The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(89)

There were only five of them in her privy chamber: Elizabeth, Dominic, Kit, Walsingham, and Burghley. Other than Kit—and that reservation solely because of his youth—there were no men Elizabeth trusted more in her kingdom.

“No one else must know,” she said first, and was pleased and a touch surprised at the firmness of her voice. But then, she had always coped well in extremis.

“Agreed,” Burghley said. “And we must move quickly.”

“Will you let her go?” It was Walsingham who asked, and in his roughness Elizabeth heard all the arguments he’d made over the years for the necessity of Mary’s death. God help him, if he so much as hinted that this was her fault…

He wouldn’t. He didn’t have to. Elizabeth knew it all too keenly herself.

For twelve years she had ignored Walsingham’s advice, and that of her council, to bring Mary up on charges that would end in her execution. How could she have done otherwise? Mary, for her faults and silliness, was her cousin. And a queen crowned and anointed. But once violate that holy gift, and how quickly the future blood of royals might be spent. Including Elizabeth’s own.

Mary had not been so circumspect, more than once lending her approval to plots to assassinate her cousin. Elizabeth had not minded those. But now Mary had brought Anabel into play…and at the moment Elizabeth would cheerfully have swung the sword of execution herself.

Now that it was too late. Because there could be no other answer. “Mary goes free,” Elizabeth announced grimly. “Walsingham, ride in all haste to Tutbury. Take Christopher with you.” She nodded at Kit. “Stephen Courtenay might be harder to persuade of this step than even Shrewsbury, but he will take his brother’s word where he might not take my Lord Secretary’s. I will meet you all at King’s Lynn.”

Burghley intervened. “Do you think that wise?”

“From the first, Mary has pressed to meet me face-to-face. It would be rude of me to let her go without granting her that request. You ride to London, Burghley. Take Dominic with you.”

“I must return to Wynfield,” Dominic insisted flatly.

“And you will soon enough. With Julien LeClerc. If Lucette wants him there, that is good enough for me.”

They broke up with only a few more words. There was little to say and plenty to do. Elizabeth ached to be in motion like the men around her. Burghley would see to it that the government and London were held stable and in ignorance of what was happening. Time enough to announce the peril once it passed. When Anabel was safely in her power once more, and Mary set loose to wreak what havoc she could outside of England.

The men did not even wait until morning. Walsingham and Kit rode northwest for Tutbury, Burghley and Dominic south to London. Elizabeth spent a restless night in Cambridge, and when the sun had risen, rode for King’s Lynn on the Norfolk coast. Her brother had fought and won a notable battle there in his last years, sending the Duke of Norfolk fleeing across the waters as Mary now meant to flee. Elizabeth took grim satisfaction from the fact that Norfolk had eventually lost his head in another rebellion, attempting to bring her down and wed Mary Stuart himself. Justice might be delayed, but it always came in the end.

—

Julien waited every day in expectation of the rack, but it never came. The closest he got was being shown the device—along with the other instruments of torture, some of which he could guess at, others too horrifying to contemplate when one might be on the receiving end—as a sort of prod to giving the answers they wanted. But he couldn’t, because what they wanted was not the truth.

He might be a liar, but he had a strange devotion to the truth. Also a perverse wish to do the opposite of what anyone wanted of him.

Walsingham did not return, which Julien found increasingly ominous. Mostly because no one else would even hint at what was going on outside the Tower walls. Where was everyone? What were they doing? Mostly, though, everyone simply meant Lucette.

After eight days (the stone of the walls was soft, and though he was no artist he could at least mark the passage of time), Julien lay on his hard bed, arms behind his head, wondering why he’d never had the nerve to tell Lucie how he loved her, when the cell door opened. He didn’t bother getting to his feet; it would simply be a guard checking on him or taunting him, or the lieutenant to ask him more meaningless questions.

Dominic Courtenay walked in.

Julien had never shot to his feet so fast in his life. For one thing, the Duke of Exeter was that sort of man—and would have been even without his exalted title. It had been twelve years since Julien had met him, but Lord Exeter looked less changed than Renaud. Of course, his wife still lived. The thought of Minuette made Julien flush with embarrassment at how he’d fawned over this man’s wife, then deepened to regret at how Lucette still held it against him. Heaven forbid Dominic Courtenay had any idea how he had tormented himself with boyish dreams all those years ago.

It was a remarkable amount of humiliation and hope to swing through in three seconds. Frankly, Julien was surprised he managed to make it to his feet and stay there steadily. Lord Exeter had the kind of black stare that made one certain the worst was about to happen to you and he was completely uninterested in your fate.

But fear for Lucette conquered even fear of her father. “Is your daughter well, my lord?” he asked.

That provoked a crack in the facade, a querying expression that quickly resumed forbidding. “I suspect you and I are going to have a long talk about Lucette in the near future,” he said grimly. “But not today. I have horses below, and we must set out at once.”