The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(105)
But I can care about Elizabeth only in brief snatches between my own joy and exhaustion. Three days ago I was also delivered, almost a month before my expected time, and gifted by God with two beautiful children. A girl and a boy. Philippa, we have called our daughter, after Dominic’s mother, who died last year in blessed peace. We considered naming her twin Jonathan, after my father, but Dominic kept looking between the two babies with a crease in his forehead as he pondered.
“Christopher,” he finally announced.
I blinked, somewhat surprised, for there is no Christopher in either of our near families. But then Dominic gave one of his rare, open smiles and said, “I like the way they sound together. Pippa and Kit. What do you think?”
I think I love you so much my heart is near to breaking, I thought.
—
3 May 1562
Tiverton Castle
The children and I leave for Wynfield Mote next week. Dominic will not be with us. He has been summoned to court. Elizabeth has tried summons before this, but Dominic has always ignored them. What can she threaten us with? Taking away Tiverton and the duchy of Exeter? It would be no punishment, for Dominic serves his people from duty rather than ambition.
This time, Elizabeth took another tack. Please, she wrote to both of us, I have great need of a friend. Not for myself. For my daughter.
—
The closer he came to London, the more tense Dominic Courtenay grew. He had not been anywhere near the city since his imprisonment in the Tower five years before. At least Elizabeth had sense enough not to summon him to Whitehall. Indeed, he did not actually have to enter the city at all, for the queen awaited him at Nonsuch Palace, fifteen miles southwest. The distinctive octagonal towers rising before him made Dominic catch his breath before he ruthlessly banished memories of previous visits. Visits when Elizabeth was merely Princess of Wales and William…
Tension made him curt, but he had never been a man of many words and Elizabeth’s guards and stewards passed him along swiftly enough to the queen’s privy chamber. To his surprise, she greeted him alone.
“No counselors today?” he asked her. “No clerks or ambassadors begging your attention for the great matters of state?”
“There is no matter of greater importance to me than what I am about to ask you.”
“Why bring me all the way here simply to tell you no? I am finished with courts and royals, Your Majesty. You know that.”
“But you are not finished with loyalty. Nor will you be so long as you draw breath.”
“What do you want, Elizabeth?” If she was going to pluck at all the most painful chords of his past, he would treat her not as queen, but as the girl he’d known since childhood.
She matched his tone. “I need you, Dominic, to stand as Protector to my daughter.”
All the breath left his body. He’d known a Lord Protector once, and no way in hell was he going to follow in the footsteps of George Boleyn, Lord Rochford.
Elizabeth didn’t wait for his refusal. “I am not asking you to run the government, Dominic. You are entirely too honest for such a task…although I suspect Minuette would be quite good at it.”
“That is not—”
Elizabeth overrode him. “Let me be frank. My life is all that stands between security and chaos in England. My life—and now that of my infant daughter. An infant whose father would gladly seize whatever power he could in this nation.”
Dominic had learned a few things from his wife, including sarcasm. “That is only occurring to you now?”
Her eyes darkened, and he realized that there was real fear beneath her royal composure. “For a man so eager to keep apart from politics, that is a rather piercing opinion to voice.”
He raised a hand in conciliation. “I apologize. What is it you want from me?”
When she spoke again, it was entirely as Queen of England. “If I should die during my daughter’s childhood, England will have need of a strong government during her minority. That responsibility would lie in the hands of Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham, as well as a carefully composed council of men I trust. I am not asking you to protect England in such a case—I am asking you to protect Anabel.”
It was that last word that moved him, the realization that Elizabeth had given her daughter a pet name. Even though he suspected her of using sentiment against him, it worked. There was only one thing more she could try, so Dominic asked before the queen could. “May I see her?”
He followed Elizabeth to a separate suite of painted and gilded chambers attended by soft-footed ladies who looked more suited to royal feasts than caring for a baby.
Anne Isabella, the Princess of Wales, lay in a cradle beneath a cloth-of-gold canopy embroidered with her mother’s personal falcon badge. The baby looked a little bigger to him than did his own twins, but the plump cheeks and finely pursed mouth were familiar childish traits. The infant had her mother’s distinctive red-gold hair and stared up at him with a curious intelligence he told himself he was imagining.
“She’s a pawn, Dominic,” Elizabeth said softly, next to him. “A Spanish pawn. If I die young, Philip’s men will spare no effort to lay hold of her. She must not fall to Spain. Promise me, Dominic. Promise me that if anything happens to me, you will take Anabel into your care. I trust few men with my government—but only one man do I trust with her life.”