The Boleyn King (34 page)

“No, Minuette. I am sorry. I was just … I have come into this blind and I let fear override my judgment. You could never be careless in your affections.”

Somehow, even that was the wrong thing to say, for she was still and pale in the candlelight. “Perhaps you think too highly of me,” she said. “But I promise, I have done nothing with Giles of which I am ashamed. There is a purpose, and I do not forget that.”

“Well, whatever that purpose is, it’s no longer yours. I have direct orders from William to get you out of here. We ride in the morning. This is not your fight.”

She studied him with grave intent, and for nearly the first time in his life, Dominic was not sure what she was thinking. “The morning,” she repeated. “Then I should retire, in order to prepare. There aren’t many hours left.”

She smiled once more, but it was her brilliant court smile, which shut him out absolutely. “I will see you in the morning, Dominic.”

He stared after her as she walked away, and might have stayed there if he hadn’t caught sight of Harrington. Dominic strode over to him and asked, “What did Carrie have to say?”

“That the sooner you get Mistress Wyatt away from here, the better. She says Framlingham has had a bad effect on her lady, but that was all. Said she had to get to packing now that you were here to set things right.”

How can I set things right when I’m not entirely sure what’s going on?
Dominic wondered.

Harrington went so far as to almost offer a suggestion. “Shall I keep a watch on her tonight?”

“No,” Dominic said. “I’ll do that. I want you watching the gates. Don’t let anyone leave tonight. Rochford sent men with Mistress Wyatt; use them if you cannot find me. Whatever’s going to happen, I think it will be tonight.”

And Minuette would be in the middle of it.
What are you up to
, he wondered,
that you do not want me to know?

I will not think of Dominic, I will not think of Dominic, I will not think …
Minuette gulped the wine Carrie had begrudgingly brought her and wondered if she could get close enough to drunk to dull her senses without tipping into insensibility.

Half an hour later—as she tripped for the third time and had to tighten her hand on Giles’s arm to keep from stumbling—she thought she hadn’t quite got the balance right.

Giles chuckled roughly as she swayed. “Sure you want to keep going? There are any number of quiet corners closer than the chapel.”

She widened her eyes innocently. “But the whole point is to give me a private tour of the lady chapel. Isn’t it?”

“Whatever you wish to call it,” he murmured.

The lady chapel could be entered only from inside the larger chapel. It was a relief to finally reach the door with its pointed arch, because Giles removed his arm to use the key.

Don’t let me be wrong
, she prayed silently.
Please don’t let all of this be for nothing
.

Giles shoved the door open, wrapped his arm around Minuette’s waist this time, and pulled her against his side as they entered. Her left hand and the candle flame wavered.

“Let’s get this out of the way, shall we?” He plucked the candle from her hand, lit two of the tapers that waited on the altar (Popish chapel or not, Minuette thought that sacrilegious), and set down her own flame between them.

In the time it took him, Minuette felt a whisper threading through her whole body—as if something, or someone, was calling to her.
It’s here
, she thought.
I was right
.

And then Giles was on her and her only thought was how to judge the balance between eagerness and hesitation.

She made herself relax, told her muscles to remain pliable. It was nothing like William or Dominic, nothing like the melting of bones and the instinct to merge. This was calculated and an imitation—but good enough for Giles. His breath was rough and his mouth insistent, his hands grasping at her bodice, fumbling for the laces …

She made a slight sound of protest and stiffened, just enough to penetrate Giles’s awareness. This was the tricky moment. She had to make him believe she was willing, not give him a reason to force her.

“This is … I’m …” She made her eyelashes flutter, looked down demurely.

“What?”

She bit her lip and decided Giles was arrogant enough to believe in her capitulation. “I just think …” She looked shyly around the lady chapel. “It’s private, but not very comfortable.”

Would he take the hint?

“Comfortable? Well, I can remedy that. You won’t leave?”

She kissed him, even let her tongue touch his lips. He gave a soft groan and pulled back. “I knew you were wild at heart.”

He strode out on a mission, leaving the door to the main chapel open. Minuette went to shut it. In these next minutes she had to look very fast, or be prepared to hit him when he returned—and for either choice she needed privacy. But as she swung the door closed, a hand grasped the edge and Dominic stepped around.

“You told me once,” he said in a whisper, coming into the lady chapel and closing the door, “that I am a rotten liar. Well, so are you. I knew you weren’t going to be shut in your chamber packing tonight. Although this was not what I anticipated.”

His face was a blank, and she wanted to burst into tears. She settled for attack. “How dare you follow me? How dare you doubt me? Do you really think that I am here to …” She couldn’t make herself say it, not to Dominic.

He studied her gravely. “I think you are here in search of the Penitent’s Confession. I think you found Giles useful. And I think he will return rather quickly, so you’d best start looking.”

“You do not think I am … wanton?” She wanted—needed—his absolution. But even as she asked for it, she knew what she really wanted was absolution for kissing William. And that she would rather die than tell Dominic.

His unreadable expression sharpened into something she thought she might put a name to when she was less flustered. “I think you are the most honest person I know. I think you were very clever to get in here without rousing suspicion.”

He took one step, two … She remembered Hampton Court and the wall against her back, and the quality of his stare was like it had been that night, pinning her in place. He spoke so softly she wasn’t sure he meant to be heard. The words danced along her skin as much as reached her ear. “And wanton is not always wicked. Like so much else, it depends on the context.”

He stepped back suddenly. “I’ll watch the door,” he said. “You start looking.”

Look. Right
. Minuette angled her back to Dominic and breathed in and out several times to still her incipient trembling. She’d thought her only trouble tonight would be imitating passion, not quelling it.

Where to look? She regretted not having come to service more often with Mary—then she would know the interior better. The lady chapel was small, and though it was richly decorated from its gilded and painted ceiling to the intricate stained-glass window depicting Salome with the John the Baptist’s head on a platter, there was very little furniture. As she could see no way in which a document could be concealed on the frescoed walls with its murals of the temple of Solomon, that left the two cushioned chairs that stayed here permanently (the others were brought in from the larger chapel as needed), the altar, and the single tapestry that hung along the back wall.

Logic said the document would be in either the least likely spot, which would be the chairs, as they might be moved, or the least accessible, which would be on the back of the ten-foot-long tapestry.

But instinct drove her to the altar—instinct and the first image that came to mind when thinking of Mary, of a woman kneeling in prayer and supplication. A woman beseeching heaven for the right course. A righteous woman who cared more for God than for kings. Deposing William would be a crusade, not a rebellion, and a crusade must begin with an altar.

She ran her hands lightly along the top, then crouched to do the same along all four sides. She tried rapping it with her knuckles, searching for some sort of hidden opening. But there weren’t any handy, elaborate carvings to trigger, and the smooth wood yielded nothing.

“Anything?” Dominic called softly.

“Not yet.”

She reached the back of the altar with no success and sank down completely to think. The tapestry, then? That would require Dominic’s help, which meant there was no hope of finishing before Giles returned. But at least she wouldn’t have to hit him—Dominic would do that eagerly.
Too eagerly
, she thought.
I will have to make certain Dominic doesn’t kill him
.

She began to rise, and her eyes passed the level where the top of the altar joined the base. There, a sliver caught her attention. She picked up the candle and saw that it was indeed a line of paler wood, thin and flat, which indicated … She used her free hand and felt that it was slightly out of line with the rest. She set the candle down on the altar and used both hands, trying to coax movement with her fingernails. The sliver of wood didn’t move at first, and she began to think they would have to take an axe to the altar, but then it groaned slightly and gave with a rush and all at once she was holding a thin, slightly hollowed wooden tray. In it rested a linen-bound object.

“Dominic!” Even as she called him, her fingers were untying the ribbon around the linen and exposing a single sheet of vellum, with faded lettering and several watermarks. But it didn’t obscure the opening:
The Penitent’s Confession, touching on the affair of Anne Boleyn with her brother, George, and the true paternity of the Concubine’s son
. There was a name affixed to the bottom, written in the clear script of a clerk, with a woman’s signature penned beneath it:
Marie Hilaire Wyatt Howard
.

She stared numbly at her mother’s name, a whimper escaping her throat. “I don’t understand.”

Clutching the precious, dangerous affidavit to her chest, she managed to sway to her feet. Dominic took one look at her and moved. “What’s wrong?”

That distraction was almost fatal, for the door swung wide and Giles came in with a heavy winter cloak draped over one arm (
So that’s his idea of comfort
, Minuette thought wildly,
a fur lining on a stone floor
) and a bottle of wine in his other hand. Everything happened both too fast and too slow—too fast for Dominic to draw his sword, too slow for Minuette not to see every movement as Giles threw the cloak at Dominic, hampering his response, then raised the wine bottle and smashed it to pieces across the side of Dominic’s skull. He fell with a weight that made Minuette’s breath stop. It started again, fast and uneven, as Giles crouched and drew Dominic’s sword, then rose and faced her.

Wake up
, she silently begged Dominic, but it seemed even he was not invulnerable. This was not a good time to discover that.

She took a step around the altar, wanting to keep Giles’s attention. “You’re surely not going to kill the king’s best friend. Even you are not that stupid.”

“I’m not going to kill him. Where would be the fun in that? No.” He began to walk closer, and Minuette had to make herself stand still. “I am going to tie him up. Strips of this”—he was close enough now to touch her ivory wool skirt with the point of the sword—“will accomplish two things: immobilize him, and undress you. And when he awakes, he’ll have a perfect view of what comes next.”

She couldn’t help it; she moved back. The fact that Giles didn’t stop her, that he continued to smile with that unnerving confidence, scared her. He was in control.

But not wholly. She drew her hands away from her chest, letting him see what she held in them. “You cannot hurt me before I burn this,” she said.

“Is that supposed to frighten me?” he asked—entirely too calmly, Minuette thought, and her heart sank.

“It should. Everything you’ve been working for depends on this single sheet. If I burn it, there will be no spark left to light a rebellion.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what that is, and I don’t care. My intent tonight is unchanged. I might have enjoyed you willing, but I will revel in you fighting.”

He lunged, and Minuette did, too. She dropped the document—her mother’s terrible, traitorous document—then grabbed at the candle and threw it in Giles’s face. He screamed, more in anger than pain. But it gave her time to scramble around the altar, where she hesitated. She knew she should fling open the door and scream the place down, but this was Norfolk territory and she didn’t know where Robert was, and the men Rochford had sent with her were quartered too far away to hear her … and she couldn’t leave Dominic. Not unconscious and with Giles armed.

She threw herself on the floor, feeling the crunch of glass from the broken bottle beneath her skirts, and slapped Dominic. “Wake up!” she yelled. “Dominic, wake up!”

Dominic groaned, and then Giles was upon her, sword in one hand, the other hand digging into her arm, dragging her up with a power that told her he would not stop until he’d had her. As he pulled her up, her fingers scrabbled along the floor for something—anything—to hit him with, but all she could find was a shard of broken glass the length of her palm.

He jerked her against him. “This won’t take long, at least not the first time. I think we can risk his waking.”

Then he was pushing her against the wall. He was going to hurt her, and his mouth was on hers and she couldn’t scream or even cry. His sword arm was across her chest, so she couldn’t breathe, and his other hand was freeing his laces and then at her skirt, pulling it up, and she had to do something or it would be too late, and damned if Giles Howard was going to be the first—