The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [75]
“But she did go? She’s safe now, at her manor?”
Kate refilled the spoon. “Safe is a relative term. Yes, it’s been given out that she’s at Hatfield, where she’s taken to her bed with fever. Illness can be a useful deterrent at times like these, as she well knows. Of course, so can the cellars of numerous neighboring houses in Hatfield’s vicinity, any one of which would gladly shelter a princess should the duke’s men be spotted on the road.”
“And you?” I asked. “Why are you not with her?”
“I stayed with Peregrine, of course. He insisted that we look for you.”
“Peregrine found me?”
“He did, on the riverbank. He told us he used to fish the Thames for bodies.” She paused. A slight tremor crept into her voice. “He said we had to keep searching, that in the end everything washes up. He was right. You’d been swept upstream by the tide and appeared near where the river bends. You were soaked through, wounded and delirious. But alive.”
“And you nursed me back to health.” I heard the sullen gratitude in my voice. It had become second nature for me to doubt even my good fortune. “Why? You lied to me about not working for Cecil. Why care if I lived or died, as long as you did your master’s bidding?”
She set down the spoon, dabbed my mouth and chin clean with the napkin. When she finally spoke, her voice was composed.
“I apologize that I didn’t tell you the entire truth. I never meant to put you in danger. My loyalty has always been to Her Grace, though she can be too headstrong and often needs protection from herself, whether or not she cares to admit it. When Walsingham told me that Master Cecil felt it best if we got her away from Greenwich, I agreed to help. I didn’t tell you because he said you had your own orders. He said you had been hired and paid.”
She paused. “I didn’t expect you. But I am glad of it. I … I am glad you are here.”
I observed her face as she talked. I saw what she meant. But as the events of the past days began to seep in, pain and anger arose in me. I didn’t want complications; I didn’t want vulnerabilities or heartache. Feeling something for her would bring me all those things.
“Walsingham gave me instructions, yes,” I replied. “And I was paid. But I also knew that allowing Her Grace to go ahead with her plan to meet with Lord Robert would put her in more danger than she’d incurred already. I’m surprised no one else shared my concern.”
“What would you have had us do?” If she’d detected the deliberate harshness in my manner, she didn’t let it show. “She insisted on questioning Robert about her brother and wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary. None of us could have known that the duke intended to woo her himself or put Jane Grey on the throne if she refused him.”
That made sense. I should rest my suspicions, at least as far as Kate was concerned. She’d not been involved in any plot against Elizabeth.
As if she had read my thoughts, she smiled gently. She knew how to pluck a chord in me, much as a hand knows a lute. In my inept attempt to hide my discomfort, I said the first thing that came into my head: “It’s not fair to test a man who doesn’t have his clothes on.”
She laughed. “You’ve managed well enough thus far.”
I wanted to weep. In some indefinable way, she reminded me of Mistress Alice, of the garnet-cheeked honest girl that Alice must have been in her youth. And as I thought of this, I saw again the triumphant look in Alice’s eyes when she turned to me by the king’s bed. She had been trying to tell me something, but I would never know now.
I met Kate’s gaze. “I thought I was going to die.…” I faltered. Conflict surged again in me, without warning, inundating me in darkness. “Where are we?” I asked in a taut whisper.
“In a manor not far from Greenwich town. Why?”
“Whose manor? Who is here with us?”
She frowned. “Her Grace owns the deed, privately; the house is leased to a friend. Besides Peregrine, you, and me, Walsingham comes and goes. He was here earlier in fact,