The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [124]
Emotion welled in me.
Whether or not she could accept me as kin seemed not to matter in that moment, though I had decided this was not the time to confess. I still had to feel my way into this new world I inhabited. For no matter how true I was to Kate—and I was true, and would be to the death—I had no doubt I was also in love with this princess. How could I not be? Only, mine wasn’t the earthly obsession of a Dudley, and I was glad of it. To love Elizabeth Tudor would indeed demand more than it could ever give; it condemned one to eternal limbo, yearning for what could never be. In this respect, I felt pity for Lord Robert, whose physical chains could never equal those she’d forged about his heart.
“Where have you drifted, squire?” I heard her ask, and I pulled myself to attention.
“Forgive me, Your Grace. I was just thinking of everything that has transpired.”
“Indeed.” She regarded me with unwavering focus.
I removed the loose ring from my finger. “I believe this belongs to you. Lord Robert gave it to me that night he sent me to you. I think he’d want you to have it.”
Her hand trembled as she reached out. “You risked much in order to get this to me, I know. Some might say too much.”
“Some might, Your Grace.”
“But not you.” She raised her eyes. “Was it worth it, everything that transpired?” As she waited for my answer, her regality faded. She reverted to what she was at heart—an achingly young woman, vulnerable and uncertain.
“Yes,” I said. “Every moment. I’d risk it all again to serve you.”
She gave me a tremulous smile. “You might find reason to regret those words.” She unfolded her other hand to reveal the crumpled parchment she held. “This is my sister’s summons to London,” she said. “Or rather, a summons from her new lord chamberlain. I’m expected to join her at court to celebrate her victory.”
She paused. When she next spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “I will have need of your keen eyes. Mary and I … we are not like other sisters. There’s too much pain in our past, too much loss. She doesn’t know how to forget, though all I’ve ever done against her was be the daughter of her mother’s rival.”
I wanted to touch her. But I did not. “I am here,” I said. “So are others. We will see to it that you are kept from harm.”
She nodded, slipped Robert’s ring into her bodice. The letter drifted from her fingers to the floor. We sat in silence for a long moment before she glanced at me, and without warning she let out a clarion laugh. “So somber! Do you know how to dance, Brendan Prescott?”
I started. “Dance? No. I … I never learned.”
“Never learned?” She leapt to her feet, Urian springing up beside her. “We must remedy that. How do you expect to enjoy, much less excel, at court if you don’t know how to dance? It’s the weapon of choice for every well-heeled gentleman. Much more has been done on the dance floor to save a kingdom than in any council room or battlefield.”
I felt my grin emerge, lopsided, as her sudden clap brought Kate and Peregrine into the gallery. My suspicion that they’d been lurking close by, awaiting her cue, was confirmed by the lute in Kate’s hands.
Jaunting at her side, Peregrine was another boy altogether, scrubbed to shiny perfection, his lithe form in a suit of jade velvet that matched the hue of his eyes. His smile looked to split his face in two when Elizabeth ordered him to beat time on one of her books: “Slowly, as if it were a kettledrum or the hindquarters of an ill-tempered steed. And Kate, play that pavane we learned together last week—the French one, with the long measure.”
Strumming the corresponding chords, Kate gave me a mischievous smile.
With a look that warned I would take my sweet revenge later, I surrendered to Elizabeth as she took me by the hand and led me into the dance.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It is important to note that this is a work of fiction. It takes as its premise: What if? and interweaves fact and fiction,