The Boleyn Deceit (35 page)

“If you love me, you will do as I ask. Take your wife away from here. When I want to see you again, I will send for you. Until then, you would be wise not to press me.” She hated herself for softening, but damn Robert! He could always do that to her.

Robert knew when he had won. He dropped his hand and kissed hers. “I am, as ever, yours to command.”

She hoped his father would be as accommodating, but she doubted it. If Robert resembled a stream, slipping swiftly and noiselessly around any obstacle in its path, then Northumberland was a mountain, looming and unmovable.

At least Amy Dudley’s unexpected appearance had given her the upper hand. Northumberland began apologizing the moment the two of them were alone in his study. The paneled space was cozily hung with tapestries, and rich rugs covered the plank floor. Elizabeth was surprised at the number of books in view—though she knew Northumberland had gone to great lengths to educate his children in humanist principles, she had always thought of the duke as less interested. A reminder that one cannot always judge by the exterior.

“My daughter-in-law should have known better,” Northumberland said gruffly. “But like most women, Amy has more temper than sense.”

“Most women?” Elizabeth asked, thinking it was an apt description of Northumberland himself.

“Your Highness, of course, is a model of all that is wise and measured.”

“I am not here to discuss your son’s wife—at least, not this particular wife. I am rather more interested in Guildford and my cousin, Margaret. Did you introduce them intending an assault on royal privilege?”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that, Your Highness. I did ensure they met, and yes, I had it in mind that perhaps Guildford would make the girl a good husband. But she was only fourteen! I thought I had plenty of time to speak to the king.”

“Youthful passion,” Elizabeth remarked drily.

“My sons are not always temperate in their loves.”

She would not let him turn this back on her, nor discomfit her with sly allusions to Robert. “When one threatens royal prerogative, one must pay the price. If you expect me to plead for him to my brother, I am not particularly inclined to do so. Guildford was entirely in the wrong.”

Northumberland flushed; he was not adept at hiding his feelings. “What harm could it do? Guildford is no threat to the king or the succession. He’s had the marriage annulled and the baby declared a bastard.”

“If that were an unshakable answer, then the Catholics would not be constantly threatening us with my half sister, Mary.”

“This isn’t about religion!” Moderating his voice, the duke said, “Your Highness, you love your brother. What would you do to protect him from the consequences of his own follies?”

“Are you implying that your king is foolish?”

“No man is perfect—certainly not a man in love.”

Elizabeth stood up in a swirl of silken outrage. “You would be wise to keep your opinions of my brother to yourself. As to other matters—I did not come here to discuss Guildford. I am
interested in larger concerns. We will meet again when you have had a chance to grow calm and consider your future. I would ponder deeply on any actions from your past that you might wish to confess. Actions having to do with the Howard family, perhaps.”

“Norfolk?” Northumberland regarded her suspiciously. “You can’t imagine I was part of that Catholic plot, Your Highness!”

“No. But I can imagine very easily that you could manufacture a Catholic plot in order to destroy your enemies.”

She could not tell if his blank expression was surprise or calculation. Perhaps he had learned something from Robert. With a false and flattering smile, Elizabeth added, “I plan to remain at Dudley Castle for a week at least. We will speak again when you are prepared to be honest.”

If she managed to bring Northumberland to confession, perhaps the sting of Amy Dudley would ease. And perhaps William would not be so furious with her when he found out where she had gone.

It had been a long time since anything had taken Minuette’s mind off her own knot of troubles, but the eruption of Robert’s wife on the scene had done just that. For a woman of middling height and no outstanding beauty, Amy Dudley had commanded the eye and the attention of every person in the hall last night—none more so than Elizabeth. Minuette had never seen her friend so miserably fixed on a single human being in her life. It was as though a demon had walked into the room.

She had known better than to make Elizabeth talk about it, though she did desperately wish that Carrie was here so she could talk it over with someone. When Minuette rose the next morning, she let herself gossip a little with the Dudley maid who came to help her dress.

“Is it usual for Lord Robert’s wife to accompany him to Dudley Castle?”

“No, miss,” the girl said as she laced one of Minuette’s periwinkle sleeves to her overdress. “She’s more likely to be here when he isn’t. ’Course, Lord Robert is hardly ever here hisself.”

Because he’s at court, making certain Elizabeth doesn’t have occasion to forget him, Minuette thought cynically. She’d always been a bit cynical where Robert was concerned. Not because she doubted his regard for Elizabeth, but because she doubted its purity. Would he have been anywhere near as enamoured if Elizabeth were not a princess royal of England? For certain he would not be as patiently loyal. He liked women too well, in all the shaded meanings of that term.

“What is she like, Lord Robert’s wife?” Minuette asked curiously. It wasn’t as though she expected to ever be in Northumberland’s household again—it wouldn’t harm her to get a reputation for nosiness.

The maid was happy to reply. “She don’t put on airs, but it’s her as has the money, and she don’t let Lord Robert forget it. To be sure, I remember when she first came here, after the wedding—very sweet, they were, he liked quoting foreign poetry to her. Italian, I think. I daresay she’s had no poetry from him for ages now.”

The maid stepped back and adjusted a creased seam on Minuette’s blue velvet stomacher. “Certainly no poetry last night,” the maid sniffed. “I weren’t serving in that wing, but they do say you could hear them yelling a long ways off.”

“Where is their wing?”

“The family’s in the first section of Sharrington range. But if it’s her you want to see, best hurry. Lord Robert’s taking her home straightaway.”

Is he indeed? Minuette thought. I think I shall have to simply barge in and introduce myself to Amy Dudley.

Because the maid’s phrase about Italian poetry was fluttering in her skull like a nervous butterfly.

It was easy enough to find the chamber Amy Dudley had been assigned to (and which, incidentally, it appeared she had slept in alone—there were no signs of a man’s presence), for there was a banging and general noise level that Minuette was long familiar with from serving the late Queen Anne. It meant the woman in question was out of temper and letting it show.

Minuette knocked on the frame of the half-open door. “May I be of some assistance?” she asked. Doing what, she wasn’t sure. Her talents ran more to flirting for information and writing flattering letters that appeared to promise without actually promising. She supposed she could pack dresses if forced to do so.

Amy whirled and eyed her carefully. “You’re with
her,
aren’t you? No one bothered to give me your name last night.”

“Genevieve Wyatt,” she supplied, ignoring Amy’s impertinent reference to Elizabeth.
She is Robert’s wife, after all,
Minuette reminded herself. And it must have taken all Amy Dudley’s nerve to walk into that room last night and face down the Tudor princess who had ensnared her husband’s heart. “I simply wished to introduce myself and ask if there was anything you needed.”

“Yes, there is something I need.” Amy snapped at the two maids packing, “You may go.” When they had gone, Amy shut the door behind them and said to Minuette, “I need to know how far things have gone between Robert and her.”

The way she avoided saying Elizabeth’s name reminded Minuette forcibly of Mary Tudor. She had spent some weeks with her last year and even after all these years Mary still referred to Anne Boleyn as “the person” or “the woman.”

“I assure you, your husband has not compromised your
honour.” Which wasn’t precisely true. To be precisely true, Minuette would have had to answer,
Robert hasn’t slept with Elizabeth and never will, because she is far too smart to allow that to happen. But no doubt he’s slept with any number of more willing women, and he would bed Elizabeth this very minute if she allowed it.

Sometimes it was best not to be precisely honest.

Amy’s lips tightened, as though she had heard every unspoken version of Minuette’s thoughts, and she sniffed. “He’ll never get out of this marriage. My family will see to it. My father is quite an important landowner.”

Minuette thought pityingly, And Elizabeth’s brother is the King of England. Care to wager who would win if they went against each other? But she let Amy rant, as surely the woman had come here to Dudley Castle to do. As she couldn’t do it to Elizabeth’s face, she might as well spill it all to Elizabeth’s dear friend.

“She thinks he’s so faithful, so undyingly loyal to the romance of loving a woman he cannot have. That’s how little she knows Robert. He could not be faithful if his life depended on it. He confined himself to my bed alone for no more than a month after our marriage before he required other women as well. Does she believe she is different?”

No, Minuette thought, but she manages not to think about that part. And Robert is careful not to flaunt his women before her. As apparently he has not been with you.

“They’re not all serving women, either,” Amy challenged. “There was a court woman, he was quite infatuated with her for a time. He even brought her into our home.”

Minuette startled, and Amy laughed bitterly. “No, he’s not quite that wretched, he didn’t know I would be there. I mostly live near my parents, so give him his due, when he came waltzing into Kenilworth with his court whore, he was quite as shocked to
see me as I was to see them. Not that it prevented him from sending me away without even pretending to be kind. The servants say Robert kept this woman with him a whole month. I wonder what he told your mistress about where he was while he played house with a woman neither his wife nor his precious princess.”

The same butterflies that had alarmed at the phrase “Italian poetry” were winging madly now in Minuette’s skull. I don’t want to know this, she thought, but she also knew it was too late to back out now.

“Did you see this woman?” Minuette’s voice sounded distant and flat in her own ears.

“I saw her. Proud, she was, though dressed no better than me. Dark colours for a dark countenance, I remember that.”

“How old was she? What did she look like?”

Amy paused. “Don’t tell me you’re one of his conquests! If you’re the jealous type, then you should keep well away from Robert.”

Summoning up her most imperious tone, Minuette said, “I am not jealous, and I have never looked twice at your husband in that manner. But it is of great importance that you tell me details of this woman’s appearance.”

Cowed, Amy muttered, “She was younger than me. Eighteen or nineteen, maybe? Dark, like I said. Not as dark as Robert, but nothing like the princess either. Brown eyes, she had, and straight brown hair to her waist. Shorter than you, and more generous in her figure.”

Minuette longed to close her eyes and curse, but she had one more question. “When did Robert spend that month with her at Kenilworth?”

“Late winter two years ago. Almost spring—March, I think it was.”

She did close her eyes then, though she kept her swearing silent. Alyce de Clare had spent four weeks away from court in March of 1553—Alyce, with brown eyes and brown hair to her waist—and less than four months later she had been with child at the time of her sudden death.

Robert was the man she’d been searching for. The man who’d gotten Alyce with child. The man who’d used her to spy on Queen Anne—using a cipher contained in an Italian poetry book. The man—the link—to the fraudulent Penitent’s Confession and the subsequent downfall of the late Duke of Norfolk.

Robert was the traitor.

“S
HE
’
S SAFELY
in the Tower?” William asked his uncle. Rochford had just returned from arresting Eleanor on undefined charges. It would, in fact, be a tricky business charging her, as William did not want to make widely known the attack on Minuette. Probably Eleanor would end up being charged with treason. If she was connected to Northumberland in any way, that charge would stick.

“She’s there,” Rochford answered. “Did not take it well.”

William snorted. “She wouldn’t. Eleanor is the original example of an utterly selfish point of view. She sees things only as they affect her.”

“Rather like a king, in fact.” Rochford spoke so drily that William had to puzzle out whether it was a jest. His uncle didn’t often joke, but this time he quirked his lips in a grin.

“Unless Eleanor has a government and an army to back up her wishes, then her wishes will never reign supreme.” William paced the length of the privy chamber and back again. “No word from Dominic yet?”