The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(31)

“Will you do that for me?” she asked, feeling more vulnerable than she liked.

He was close enough to touch, though he didn’t. Quite. His hand came up and hovered at her throat, where she wore the enameled green panther on a black velvet ribbon, then dropped to his side. “I am yours to command.”

“I’m not commanding. I am asking.”

When the corners of his mouth tipped up, she had to stop herself from touching the dimples that formed. What was wrong with her? She was never this…whatever this was. She was always, perfectly and absolutely, in control of herself.

“I will go to Spain. For your sake, Anabel, no one else’s.”

It was the first time he’d called her by name since entering, and she thought she might cry from the tone of it. Or laugh. Or slap him on the arm to stop him from sounding so…intimate.

It was a very good thing, she decided at that moment, that Kit was going as far away from her as possible. That would give her time to flirt with the Duc d’Anjou and charm the Scots ambassador and, in general, do everything she could to remember that it was her hand and her future crown at stake in the marriage market.

Not her heart.





Somehow Stephen made it through the days by sheer force of will. He was disciplined and trained and self-controlled and his Somerset estates were run with care and efficiency. But force of will could not control the nights.

Only weeks after leaving Ireland did Stephen realize that he’d expected time to make it better. Surely he couldn’t continue to dream night after night about what had happened, reliving his men’s fall, the prisoners’ slaughter, Roisin’s death, Harrington…

But he did continue to dream. When winter arrived at Farleigh Hungerford in force in early December, Stephen had not slept more than two hours at a time since Ireland, with no sign of reprieve. He had left Wynfield Mote so his family wouldn’t realize that his state of mind was much worse than the injuries to his body, hoping that being away from the living reminders of his failure—not having to see the widowed Carrie and fatherless Matthew every day—would allow him to grow numb. But again, numbness was only something he could control during the day.

So he did what countless men before him had done—he drank. Heavily and indiscriminately. If his steward and household servants were concerned, he made sure they had no legitimate cause for complaint by concentrating ferociously on his work. The harvest was accomplished, the estate ledgers balanced, his tenants and servants healthy insofar as he could provide, and his soldiers well drilled. What could they say? That he looked unhappy? That where before he had been unfailingly polite, even kind, to those around him, now he was abrupt? Those were not sins, not even legitimate failings. His household said nothing to him, even when they must have been counting the number of bottles he got through in a week.

He was not afraid of his household or his men. And those he was afraid of kept well away from him. Until he received a letter from his sister, Lucette, announcing that she and Julien intended to spend Christmas at Farleigh Hungerford with him.

He stared at the letter for a long time, considering. Only Lucie would have dared to announce rather than ask. And unlike his other correspondents, she did not lace her letter with concerns about his health or well-being. She simply said that their parents, in an unprecedented move, had agreed to spend Christmas at court. “Because Pippa has been missing Anabel,” she wrote, “and Kit is still in London preparing to sail to Spain in the spring.”

As Julien, Lucette continued, was not comfortable with spending Christmas at the English court, they would come to Stephen instead.

Stephen might have forbidden her, if he hadn’t known she would just go ahead and come anyway. And if this was the family’s plan to see how he was doing, better Lucie on her own than all of them at once. He wrote back to his sister, just two lines, and said she would be made as welcome as a single man’s household could make her.

That night he drained twice the usual amount of wine.

Lucette and Julien arrived five days before Christmas, and Stephen nearly lost control at his first sight of them. He watched from an upper window as Julien helped Lucie out of the coach. Instead of simply handing her out, he put his arms around her waist to swing her out and held her tightly to him so he could kiss her. Lucie’s hands were in Julien’s hair as he teased her with light kisses at the corner of her mouth and along the line of her jaw. Stephen could almost hear his sister’s breathless laughter.

Their joy was sickening.

He allowed his steward to greet them and get them settled into the suite carefully prepared by his household. But he couldn’t avoid them forever. Better to meet Lucie on his own terms rather than wait for her to waylay him. So he made his way to the Lady Tower, where he’d installed them at a safe distance from where he slept, and knocked twice for warning on the frame of the open door.

At least Lucie didn’t fly to him, or hug him or stare at him or anything he could not have borne. But nor did she look abashed at inviting herself to Farleigh Hungerford; clearly her joy ran too deep for anything but surface concern. All the better for him.

Julien, on the other hand, watched him warily, and Stephen wondered what the Frenchman thought he might do. Yell at Lucie? Order them to leave? There was protectiveness in every line of his body, and Stephen didn’t relish coming up against Julien in a dispute.