The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(59)
Stephen had to drop his eyes, certain Maisie would mark his disappointment. She was hardly throwing herself at him, was she? Not very flattering. But perhaps, in time, she would come to love him the same way he loved her. Soul and body.
Or perhaps not. “I have no objection to bearing your children,” she continued firmly. “I also have no objection to how you choose to meet any other…needs you might have. I am quite certain you will be discreet.”
After that extraordinary speech, what on earth was he supposed to answer? Tell her she had misread him completely? Confess that for months now, without even being aware of it, he had not been able to envision any woman in his bed but her? Maisie needed him in order to protect her place in the company. That was all.
He had promised her that the marriage would be hers to define. And Stephen was, if nothing else, a man of his word. “That you will allow me to help you is quite satisfaction enough. Children need not be a question between us. Certainly not now.”
But as he pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek to seal their bargain, Stephen felt as though the children the two of them might have were haunting him forlornly. Dark like him, or moonlight pale like Maisie? Her brains, of course, and her courage. He was twenty-six years old—he’d never especially thought about children. Until now, when the woman he loved seemed prepared to bargain for them simply as an offering to his pride.
Not the ideal way to begin a marriage. But for all that, Stephen could not bring himself to regret it.
—
The Spanish court passed Christmas at El Escorial, the beautiful palace wrought almost entirely from King Philip’s imagination. The only thorn in the season was the continuing silence as to Mary Stuart’s current whereabouts. She must have left Waterford by now, even with the worst of seas. She could not mean to spend all winter in Ireland, not with Spanish troops concentrating along the east coast in preparation for supporting the English invasion. There would be, at least, no shortage of ships and soldiers able to defend her, but no commander wanted a royal woman to protect in such a delicate situation—and certainly not a woman as politically dangerous as Mary. Philip told himself the ships escorting her back to Spain would have had to sail quite far south in order to avoid drawing too near England’s coast, thus causing the delays…but he was grateful that he had not given in to her pleas to send Alexander with her.
Christmas with children was enchanting, and Philip took great pleasure in the time he spent with his sons. His time with Anne had been so circumscribed by distance and cirumstance that he had few memories of playing with her. He’d had another child once, though…a boy who, even at the age of four, had been dangerously willful. Independence was a trait to be cultivated, but reckless violence was not. Carlos had given far more hours of heartache than he ever had of joy, and his death almost twenty years ago had not been greatly regretted. But every now and then, when Philip saw a flicker of familiarity in the tilt of Charles’s head or the high pitch of Alexander’s chatter, he recognized the cost of being a king first and foremost. Before even a father.
Anne had written to him, a rarity that he marked down to Christmas goodwill. She had said nothing of Ireland or the Netherlands, nothing of her mother, nothing of religion. So many topics were banned between them that her letter had been little more than polite inquiries about her half brothers’ health and gossip from her own household. Philip had shaken his head when he learned of Philippa Courtenay’s hasty wedding to a man not of her class, but Anne was clearly touched by the romance of it. Though she had added, in words as tart as her mother’s: She’s a braver girl than I, to run the risk of offending the Duke of Exeter. But then, some fathers are prone to forgive their daughters any manner of sins.
Not like you, ran the unwritten corollary.
The correspondence from Tomás Navarro was more revealing. The priest’s letters from Kenilworth Castle arrived in a bundle on the second day of 1586, and Philip read them alone. One had to sort through the Jesuit’s prejudices, but otherwise his reports were concise and clear.
The queen and the princess were not more than civil to one another in public…spent no time speaking privately…When the queen expressed dissatisfaction with the attendance of the Earl of Arundel, the princess forbore to listen…the princess quarreled with Lord Christopher Courtenay and he rode back to the Scots border on his own…they say there was a woman in it…
About damn time, Philip thought in a rare burst of profanity. He’d begun to fear that Christopher Courtenay was that rarest of creatures—a man so devoted to a single woman that he could not be swayed by any temptation. When the Courtenays had visited Spain several years ago, Philip had gone so far as to offer the boy a Spanish bride. And when the Duke of Exeter declined on his son’s behalf, Philip had waited fatalistically for his daughter to make an enormous error.
He should have trusted her. Anabel not only had his own moral character, but Elizabeth’s strong pragmatic streak. That didn’t mean he wasn’t grateful for whomever the unknown woman was who had finally persuaded the strong-minded Christopher Courtenay from the path of hopeless devotion.
On the other hand…this might be just the crack in Anne’s certainty that could be profitably exploited for her own good. Philip took his ponderings to Mass at his private chapel in El Escorial. While the monks sang service, their voices floating from behind the sail vaults of the church, Philip sought the will of God. For his daughter. For England. For the souls of all the people wandering so far from the paths of light.