Lady in Waiting: A Novel (38 page)

Three weeks after I e-mailed Claire Abbot, I received a reply. I’d begun to think she had no time for my silly notions. I had mentioned in my e-mail the details of the ring, all that I knew about it, which was not much. I told her I wondered if perhaps it had belonged to the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey. When I saw Claire’s name in my inbox on an early Monday morning, I opened her message before anyone else’s.

I wrote her back immediately, asking if it would be too much trouble if I came to see her that Friday afternoon. My son had a track meet the following day in Hanover.

I waited all day to hear back from her.

Stacy was excited for me. Claire Abbot didn’t say there wasn’t a ring.

Wilson was cautious. Claire Abbot didn’t say there was.

Finally, at a little after three o’clock, Claire e-mailed back. Her reply was short. She asked if I could meet her at her office at the university at three thirty on Friday.

I accepted at once.

Then I called to reserve a rental car for the weekend.

When I hung up, I considered what my options were for housing.

I could stay in a hotel.

I could ask Brad if he’d again be amenable to my staying at his place. And I could tell him that I could sleep in the guest room. And then we could go to the track meet together.

I decided to text this request to him so that he could process it his own way. And because I really didn’t want to hear hesitancy in his voice. He might have it, but I didn’t want to hear it.

As I walked home three hours later, he texted me back.

So.

That was that.

The drive to Manchester was enjoyable once I was well away from the frenetic commotion in the city. I rented a Mini Cooper. Red with white racing stripes. I had always wanted to drive one.

I arrived at the University of New Hampshire campus fifteen minutes early, so I took my time parking, making sure the prayer book and ring box were safely inside my purse, and finding a rest room.

I found Claire Abbot’s office at the Horton Social Science Center and was standing outside her door at precisely 3:30 p.m. I knocked and a woman’s voice from within told me to come in.

Claire Abbot was a little younger than I was, petite and slender, her short hair cropped close to her head. She was wearing denim pants and a madras blouse with her sleeves pushed up. Her office was in a state of organized clutter. Little stacks of books, papers, and magazines were everywhere, but they were very neat little stacks.

She stood when I came in. “Jane Lindsay? Hello, I’m Claire Abbot. Please have a seat.”

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, Dr. Abbot. I really appreciate it.” I took a seat across from her desk. I noticed that on her walls were pictures and lithos of castles, cathedrals, and English nobility. Tall bookcases on either side of her desk were top-to-bottom filled with colorful spines, some of them obviously very old. At her elbow was a cup of tea on a saucer.

“Well, I am glad it worked out for you to come today. And please call me Claire.” She settled into her chair. “Would you like some tea?”

“No, but thank you. I … I almost expected you to have a British accent.”

“My father was British,” she said, lifting her cup to her lips. She took a sip. “And I was born in London. I haven’t lived there since I was three. But I still feel like British history is in my blood.” She set her cup down. “How about you? You have an interest in British history? Is that how you came by your ring?”

“Not exactly. I manage an antique shop in Manhattan, and I have a lot of Victorian and Edwardian antiques in the inventory. But I’ve never come across anything this old before.”

“May I see it?”

I reached into my purse and handed her first the prayer book, which
I had wrapped in a piece of cotton flannel, and then the ring. I removed it from its box and placed it on her desk.

She spent a few minutes looking at the prayer book, murmuring that whoever had owned it should have taken better care of it.

Then she set the book down and examined the ring. I watched as she held it under her desk lamp. She reached for a small magnifying glass in a pencil cup and held it close to the inscription inside.

“Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, sponsa,”
she recited. “That’s from the Song of Solomon.”

“Yes.”

“This ring is beautifully made. Has a jeweler seen it?”

“A friend of mine who’s an antique jeweler on Long Island looked at it. He said the stones are top quality and expertly cut. That’s why I think it had to have been purchased by someone of nobility and given to someone of nobility. And that it’s Elizabethan or older.”

“And that’s why you think it was Lady Jane Grey’s ring?”

“Well, the time period is right. The quality of the stones fit her station in life. And her first name is inscribed inside.”

Claire nodded slowly. “How much do you know about Jane Grey?”

“I’ve read four books about her and an entire volume on the Tudors. I know the only betrothal that was official was the one to Guildford Dudley.”

“Whom she married.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “But this ring shows no sign of wear. What if she didn’t wear it because she felt like she couldn’t. What if … what if it wasn’t a betrothal ring so much as a declaration ring. What if the person who gave it to her was in love with her, and this was his declaration to her?”

“What if, indeed?” Claire smiled at me.

“You think it’s a crazy idea.”

“Crazy? No. Intriguing? Very much so. Likely? No one can say, really.”

“Could it be hers, though?” I asked.

Claire held the ring up to the light again. “Well, you probably know as well as I that it’s of course possible. But in all my studies of Jane Grey’s literary remains, and those of people who knew her, there is no record of who she might’ve loved, if anyone. And then there’s the matter of this ring being hidden inside a prayer book for who knows how long. If it was hers, how did it end up in a forgotten prayer book?” Claire handed the ring back to me. “It would be nice if the ring could talk.”

I took the ring and fingered the stones. “When you held it, did you think perhaps it really could be Jane Grey’s ring?”

Claire toyed with the handle of her teacup. “No. I can’t say that I did.”

“I do, though. Every time I touch it, it feels like it’s her ring.”

“Well, then, if I were you, I’d stop asking experts like me our opinion and just live like it was hers.” Again, she smiled. But not in a mocking way.

“You don’t think it’s … silly, do you?”

“It really doesn’t matter what I think, does it? It’s your ring, now. And it has your name in it. But I don’t think you’ll want to sell it in your store under a placard that identifies it as Lady Jane Grey’s ring. You might end up on the front page of the London tabloids.”

She laughed gently and I joined her.

“I’m not selling it.” I slid the ring on my pinkie.

“I wouldn’t either, if I were you. Besides, I think maybe you were meant to have it.”

I gazed up at her. “Meant to have it?”

Claire lifted and lowered her shoulders. “I don’t believe in coincidences. It doesn’t seem like it’s an accident this ring fell into your hands
and that you feel this way about it.” She took a sip of her tea. “Do you think it’s mere coincidence?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

A couple of quiet seconds passed between us.

“I wonder if she knew any happiness at all,” I said. “She never got to make any choices for herself. She was a pawn. To everyone.”

Claire set her teacup down carefully. “Actually, you’re only half right. Jane Grey was indeed used by people like the Duke of Northumberland, and even her own parents, but she made many choices, and she gets far too little credit for having made them.”

“I don’t know what you mean. She was forced to marry a man she probably didn’t love and forced to accept a crown she didn’t want and then was executed because of it.”

Claire crossed her arms in front of her desk. “Yes, she married a man she probably barely knew, but all aristocratic girls of that day faced that possible dilemma. But think about it. She could’ve run off before her wedding day. She could have disguised herself and run away. And if she did love someone, like you are supposing, she could’ve fled with that person. They could’ve escaped into the wilds of the North and lived as lovers and paupers. It would have been irresponsible and scandalous, of course. But she could have done it. Instead, she chose to stay and fulfill her duty.”

I could think of nothing to say. Claire went on.

“And, yes, she had no desire to wear the crown, and at first she declined it. But the men who wanted her on the throne instead of Mary persuaded her to accept it, which she did. She could have refused. But she truly thought she could do some good for her country. That made her naive, but not without choice.

“And when Mary kept sending her confessor, John Feckenham, to the Tower to try and convert Jane to Catholicism, Jane would not bow to it.
Guildford did, as did his father. But Jane would not. She didn’t believe in the tenets of Rome, and she wouldn’t perjure herself by confessing that she did. That, in itself, is the most amazing of all the decisions she made. So I don’t think of her as a young woman robbed of choosing her own destiny. I know there are many who do think of her that way, but I don’t. And if you are going to live your life believing you are wearing her ring, I suggest you don’t either.”

In that moment, everything seemed to crystallize for me.

I thought it had been easy thinking my life to that point had been one long bend toward the will of others.

It had been punishing.

And I was through with it.

I
t was still light as I pulled into Brad’s driveway. I found the key under the mat and a note.

I crumpled the note and slipped it into my pocket. Once inside, I went from room to room and opened windows, a facade for letting in fresh air, but my true intent was to test my presence in each room.

What if this were my house? What if I lived here with Brad? What if this were my kitchen? My living room. My dining room. My patio.

I went upstairs and into the guest room and imagined Connor sleeping there during Christmas vacation and his summer break. I pictured his posters of the Boston Marathon and New Zealand on the walls and his trophies from high school on a shelf above the dresser. And his ball caps on the posts of the bed.

Then I went into the bedroom. And I pictured a different bed. Not that one. And not the one that is in our apartment in Manhattan. A new bed.

I pictured our black-and-white photos of Boston and Quebec on the walls. I pictured my shoes lying askew in the middle of the floor, my jewelry on the bedside table, my scent in the unseen air.

I walked over to the bed and sat on it slowly, closing my eyes and imagining being in a house like this one when it rained and when my parents came to visit and when one of us had the flu and when we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.