The Virgin's Daughter (39 page)

Elizabeth dressed with care. Though not as glamorous as she would have been in her own court, her brocaded crimson damask and high ruff were impeccably royal. She wore a wig closely curled and set with pearls. Though she had been dressing the monarch’s part for almost half her life, she admitted one moment’s weakness to have Minuette tell her how well she looked, or Kat Ashley to sniff and pronounce her appearance “adequate.”

When reunited with Anabel, she would take care to be freer with her compliments.

She took only two guards to escort her and rode in a carriage, not wishing to be on display. The ship stood a polite distance off, with a skiff waiting to board its royal passenger. Elizabeth ignored them.

She could hardly admit, even to herself, that mixed with fury was a hint of—nerves? anticipation?—at finally coming face-to-face once more with the woman who had been her greatest rival. They had met once, many years ago in France. Elizabeth had been attending the French court as her brother’s representative to his betrothed French bride, and Mary had been still a girl. Thirteen at the time, but Elizabeth remembered her as tall and breathtakingly beautiful. They had similar colouring, from their shared Tudor blood, but Elizabeth knew herself to be the better ruler. Mary might style herself Queen of France and Scotland, but her French reign had been astonishingly brief and the dislike of Catherine de Medici—Mary’s French mother-in-law—had driven her back to her rightful island crown. But she had barely managed six years in Scotland, running through two husbands and multiple scandals, and alienating her firmly Protestant people so thoroughly that they had not wanted her returned these dozen years.

All the while, Elizabeth had held England together, sometimes by the mere force of her will. And if it galled her to let Mary slip through
her fingers today, there was consolation that at last the hated queen would be off English soil. For good.

Mary still managed an upright figure on horseback, though even from that vantage one could see the extra weight she’d put on in captivity. Elizabeth took petty pleasure in noting that—she herself was nearly as slender as she’d been as a girl. Of her famous beauty, Mary had retained the outlines, but eroded by time. She might be years younger than me, Elizabeth thought, but not so very much more desirable.

And that was only counting the physical. What price would Mary command on the open market, a woman so smeared by sexual and violent scandal? It almost cheered Elizabeth, so that she was able to greet her cousin with a modicum of politeness.

“So eager to leave our hospitality?” she asked as the Scots queen faced her down. It was slightly disconcerting not to be curtsied or bowed to, but it wasn’t worth fighting over at the moment.

Not that she wouldn’t mark every charge against Mary, that she might pay her back in kind one day.

“I would have thought you eager to rid yourself of me all these years, and yet you delayed. Perhaps you merely found my presence convenient.” Mary had been helped down from her mount by Stephen Courtenay, with a particular blankness of expression with which Elizabeth was long familiar on his father’s face. Mary ignored the men standing behind Elizabeth—Stephen, Kit, and Walsingham—as well as those who would be allowed to sail away with her. There might have been no one on earth at the moment save these two queens.

“You have never in your life been convenient,” Elizabeth said. “Only necessary.”

Mary’s smile was frost and glass. “And now it is necessary to let me go.”

Elizabeth’s smile was ice and daggers. “You set violent men on my daughter. I will not forget.”

“I did not know what means would be used. Your daughter will be unharmed, and after all, if only you had been reasonable, it would never have come to this.”

“If you found me unreasonable before, you will not like what follows today. It is as well that you are leaving England, for I could sign your death warrant this instant without regret.”

“If you had it in you, you would have seen me dead years ago. For all your vaunted hardness, you avoid the difficult choices, cousin. And that is why I win—because I made them.”

Surprisingly, it was not Walsingham who interrupted, but Stephen Courtenay. “What is the phrase we take back to your men?” he demanded of Mary. Elizabeth noted the fierceness in his voice and the lack of title he gave her. Interesting—she would not have taken Stephen for a man of any kind of passion.

But then, he was Dominic Courtenay’s son. And though it might be strictly controlled, Dominic was a man of deep and dangerous passions.

Mary eyed him slantwise. “When I am in the skiff and sure of not being seized, I will tell you.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Stephen demanded. “Although if my queen asked it of me, I’m quite certain I could get the phrase from you here and now.”

Elizabeth sketched a dismissal at Stephen. “I will not take that risk. Go, then,” she told Mary. “If ever we cross paths again, your life will be forfeit for your treachery.”

“Ah, cousin, how I once longed to be friends. It is you who has made us enemies. Remember that.”

Mary and her woman and confessor were helped into the skiff, the ladies’ voluminous skirts crushed against each other. From her seat, Mary looked at Stephen with a certain resentment that spoke more of the woman’s feelings than the queen’s. “The phrase you need to set your princess free is this: ‘The nightingale sings her freedom.’ ”

“My queen and her council value Anne’s life sufficiently,” retorted
Stephen. “But as for myself, it is my sister’s life I hold against you. I will see you paid for it one day.”

Mary set her chin and looked away. Elizabeth watched motionless from shore until the skiff had crossed the choppy waves and the occupants brought on board the waiting French ship. She stayed until it had passed from sight over the eastern horizon.

Long before that, Stephen and Kit Courtenay had ridden west for Wynfield Mote. They carried with them the Great Seal of England with Walsingham’s affidavit of their authority, and the phrase from Mary Stuart that would see Anabel freed.

Elizabeth would not draw a deep breath until her daughter was in her hands once more.

TWENTY-THREE

J
ulien had been camped outside Wynfield Mote for four days before anything of import happened. He had thought himself a patient person—or at least one able to entertain himself while waiting—but he truly thought he might run mad within sight of Wynfield Mote and unable to do a thing but wait.

It was a small encampment—Dominic and Minuette Courtenay, their youngest daughter, Pippa, and a dozen retainers, all armed. If Julien had been afraid of his reception by the family, he need not have worried. He had known Minuette to be beautiful when he was younger—but in his youth he had overlooked her great warmth and generosity. And perhaps Dominic had said a word or two in her ear about his suspicions of Julien’s feelings. Heaven knows he’d said little enough himself, but the Duke of Exeter seemed to know how to read the quality of his silences.

In any case, he was welcomed as an ally, though Julien had no illusions: if it were between him and Lucette, they would cheerfully throw him to the wolves. At least in that, their intentions aligned perfectly.

For days now, Julien had done little but ponder his brother’s astonishing betrayal. He still wasn’t sure of Nicolas’s motivations. Nicolas hardly spoke of politics at all—when had he come to care so much about Mary Stuart and England? Julien had thought he’d been the one keeping all the secrets these eight years. Once again, his self-absorption had blinded him.

An hour or two after sunset on the fourth day since reaching Wynfield, Dominic and his man Harrington received the scout’s report of riders coming fast. Julien recognized Kit Courtenay on horseback and guessed the second rider was the other brother, Stephen.

“We’ve got it,” Kit called as he swung off his horse, both man and beast looking utterly exhausted and soaked through from long hours of hard riding. “Stephen’s got the Lord Chancellor’s seal and we have the phrase from Mary.”

“She is gone?” Minuette asked her oldest son. He looked like his father, but Julien thought there might be a streak of his mother’s temper running through him.

“Mary Stuart?” Stephen said with contempt. “She’s gone, sailed off to whoever wants her. France, I suppose. It was a French ship.”

“Let me have the seal,” Dominic said, and Stephen handed the velvet bag containing the symbol of England’s most powerful office to his father.

“I want to go in,” Kit announced.

Dominic shook his head. “You’re worn-out and that’s my home and my daughter.”

“And Anabel!” Kit said fiercely.

With a glance at his wife, Dominic again shook his head. “I won’t forget. I will get them both out.”

Julien had mostly kept his own counsel, aware that he was here on sufferance, but finally he offered, “Shouldn’t I come with you? I thought I was here to deal with Nicolas.”

“He hasn’t asked for you. I’d rather keep you in reserve till necessary.”

If something went wrong, Dominic meant. If Nicolas broke his
word and kept the women, or took Dominic hostage as well. Julien felt a chill along his spine. He knew perfectly well that this would only end when he and Nicolas were face-to-face.

But he was in no position to argue.

Kit had no such scruples. “Take me with you.”

“No.”

“Father, please, it should be me, I’m less valuable than you. If something happens—”

Surprisingly amidst all this male tension, it was Pippa who broke in. “Let Kit do it,” was all she said, but it froze everyone to silence.

Minuette looked searchingly at her daughter. “Are you certain?”

“I don’t think—” Dominic started, but stopped when Pippa laid a hand on his sleeve, just above his missing left hand.

“I am very certain, Father. Kit is right. Let him go.”

There was something otherworldly and yet absolute about her, and the chill Julien had felt before shivered through him again. Lucette had never told him her sister was a…What? Seer? Visionary?

Whatever it might be called, the men in her family listened. Dominic handed the bag with the Great Seal to Kit and said grimly, “Bring them out, son.”

—

“They’re moving.”

At the note in Anabel’s voice, Lucette steadied herself and reluctantly returned her thoughts to the chamber she was in. She had taken to retreating in some form to pass the long days under Nicolas’s razor-sharp attention. She was clever enough to hold up her end of the conversation without being wholly present, and gave thanks to Dr. Dee for teaching her how to think of more than one thing at a time.

She didn’t stir from her chair, though, for she had learned by hard experience that Nicolas liked to tell her when and where to move. He went to the window where Anabel looked out and studied the landscape with her.

“I believe you’re right,” he said. “That does appear to be a party for parlay approaching from their encampment.”

He opened the door and summoned Laurent with barked orders. Anabel and Lucette exchanged a long glance, then both looked away. As long as Anabel got out of here, Lucette would be happy. She was perfectly certain she herself would be staying behind.

Laurent took the princess, and Nicolas escorted Lucette, both of them with daggers negligently held to their sides. Lucette was under no illusions about how quickly that positioning could change. Her father had taught her several ways to bring a dagger into play and was certain these men knew even more than she did.

The four of them took up position in the rebuilt medieval hall of Wynfield Mote. Though designed along its previous lines, modern comforts and touches had been introduced when it was restored after the fire. Lucette had always loved the hall, redolent as it was of family and laughter—would she ever be able to feel that way again?

She had been expecting her father, certain he would not let anyone else do it. But perhaps Nicolas’s men had been ordered to keep the elder Courtenay out, for to her surprise it was Kit who entered. Her brother had always possessed a certain grace, but his movements today spoke more of contained violence than fluid action.

His eyes went first to Anabel, and Lucette nearly caught her breath at what she saw in his face. But he was quick and shut down his feelings before they could more than briefly flash.

Did Anabel know that Kit was in love with her? Did Kit even know it before now?

“And why,” Nicolas wondered aloud, “did they send the young colt?”

“Because I saw Mary Stuart board ship for France and sail away with my own eyes. I have the Lord Chancellor’s seal, and your phrase.”

Nicolas cocked his head impatiently. “And?”

Kit tossed him a small velvet bag, then spoke. “ ‘The nightingale sings her freedom.’ ”

Kit let it linger, and Lucette felt Nicolas’s satisfaction through the points where he touched her. However much he’d had his own agenda—and still had things to finish—he was truly satisfied to have freed Mary.

No one moved, though Lucette could see what it cost her brother to stand still and wait. His jaw was tight surely to the point of pain, but he would not speak first for fear of unbalancing the moment.