The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(58)

“Did she elaborate on the nature of that trouble?”

“She did not.”

They had been speaking English; now Anabel switched to Spanish just in case one of her other women came into the chamber. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you are also troubled, and like Lady Philippa choose to hide it rather than face it. My grandmother thought it strange that two young women so closely knit would choose to keep their secrets from each other.”

Just how canny was Madalena’s grandmother? Anabel wondered. Could she read her secret from across the seas? A secret she was keeping from herself almost as much as from Pippa.

How do you know when you’re in love? Anabel had asked that question when she was twelve—not of her mother, whom she could not imagine ever having been in love, but of Minuette. It had seemed a very pressing question then, when she was just old enough to realize that love was possible, while still young enough to believe such a question would matter in her life.

Minuette did not laugh it off, or turn her away with a teasing answer. Perhaps she had sensed the trouble behind the question, from a girl who had watched her parents and knew that, whatever they felt, love was not the motivating factor of their relationship.

Only now, at the age of twenty, did Anabel realize how Minuette must have paused at the question—for surely it had brought a flood of memories about a man who had loved her to violent distraction. Anabel’s uncle, the late King of England.

“I can only speak for myself,” Minuette had warned her, “but there were two things that told me I was in love. First, that there was no one else I would rather be with for every moment of my day—not just the romantic moments.”

“And second?” Anabel had prompted, only slightly unsettled by the thought of grown-ups being romantic.

“Second, because he made me want to be better. Not by lecturing me or ordering me—trust me, the few times he tried that ended disastrously!—but simply by being himself. The very fact that Dominic loved me precisely as I was made me want to give him the best person in return.”

That had seemed an esoteric answer to a twelve-year-old, even a precocious princess with an impressive education. At the time, Anabel had been looking more for fireworks and breathless proclamations of an inability to breathe without each other.

But now, as Madalena silently pinned her hair, Anabel knew that Minuette had spoken true.

She had known Kit was in love with her since the crisis at Wynfield Mote. But only now could Anabel admit that she was as wholly in love with him as well.





Their final weeks in Spain passed in a whirlwind of official events and semiofficial discussions between Philip’s councils and Elizabeth’s envoys. Kit watched his father come and go from those discussions with his usual imperturbable expression and wondered what he thought of the current situation in Spain.

Kit was young, but one didn’t have to be old to feel the undercurrents of tension and suspicion that had followed them through their travels. Indeed, perhaps he and Pippa had the advantage. People took less notice of the young—everyone, that is, except Philip himself.

The King of Spain might be the most powerful monarch in the Christian world, but he was also a loving father who had spent several afternoons in private consultation with Kit and Pippa, encouraging them to share as many stories of his only daughter as they could. And not just of the last year, but all the many years he had missed of her life. The king was particularly enchanted by stories of her stubbornness, and had laughed when Pippa did an accurate imitation of a ten-year-old Anabel using devastating logic to refute every argument her mother made as to why she had to learn Greek.

But other than by the king, the Courtenays had been received with surface courtesy and sideways glances. Kit had thought Seville might be less wary than Madrid or El Escorial, since the port city had such a constant influx of traders and contact with the New World. But there were undercurrents here as well. He was beginning to grow tired of politely shuttered faces and people who pretended not to understand his most basic questions.

He was also increasingly worried about Pippa. His twin had grown ever more inward since her visit to Madalena’s grandmother. She would not talk about it, and only on reflection did Kit realize how much of their life had been defined by Pippa not talking. Or at least, not talking about herself. She was always the one giving advice and counsel and keeping her own interior life securely locked away. It was disconcerting to realize how little he knew about his twin.

All in all, by the time his father asked him to walk down to the harbor, he felt rather like one of the Arabian thoroughbreds the Spanish had in plenty. The day after tomorrow they would set sail on one of Philip’s royal ships and hug the coast of Portugal north before returning to Portsmouth.

It was blazingly hot, in a way Kit had never known before. Even his parents had never been this far south, and the entire English party was amazed at just how thick the air could lay beneath the sun’s rays. Kit couldn’t believe that people managed to labor in this weather. But there were crowds aplenty as they strolled the bright streets.

If Dominic’s stated reason for their route was to cast an eye over their ship, Kit quickly realized there was more to it than that. Of course there was. Dominic Courtenay did not lightly seek his children’s company—or at least, not Kit’s. He’d always had time for his daughters, and Stephen had naturally spent many hours alone with their father, being appropriately raised as heir to one of England’s wealthiest estates.