The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(46)
A good lesson, she marked, that however calculating her mother might be in person, she had the gift of inspiring her people and holding their love.
They rode into Hampton Court on June 28, where Lord Burghley and Walsingham waited with Elizabeth’s council to greet them. Though Anabel found this particular palace a little old-fashioned, it certainly showed its best with the red brick warmed by neat turf and a riot of wildflowers and more exotic blooms. They dismounted outside and walked across the moat bridge in procession. Anabel looked up with fondness at the King’s Beasts that lined the bridge. As a child she had loved the whimsy that peeked out from behind their sometimes grotesque features—even when Kit claimed that the stone beasts came to life at night and gobbled up unfortunate children.
After a brief welcome, the English and Spanish parties went their separate ways into different wings of the palace to rest and prepare for the night’s public festivities. Tomorrow would begin the tedious and delicate diplomatic dance of ending one generation’s marriage and preparing for the next.
Pippa accompanied her to the chambers that had once been Elizabeth’s, and Anabel impatiently dismissed the other ladies. She admitted only Pippa into her bedchamber, where her friend helped her out of the tight overgown for riding. Perhaps not quite fair, for Pippa could not change or wash until Anabel dismissed her, but who ever said that being friends with royalty was fair? And just now Anabel needed her friend’s particularly intuitive brand of advice.
“So,” she said, throwing herself inelegantly into a chair and impatiently motioning Pippa to do the same, “who am I going to be betrothed to by the time my father leaves England for good?”
“You’re certain you’ll be betrothed?”
“As good as.” Anabel shifted impatiently and stretched. She looked up at the corniced ceiling, pretending an indifference she didn’t feel. “What are the odds my father will agree to James of Scotland?”
Pippa was silent, and Anabel took heart. Sometimes Pippa was quick and charming, but whenever she took her time it meant whatever she said would be truthful. Not just honest, but truth of the kind that John Dee offered.
Finally Pippa spoke. “In the end, Your Highness, it will only be your father’s decision if you choose to let it be. Possession, as they say, is nine-tenths of the law, and King Philip does not possess you.”
“So it is my mother who will get her way on my marriage in the end. I suppose I knew that all along.”
A long pause, the kind that made Anabel’s skin prick and kept her eyes turned away so as not to spook her friend. Then Pippa said slowly, “I did not say that. I rather think it will be you who gets your way. If only you can decide what that is.”
Anabel caught her breath, and swung her gaze to Pippa. “Are you saying that my husband will be whomever I choose?” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me who it is I’m going to choose?”
Just like that, Pippa lost her air of otherworldliness and her impish grin made her once more a girl. “Where would be the fun in that?”
Anabel studied her friend, the dark blonde hair with that single streak of black framing her face, the green eyes deep and knowing, dressed in a riding gown the colour of the midnight sky. Pretty, polished, self-sufficient…outwardly unremarkable in a court teeming with pretty and polished women.
But inwardly? Anabel could never quite make up her mind. Was Pippa truly visionary, or just very skilled at reading people and guessing their hopes and dreams?
Anabel supposed there was wisdom in people being left guessing. It was one thing for a scientific, respected man like John Dee to speak guardedly of what his star charts told him, but for a woman—especially a young and pretty woman like Pippa—the word visionary could all too quickly turn to the much more dangerous witch. No child of Minuette Courtenay would ever be so careless as to hand an enemy a weapon against herself.
“All right.” Anabel stood and straightened herself. “Go rest and make yourself beautiful for tonight. I shall need you to keep Brandon Dudley occupied later so my mother doesn’t grow too complacent in her plans for mischief.”
“Does that mean you have your own plan for mischief?” Pippa teased.
“I rather think Kit will be all too happy to aid me in mischief-making. You shall see.”
After all, what was the use in having friends like Kit and Pippa if you couldn’t count on them to fall in with all your plans? Anabel wouldn’t mind discomfiting her mother and making her father pause. If Pippa was right, then she would end by choosing her own husband. And she could not envision a future in which that choice would be James VI of Scotland.
—
“Stephen,” Mary Stuart asked, “tell me, are you very close to your mother?”
The young man had a way of slipping out of direct answers. “What do you consider ‘very close’?”
She pouted prettily over her embroidery of a ginger cat wearing a crown, her teasing jab at her cousin. Stephen was the only man she allowed into this chamber of feminine pursuits. Unlike most men, he did not seem uneasy or out of place, merely as though he were content wherever he was.
Considering his own question, she finally answered, “I mean a son who makes his mother his confidante. Who permits her access to his worries as well as triumphs. Who trusts her entirely, as the woman who gave him life and must surely be his fondest advocate.”