My Lady Jane(26)

Wearing his crown.

“Is there a problem, Sire?” Dudley prompted. “Do you need to lie down?”

“Give me the document,” Edward said. Dudley moved the parchment to a nearby side table, and Edward signed his name carefully. The duke leaned over him to drip wax onto the bottom of the paper and helped Edward to press the ring with the royal seal into the wax. After that was finished, Dudley signed the paper himself, as a witness, along with Master Boubou. Then Dudley rolled the scroll up and whisked it out of sight.

Weariness tugged at Edward again, and he got back into bed, sinking against his plethora of pillows. He closed his eyes.

He had just made Jane the most powerful woman in England.

He liked the idea, but there was still something nagging at him. A doubt. A whisper of worry.

He tried to ignore it. His stomach rumbled, and he decided that any misgivings he might be feeling were due to how hollow and exhausted he was. He really should eat something, he thought. He wished Mistress Penne had left the soup.

He opened his eyes to ask Dudley to send for her but fell silent when he saw the duke and the doctor standing close together, staring out the window where he had been standing a few moments before.

“So. It is done,” the duke said in a low voice.

“It is done,” Boubou affirmed almost mournfully. “And it will be done, as I promised.”

A chill trickled down Edward’s spine. He must have made some kind of noise, because both men turned to look at him. Edward quickly closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing.

“It won’t be long now,” he heard Boubou say from the far side of the room, then the creak of the door’s hinges. “A day or two, at most.”

Edward felt a shadow fall over him. “Sleep well, Your Majesty,” came Lord Dudley’s voice, almost tenderly, and the duke’s clammy fingers brushed a strand of hair from Edward’s feverishly hot face. Edward didn’t move, but next to him he felt Pet’s body tense, the beginnings of a growl working its way up through her chest.

He flexed his fingers where they were buried in her fur, trying to put her at ease.

Lord Dudley turned and hurried out, the sound of his footsteps falling urgent on the stairs. Edward opened his eyes. Pet let out a soft, angry bark.

“It’s all right, girl,” he said to Pet.

She turned over to have her belly rubbed. He obliged her absent-mindedly, trying to clear his thoughts enough to interpret what he’d just heard.

It is done. Well, he’d signed the document, so that was probably the it they’d been referring to.

But then Boubou had said, It will be done, and something about a promise. And Edward had no idea what that meant.

And, then, most troubling of all: It won’t be long now. A day or two at most.

It won’t be long now.

He was fairly certain that the it in this instance was his death.

He slept until the nurse returned a few hours later. This time she carried a plate of blackberry pie, piled high with whipped cream.

Edward’s mouth watered.

He had the fork in his hand, a piece of delicious pie nearly to his lips, when Pet snarled. Not growled. Not barked. Snarled. Then she lunged toward the pie.

Edward was so surprised that he dropped the fork.

Mistress Penne was so surprised that she dropped the plate. It clattered loudly to the floor.

He expected to see Pet dash to lick up the pie (he really should have given her some of the venison from his soup earlier), but the dog ignored the food completely. She leapt to the floor between Mistress Penne and Edward, teeth bared, hackles raised, hair standing up all over her body. The sounds coming from her throat belonged to a much bigger animal.

The nursemaid’s watery eyes bulged. “The dog has gone mad,” she gasped.

Edward was inclined to agree. Pet looked truly terrifying.

“Back away slowly,” he advised. “Once you get to the door, run and get Peter Bannister. He’s the kennel master. Send him here. He’ll know what to do.”

“I can’t leave you here.”

“Pet won’t hurt me,” Edward said with more confidence than he felt. He was about seventy-five percent certain, at least, that Pet wouldn’t hurt him.

This was all it took to satisfy Mistress Penne. She took three hasty steps back and then was gone.

Pet’s snarl faded. She sat down. She still did not seem even remotely interested in the pie. She reminded Edward of a statue of a stone lion that his father had commissioned for the royal gardens, standing at attention, back stiff, head high, ears forward.

She was guarding him, he realized. But from whom? Mistress Penne?

Soon he heard footsteps on the stairs again, and Pet stood up, her tail wagging.

Peter Bannister came bursting in the door. His eyes went first to Edward, taking in the monarch’s rumpled bedclothes and pale, strained face, but when he found that the king was unharmed, the kennel master dropped to his knees beside Pet. The dog licked his face, then whined deep in her throat and sat down again near the foot of Edward’s bed.

“There now, my girl,” Peter soothed in his rough peasant’s lilt. “It’s all right. You can come out.”

Come out? thought Edward. Come out of what?

Pet whined again.

Peter crossed to the door and bolted it from the inside, then turned back to the dog. “Fine. Come on, then.”