Laura Andersen - [Ann Boleyn 01]

by The Boleyn King

William said, “Wait.”

  Both men stopped, his uncle looking impatient. It gave William pleasure to say, “I agree that Dominic will be of great use in France, but I have work for him this week. There is no need to send him off tonight.”

  “There is a need,” Rochford said. William could almost hear what he wanted to add: Because I said so.

  He stared his uncle down. “I require Dominic’s service. He will be available to you six days from now. Make whatever plans you like, but Dom does not sail until then.”

  It wasn’t often he made his uncle this angry. But there was, as always, calculation to it. And tonight his uncle’s calculation decided that this was not a point worth fighting over. Icily Rochford bowed and said, “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

  “I’ll speak with you in the morning,” William said, dismissing him.

  If Dominic resented being fought over like a woman, he didn’t show it. But he did ask, once Rochford had left, “Am I truly required, or was that a convenient excuse to spread your wings?”

  “I do require your service … or at least, Minuette does.”

  Dominic’s expression sharpened. “For what?”

  “She told you of the invitation to visit Alyce de Clare’s sister?” When Dominic nodded, William said, “The woman lives only five miles from Minuette’s estate, Wynfield Mote. Now that I have reclaimed it from the Howards, I thought it would be convenient for her to visit and see how things are in hand. I want you to go with her.”

  “You do not trust her?”

  “Her intentions? Absolutely. Her good sense …”

  At last Dominic relaxed. With a laugh, he said, “Are you really the one to criticize her good sense?”

  “And that is why you are the perfect escort for her, as you are the perfect counselor for me.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He bowed and turned for the door.

  “Dom?”

  But when Dominic looked at him, William found that he didn’t know what he wanted to say. He settled for, “I wish I didn’t have to let you go to France. But if my uncle is going to use someone, I’d like it to be someone I trust.”

  “Don’t do anything rash while I’m gone.”

  Disarmed by the familiar banter, William said, “You think I still need a nursemaid?”

  “I think you’re likely to get yourself into trouble without me around to stop you.” Dominic paused. “Don’t marry anyone else off without letting me know.”

  “I promise, if any of my sister’s ladies are asked for, I’ll check with you first.”

  And then Dominic was gone and William felt momentarily as empty as the chamber in which he stood. There was an element of truth to Dom’s teasing—he had always been the one to steady William in both his anger and his enthusiasm. William wondered how long it would be until he saw Dominic again.

  Thoughts of Eleanor broke through his melancholy, and desire returned with a rush as William pictured her, warm and eager. He set off for his bed, where nothing need be debated or measured or calculated.

  CHAPTER SIX

  26 September 1553

  Wynfield Mote

  I have been at Wynfield only one day, and already I feel myself home. The house is unchanged and I find in every room and corner a memory of earliest childhood, both bitter and sweet, for I have not felt the presence of my parents so strongly since their deaths.

  I was worried about my reception from my father’s steward. I thought Asherton old and forbidding when I was six, and I expected him to resent my presence after all this time running the estate by himself. But when I met with him last night, I found a man who cannot be above fifty. And though he is taciturn, he is not unkind. In all, a man whose good opinion I should like to earn. I am determined to learn everything about running an estate this size, and I shall defer to his judgment and knowledge wherever it exceeds mine. Which is everywhere.

  27 September 1553

  Wynfield Mote

  I have been busy from morning till night. I never could have imagined I’d find such pleasure in simple domestic tasks. I begin each day in consultation with Mrs. Holly, who has kept the interior of Wynfield spotless all these long years. She is almost giddy now that she has someone to actually serve. Even court banquets pale next to the ceremony with which Dominic and I are served our meals. I would prefer to dine in a smaller room, but Mrs. Holly insists we use the hall, where the long table is set, somewhat pathetically, for two.

  In the afternoons I have ridden out with Asherton. I have now visited every tenant farm and cottage on the estate. It is only twelve in all, but I quite delight in the pretty households and the healthy faces of my people. My father was born at Wynfield, and I can judge the respect in which he was held by the reverent manner in which he is spoken of to me. Though my mother’s tenure here was short, she was also loved. I have been told numerous times how much I resemble her. I wonder if they know there is nothing I would rather hear.

  Mrs. Holly delights in telling me stories of my early years. And not all the stories are flattering. She claims that I once screamed three hours straight because my father rode off without me. Not for me the ladylike tears of a broken heart, she said, but full-throated shouts of pure rage.

  I think her memory is not as good as she claims.

  She said she has one or two of my mother’s personal belongings that she will search out for me. Most of her things, naturally, are in Howard hands, as that is where she died. I shall be interested to see what she left behind when she remarried.

  Tomorrow is our last day at Wynfield, before Dominic must return me to court and take himself to France. I shall spend the morning with Emma Hadley, prying out her sister’s secrets. I can only hope they are useful.

  Within five minutes of meeting Alyce de Clare’s sister, Minuette was desperate to get away. Emma Hadley had the same rich brown hair as her younger sister, but her figure had grown stout with childbearing and her expression was all discontent and greedy curiosity about the court.

  “Alyce was always so sparing in her stories,” Emma said, eyeing Minuette with an unnerving hunger. Though they were seated across from each other in a shabby parlour, it felt far too close.

  “One learns to be discreet, especially in the queen’s household,” Minuette said politely. She had come here to pry secrets from Emma, but how much would she have to give in return?

  “Oh, yes,” Emma sniffed. “Naturally. But still, I was her sister and all I could get from her was the most general of information. What the queen wore for Christmas mass or the weather when she went riding. Never anything about the king himself. Is he as handsome as we hear? What sort of women does he like?”

  Repressing her revulsion, Minuette said, “The king is very handsome.” Not for any amount of secrets could she bring herself to talk about William and women. Not when he was probably with Eleanor at this very hour.

  “Alyce told me you were raised with Princess Elizabeth, that you were only in the queen’s household to be trained for her service. What is the princess like?”

  A woman who would reduce you to silence with a single blazing look, Minuette thought. “She is her father’s daughter and noble in everything she does.”

  Before Emma could launch another inappropriate question at her, Minuette noted, “I know how much Alyce enjoyed her visits to you. If she did not speak much about court, surely she spoke about her own life away from you.”

  Emma harrumphed. “Oh, she enjoyed coming here, right enough. To lord it over me, show off her fine dresses, and look down her nose at us. No country gentleman for her, she said. She had her sights set on marrying well and staying at court.”

  Minuette could not dispute that picture—Alyce had always had a self-contained manner that just missed being superior. “Did she ever mention anyone in particular?”

  “Got herself in trouble, did she?” Emma’s eyes sharpened. “They didn’t say, when they told us she’d died, but it only makes sense. No, she never said a word to me about any particular gentl
eman. But then, I hadn’t seen her for more than a year.”

  Minuette stopped in midquestion when she realized what Emma had said. “Not for more than a year? Are you certain?”

  “I’m certain. We saw her August last year, and then not again. Said the queen wouldn’t release her. She said maybe Christmas this year. But of course—”

  Emma stopped talking suddenly, and for the first time Minuette saw grief in her eyes as she realized she would never see her sister again.

  But even as Minuette murmured the appropriate words of comfort, her mind was spinning. Alyce had claimed the queen would not release her in this last year—but twice in that twelve months Alyce had left court. November last, for two weeks. And for the whole of March this year. A month when she had told Minuette she was going to her sister’s …

  Wherever Alyce had been in March, simple arithmetic made it likely that she had been with the father of her child.

  Excited by the news, Minuette stood abruptly. “Thank you for seeing me. I liked Alyce very much. I miss her.” And those are the truest words either of us has spoken yet, she thought.

  Emma talked all the way to the door, and this time her conversation was more than just inappropriate—it was incredibly rude. “I suppose you will marry well,” she said enviously. “Not likely to see you around your farm in future. You’ll be like your mother—off like a shot the day she was free to marry a duke’s brother.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  It was a mistake, for Emma’s instincts sharpened to the question. “Didn’t you know? Everyone round here knows the story. Your mother only married Wyatt because she fell pregnant with you. It was the younger Howard she’d always had her eye on. But he was married at the time, so she did what she had to. By the time your father was dead, so was Howard’s wife. From queen’s household to country gentleman to the nobility … she planned it as sure as anything.”

  “My mother married because she wished to,” Minuette managed to say.

  “Easy to indulge your wishes when you have royalty as friends,” Emma muttered. “You’re as spoiled as she was.”

  Minuette arranged her features into an expression of contempt that would have done Queen Anne proud. “A word of advice, Mistress Hadley—it is not wise to speak so freely of those in power, or their friends. The royal temper can so easily be excited.”

  From the moment they’d arrived at Wynfield Mote, Dominic had seen Minuette bloom like an exotic flower returned to its native soil. The manor house sat in a hollow of land edged by the remnants of great woods, with a stone bridge that crossed the moat into a cobbled courtyard. Newer timbered wings added by Minuette’s father nestled comfortably next to the fourteenth-century great hall; orchards and gardens ringed the outside of the moat; and everything from dovecote to stables to kitchens was neat and pleasant.

  Despite William’s warning, Minuette’s good sense had been very much in evidence as she negotiated her way with a wary steward and a smothering housekeeper. She had visited her tenants, addressed them by name, listened to endless memories of her parents. Dominic had been impressed—not by her kindness, which he knew well, but by her patience and astuteness. She was more herself here than he had ever known her, and it made him almost sorry to return her to court.

  Not that he had been idly watching her all this time, for even in the country he had work to do. Dispatches from Rochford arrived daily—leaving Dominic to marvel at the cost in time and money expended on lecturing him—and he always had a stack of recommended reading.

  On their last day at Wynfield, Dominic sent Minuette off with Asherton and then shut himself up in what had been her father’s study to puzzle out the latest reports from Rochford’s spies in the emperor’s court. It would be useful to know what was being said in Spain about their new alliance with France.

  But after several hours, it was almost a relief to turn from Continental politics to the more personal kind. Amongst the latest dispatches from Rochford was a letter from Queen Anne complaining that not enough money was being allocated to the college she had founded at Oxford with funds from the dispossessed monasteries. Deal with this, Rochford wrote him. Dominic knew he did not mean Find the money or Give her a precise accounting of funds but rather Flatter her out of her temper.

  Dominic had known the queen all his life, and yet she still made him uncomfortable. This hadn’t always been the case. He had once been in and out of her presence without a second thought except to mind his manners. But around the time he turned sixteen and gained his full height, growing into something more than just a boy with too-large feet and hands, the queen had begun to speak to him differently. She drew his name out, letting it linger in the air while she studied him. She would touch him briefly, lightly, on the arm. It was never any one thing that made him nervous, but an awareness that she reflected back at him—that he was young and attractive and she knew exactly how to play him.

  But she was his best friend’s mother, and he would not play that game with her. Instead he avoided her when possible and spoke (or, as in this case, wrote) as formally as though he were a priest and she were an importunate child. He very much doubted that anything he sent back to her by this letter would flatter her out of her temper—more likely it would only increase it.

  He didn’t realize how late it had grown until Mrs. Holly brought a tray to his room for dinner.

  “Is Mistress Wyatt not back yet?” he asked, concerned.

  “She is, sir. But she asked not to be disturbed.”

  Interesting. Did her withdrawal mean that she had learnt nothing from Alyce’s sister? Or that whatever she had learnt was too upsetting to be immediately shared?

  He tried to keep away. He finished his letters and then checked that his trunk was neatly packed for tomorrow’s departure. But when he couldn’t help it any longer, he went looking for her. Her room was empty, as were the solarium and the great hall. As he came out the front door, a voice said, “The young miss is in the rose garden.”

  Dominic jumped and swore at the sudden voice from behind, and rounded on the speaker. “Someday you will have to teach me how you move so silently for such a big man.”

  Harrington—three inches taller than Dominic and three stone heavier—didn’t even blink. “The rose garden,” he repeated, then padded away toward the stables.

  For a man supposed to be my servant, Dominic thought, Harrington behaves as though he is in charge. Rochford had put the man at Dominic’s disposal when he left court, with orders to take him to France. “He’s useful,” Rochford had said, “in more ways than one.”

  Rochford hadn’t elaborated, and Harrington hadn’t said more than ten words at a time to Dominic all week. Was his usefulness confined to moving like a shadow and knowing without asking whom Dominic was looking for?

  Minuette was indeed in the rose garden, already bare of blooms, leaves shriveling in the early autumn frost. It was pleasantly symmetrical, with four quarter circles bounded by a low brick wall, and Minuette sat on the single wooden bench in the center of the garden. She had an embroidered shawl around her shoulders and her hands twisted at something in her lap.

  Jewels? he wondered. They dimly reflected light back. “What do you have?” he asked.

  She blinked as though coming back from a faraway thought, and used one hand to hold up a strand that was not jewels, but …

  “Minuette,” he said sharply. “Is that a rosary?”

  He did not need an answer. The jet beads with a heavy silver cross at the end were quite clearly that banned item of Catholic devotion.

  “My mother’s,” she said conversationally. “The housekeeper gave me a casket my mother left behind when she married Howard. Though I don’t know why she didn’t take it with her—the Howards being Catholic. Supposedly it was a gift to her many years ago in France.” Minuette looked at him. “A gift from the queen, back when she was just Anne Boleyn in the French court. Ironic.” She let the rosary beads fall into a pool in her lap. In spite of her conversa
tion, she didn’t seem to have come all the way back from wherever her thoughts had taken her.

  “What did you learn from Alyce’s sister today?” he asked.

  “Besides the fact that she is a nosy, bitter woman who thinks everyone she meets owes her something?”

  The bitterness did not sound like Minuette at all, but before he could probe she added, “She did have some useful information, at least. About Alyce’s absences from court. I will discuss it with Elizabeth and William when we return and it should lead us somewhere.”

  So it wasn’t Alyce that was bothering her. “What are you thinking about, Minuette?”

  It wasn’t just politeness. He really wanted to know, with an ache that he told himself he imagined.

  In an instant she had a court smile on her lips. “Oh, about fabric and ribbons and young men asking me to dance.”

  William would have teased along with her, maybe even Elizabeth, but not Dominic. Not tonight, when tomorrow he would have to say goodbye to her for however long Rochford wanted him in France. “Tell me the truth.”

  The smile slipped away like a shy child ducking behind a door. “I was thinking about friendship and love and marriage. And if those three can ever come together.”

  The imagined ache grew. “And what prompted such philosophical thoughts?”

  “Oh, the wedding last week.” Her voice strengthened. “Honestly, Dominic, I cannot understand Eleanor Percy. Not even a crown would have induced me to marry Giles Howard.”

  “You are not Eleanor.”

  “It’s not just her,” she said, so softly it was as though she didn’t want her words to make it into the world at all. “Giles Howard is not so much like his father—but he is very like his uncle.”

  “Your stepfather.”

  “I’ve always believed that my mother had no choice but to marry when Stephen Howard wanted her. But what if … I was only six when my father died and eight when my mother died. How do I know who she really was?”

  Dominic let the question hang, though she hardly seemed to expect an answer. It was that vagueness that disturbed him, for Minuette was usually as clear as a swift stream. Feeling his way toward whatever her true worry might be, he finally said, “Whatever choices your mother made, they don’t alter you. I know who you really are, and you have nothing to fear.”