The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(79)
Nicolas and Julien LeClerc were clearly brothers, with a marked similarity of colouring and features, but also undoubtedly individual. Nicolas a shade darker of hair and carrying more weight, Julien taller and grimmer. She suspected Julien would have a dashing smile, but it showed no evidence today.
The men bowed and rose at her gesture. “So,” she said sternly, “what is this about wishing to remove one of my favorite subjects from England?”
“Your Majesty,” replied Nicolas in accented English, “I doubt any force short of heaven could persuade Mademoiselle Courtenay to abandon her allegiance to Your Grace.”
Elizabeth sniffed, not displeased. “Still, as you have not yet obtained the Duke of Exeter’s permission, I suppose I need not worry overmuch. I am not certain there is a man on earth to whom Dominic Courtenay would willingly entrust Lucette.”
Through the banter, neither Julien nor Lucette moved, hardly even blinked. Without showing the least outward sign, somehow Elizabeth knew that they two were powerfully, almost painfully, aware of the other.
Interesting, she mused afterward. Lucette fell in love in France, all right—but not with the man she’s linked to now.
She found the problem mildly diverting until, with a suddenness that shocked her, there was another assassination attempt.
In her oft-threatened years as queen, there had never been two so close together. The second attempt was not a direct physical threat such as the man with the misfiring pistol had been, but the more subtle and disconcerting use of poison.
It had been planted in her drink—a cup of sack, the dry Spanish wine sweetened with sugar—brought to the tennis courts where Elizabeth was the center of a crowd watching Brandon Dudley and Kit Courtenay play. The queen had a small round table next to her canopied seat on which sat a variety of treats. Of course, like all royals, Elizabeth had a taster. Nothing came within her reach that had not been tested on someone less exalted. Nothing had ever happened, as usually nothing ever did. This was England, after all, not Italy.
But this time the drink had not been set down for five minutes when there were shouts from the kitchen buildings and then the running feet of guards, with Walsingham in black swooping among them like a crow of foreboding. Elizabeth rose, expecting violence, but the guards surrounded not her, but her refreshments. Bewildered, she met Walsingham’s eyes as he reached her and, forgetful for once of status, ran frantic hands down her arms.
“Are you well?” he demanded urgently.
“Yes, of course, what has—”
In the rarest form of discourtesy, he turned away while she was still speaking and seized the goblet. “You did not touch this?” he asked her brusquely. His face was pale.
Understanding began to dawn. “No,” she said softly, “I have not. Who has?”
But with the knowledge that his queen was not about to fall dead at his feet, Walsingham gained control of himself and the situation. “Let us walk,” he urged her.
She allowed herself to be led away, the two of them flanked by armed guards. “Poison?” she asked, voice carefully pitched so as not to carry beyond the knot of guards.
He nodded grimly. “Your taster collapsed within minutes of the drink leaving the kitchens. She was dead when she fell.”
“Nightingale?” Elizabeth asked.
“It must be.”
“Nicolas LeClerc was at the tennis match, sitting not ten feet away from me for the last hour.”
“Whoever did this will have taken care to be blamelessly elsewhere. They pay men to do their dirty work.”
“But?”
“I already have men turning out the chambers of the LeClerc brothers. If they are lucky, evidence will be forthcoming.”
“How would that be lucky for them?”
“For one of them, at least—the innocent one. If I do not find evidence, then both of them will be locked up by nightfall.”
Elizabeth shivered once, seized by that feeling of someone walking on her grave. Not yet, she told the shadows firmly. Death cannot have me yet. Not for many long years, and not by violence.
—
Julien did not attend the tennis match. He was moodily alone in his chamber—a tiny rectangle that at least he did not have to share with Nicolas, and certainly cleaner than his rented space in Paris—when the door was flung wide and a man in clerkly black flanked by two guards rasped, “On your feet. Don’t touch anything.”
Slowly, Julien rose to his feet from where he’d lain stretched full-length on the bed, jerkin unlaced over his shirt, boots tossed carelessly on the floor.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“For you to stand still in the corridor and go nowhere.” The man stepped aside for Julien to exit the chamber, but the guards remained in place. No doubt to keep him from fleeing. Every inner alarm that had kept him alive so long in a dangerous profession was ringing, but he knew how to feign ease.
Even the most thorough search couldn’t last long, for there was nothing in the chamber except the bed, a chair, and Julien’s trunk. The clerk (or whatever he was) removed everything from the trunk, shaking out the clothes, running his hands along the interior looking for secret hiding places, then swiftly dismantled the bed and mattress. He was too well-trained to express frustration, but there did seem to be a remoteness to his face when he finally conceded there was nothing to find.