The Boleyn Deceit (13 page)

Her surprise meant she didn’t move quickly enough, and Eleanor seized the moment. “Mistress Wyatt,” she cried. “What a pleasure! How … sweet you look tonight.” Eleanor managed to make it sound as though Minuette were a twelve-year-old still dressed for the schoolroom.

But as always with Eleanor, Minuette knew precisely the right response. “Thank you. You are looking very … maternal.”

Maybe not precisely the right response, for Eleanor’s smile
widened and she said, “If you could only see my daughter. She is so lovely, with her red-gold hair.”

The colour of the Tudors’
, she didn’t say. She didn’t have to. Everyone knew her daughter was William’s and not her dead husband’s. Minuette wanted nothing more than to slap her smiling face, or retort that William meant to give her a crown as well as children, but the reasonable part of her was watching it all with amusement, her mind whispering,
Why do you care? It’s Dominic you love. And even as your friend, William never loved Eleanor as he loves you.

Reasonable as that voice was, truthfully the only thing that lifted Minuette’s chin was the memory of William on his knees before her, pleading with her to marry him. “I confess myself astonished to see you. But then, the king has always been kind to those in less fortunate circumstances.”

“My widowhood, you mean?” Eleanor asked.

And for an instant Minuette was sickeningly ashamed of herself. Eleanor was a widow because of her. She managed to say, more gently, “I am sorry for your husband’s death.” More than you’ll ever know, she thought.

But Eleanor was a survivor and she didn’t bother to play the grieving wife for Minuette. Instead, she shrugged and said, “Life goes on, Mistress Wyatt. And life is full of opportunities.”

So much for kindness; Eleanor was laying down battle lines, and so Minuette let her dislike of the woman guide her own steps straight to William. Usually they circled each other in public—William for discretion’s sake, Minuette for Dominic’s sake—but tonight she behaved as she’d used to when William was nothing more than her friend, and laid claim to him as Eleanor had always driven her to do.

When she slipped her hand through William’s arm, he startled for a moment, distracted from his conversation with the new
Duke of Norfolk and Bishop Bonner. But he covered it quickly and conversed for another minute. Bonner looked at her thoughtfully when the two men bowed themselves away, but she ignored the bishop. It felt wonderful to look at William and say, “Wouldn’t you like to dance?”

He tilted his head and she saw his other hand begin to rise, as though he meant to touch her cheek. But he refrained and said only, “What has prompted this?” Even as he asked, however, comprehension came. “Ah, I see.”

“You didn’t tell me she would be returning to court.”

“It was a last-minute arrangement. Norfolk is her nephew by marriage and she came with the family—”

“The family whose name she quickly dropped so as not to be tainted.”

“I could hardly say no to her presence tonight. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” His voice lowered. “You know that it’s all over between us, don’t you? I care nothing for Eleanor. I care nothing for anyone but—”

He stopped himself, aware of how very public this discussion was. That same reasonable voice prodded Minuette’s conscience.
Why are you so pleased with William’s declarations?

She told that voice to be quiet as William used his hold on her hand to guide her into the opening steps of a galliard. She allowed herself to dance without thinking, enjoying movement for its own sake and also as a distraction from a conscience that kept prodding uncomfortably at her motivations.

That reasonable voice of conscience sounded disturbingly like Dominic.

She searched for him as she danced, and didn’t have to look far. In his customary sober clothing only partially relieved by the ducal collar he wore for the first time, he leaned against a pillar and watched her dance with William, his expression stony. She
could see why he had picked up the nickname the King’s Shadow, for he seemed a darker version of Will—as though William had all the light and pleasure of his power and Dominic all the burden of it. She grew uneasy as he continued to watch them; just how angry was he?

William had seen what she did. “I believe you shall have to dance with someone else after this,” he murmured. “Or Dominic will wonder what has happened to our discretion.”

She didn’t think it was their discretion Dominic was worried about. Although he had often been difficult to decipher, it had only grown worse in the last months. But tonight she had the distinct impression that he was jealous.

This knowledge didn’t give her the same pleasure that Eleanor’s jealousy did. In fact, it brought her back to earth with a thump and made her stomach turn over as she finished the dance and braced herself to speak to Dominic while William was engulfed by a crowd of other women.

I can deal with jealousy,
she told herself.
All I need do is persuade him to come outside for a bit and be private and remind him whom it is I truly love.
But when she approached him, Dominic took her by the arm without waiting for her to speak and escorted her out the nearest door.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded, his dark green eyes furious. “You practically threw yourself at William.”

“It was seeing Eleanor,” she answered, stung by his anger. “I wasn’t warned and it was a shock. You know that Eleanor has always had that effect on me, and it doesn’t have anything to do with loving you. You needn’t be jealous.”

He stopped abruptly and released her arm. The corridor was empty except for a cursory guard, but still he kept his voice at a whisper. “This has nothing to do with jealousy. This has to do with wisdom. Do you think I was the only one to notice the two
of you? The way he touched your hand? He was talking to a duke and a bishop at the time! They are neither of them stupid. And Eleanor could not take her eyes off you.”

“We have always danced together. There was nothing new in that.”

“There was in this dance. The two of you …” Dominic stopped, his jaw tense. “There was a heat to it that only a fool or a saint could have missed. And Lord Rochford is neither. I’ll warrant he’ll have something to say about it before long.”

“What of it?” she shot back. “Perhaps that is what we need—to have it confronted so William can realize it will never come to work and he can release me.”

Dominic was no longer touching her, but his eyes riveted her in place and she remembered Hampton Court two years ago and the rain falling on them as they faced off in a malodorous kitchen lane. She longed to lean into him, to close her eyes and touch the black hair that tumbled to his collar and have his hands on her …

“Do you want William to release you?” he whispered intensely. “Sometimes I wonder.”

He turned and left her.

The moment William saw Rochford’s face the morning after the ducal investitures, he knew he was in for an unpleasant conversation. No guessing needed—he knew what his uncle was going to say. Even before Rochford went to the trouble to take William into his privy garden where they could walk alone out of earshot.

Still, he said it more bluntly than William had expected. “Your Majesty, you must send Mistress Wyatt away.”

“Must?” William could not keep the flash of anger out of that word, although he knew it made him sound like a petulant child.

With effort, he managed to repress the other hasty words that
sprang to mind. Instead, he continued, “You oversee my government, Lord Rochford, not my court. Keep to administration and leave personal matters to me.”

“There are no personal matters where kings are concerned. Particularly not a king’s marriage.”

“The council approved my betrothal to
Elisabeth de France.” William bent over and snapped off several tulips in particularly pleasing shades of cream and pink. They would look very well in Minuette’s hands.

“Your betrothal is why we are preparing to receive French envoys in ten days’ time. They will be here for a month, including Elisabeth de France’s uncle, and they must go back to Henri convinced of your intent in this matter. You cannot hope to have Mistress Wyatt at your side every moment of every day without causing insult to the French. Even if she were no more than your mistress—”

“If?”

Rochford regarded him coolly. “Have you forgotten I once served your father? I know the look of the Tudors when they are still anticipating their desires. You’ve not had the girl yet. And she’s shrewd enough to make certain you don’t until she has what she wants.”

“As shrewd as my mother, then.”

“We are not discussing your mother.”

“Aren’t we? How many people lined up to say precisely the same things to my father? If he had listened to them, you would be nothing more than a country gentleman of limited means.”

“And you would never have been born.” Rochford waved his hand in an impatient gesture. “That is not the point. As your chancellor, I see to England’s interests. Your position is not as secure as you would like, Your Majesty. That is why I support Elisabeth de France. In spite of my distaste for the Papists, a Catholic father-in-law will be a useful tie. With any luck, useful enough to keep plotting to a minimum.”

“You overestimate the appeal of the plotters. I’m popular with my people. And no one seriously wants a woman ruling England.”

“You are popular,” Rochford agreed in a more measured tone. “You might be able to pull it off. But not without splitting the nobility of England right down the center. The rifts your father created are still echoing. You are meant to close those rifts, not widen them.”

“I will be patient and careful, Uncle. I will do nothing in haste that might injure our security. But,” William added, “my marriage will be, in the end, my own choice.”

“Unless you are prepared to break the treaty at once and lose what you have gained, I would advise that, for the duration of the envoys’ visit, you give no cause for discontent. If you will not send Mistress Wyatt away, at least make her presence less prominent.”

William turned his back on Rochford and tossed away the tulips—he had crushed the stems in his displeasure. “I’ll consider it.”

All through the endless afternoon of meetings and audiences that followed, William did consider it. He was skilled at listening with half his attention and even replied sensibly when necessary, while the rest of his mind churned over the conversation with his uncle. Rochford had been wise enough to disengage for the moment, but William was under no illusions that this was the end of it. They would fight this battle again.

When the last applicant for position had bowed humbly away, William returned to the privy garden and walked alone among the bravest of the spring flowers. It had rained since this
morning: the ground was damp, but the sky was beginning to clear and the newness of the air eased a little of his tension.

His uncle was right. He’d known it from the moment Rochford had given his measured advice. England could not afford to break with France yet, not with the treasury depleted, the last harvests poor, and the Catholics held at bay by promises and hopes.

On the other hand, William had just spent two weeks without Minuette at court and had not liked it at all. He would not send her away, so he would simply have to grit his teeth and be as publicly indifferent to her as possible while the French were here.

It won’t kill me not to touch her, he decided, as long as I can still look at her.

Two days after Dominic’s investiture as Duke of Exeter, Minuette went walking with her stepfather along the river gardens at Richmond as the noon sun peeked through the clouds with a fickle promise of warmth. Fidelis accompanied her, as he nearly always did these days. Large dogs were required to remain in the stable precincts at court, but William had made an exception for Fidelis. She liked that the enormous hound gave her a measure of gravity, and it meant that few approached her rashly. Stephen Howard shook his head when he saw them together.

“Are you certain he’s not a hellhound?” he asked. “He’s looking at me quite suspiciously.”

“Intelligent dog.”

He sighed. “Must we always spar when we meet, daughter?”

“I am not your daughter.”

“Temper, temper … do you really want to risk me leaving court without telling you what I’ve learned?”

Since this kind of sparring could go on for hours, Minuette surrendered. “Very well. What have you learned?”

“Precious little. Every trail seems to wander into mist as soon as it’s looked at twice. For instance, I have a correspondent on the Continent who claims that the Spanish navy never set sail for England last autumn.”

“But Lord Rochford said—”

“Rochford has his intelligence and I have mine. Who is to say whose is correct? It may be that his agents wanted him to believe the navy was on the move.”

“Or your agents want you to believe that it wasn’t,” she retorted. “How is one supposed to divine fact from all this?”

He nodded. “Good girl. You have learned the first rule of politics—there is no fact, only interpretation. And that depends entirely on who is doing the interpreting.”

“Well, you and I know the Penitent’s Confession was a slanderous fraud. That is fact. And Alyce de Clare’s death is another fact.”

Howard shook his head. “I wonder, Minuette: if Alyce de Clare had been merely a nameless lady-in-waiting, if she had not been your friend, would you still be so eager to make inquiries? You will make yourself sick caring so much about others. Her family seems content to let it lie—why not you?”

Minuette told the truth with perhaps more force than necessary. “Precisely because her family—and everyone else—is content to let it lie. I failed to help Alyce when I might have. All I can offer her now is the truth.”

Howard shook his head. “You are stubborn and self-righteous, rarely an attractive combination.”

“Then why are you helping me?”

He paused along the path to look out at the Thames, and Minuette instinctively held her tongue as he considered. Finally, he said, “Do you know when it was I fell in love with your mother?”