The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(70)

“The problem of Mary Stuart is for Scotland and King James to handle,” Anabel said flatly. “No one could be more wary of the woman than those Scottish lords who drove her out twenty years ago. There is nothing we can do about that.”

“Perhaps it is time to bring everything into the open,” Littlefield said. The chaplain had always been the one most uneasy about Anabel’s deception with her mother.

Her reply was swift. “No. It is too early. I will not waste the last two years by panicking so near to the end. The sacrifices we have all made must be worth it.”

“Then we simply wait?” Hatton asked.

“Did I say so? What we do is deploy our less obvious weapons.” Anabel smiled. “Why do you think we have spent so much effort seducing the North? For precisely a situation like this. Now our chief seductress will reap the benefits of her efforts.”

She heard Matthew Harrington shift in his seat. Was he going to protest openly? she wondered. If he meant to, his wife forestalled him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been called a seductress before,” Pippa said with just the right touch of amusement. “I’ll begin making the rounds tomorrow. Surely, if there is anything to know, someone in one of the northern Catholic households will have heard. Even if it’s only a whisper.”

“Which means someone might go to serious lengths to prevent you learning it,” Matthew pointed out. In a matter of just a few words, he managed to sound both worried and threatening.

“Of course you will go with your wife,” Anabel said. “And the point is not to flush anyone out. I trust you both to be discreet and not raise any alarms. All I want is information. The decisions are not in your hands.”

Pippa laid a hand on Matthew’s arm in restraint. “Of course, Your Highness.”

“Don’t spook anyone,” she warned Pippa. “Be charming and subtle and na?ve.”

It was at this moment that Kit said suddenly, and apropos of nothing, “Lakehill House!”

Everyone turned to him. Even Pippa, who looked nearly as startled as everyone else.

“Do you have something to add?” Anabel asked.

“I knew I’d heard that name. Now I know why I couldn’t remember. It’s in the North, true, not far from Kendal, but it’s little more than a farm with no significant ties to any northern power.”

Everyone else continued to look blank, but Pippa said, “Of course. How could I not have seen that at once?” Her words were little more than a murmur, as though asking herself.

“Kit?” Anabel prompted.

“Lakehill House,” he announced, “was given by the crown some thirty years ago to the youngest son of the Duke of Norfolk, Giles Howard. When he died, it remained the property of his widow. Eleanor Percy.”

At once, Anabel grasped the meaning. Eleanor Percy: mistress of the late King of England; mother of the king’s daughter, Nora; the woman who had held Dominic Courtenay prisoner at the king’s command at…yes…Lakehill House.

Christopher Hatton asked skeptically, “Why would Eleanor Percy mix herself up in all of this? She has no morals, I’ll grant you that, but she’s never made trouble beyond breaking up other marriages.”

“Perhaps she simply hasn’t had the chance,” Anabel answered. “But in the recent past the Earl of Ormond has sent her back from Ireland, the queen commanded her to remain away from court at—as Kit pointed out—little more than an isolated farm…My mother once told me not to underestimate Eleanor’s ability to cause trouble.”

“Also,” Pippa said drily, “Eleanor Percy hates no one on this earth more than she hates Minuette Wyatt Courtenay. Until now our family has kept to ourselves except when under the queen’s direct protection at court. No longer. Kit and I are in the North, Stephen is in Scotland, my parents are far out of reach in the South…yes, Eleanor might go far to cause Minuette’s children trouble.”

“This is not trouble,” Christopher Hatton pointed out to Anabel. “This is treason.”

The Tudor smile could never have been mistaken for warm. “I can think of no more suitable response than for Minuette Courtenay’s son to arrest Eleanor on charges of treason. Go to Lakehill House, Kit. Travel quiet and swift so she won’t see you coming. Then throw her in the deepest cell you can find.”

The council chamber emptied swiftly after that. Kit did not wait even to say goodbye—he would be halfway to Kendal by dark. But when Pippa moved to join Matthew, Anabel stopped her with a touch to the wrist. She could feel the fineness of Pippa’s bones and marked the increasing sharpness of her friend’s cheekbones. Caught in stillness, there was a pallor to her skin that Anabel had not noticed before.

“Are you sure you’re well enough to do this, Pippa? It’s a lot of ground to cover in the next weeks,” she said with concern. “You’re not…I mean…You’ve been married seven months. I have no wish to jeopardize your health.”

“I am not with child,” Pippa assured her. “It will pass, Anabel. Better for me to work through it. Let me be useful. That is all I wish.”

“You will let me know if the strain is too great? Or no, of course you will not. But Matthew will. I will not have you suffer in my service, Pippa.”

“If I suffer, I assure you it will not be from too great service. That I promise.”