The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(2)
“What is your name, child?”
“Ailis.” Her voice was soft but distinct.
“How old are you, Ailis?”
“Fourteen.”
She and FitzMaurice studied each other in equal measure, until he blinked first. Then, to Finian, he said gruffly, “Surely any help the girl requires can be handled within your family and clan?”
“Help, aye. But vengeance—that will take more than just the men of our clan.”
“Vengeance for what?”
When Finian reached for her cloak, Ailis made a single convulsive gesture of protest, but she stood still enough as her uncle swept off the enveloping garment and revealed her pregnancy for all Irish eyes to see and understand.
FitzMaurice narrowed his eyes. “Who?” he demanded of her. “Gilbert himself?”
Finian answered for her. “One of the English dogs under his command. She won’t say.”
“Why not?” FitzMaurice demanded. “You know who I am, girl. The Captain of Desmond. I would see your shame avenged.”
With those clear, uncompromising eyes, Ailis answered, “Vengeance belongs to me.”
With a shake of his head, but a grudging respect, FitzMaurice conceded. “If my men had half your focus, Ailis Kavanaugh, we should put the English to rout in a month’s time. Go then, and seek your vengeance. If you find you would like my aid at any time, you have only to ask.”
When she smiled, cold as it was, FitzMaurice could see the great beauty that she would one day become. “I can destroy one Englishman without any man’s aid,” she promised.
FitzMaurice believed her.
Elizabeth loved weddings. At least those weddings in which she could appear the benign good fairy, generously bestowing her favour upon a couple and, as always, claiming the spotlight for herself. Most families fortunate enough to draw the queen’s attention to such an occasion fell over themselves to get out of her way and let her run things in the manner she wanted them.
Not the Courtenay family.
At this wedding, Elizabeth was little more than a guest. For one thing, she had wanted the wedding to take place in London. As the bride was both the eldest daughter of the Duke of Exeter and Elizabeth’s own goddaughter, the queen had graciously offered any number of royal chapels for the ceremony, from private ones such as Hampton Court to more public parishes like St. Margaret’s at Westminster.
But Lucette Courtenay had her mother’s stubbornness when her own wishes were at stake, and so Elizabeth herself had to travel northwest to participate in the wedding of the English lady and her French Catholic spy.
Elizabeth did not stay at Wynfield Mote with the Courtenay family, but in Warwick Castle ten miles northeast. After the castle’s forfeit to the crown upon the Duke of Northumberland’s death, Elizabeth had bestowed it upon one of the duke’s surviving sons, Ambrose Dudley. In gratitude for the queen’s generosity, Ambrose gave her the run of the castle whenever she wished. A queen had no release from ruling, so Elizabeth filled hours of each day with letters and papers and in meeting with the men who rode back and forth between the monarch and Walsingham in London. Though her Lord Secretary (and chief spymaster) had once used both the bride and groom in his intelligence web, Walsingham had not been invited to the wedding.
The ceremony itself went off beautifully. Conducted at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon—and in the language of the Prayer Book issued by Elizabeth’s government in the first year of her reign—Lucette Courtenay and Julien LeClerc pledged themselves to love and honour, to worship with their bodies, and remain loyal to their deaths. Elizabeth herself had not been married to quite those words. Indeed, the working out of her marriage more than twenty years ago to Philip of Spain had required nearly a month of exhaustive debates on how precisely to balance their vows as Catholic and Protestant. But as Julien LeClerc had willingly adopted the Protestant faith for his bride, there was no trouble about words today.
They at least allowed the queen to host a banquet for them afterward at Warwick Castle. Elizabeth had rather hoped that Lucette would wear the Tudor rose necklace she had once given her, but the dark-haired bride was adorned instead with another necklace familiar to the queen: pearls and sapphires, with a single filigree star pendant.
When the bride’s mother joined her, Elizabeth said acerbically, “Don’t tell me you have handed over your prized possession, Minuette. Whatever does Dominic say?”
Though nearly forty-five, Minuette Courtenay was recognizably still the young woman who had once captured the King of England’s heart. If there were strands of gray in her honey-gold hair, they did not show, and her gown of leaf-green damask fit as neatly as when she was young. There were times, looking at her friend, when Elizabeth could almost believe the last twenty-five years a dream.
Minuette returned her to the subject of the necklace. “It is only lent for now,” she replied with equal tartness. “And Dominic would say that we ourselves are our prized possessions, not any material goods.”
“Do you never tire of your husband’s practical perfection?” Not that there wasn’t a grain of envy in Elizabeth’s soul at her friend’s long-lived and loving marriage.
Minuette turned the conversation with the ease of a woman who had known her queen since childhood—indeed, still knew her rather better than made Elizabeth comfortable. “Anabel tells us you intend to invest her formally as Princess of Wales. She is very proud—and, to your credit, taking the responsibility seriously. Dominic says her spoken Welsh has become quite good.”