Her Last Assassin (28 page)

‘Then you should,’ he muttered thickly, staring down at her naked body. ‘God forbid I ever ruin you in the eyes of the court.’

Her presence in his bed felt like a dream. He had to remind himself that she was no longer a child, no longer his ward, his responsibility. Yet he could not control the desire driving him. To love her was a fantasy of such dizzying lustful power that it threatened to drive him out of his mind, his whole body shaking at the strangeness and yet familiarity of her warm skin against his.

Her kiss nearly undid him, her tongue dancing sweetly with his. She whispered in his ear, ‘Ruin me if you must, Faithful. But love me. Make me yours. I cannot wait any longer.’

‘I have waited years …’ Goodluck managed, then lost all hope of coherent speech as her hips rose to meet his, her strong legs wrapped about his back to urge him on.

‘Lucy,’ he groaned, and drove hard into her. ‘My love, my love.’

Goodluck woke in the night to find her stroking him, her dark eyes watching him with passionate intent, and his desire rose urgently again to match hers. He had not withdrawn to prevent his seed from filling her the first time, and when he pushed her back into the warmth of the straw pallet, he knew he would not pull out this time either. There had been a recklessness and an air of inevitability to their first-ever lovemaking, and she had seemed to desire their union as much as he did. Now she wanted him again.

He groaned pleasurably as Lucy parted her thighs and drew him back inside her, their bodies moving with one purpose. All other thoughts were pushed aside before his desire for her, a need which kept him hard and eager, his stamina that of a young man again.

And yet he should use his head, for this night might bring dangerous consequences for them both. She was still young enough to conceive by him.

If there should be a child, he told himself firmly, he would marry her at once, and so prevent Lucy from falling into dishonour at court. Then he remembered Shakespeare, and how that young man had used her like this, night after night, with no thought of marriage, and his desire was suddenly tainted with bitterness and an old fury.

‘Come away from court with me,’ he urged her, slowing his thrusts. ‘Before the month is out.’

‘Leave court?’ She sounded startled.

He stopped, supporting his weight on his hands. Looking down into her face, illuminated by the glowing embers in the hearth, he knew a terrible moment of fear. Fear that this flood of happiness would be fleeting, that the rituals of courtly life would soon intrude again, the dreariness of custom and habit, and they would be broken apart.

‘It is the only way for us to be together. Come away secretly with me, and we shall be married in the country. I’ll take you in disguise to my brother’s farm in Oxfordshire. It is an isolated spot, and safe enough. No one will think to look for us there.’

‘I cannot,’ she whispered in the darkness, staring up at him. Her desire seemed to fall away sharply. ‘The Queen—’

‘You love me?’ he interrupted her.

‘Yes.’

‘And you intend to be with me for the rest of your life?’

Lucy hesitated, her dark eyes wide with fear and uncertainty. His heart juddered with the sudden suspicion that she would reject him and go back to Shakespeare.

He did not know what he would do if Lucy were to put him aside after their lovemaking tonight. Find Shakespeare and run him through with his blade, and go readily to the gibbet for his murder. For there would be little purpose in staying alive once he had tasted this love, then been kicked aside for such a wastrel.

But to his relief she did not reject him.

‘Yes,’ she whispered at last. ‘This change between us is strange, and yet not strange. It feels right to love you as a man, not simply my guardian. It is as though everything I have ever done has been leading to this. And I do love you, with all my heart. But for us to be married … No, it cannot be like this. Not without warning, without even Her Majesty’s permission. We would be hunted down and punished. Let me wait for the right time to ask Her Majesty, not before.’

‘I cannot lie with you, and not marry you,’ he insisted doggedly, and hoped she would not mistake his sternness for tyranny. Everything else he would concede to her as his wife, but not this. Not her honour. ‘I watched over you and advised you as a child, Lucy. Trust me to make this decision for you now.’

‘Goodluck, I love you dearly, but I cannot let you make such a dangerous decision. I know the Queen, and you do not. She is a cruel and jealous mistress, and will not take kindly to any man stealing me away from court. I would not see you punished like others who have dared to love one of her ladies behind the Queen’s back.’

‘But—’

Lucy laid a finger on his lips. ‘Hush, let me be your guide this time. I will marry you, I give you my word. But it must be done as I say, or we shall both suffer the consequences.’

‘And if the Queen does not give her consent, and you find yourself with child, what then?’

Lucy stroked a slow wanton hand from his chest to his groin, leaving him throbbing with renewed desire, his need for her almost painful. ‘Then we will run away from court as you suggest, and change our names, live as vagabonds, and hope they never find us. Tonight though, I do not wish to talk of the Queen, nor of spies, nor of running away.’

She smiled up at him, and he saw the same passion in her face. ‘Tonight I just need you to love me.’

Three

S
TIFFLY
, E
LIZABETH TOOK
up the reins again and turned her horse’s head back to face the way they had come. It was February, and even encased in fleece-lined kid gloves her fingers were numb with cold.

‘Let us ride back to Greenwich Palace,’ she told her entourage, and saw the relief on their raw-nipped faces. Too long cooped up inside during the snows, they had followed her and Lord Burghley cheerfully enough through the palace gates and into the woodlands beyond, their bridles jingling, their horses’ hooves sounding like gentle thunder along the ice-hardened paths. But as the air grew colder, even she had begun to doubt the wisdom of this excursion. Still, it was good to breathe fresh air again instead of the stewed fog of the smoky palace chambers.

Coming to a familiar clearing, Elizabeth had pulled up sharp and sat on her mount looking about at the woodland scene, remembering other wintry rides she had taken with Robert Dudley by her side. Robert had been her Master of the Horse for many years, his effortless horsemanship always a pleasure to watch. Essex held the post now, but he was no match on a horse for his stepfather. An excellent horseman but he lacked Leicester’s vitality, the sense that he was one with the animal he rode.

Dearest Robert, she thought, and patted her horse’s neck absentmindedly.

At her back, the impatient courtiers muttered among themselves and waited to see what she would do next, some walking their horses up and down to keep warm, the animals’ breath steaming out in great clouds on the frosty air. And now she had turned her horse for home, the courtiers fell back in disarray to let her pass, their horses milling about in sudden confusion.

‘Which of you advised me that the winter snows were thawing and it was safe to ride out again?’ she demanded petulantly of nobody in particular. ‘Whoever it was, the fool should be whipped. The snow may be melting, but it is too icy to ride, and the north wind is like a knife in my back.’

‘Indeed, the spring is not yet upon us,’ Lord Burghley commented, her secretary of state riding at her side in Essex’s absence. She wished he would not make the effort to accompany her out on horseback, for his health had been ailing for some years now and it hurt to see his lordship so grey and drawn, sitting upright as ever but clearly in pain. ‘Yet some greenery braves the cold to herald its coming, Your Majesty.’

She followed the direction of his pointing arm, and smiled to see a few doughty snowdrops piercing the scattered snow and ice along the woodland ride.

Elizabeth wished she had the same native courage as those flowers. But then her spring years were long over; all she had to look forward to was deepening winter, her body increasingly frail, even if she was not yet as elderly as Lord Burghley. The weather mirrored her own wretched state, each day since Advent dawning dark with an overcast sky and threat of further snow. Her people suffered too. This winter had been particularly hard, with tales reaching her ears of country folk found frozen to death in their own homes, or foolhardy commoners drowned by falling through ice on the Thames as they attempted to cross the ice-locked upper stretches of the river on foot. And the continuing fear of a Spanish invasion could not be shaken from them; like dogs with a bone, the people held firm to their hatred of King Philip and his Catholic hordes, and grumbled that she had not yet brought this long war to a successful end.

Some of her younger ladies, riding a short distance behind, broke the amiable quiet of the woodlands with a burst of immoderate laughter. Elizabeth slowed and glared over her shoulder. At her frown, they fell silent, most looking away with downcast eyes.

Ignorant young girls!

She looked for Helena among their number, meaning to reprimand her for allowing such misbehaviour, then belatedly recalled that the Swedish noblewoman had fallen sick and was being nursed in bed. The oldest of her ladies that day was Lucy Morgan, ducking her head as she rode beneath the ice-covered branches, her dark face glowing with apparent pleasure at this outing.

Elizabeth studied her suspiciously, for Lucy was not a natural horsewoman and was wont to look uncertain and fidgety on her mount. And there were still whispered rumours about her African lady-in-waiting. Rumours which Elizabeth tended to put down to ill will among the other women.

But this smiling look …

The path gradually opened up as they left the dark gloaming of the woods behind. Under a lighter sky, she urged her horse on and the others followed, the whole cavalcade beginning to ride more swiftly back towards the palace. Cows lowed sulkily from somewhere beyond white-encrusted hedgerows, and she caught the herder’s hoarse cries as he drove them back up the slope from milking. Closer now she could see the icy thread of the river through the trees, and smoke rising from a hamlet of ramshackle, snow-covered buildings along the road towards London.

Was Lucy Morgan once again playing between the sheets? There had been a poet who had pursued her once, then a short-lived marriage without permission, and a stillborn child. Although a widow need not be watched as closely as a maid, nonetheless Elizabeth had a duty towards her attendants and she intended to uphold it. She could not allow her ladies-in-waiting to despoil their honour with every chance courtier who admired them. She had sent young Bess Throckmorton to the Tower for dallying with the roughly handsome Raleigh – that whole episode had left her sick and furious – so Lucy Morgan should expect a similar punishment if she had any secret love to conceal.

Elizabeth felt a profound distaste at the thought of any courtier lying with the dark-eyed, dark-skinned Lucy Morgan. And what of a child that might come from such a union?

It did not bear thinking about.

She shivered as the icy wind tore at her, and wished angrily that she was back in her Privy Chamber with a greedy fire in the hearth and a lacy woollen shawl to keep her back and shoulders warm. She was surrounded by fools and slatterns, obsequious charlatans who wrongly informed her that it was warm enough to ride out again, lustful women who could not keep their chastity much beyond their fifteenth year, and ambitious youths on every corner, jabbering at her for this and that, pestering her for honours she had no wish to bestow, and ruining her ladies while their keepers turned a blind eye to such whorings.

The palace gates were in sight, the liveried guards standing stiffly to attention for her approach, their pikes upright.

Elizabeth steadied her mount and allowed Lord Burghley, riding sturdily some three hundred paces to her rear, to catch up with her.

‘Any new word from my lord Essex?’ she asked lightly, trying to sound as though she did not care, when in truth the earl’s absence pained her more each day. ‘Is he indeed unwell again, as he wrote to tell me yesterday, or is this another of his elaborate excuses not to come to court?’

Lord Burghley gave her a look which was not hard to read. He might not see through her as readily as Walsingham had always done, but he was no fool. ‘I believe he has been taken sick, yes. Though not so unwell that you need fear for his safety, Your Majesty. Indeed, he was able to send me a note this morning, pertaining to various matters of state which we have been discussing in the council.’

Something in his tone made her take interest. ‘Which matters are those? Our war with Spain?’

‘Do you remember Don Antonio, Your Majesty?’

She nodded, bending forward to stroke her mount’s black neck as the animal neighed restlessly, accustomed to a faster pace than this. As she recalled, the man was a Portuguese noble with some claim to the throne of Portugal, currently held by King Philip of Spain. Don Antonio had come to the English court a few years ago, begging asylum on the grounds that King Philip wished him dead, and she had granted it, even giving him some small property.