The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(5)
In short, men.
Attempting indifference, Lucette asked, “Why does Walsingham believe the LeClercs are involved? Surely he is not swayed by mere rumour.”
“Among the coded letters carried by the Catholic Englishmen last week, Walsingham encountered a name, a single name of great concern. One that is not on the list you just studied.”
Lucette raised her eyebrows in query, knowing she did not do so half as smoothly as her monarch.
Elizabeth spoke the single name. “Blanclair.”
It was all she had to say, for Lucette knew that name as well as she knew that of Wynfield Mote or Tiverton. For Chateau Blanclair was the lovely Loire Valley home of Renaud LeClerc, who had sheltered Minuette Courtenay when she’d been driven out of England by the late king’s rage, and it was at Blanclair that Lucette had been born and passed nearly the first year of her life.
Though she had never been back, her mother and Dominic had been to France twice in her lifetime, and the Courtenay family had maintained close epistolary ties with the LeClercs. Lucette herself wrote to Charlotte LeClerc at least twice a month; hence Charlotte’s latest plea to come to France and see her. Lucette had not discussed the proposal with her family yet, nor had she made up her mind as to her response.
It appeared Elizabeth had preempted her.
“So that is why you want me,” Lucette answered. “Not for my mind or my skill in seeing patterns, but because I am a woman and, unlike others of Walsingham’s employ, can be sent to seduce men of their secrets.”
The queen looked amused. “I hear that both Nicolas and Julien LeClerc are fine men. Seduction would not be such a trial.”
“Your Majesty—”
“Do not take the high moral ground on the basis of your sex, Lucette.” The queen was not angry—yet—but the warning of it was in her voice. “I am a woman and I do not scorn to make use of it against those weak enough to be so used. For all that, do you find anything lacking in the strength of my mind or the force of my will?”
Lucette pressed her lips tight so as not to lose her temper with royalty.
And then the queen, as she always did, chose precisely the right tone; one of wistful remembrance, tugging on loyalties formed before Lucette was even born. “I need you. England needs you. Body, mind, spirit—you can go where none other I trust half so well can go. You can enter the very heart of a home and family that evidence suggests may be a threat to us. I do not order you to a certain conclusion—I ask you only to bring me the truth, wherever it may lie. Chateau Blanclair and the LeClerc family may be innocently on the fringes of involvement, but a fringe can lead one deeper. If France and Spain combine against me, how long before an assassin gets lucky and my half-Spanish daughter is handed into Philip’s control? How long before England is left to be squabbled over by Catholics and Protestants once more? What are the niceties of your conscience against such a threat?”
Even as Lucette recognized the manipulation of Elizabeth’s passionate appeal, she was also moved by it.
She offered one last—expected—resistance. “If my father knew what you were asking…”
Clearly she was more rattled than she’d thought, or that would not have been her wording. The queen pounced on that slip. “Don’t let’s be coy, Lucette. If your ‘father’ were alive to know it, then I would not be queen and my life would not be in danger.”
And just when Lucette was prepared to almost hate the queen for her manipulation and self-righteous power, the facade opened a crack and there was Elizabeth—her mother’s friend, herself once a clever girl who no doubt could easily have seduced half the secrets of Europe out of any man she liked—and that warm, playful girl smiled out of the wary woman’s eyes.
“Ah, Lucie,” she said, “you were going to say yes before ever you came in here, whether you admit it or not, because there is no dare you will not take. You want people to think you restrained and modest and demure, but you are aching to live in this world and use the gifts God has granted you. And I like to think that you have a little affection for me, niece, and would rather not see me dead if you can help it.”
Fighting against the smile wringing its way out of her, Lucette said, “You truly believe I can help it?”
“Walsingham believes so, as does Dr. Dee. And yes, Lucie, I believe you can do it. Not because you are my niece, but because you are Minuette’s daughter. I never knew a woman more able to accomplish her own ends than your mother, and I believe she has passed that to you.”
Lucette rose from her seat and made her submission, feeling the wings of panic and pleasure combine in an exhilarating mixture. “I will serve you in this, Your Majesty.”
TWO
If Lucette had worried about the reception her impending visit to France would have at home, she needn’t have bothered. For her brother Stephen had news of his own to impart upon the Courtenay family’s return to Tiverton: namely, that he had been tasked with joining the English royal guard attendant upon Mary Stuart of Scotland. He delivered the news with his customary calmness at dinner, always using as few words as possible to explain himself, and waited for his father’s reaction.
One usually had to wait some time for a reaction from Dominic Courtenay. The Duke of Exeter was a man of even fewer words than his eldest son, and only long study and familiarity allowed Lucette and her siblings to read any sign in his countenance. She caught the twitch along his jaw, and then her mother intervened.