinuated your way into my good graces to spy my secrets? How dare you!”

“I dared very easily, though not successfully enough, it seems.”

She slapped him. The younger brother took a step forward, but Walsingham restrained him. Stephen merely stared her down, every bit as cool as she was incensed.

“You have made an enemy today, Lord Somerset,” Mary told him.

“I was always your enemy, lady. You just didn’t have the wit to see it until today.”

—

Anabel had heard stories of her mother’s captivity at the hands of the Duke of Northumberland when Elizabeth had been Princess of Wales. She had thought it mostly a romantic tale, for it was long past and the outcome certain. Actually being held, she discovered, was an entirely different matter.

Also, the Duke of Northumberland had not been a fanatic or a madman, just an ambitious lord who overreached and was eager to save his family from falling. It was unlikely he would have actually harmed Elizabeth. But Nicolas LeClerc was a different matter entirely. Anabel didn’t trust him an inch, and she didn’t like the way he looked at Lucette.

The women were kept confined to Anabel’s bedchamber. They were allowed a screen in the corner behind which to change and use a chamber pot that Nicolas made his man empty. They were brought the simplest of foods twice a day: porridge, apples, cheese, and beer. Nicolas stayed with them eighteen hours a day, only locking them in at midnight while he slept on a pallet outside the locked door. They had briefly considered trying to escape through the window, but it was a forty-foot sheer drop, and Nicolas had a dozen armed men
inside the moat, scruffy and ill-dressed but handling weapons knowledgeably enough.

“He won’t hurt you,” Lucette had told Anabel the first day, and continued to repeat as something of an incantation as the days wound endlessly on. They did the calculations on how long it would take riders to go their various directions and figured it would be at least ten days before they would know if Mary had been freed.

Of course Mary would be freed, Anabel thought firmly. Her mother might find Anabel troublesome at times, but Elizabeth would never risk her daughter’s life. If for no other reason than that England’s throne must have an heir.

But mostly, Anabel didn’t talk. Except for her title, Nicolas was uninterested in her. It was Lucette who consumed him.

Nicolas liked to talk, and Lucette had to spend hours each day parrying his conversation. It was exhausting merely to watch. But Anabel learned plenty through his endless discourses. Such as the fact that his younger brother, Julien, was head over heels in love with Lucie. That Nicolas might have set his sights on her merely to upset his brother, if he hadn’t had a use for her already. That he’d maneuvered his sister into asking Lucette to France precisely in order to gain a reciprocal invitation to England, thus giving him his chance to seize Anabel herself. “And how fortunate for me that you were beautiful and spirited,” Nicolas said, “for thus I gained pleasure along with necessity.”

But it was the fact that Lucette had apparently fallen in love with Julien that upset Nicolas beyond measure. It made him try all the harder to break her.

Eight days into their confinement, Anabel kept her usual silent perch on the deep windowsill, the diamond-paned glass offering an alluring view of hills and freedom beyond the immediate ring of armored men inside Wynfield’s perimeters. It was possible from here to see the camp put up by the Courtenays and faithfully attended by Minuette, in command while her husband was absent. It made Anabel feel better simply to have someone faithful in sight, no matter how far it might be from practical help.

Lucette sat in the chair Nicolas liked her in, hands folded in her lap and her face as inscrutably unreadable as her father’s at its most forbidding. Anabel knew the technique—refuse to give a bully the reaction he was hoping for and eventually he will tire of provocation.

Nicolas never tired of provocation.

“You should write to Felix,” he told Lucette today. “I know how much he is longing to welcome you officially as his mother.”

“I will be truly sorry to disappoint Felix.”

“But not to disappoint me? See, there’s your trouble in miniature—you worry about hurting a seven-year-old boy thousands of miles away, but not the grown man with a dagger in his hand and a dislike of your tongue.”

“If you dislike my tongue, why not cut it out?”

“I have no wish to damage you, Lucie mine. At least not permanently.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said softly, almost under her breath, and Anabel had the impression the protest was wrung from her against her better judgment.

“Because it’s what Julien calls you? Ah, but Julien is not here.” Nicolas walked around her and with one hand stroked her dark hair. Both girls were, by necessity, dressed simply and with their hair done in plaits. Nicolas lifted the end of one of Lucette’s braids and said in a tone clearly meant to be seductive, though it mostly made Anabel’s skin crawl, “You are mine for now. And if Julien should reappear? Then may the best man claim you.”

“I am no slave to be claimed,” she blazed. “And there is no question which of you is the better man.”

“If only he could hear your valiant defense of his character…but I rather think the only thing on Julien’s mind will be that you lied to him. You suspected I was the one behind Nightingale, and you didn’t tell him. For all his easy lies, my brother is quite stupidly devoted to honesty. He will not take your betrayal lightly.”

“Nor yours.”

“Good!” Nicolas jerked his hand away and circled restlessly, hand tightening on the dagger hilt at his belt. “I never meant him to take it lightly. I meant it to dig his heart out, squeeze the guilt he deserves into every part of his soul and then squeeze harder.”

Anabel swallowed, and though he gave no sign of noticing her, it seemed to break Nicolas’s dangerous train of thought. He squatted easily before Lucette and studied her with a light smile before cupping one hand against the back of her neck. “So lovely and so wicked, like every woman ever.”

When he kissed Lucette, Anabel shut her eyes. But then she opened them, refusing to retreat when Lucette could not.

It had not gone further than kisses, and Lucette did not seem concerned that it would. But Anabel did not like the alarming light in Nicolas’s eyes, and she prayed for all she was worth.
Lord, let them ride fast. Get us both out of here before something is done that cannot be undone
.

—

Elizabeth reached the environs of King’s Lynn a day and a half before the Tutbury party. She had never been very good at waiting, and never more so than when waiting for something distasteful. But as they did not want word slipping out of their careful net of secrecy until Anabel had been safely retrieved, she kept her demeanor as steady as possible and used fatigue and a sick headache as an excuse to take refuge in the somewhat derelict Castle Rising five miles outside the town. Bequeathed to the Howard family by her father, she had repossessed the castle shortly after her brother’s death, and though much of the medieval castle had been overrun by rabbit warrens, the guest lodgings built in the 1540s were acceptable. Burghley’s report from London arrived the morning after Elizabeth’s arrival and confirmed that Dominic and Julien were setting off immediately for Wynfield Mote.

An outrider appeared at Castle Rising an hour before noon to announce the imminent arrival of Mary’s party. Elizabeth sent him
back with orders for Walsingham to conduct her cousin anonymously around the outlying areas of the town and meet her at the French ship that had waited prudently offshore for the last week.