The Virgin's Daughter (15 page)

“Is it? Then add to my concerns the fact that Nicolas is also eyeing her with more interest than is wise. If you’re only trying to torment him, using Lucette, then don’t. I do not want her caught between the two of you trying to best the other. Is that clear?”

“I promise not to mix up Nicolas and Lucette. I think I can keep my intentions toward each straight in my mind.”

Unfortunately for Felix, Julien’s mood had been spoiled by his father’s warnings. The poor boy kept trying to engage his uncle in his water horseplay, but Julien could not stop thinking of Nicolas and his interest in Lucette. That could not come to a good end, for anyone. And was it fair for Julien to take advantage of his brother’s misfortune, when that misfortune lay at his very own feet?

After a half hour in the river Felix gave up and the two of them threw on shirts and breeches soon made damp, hair tousled dry by rough linen. Julien repented his abstracted mood and, in a sudden fit of playfulness, tackled the boy into the high grass. “You’re it,” he called, then took off running.

Felix bolted after him like a colt, and Julien took care to be caught now and again. Thus laughing and damp, they ran into the low-bordered rose garden and straight into Lucette.

She was reading a letter, and shot to her feet, dropping the pages. Julien stopped dead, staring like an idiot. Only Felix kept his composure, gathering the pages and returning them with a bow.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,”
he said. “You will forgive our appearance, but we have been swimming.”

“Yes, I see,” she said, that telltale flush colouring her cheeks.

Julien swallowed. How could he not think of anything to say? Being quick with his tongue was his stock-in-trade. Finally, he managed to stammer out, “News from home?”

“Mmmm.”

He knew that noncommittal sound—he’d made use of it plenty. It meant one did not want to answer the question.

Once again Felix was quicker than his uncle. With a worried tilt of his head, he said, “Are you quite well? You look…” He trailed off politely. Even at seven years old, a Frenchman knew better than to utter anything but compliments about a lady’s appearance.

Lucette did look distracted. Flushed, as he’d already noted. And as though she could not look him in the eye.

“I am not feeling well,” she said. “I believe I have a sick headache coming on. Perhaps I’ll retire now and miss dinner. I’m sure a good rest will see me better tomorrow.”

She threw a general, determined smile in their direction before retreating rapidly. Julien’s wits began working in direct proportion to her increasing distance, and so did his cynicism.

You’re lying, Lucie, he thought. Whatever the reason for locking yourself in your chamber tonight, it is not because of a headache.

—

The Spanish ships anchored in Portsmouth on June twenty-fourth, a day of near-Mediterranean sunshine and a freshening breeze that blew the sea-salt scent to where Anabel stood on an open balcony of her grandfather’s Southsea Castle. In a few minutes she would be expected to appear at her mother’s side to welcome King Philip, but for now she let her heart be tugged toward the impressive ships and bright Spanish colours. It was the nearest to sentiment she could allow herself, for it would not do to show weakness in the coming days.

She could feel Pippa two steps behind her, Kit silently at his twin’s side. Kit wasn’t often silent, but he knew how to choose his moments, and more than anyone on this earth her two dearest friends knew how Anabel had longed as a child for her father’s presence.

In her eighteen years, she had passed less than a thousand days total with Philip, some of that when she’d been just an infant. Since then the King of Spain had made only two protracted visits to his English wife and daughter—in 1570 and 1575. Looking back, Anabel could recognize that both those visits had less to do with her and more to do with attempts to breed another child, but she’d been too delighted when young not to believe Philip’s sole interest in England was his daughter.

Usually it was Pippa who said the instinctively right thing, but today Kit approached her and said softly from just over her shoulder, “I feel sorry for him, Anabel. His Majesty of Spain is about to be confronted with the most beautiful princess in Europe. The shock of what he cannot regain will be, I imagine, very painful.”

Anabel reached back with her left hand and Kit grasped it, quick and reassuring. “Time to go, Your Highness,” he murmured, and Anabel turned away from the ships and braced herself for the game that was about to begin.

For once, her mother had waited for her before entering the hall. She flicked a glance over Anabel—from hair dressed intricately at the crown, then falling loosely down her back to the blue and silver gown edged with pearls—and nodded once.

“Adequate,” Elizabeth pronounced, then nodded to the steward that they were ready.

Elizabeth herself wore a cloth-of-gold gown studded with gems, a cartridge-pleated ruff so stiff and wide her head seemed entirely separate from her body. It was a dress meant both to proclaim her position and reinforce her solitude. It was the dress of a queen meeting the king of a not-entirely friendly nation, not that of a wife reuniting with her husband.

Kit and Pippa had already joined the crowd, and Anabel felt a moment’s piercing solitude as she followed her mother to the two thrones side by side—one beneath the colours of England, the other beneath the arms of Spain—and the slightly plainer chair with curved arms set defiantly at the queen’s side.

They did not sit, yet, for it would be another quarter hour before the Spanish arrived, and Elizabeth kept her close as she conversed with the Earl of Shrewsbury and Sir William Paulet. Anabel would have preferred her own circle, but was this not what she had been pressing for—to be at the center of court life? She could hardly complain about getting what she wanted.

At a signal from the attendants, Elizabeth proceeded to her throne, where she stood for a moment—not so much studying the crowd as allowing herself to be studied. With a graceful movement, she sat, and Anabel gratefully took her own seat. She was cross to discover that she was trembling.

Not exactly a private family reunion, though those invited to witness it were few, only three dozen of the court’s most important. (Besides Kit and Pippa, whom even Elizabeth rarely tried to exclude, as though she also thought of the three of them as a single unit.)

And then the doors at the far end were opened and Lord Burghley preceded the Spanish entourage.

Anabel’s first impression was that Philip had aged more rapidly than Elizabeth, though logically she knew it was only that she had seen him so infrequently. Considered objectively, Philip was an upright figure, unmistakably royal in bearing apart from the understated luxury of his deep black clothing. His light brown hair, once noticeably tinged with red, was now sprinkled liberally with white, but not to his detriment. He had the same mustache and pointed beard she had always known, and she had to bite down hard to keep tears from forming.

She did not, of course, come first. Where another father might impulsively swing into his arms a daughter he hadn’t seen in five
years, this was a family of royals. Her father did fix his eyes on her as he came up the hall, and she flashed him the briefest of smiles.

Then Elizabeth stood, in a nicely judged piece of theater, and took the last two steps to greet her husband. “You are most welcome, Your Majesty.”

Philip gave a low bow and his English was perfectly serviceable. “It is my great pleasure to return to England, Your Majesty.”

As her parents faced off, both clever and calculating and forever wary of each other, Anabel knew that she would do everything in her power to keep from being married to a king. She did not want a marriage of balanced equals, always pushing against each other for the advantage. Better to marry a man who would owe everything to her, for then at least there would be a chance of personal affection—or at least a good imitation of it.

Then it was her turn. She had stood, naturally, when her mother did. Now her father stepped to her and gently lifted her hand to his lips.
“Cielita,”
he said, “I have counted the hours until this day for many years. My heart could not be happier.”

As a royal princess born, Anabel knew how to accommodate two states of being at once. Just now there was an undeniable burst of little girl pleasure that her father loved her. But that did not discount the calculation that was as much a part of her parents’ legacy as her hair or eye colour.

Philip felt guilty at his years of absence. And a father who felt guilty might be manipulated into giving more than he meant to.

NINE

E
ven a husband and wife on the brink of divorce, and who had spent many more years apart than together, could be expected to withdraw into privacy. Elizabeth kept Philip waiting until evening, when the reception festivities and feasting were finished, when Anne had bid her father goodnight with a mix of little-girl longing and womanly wariness. She had her ladies remove the elaborate court gown and dress her in something simpler, a loose Spanish gown of navy silk left open to show the blue and white kirtle beneath. Then she made herself comfortable in the privy chamber decorated for her use, sent her ladies away, and waited for her husband.

Philip had also changed, she noted when he bowed to her on the threshold of the open door. His attire was as nicely judged as her own, between casual and familiar, which did not surprise her. She could never have married, let alone remain married this long, to a man who she did not respect.

When he stepped into the chamber, the door was politely
closed from outside and the two of them faced each other alone for the first time in five years.

“You are truly looking well, Elizabeth,” Philip said. “It was not simply courtesy when I said it before.”

“Would it be rude if I mentioned that you look a little tired?”

The ghost of a smile that came and went so fast as to be almost missed. “I am the one who has had the burden of travel. As I always have through the years of our marriage.”

And that slight sting was perhaps the most attractive feature of her husband—for not many men in this world could speak to her like that. She arched an eyebrow with feigned disapproval. “I was not aware that you ever wished me to visit Spain. It’s one thing to have married a heretic bastard queen—quite another to force your people to accept me in person. I thought you liked me at one remove.”

“We are both easier, perhaps, with a silent partner rather than the complications of a daily partnership.”

Except it wasn’t a partnership, and never truly had been. In Spain, Elizabeth would be nothing more than the barely tolerated Protestant wife of their Catholic monarch, as likely to be assassinated as welcomed. And in England, Philip fared little better. No one had tried to kill him, but he’d only ever received grudging acceptance. England had a long history of disliking foreign royal spouses. There had never been a question of Philip receiving the crown matrimonial, such as the wives of kings did, and Elizabeth admitted there was little to tempt her husband in this country. Save herself, and their daughter.

And now, after twenty years, those temptations were no longer enough.

She waved her courteous spouse to a chair. “Do we begin the end of marriage wrangling tonight?” she asked. “The discussions of Anne’s future husband?”

“That is not why I came. There will be time enough for necessities in the days ahead. Tonight, I thought, we might simply talk to each other. As we used to do, in the first weeks of our marriage.”

Damn the man. Philip was not a charmer, not careless in bestowing affection—in short, nothing in the least like Robert Dudley had been—but there was no denying that their marriage had been more than business. Never easy, never simple, never uncomplicated…but none the less vital for all that.

“And what,” Elizabeth said with a tartness that Philip would be able to read as affection, “shall we talk about if not business?”

Philip had several different smiles. The one he gave her now she wagered only a handful of women in his lifetime had been privy to. Elizabeth felt a flash of jealousy as she wondered what woman would have the benefit of that smile in the coming months and years, then quashed it. “You are my wife,” Philip said softly, “and the mother of my only living child. You might try simply sharing your burdens with me. Not your royal burdens, but your personal ones.”

I am tired
, she considered saying.
I worry about Anabel all the time—is she safe, is she happy, will she ever understand why I do what I do in her interests? How can I make her strong enough to bear the burden she will one day have as queen? There is nothing I will not do for my daughter…or for England
.

And that was why she said nothing. Because there was nothing in her life that was not political.

As if he could read the reasons for her reluctance—as perhaps he could after so many years—Philip took her hands in his and said softly, “Or we need not speak at all. Some of the finest moments of our marriage have been entirely wordless.”