The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(25)
Your raven stands ever constant at your command.
It was Kit who shadowed her through the day and into the night. Kit she kept turning to for comments, Kit whose honey-bronzed hair was like no one else’s, Kit whose laughter and unfailing friendship Anabel missed so much she could hardly bear to think on it.
She wanted Kit back, whatever it took. Which meant she had to acknowledge the truth of why he’d left.
He’d left because of her. Because of what had happened at Wynfield Mote a year ago, when she and Lucette Courtenay had been held hostage by a Catholic troublemaker. It had been Kit who walked into the hall of his family home with the necessary information to have Anabel released. And when he’d walked in, those clear hazel eyes of his had locked on her with an intensity that stole her breath far more than fear ever had. It was the tension of…
Why balk at the word? The tension of love. Not the love of a childhood friend, or of a subject for his future queen. There was nothing political or calculated or planned to that emotion—it simply existed. Kit loved her. She had known it in her bones at that moment.
And ever since, she had been pretending not to know it.
Kit had made it easy for her, she could see that now. Kept his temper when she’d raged at him for not doing what she wanted, refusing to back down when she insisted he stay in England and serve her. She would never have guessed he could be so self-sacrificing. And while he said nothing, she had pretended to believe it did not lie between them.
Because if she once admitted Kit’s love, then what might happen to her? If she once allowed herself to think of it, what might she feel?
There were some commands even a queen could not give. Stop loving me, for instance. Stop getting in my head and making me remember your eyes and your laugh and how you are the one I look for a dozen times a day.
Kit might be hers to command, but she was not his to love. Not ever.
—
For five days following her daughter’s investiture, Elizabeth’s government and court life was centered on Ludlow Castle. It was a testing period, to see how the Princess of Wales’s household could work with the queen’s without too wide an audience to comment on every moment of friction between them.
But some matters required still more privacy. Such as meeting with her niece, Nora Percy. Elizabeth welcomed the girl into an alcove off her bedchamber that had been set up for the queen to read and write in solitude.
It was always a bit of a shock to realize how much Nora looked like her mother. She might have been Eleanor reborn, with blonde hair and catlike brown eyes…except that Nora had none of her mother’s blatant sensuality and aggressive charm. Those traits had brought Eleanor into a king’s bed when she was only eighteen and had kept her alive through multiple changes of fortune.
Elizabeth much preferred Nora’s reserve, and she smiled now with a fondness few ever received from her. “Did you enjoy Ireland?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Not sorry to leave your mother behind?”
Nora, whatever she felt, could never be brought to openly criticize Eleanor. “She will do well enough without me at Kilkenny.”
“I assume that means your wishes are unchanged?” Elizabeth queried.
For the first time, Nora lost a little of her self-possession. “I do not…No, Your Majesty. I have nothing to ask differently.”
Nine years ago, the eighteen-year-old Nora had been a shy girl newly come to court after a quiet life with a musician uncle in Yorkshire. For the daughter of two such personalities as Eleanor Percy and William Tudor, Nora had kept to herself to a surprising degree and Elizabeth had quickly dismissed the girl as weak.
Until that weak girl had requested a private audience and asked the queen—her aunt—for a favor. “My mother has been matchmaking since I was little,” Nora had said calmly. “She would have married me off long since if it were not that your consent is also required.”
“And you have a particular young man to whom you would like me to give consent?” Elizabeth had asked, a little amused.
“I do not wish to marry, Your Majesty,” Nora had answered. “I would ask you to refuse consent to all who might ask in the coming years.”
And so Elizabeth had done, a little bemused but willing to grant what cost her nothing—and what displeased Eleanor in the bargain. Ten times in the last seven years Elizabeth had refused men who had wished to claim Nora.
Now Elizabeth studied the girl—woman, she corrected herself, for Nora was twenty-seven, though she looked younger—and wondered if she had finally met someone capable of changing her mind.
But if she did not wish to say, Elizabeth would not force the issue. “May I take it you are not interested in returning to Ireland?”
“I would prefer to return to York for a time, Your Majesty. My uncle Jonathan is ill. It would be a comfort to us both for me to go home.”
“As you like,” Elizabeth said. She did not add that Nora would be missed, for truthfully the woman moved through life with a delicacy that seemed to leave little imprint behind her. Though she had come to know this niece of hers well enough to recognize that was a deliberate choice on Nora’s part.
With personal business completed, Elizabeth turned her attention to the more practical matter of judging how smoothly her daughter’s household and council functioned. It did not take long to appreciate how well Anabel’s treasurer worked as a liaison between households. Which made sense, since he’d been trained by Lord Burghley. But Matthew Harrington also came from the Courtenay household. Elizabeth had known his mother, Carrie, since she’d become Minuette’s personal lady almost thirty years ago. During those turbulent times, Elizabeth had often had cause to give thanks for Carrie’s steadiness and loyalty when Minuette most needed it. Matthew’s father, known to most simply as Harrington, had once been in Lord Rochford’s service but took to Dominic Courtenay as though the two men had been meant to work together since birth. Elizabeth couldn’t truly say she knew Harrington—she doubted anyone but Carrie and Dominic could say that—but he had been a godsend in keeping Minuette alive during the months William was determined to kill her.