The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(54)
Renaud tipped his head and considered her quizzically. “May I speak personally, Lucette, as though you were my own daughter? For certain, I was the first man to lay eyes on you, and you were under my care for nearly a year of your life.”
She nodded, unable to speak even if she’d wished to.
“I think you are far more like Dominic than you know. Blood or not—and that is something neither of you will ever know for certain—you have his iron sense of right and wrong. But this is not a black-and-white world, ma petite, something Dominic learned at great cost. You are so afraid of not being wanted, you will not put it to the test. Thus you create the very distance you fear.”
She blinked and stared over his head. More gently, as though she were still a child, he offered, “If it is information about William that you crave, I suggest you ask Dominic. No man living knew him better.”
With a little gasp half sob, half shock, she protested, “I could not possibly do that.”
“Because it would hurt him? I assure you, you are hurting him far more with your politeness.”
“What could he possibly tell me of the king that I would want to know? The king died his bitter enemy.”
“Anger there was between them, yes, and betrayal on both sides. But do you think Dominic Courtenay a man to report only one side of any issue? Whatever you ask him, he will answer honestly and fairly, probably with as much emphasis on his own sins as those of the king.”
He leaned forward and plucked up a square, sealed letter. “This,” he said, handing it to her, “you yourself brought me when you came. It is for you, sent with a covering letter to me, asking me to use my best judgment on when it might be most wanted.”
The handwriting was Dominic’s. She managed to escape the study without humiliating herself with full-blown sobs, and escaped into the first empty chamber she found.
Like Dominic himself, the letter was bracingly straightforward, written to her as though they happened to be in conversation.
I’m not a complicated man, Lucie. I don’t like plots or secrets or political manipulation. William Tudor was adept at all those things, and I definitely don’t like a dead man wrecking my family from beyond the grave.
Worse when that dead man is the closest friend I have ever had.
I don’t know how to play games, Lucie. And I don’t know how to fix this. Whatever you need of me, you have only to ask. I will do whatever is in my power to make you happy.
That is what fathers do.
—
Anabel had not enjoyed herself more in her life. Perhaps when she’d been a child, left to run free at Wynfield Mote with Kit and Pippa, almost able to forget for a few weeks who she was and the weight of expectations upon her. There was no forgetting this summer who she was, and in its way it was far more satisfying. The Princess of Wales reveled in being at court—and not just being there, but central to all that was happening. Outside the council room, at least.
Naturally, Philip wished to spend as much of his free time as possible with his daughter. Naturally, Anabel concurred, though she kept her inner coterie tightly around her. For this particular summer, that meant not only Pippa and Kit, but Brandon Dudley and Francis Huntingdon and Robert Devereux and others of lesser rank but equal ambition. There was also the shy Nora Percy, twenty-five and recently brought to court as one of Elizabeth’s ladies. She was an acknowledged daughter of the late king, which made her Anabel’s cousin, but they had rarely ever met. Nora had been raised by her maternal uncle and his wife in Yorkshire and seemed to prefer that retired life, but she had a fiercely ambitious mother who was only too glad to use her daughter as an entrée to inner circles.
“Watch out for Nora,” Elizabeth had instructed Anabel when lending the girl to her service for these weeks. “And even more, watch out for Eleanor. She will seek to use you for her own benefit.”
“And how is that different from everyone else at court?” Anabel had shot back.
Her mother’s expression had been grimly amused. “You’ve never spent time with Eleanor Percy. Trust me, you have not met her like before.”
But Nora was quite agreeable, musically talented as suited her upbringing and well-read, her only real flaw a lack of easy humour that left her always guarded and uncertain if she were being teased. Kit, of course, took advantage of that, and Anabel had heard Pippa scolding her twin about it.
The other men were unfailingly polite to Nora, considering her relationship to the throne, and rather more attentive to both Anabel and Pippa. They seemed happy to divide their smiles and attention, simply glad to be where they were, almost as glad as Anabel to be of serious importance at last.
A week after their arrival at Hampton Court, Anabel and her bevy of young nobles were gathered along the Thames, shooting arrows in King Henry VIII’s tiltyard, built west of the palace. The fickle sun of English summer shone in full force this afternoon so that their movements were deliberate and conserved in the heat. Anabel wore the lightest layers she could manage—embroidered linen and silk so fine it was nearly sheer. She was an accomplished shot and nearly every arrow she loosed hit the white circle in the target’s center.
The men took care not to outshoot their future queen…all except Kit.
“Ha!” he crowed, as his arrow sung straight into the clout, the pin at the very heart of the white circle. “Told you I’m better.”