The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(34)

Usually it was Pippa who said the instinctively right thing, but today Kit approached her and said softly from just over her shoulder, “I feel sorry for him, Anabel. His Majesty of Spain is about to be confronted with the most beautiful princess in Europe. The shock of what he cannot regain will be, I imagine, very painful.”

Anabel reached back with her left hand and Kit grasped it, quick and reassuring. “Time to go, Your Highness,” he murmured, and Anabel turned away from the ships and braced herself for the game that was about to begin.

For once, her mother had waited for her before entering the hall. She flicked a glance over Anabel—from hair dressed intricately at the crown, then falling loosely down her back to the blue and silver gown edged with pearls—and nodded once.

“Adequate,” Elizabeth pronounced, then nodded to the steward that they were ready.

Elizabeth herself wore a cloth-of-gold gown studded with gems, a cartridge-pleated ruff so stiff and wide her head seemed entirely separate from her body. It was a dress meant both to proclaim her position and reinforce her solitude. It was the dress of a queen meeting the king of a not-entirely friendly nation, not that of a wife reuniting with her husband.

Kit and Pippa had already joined the crowd, and Anabel felt a moment’s piercing solitude as she followed her mother to the two thrones side by side—one beneath the colours of England, the other beneath the arms of Spain—and the slightly plainer chair with curved arms set defiantly at the queen’s side.

They did not sit, yet, for it would be another quarter hour before the Spanish arrived, and Elizabeth kept her close as she conversed with the Earl of Shrewsbury and Sir William Paulet. Anabel would have preferred her own circle, but was this not what she had been pressing for—to be at the center of court life? She could hardly complain about getting what she wanted.

At a signal from the attendants, Elizabeth proceeded to her throne, where she stood for a moment—not so much studying the crowd as allowing herself to be studied. With a graceful movement, she sat, and Anabel gratefully took her own seat. She was cross to discover that she was trembling.

Not exactly a private family reunion, though those invited to witness it were few, only three dozen of the court’s most important. (Besides Kit and Pippa, whom even Elizabeth rarely tried to exclude, as though she also thought of the three of them as a single unit.)

And then the doors at the far end were opened and Lord Burghley preceded the Spanish entourage.

Anabel’s first impression was that Philip had aged more rapidly than Elizabeth, though logically she knew it was only that she had seen him so infrequently. Considered objectively, Philip was an upright figure, unmistakably royal in bearing apart from the understated luxury of his deep black clothing. His light brown hair, once noticeably tinged with red, was now sprinkled liberally with white, but not to his detriment. He had the same mustache and pointed beard she had always known, and she had to bite down hard to keep tears from forming.

She did not, of course, come first. Where another father might impulsively swing into his arms a daughter he hadn’t seen in five years, this was a family of royals. Her father did fix his eyes on her as he came up the hall, and she flashed him the briefest of smiles.

Then Elizabeth stood, in a nicely judged piece of theater, and took the last two steps to greet her husband. “You are most welcome, Your Majesty.”

Philip gave a low bow and his English was perfectly serviceable. “It is my great pleasure to return to England, Your Majesty.”

As her parents faced off, both clever and calculating and forever wary of each other, Anabel knew that she would do everything in her power to keep from being married to a king. She did not want a marriage of balanced equals, always pushing against each other for the advantage. Better to marry a man who would owe everything to her, for then at least there would be a chance of personal affection—or at least a good imitation of it.

Then it was her turn. She had stood, naturally, when her mother did. Now her father stepped to her and gently lifted her hand to his lips. “Cielita,” he said, “I have counted the hours until this day for many years. My heart could not be happier.”

As a royal princess born, Anabel knew how to accommodate two states of being at once. Just now there was an undeniable burst of little girl pleasure that her father loved her. But that did not discount the calculation that was as much a part of her parents’ legacy as her hair or eye colour.

Philip felt guilty at his years of absence. And a father who felt guilty might be manipulated into giving more than he meant to.





NINE




Even a husband and wife on the brink of divorce, and who had spent many more years apart than together, could be expected to withdraw into privacy. Elizabeth kept Philip waiting until evening, when the reception festivities and feasting were finished, when Anne had bid her father goodnight with a mix of little-girl longing and womanly wariness. She had her ladies remove the elaborate court gown and dress her in something simpler, a loose Spanish gown of navy silk left open to show the blue and white kirtle beneath. Then she made herself comfortable in the privy chamber decorated for her use, sent her ladies away, and waited for her husband.

Philip had also changed, she noted when he bowed to her on the threshold of the open door. His attire was as nicely judged as her own, between casual and familiar, which did not surprise her. She could never have married, let alone remain married this long, to a man who she did not respect.