The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(3)
Instinctively, Elizabeth darted a look to where her only child sat in merry companionship with Minuette’s twins. Kit and Pippa Courtenay were on either side of the princess, their matching honey-gold heads (like their mother’s) bent inward as the three of them talked in no doubt scurrilous terms about the guests. The tableau tugged painfully at long-ago memories. “The Holy Quartet,” Robert Dudley had called them: Dominic, Minuette, Elizabeth…and her brother, William. She could only hope there was less pain in these young ones’ futures.
“The investiture,” Elizabeth acknowledged. “Of course it is only a formality. A ritual I never had. But it will be useful just now to remind the Welsh of our power. That is why I have chosen Ludlow Castle for the investiture, rather than simply doing it before Parliament. Anabel will make a charming figure to the Welsh.”
“She says the council has invited a representative from the Duc d’Anjou to attend the investiture.”
“As well as an envoy from Scotland. France is prepared to give us a large measure of what we want now that Mary Stuart has wed Philip. I will see what I can get from them, but it is Scotland that is most desperate for an alliance.”
“What is Anabel’s preference?”
Elizabeth huffed in exasperation. “You know better than that, Minuette. With my divorce from Philip and his recent marriage to Mary Stuart, all Europe is on edge. Mary wants Scotland back, make no mistake, and if she can persuade my former husband to give her Spanish troops, then our island is in serious danger. If Anabel were at all prone to romance—and I’m not certain that she is—she would have to give over for hard, cold reality. England and Scotland must stand together or we will fall separately to the Catholics.”
Minuette held her silence almost to the point of discomfort, but finally said, “I wasn’t criticizing, Elizabeth. Not intentionally. It is only that you were my friend before you were my queen, and at times I wish you unencumbered by the burdens of ruling. You and Anabel both.”
It was my choice to rule, Elizabeth thought, but would never say. I just didn’t have a clear idea of what it would mean, the years of weariness and care and doubt. And always, the waiting for the next crisis.
She didn’t have long to wait. Before the wedding party had quite broken up, a courier arrived from London with a curt message written in Walsingham’s hand, the message Elizabeth had been fearing since the Scots queen had escaped her English imprisonment last year and then married the King of Spain.
Mary Stuart is four months gone with child.
—
The morning after his sister’s wedding, Stephen Courtenay woke late and for nearly the first time in his life was reluctant to leave his bed. (His empty bed, at least, and at home it was always empty.) But with Lucie’s wedding out of the way, he couldn’t put off what came next. The queen had offered him a command, and would not long await an answer.
Command was one thing—he had been raised to expect it. Command in Ireland was something else entirely. And convincing his parents to accept it when he himself was ambivalent? No wonder he’d rather stay in bed.
But he was twenty-one years old and could hardly hide from trouble. So he flung himself out of bed and dressed in record time in the belief that he might as well get unpleasant things done quickly. If he were Kit, he would dawdle his way through, putting it off as long as he could, but irresponsibility was not a trait an eldest son and heir could afford. That was the province of younger brothers.
On this particular morning, Kit was long gone on a ride with Pippa and Anabel. Lucie and her husband had spent the night at their new home, Compton Wynyates, and from there meant to go north and spend the next few weeks in Yorkshire, since the French-born Julien thought it sounded exotic. From the way Lucie and Julien had been looking at each other last night, Stephen supposed they would hardly notice their surroundings, as long as they had a bed.
And that was a disturbing image of one’s sister. Stephen shook it off as he swiped bread and cheese from the Wynfield Mote kitchens and headed for the fount of all certain knowledge where his family was concerned—Carrie Harrington.
Just turned sixty, Carrie had been in his mother’s service for twenty-five years, and in Minuette’s mother’s service before that. After she’d lost her first husband and both their children to illness early in life, she had remarried the large, silent Edward Harrington, who’d served Dominic Courtenay since before he was the Duke of Exeter. Carrie had personally delivered Stephen and each of his siblings and could always be counted on for good advice.
And also a certain amount of mind reading.
“Looking for your parents?” she asked, squinting up at him from her comfortable chair in the sunlit solar. “Or looking to avoid them?”
Stephen smiled. “Which should it be?”
Her hair was a soft gray-brown and her face lined, but her hands were steady on her needlework. “Don’t look to me to sort your problems. Go to Ireland or not—it is your decision. And that, for what it’s worth, is what your parents will tell you.”
“I know. Sometimes I wish they were more autocratic.”
“No, you don’t. You only appear submissive in comparison to your brother. If ever you are commanded against your wishes, Stephen, you will balk authority as surely as Kit does.”
“Then let us hope I am never commanded against my wishes. There can only be one Kit.”