My Lady Jane (18 page)

It occurred to Edward then that in some ways he'd always been preparing to be a king, instead of truly being one.

He cleared his throat. “So, how old were you,” he asked, to change the subject, “when you discovered you were an E∂ian?”

“Oh, I've always known it,” Gracie answered. She turned the rabbit slowly to its other side. “My ma and da were, and all my aunts and uncles and cousins and such. It would have been a great disappointment to me if I'd turned out differently.”

“But when did you know you were a fox?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Many Scots are foxes. And harts and hinds, martens and roes, the beasts of the chase, we are. Why else do you think the English have taken such pleasure in hunting us?”

Gulp. The English, aka Edward. Although he considered the bad blood between England and Scotland to be completely his father's doing, certainly not his own, except for all that business with Mary Queen of Scots. He shuddered. “So why are you helping me, if you're Scottish and I'm English and we should be trying to kill each other?”

She lifted the roasting stick from the fire and drew out her knife again to divide the rabbit. To answer his question, she said, “I've always had a weak spot for the truly pathetic creatures of this world.”

“Thanks,” he said wryly, and promptly burned his tongue on the rabbit. “God's teeth, that's hot!”

Gracie handed him a flask of water, which he took gratefully.

“So tell me about this granny of yours who's going to save the
day.” She had the sense to blow on the meat before she began to eat it, and for a moment Edward just watched her. “Your granny at Helmsley?” she prompted.

“Oh. She's the old Queen Mother,” Edward explained. “My father's mother, Elizabeth. She was supposed to have died half a century ago, even before my father became king. But they only told the people she'd died, when in truth they spirited her to Helmsley, where she's been ever since.”

“Why?”

“Because she's a skunk.”

Gracie snorted with laughter. “A skunk?”

“An E∂ian, in the time when it was illegal to be an E∂ian,” Edward continued around a more careful mouthful of rabbit. “But my grandfather loved her, he truly loved her, so rather than burn her at the stake he decided to stage her death and send her away. We'd take a trip out to the country to see her every few years, Mary and Bess and I, and my cousin Jane a few times, too, since Gran is her great-grandmother. She's so old—she's got to be nearing ninety now, I'd say—and she has no decorum whatsoever. Once, she made Father so angry that he turned into a lion, and we were afraid he'd devour her, but then she turned into a skunk and sprayed him right in the face. It took weeks for him to be rid of the smell.”

“Sounds like I'm going to like her,” Gracie said with a grin.

“Jane and I adored her. She loved to play games with us. It's her face on the cards, you know, whenever you draw the queen of hearts.”

“Is that so?” Gracie was already done with her rabbit, and flung its bones into the brush. She always ate quickly, without anything resembling manners, as if she might have to flee at any moment. Edward, on the other hand, was taking time to savor his rabbit. He was finding this fire-cooked food better than anything he'd been served in the palace, because now when he ate he was always so hungry, and he could feel the food giving his body strength that he desperately needed. This food was giving him life.

“So is it really only a day left before we arrive at Helmsley?” he asked when he was finished.

“If we don't run into any more problems.” Gracie sucked at a bit of rabbit grease on her fingers. “But, like I've said time and again, we could get there much faster if you'd only—”

“And I've told
you
time and again,” Edward interrupted. “I'm not going to become a bird and ride on your shoulder like your pet. If it were so simple as that, I could change and fly straight there, couldn't I? I could leave you behind.”

“Well, don't be staying on my account.” She leaned back on her arms and gazed up at the stars. “Fly, then.”

“I can't,” he admitted. “I don't know the way.”

She made a sound like a chuckle.

“Besides,” Edward continued lightly, “I suppose I've come to enjoy your company.”

It could have been hopeful thinking, but the Scot seemed pleased at this announcement. “Have you, now? Well, I suppose I like your company as well, when you're not being a spoiled brat.”

“Oh, thank you very much,” he muttered.

“You're quite welcome. But you should fly away, if you can. Helmsley wouldn't be very far as the kestrel flies.”

He shook his head. “When I'm a bird, I forget myself. I forget everything but the wind and the sky. I'm just flying, floating above it all, and it's the best feeling in the world. I'm not sick. I'm not king. I'm free.”

She'd moved closer to him when he spoke of flying, her expression pensive. She gazed up at the stars, and he tried not to be distracted by the alluring arc of her neck. “It does look lovely up there,” she murmured. “I've often dreamed of flying.”

“But I lose all sense of time and purpose when I do,” he continued. “Does that happen to you when you change? Does the animal take over?”

She looked thoughtful. “I do have foxy thoughts, sometimes. A love of holes. Of running. The squawk of a chicken just before my teeth sink in—” She blushed and showed her dimples again, eyes dancing in the firelight.

He pretended to stretch his arms, in order to shift even closer to her. (This isn't in the history books, of course, but we'd like to point out that this was the first time a young man had ever tried that particular arm-stretch move on a young woman. Edward was the inventor of the arm stretch, a tactic that teenage boys have been using for centuries.)

Gracie didn't move away. The kiss might have happened then, but at that exact moment the wind shifted, sending a cloud of smoke
from the fire into their faces. They both coughed, of course, but Edward coughed and coughed until his vision blurred.
Curse Dudley and his poison and his plan and all this wretched coughing,
he thought. No way she'd kiss him after he just hacked up half his lungs.

Gracie jumped to her feet and made herself busy tending to the fire. “Anyway, you're a greenie,” she said as she strategically arranged more pieces of wood. “You've just discovered your E∂ian form. You'll learn to control it, in time.”

He sighed. “How do you do control it?”

“It's not so hard. When I want to change, I take a deep breath to clear the head, and I think something like,
To be a fox now would be to find our supper, and to find our supper would be to help the young king,
and then the fox rises to the occasion. Speaking of which,” she added, turning to her pack. “I've brought us some dessert.”

She took out a handkerchief and unfolded it, and there, glistening in the firelight, was a handful of blackberries.

Edward didn't know what happened. One minute he was fine, pleased, even, at the prospect of having the taste of blackberries on his tongue again, and then the next he was thrashing in a violent series of seizures, his eyes rolling back in his head, his mouth foaming. He could barely discern Gracie's face over him, her eyes wide with worry.

After several moments the shaking passed. He lay for a while curled on to his side, exhausted and panting, then coughing again, always coughing, then vomiting up rabbit. When he was done Gracie laid her cool hand against his forehead.

“You're hot,” she murmured.

He wished he could take that as a compliment. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't have one or two days to get to Helmsley, do I? I'm still dying, apparently.”

Her jaw set. “You need to change. It's the only way.”

All that was left of his pride seemed to have deserted him. “How?” he whispered.

“I'll wrap you loose, so you won't be injured, and bind you to me, and carry you.”

“Bind me to you?” he croaked, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Like a mother would carry her bairn,” she said, grabbing his hand. “You'd be safe, and we'd go quickly. I can run like the wind, even when I'm not a fox.” She pulled his hand into her chest, where he could feel the strong beat of her heart. “I promise you. I can get you to your granny.”

“All right,” he whispered, a hint of a smile appearing on his lips. “I can't very well say no to spending the night resting against your bosom, can I?”

She snatched his hand away. “Don't be fresh.”

He gave a soft laugh, and then he was a kestrel. Gracie sighed and pulled the cloak around him, and it was dark, and warm there against her, and good. Really, really good.

He became slowly aware of a faintly bad smell. He stretched and was surprised to find himself in his human body again, on a real
bed, it felt like, covered in furs. He opened his eyes. A single candle burned in the darkness, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out a figure sitting by his bed. A woman.

“Gracie? Where are we?”

“You're at Helmsley,” said a voice, but it wasn't the Scot's voice. It was Bess. She smiled at him and caught his hand. “I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it.”

“I was beginning to think so, too,” he admitted.

“Here.” She brought a cup to his lips. He drank and then hissed at the taste. It wasn't water, but a concoction so foul it made his eyes tear.

“It will snake the poison from your blood,” Bess told him. “Gran made it.”

“Gran's here?”

“Of course I'm here,” came a gruff old voice from the doorway. “Where else do you suppose I would be?”

“Hello, Gran.”

“You've got yourself in quite the pickle, haven't you, my boy?” Gran said. She went to the window and drew back the heavy velvet curtains. Warm midday sunshine poured in.

“Gran,” Bess admonished warmly. “You shouldn't address him as
boy
. He's still the king.”

“He's a birdbrained boy, as far as I can tell,” the old lady cackled. “I mean, getting himself poisoned. My word, child. People tried to poison me ten times a day, when I was queen. None of them ever succeeded.”

“Yes, Gran,” he said. “It was in poor form to get myself poisoned.”

“Now get up,” she ordered. “You need to get the blood moving through you, to give the antidote a chance to work.”

He still felt light-headed and wobbly, but he didn't argue. He let Bess support him as he sat up and swung his legs out of bed. That's when he discovered he was wearing only the white linen shirt Gracie had stole for him, which hit him mid-thigh.

“Um, where are my pants?”

Gran scoffed. “Oh, please, it's nothing I haven't seen before.” She got on the other side of him and poked him in the ribs. “Up with you.”

He stood. It did not escape his notice that Gran was as unpleasantly fragrant as ever, but the skunk smell was actually working to clear his head. He felt weak and hollowed out and half-naked, of course, but decidedly better.

Maybe he wasn't going to die.

Gracie appeared in the doorway. Her gaze went straight to his white, white legs.

“Your Majesty,” she said with a grin, and curtsied impertinently, which looked all wrong because she was still wearing trousers.

Or maybe he wanted to die, after all.

Still, as Gran had said, it was nothing she hadn't seen before.

Gran and Bess were both looking from Gracie to Edward and back again with amused expressions. Then Bess snapped out of it
and fetched his pants. He tried to ignore his burning face as she helped him put them on, one leg and then the other. Once they were fastened, he stood up straight and said, “I can manage,” shook Bess off as she tried to help him, and walked slowly but steadily across the room to the window. It looked like a summer day outside: birds singing, green grasses swaying in a half-tended garden below, sky so blue you would doubt that it had ever rained.

“How long have we been here?” he asked.

“You arrived early this morning,” Bess provided.

Less than a day, then. Gracie had run them here in less than a day. He glanced back at her. “You can run pretty fast, for a girl.”

“Well, I may have held up a nobleman on the road and borrowed his horse,” she confessed.

A crime punishable by death, he remembered. “I owe my life to you,” he said.

Her dimples appeared. “A girl does what she can, Sire.”

“Oh, I like her,” Gran announced. “Can you play cards, my dear?”

“A bit. And I hear you're the queen of hearts,” Gracie answered, which clearly pleased the old lady even more.

“There's no time for cards, Gran.” Bess's expression was so solemn that she vaguely resembled Mary for a moment. Which made Edward remember Mary. And her soldiers, marching toward his castle.

Gran sighed. “True enough for you, but not so for me. Come along, you,” she said to Gracie, grabbing the girl's arm and towing
her toward the door. “I'll show you how to play trump.”

“Keep an eye on her sleeves,” Edward called after them. “You never know what she might be hiding up there.”

Gracie made a face that said,
Do I look like an amateur to you?
and he was tempted to warn Gran, too, that the Scot was more than what she seemed. But then they were gone.

“We need to talk,” Bess said in a low voice.

He crossed back to the window and leaned against the sill. Bess closed the door, then pulled a chair up beside him. “All right, Bess,” he murmured, suddenly tired again. “Tell me what's happened.”

“Jane became queen, as you intended.”

“As Dudley intended,” he corrected darkly.

“The duke also attempted to capture Mary and me and throw us in the Tower, so we would pose no threat to Jane's rule,” Bess continued. “But I slipped out when I heard them coming, and Mary caught wind of it through one of her craftier spies, and escaped to her estate at Kenninghall, and from there she went to Flanders to enlist help from the Holy Roman Emperor. She raised an army, of course, and from what I understand, she took back the throne this morning.”