The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(63)

Her husband had grown quick to recognize her spells, and it was his hand on her elbow that brought her back to the surroundings of Lucette’s hall. Her sister had not missed the moment—her sharp gaze made that clear—but she did not choose to pursue it just now.

“Fun, indeed!” Pippa said brightly, returning to the subject at hand. “Father has always had an equable temper—at least where we are concerned—but we have certainly tried it severely this last year. How do you suppose Mother is soothing him?”

Lucette arched an eyebrow, a trick remarkably like Queen Elizabeth. “In this matter,” she said darkly, “it is the other way round. Mother has opinions, and she is determined to share them. I do not envy Stephen.”

Pippa thought of her older brother and the young Scots woman, of the way the air tightened between them as though the very elements of the earth were conspiring to bind them together. “I think,” she said, “that Stephen is fully as opinionated. He will apologize for hurting her, but never for his choice of partner. Rather like Mother, in fact.”

“I wouldn’t say that to her,” Lucette warned.

“I won’t have to. Mother will see it for herself.”

Unfortunately, Minuette Courtenay could see all manner of things for herself. Including her younger daughter’s increasingly fragile control. She was wise enough not to confront her directly. Instead, she began by asking Pippa about Anabel’s state of mind.

“She is so young,” her mother mused. “It is a dreadful burden Elizabeth has laid on her.”

“I think it was fully as much Anabel’s idea as the queen’s.”

“But when we are young, we often cannot see the full cost of what we choose.” Minuette hesitated, those hazel eyes nearly identical to Kit’s, fixed on Pippa’s green ones. “You, of course, are an exception. You see far more than I do. Far more than I would like.”

“If you are asking me if I have seen the outcome—I have not. If John Dee cannot prophesy the end of this war, it is hardly likely that I could.”

“Then what is it you do see, Philippa?” her mother asked gently. “What is it that troubles you enough to put shadows beneath your eyes and lines of care on your face? Why does Matthew track your every move as though afraid you will break—or vanish?”

“I see pain,” Pippa answered unwillingly, picking her way with care over the difficult landscape of this conversation. “But that is hardly a surprise. One cannot have war without pain. Especially not a war within a family. For all her logic and apparent indifference, Anabel hates exploiting her relationship to her father. And she hates even more being exploited by him.”

“My darling girl.” Minuette bit her lip, clearly considering how far to press. “I love Anabel and I love England. But not as I love you. Will you not tell me?”

Pippa looked straight into her mother’s face and lied. “There is nothing to tell.”

It was simpler after that to just avoid her family. Pippa thought she had found an isolated section of the vast house—not as large as Tiverton Castle, though enormous compared to Wynfield Mote—but soon found another person who had fled from too much familial intimacy.

“Hello, Felix.” She spoke softly, as one would to a horse about to bolt. She had not forgotten how haunted he’d looked upon his arrival in England last spring. But the expression he turned on her now was, if not that of an entirely lighthearted child, at least considerably eased.

“My lady,” he said in very good English. In the manner of fourteen-year-old boys, he had shot up even more, and was clearly on the way to matching his Uncle Julien’s remarkable height. And despite being too thin as yet, his brown hair and eyes were attractive.

“Pippa,” she corrected him. “You look much happier since last I saw you.” Never let it be said that she was afraid to speak bluntly. She was only oblique about her own feelings, not those of others. “You have come to terms with your uncle?”

“Yes.” Felix blinked and cleared his throat. “I suppose I should apologize to you as well. For my father’s wickedness in your home.”

“It is not your responsibility, Felix. And what your father wrought did by far the most damage to you. It is I who am sorry, for all of it. I cannot envision living in the world without my parents. And, of course, your grandfather. Renaud LeClerc was a very good man.” She studied the boy, showing in the bones and the eyes and the height a hint of the man he himself would be. “Will you return to France?”

“No. Not this year. We will wait until matters are decided between England and Spain. My uncle and Lucette have said they will travel with me when I wish. But I intend to make this my home until I am old enough to run Blanclair.”

“Good. That is good.” She felt tears prick and blinked rapidly to clear them.

“My lady…Pippa?” Felix said hesitantly. “Why are you sad?”

Because I like this world and I like you and I wish I could see you become a man worthy of Blanclair…

“It is the travel,” she said dismissively. “I think I will rest for a while.”

And though it had been a device to escape, once Pippa retreated to bed, she almost instantly fell asleep.

—

It didn’t take long for word of Kit and Anabel’s argument at Kenilworth to make its way to the Marches of England. If Kit had thought it difficult enduring the sidelong glances and whispers that followed when he was in Anabel’s good graces, he soon found this was even worse. As though every word of speculation merely confirmed his own misery.