The Virgin's Daughter (33 page)

For all the times Nicolas had burned with envy of Julien’s whole and perfect body, the life open to his brother that had been so violently shut to him, he was repaid a thousandfold now. Perhaps a casual observer would mark nothing in Julien’s controlled expression. But Nicolas could read every shade of his brother’s torment and reveled in it. His eyes tracked Lucette almost against his will, as she moved through the crowd with ease in a yellow dress that set off her dark hair to perfection. Around her neck she wore a circlet of Tudor roses. She avoided both brothers in equal measure and Nicolas didn’t mind giving her space tonight. Let her maintain the illusion of control while she could.

Shortly afterward the leading men withdrew, and not ten minutes later so did Julien.
Sloppy, brother
, Nicolas criticized silently.
Anyone might guess you’re up to something secret
.

Julien always played his part to perfection, even when he had no idea he was but a player in Nicolas’s drama. Let him talk things over with Walsingham—soon, Julien would be in a trouble he could not talk his way out of.

Leaving Nicolas free to act.

—

Julien had once learned to cope with misery by throwing himself into a chaotic mix of intelligence work, drinking, womanizing, and avoiding his family. Now he’d had to adapt his methods for a misery he’d never anticipated. He had never thought to fall in love—not like
this, a love that made him want to shout to the heavens and dance through the fields, a love that had humbled him to the dust and shaken everything he thought he’d known about himself and his ambitions. But in the end, Lucette had been no different from any of a dozen women he’d known. She did not love him. Desired him, yes. But desire was easy. Desire had been all he’d wanted for eight years. Now he wanted more. And the woman he wanted it from could not give it to him. All he had left was to cope with bitter disappointment and do what he could to ensure Nicolas wasn’t destroyed when Dominic Courtenay forbade their marriage.

Even now, with no hope for himself, Julien could not bear the thought that the marriage might be blessed. He was mean enough to hope that if he could not have her, neither could Nicolas.

So all-encompassing was this misery and its effects that Julien had barely spared a thought for the fact that he would be facing Walsingham for the first time in eight years. Only when he reached Windsor did the reality of his professional situation sink in. He’d been an enemy spy in his own country so long that he hardly knew how to act in the company of his spymaster.

Especially one who clearly harbored doubts about his trustworthiness.

It all combined to leave him spoiling for a fight, heightened by Lucette’s cool beauty and avoidance of him. True, he was avoiding her as well, but she didn’t have to look so unaffected by his ignoring her. So when Walsingham invited him to step out of the hall and meet him in a private chamber, Julien set out in an explosive mood.

His explosive moods mostly manifested in a darkly sarcastic cheer, so as he passed into the chamber to which an indifferent guard motioned him, Julien said, “From ambassador to Lord Secretary—you’ve done well for yourself, Walsingham. How many have you killed to get here?”

“No more than you’ve killed to keep your secrets.”

Julien grunted, remembering anew that Walsingham was unflappable. He declined the proffered seat and lounged insolently against
the linenfold paneling, arms folded as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “And which secrets would those be? The ones I keep for you—or the ones I keep from you?”

“That is the question,” Walsingham agreed. “Where exactly do your loyalties lie at this moment?”

“Where they have always lain. With myself.”

“Don’t try that on me,” Walsingham said sharply. “A man devoted only to his own interests would not have thrown my money back in my face so long and with such venom. Only a man touchy about his honour would be so insulted by reward.”

“What do you want?”

“Have you turned against me and England?”

“
Turned
against you—or always been against you?”

Walsingham shook his head. “No. I know how to read men, and when you offered yourself into my hands, it was done from principle and honestly. I am simply not certain if that principle has continued to sustain you this long.”

“I have done nothing against the interests of your queen, nor will I,” Julien said wearily. “I still believe what I did before—that Europe needs a balance, and places where those whose beliefs are unpopular in their home countries can go for safety. I would prefer that the Huguenots be able to remain in France. But as long as they are despised and hunted, I will continue to do what I can to keep them safe from the fanatics in my own country.”

“How I want to believe you, LeClerc. But there have been troubling signs pointing in your direction for several months now.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what those signs are?”

Walsingham simply gave him a look and Julien sighed. “Right. Well, as I pointed out to your latest intelligencer, I cannot prove a negative. And I certainly cannot prove it when I don’t know precisely what pieces of evidence are causing you to suspect me.”

“Do I detect sarcasm in your assessment of Lady Lucette?”

“Oh, come now, Walsingham—engaging a woman? I don’t suppose her father would be too happy about that.”

“Don’t change the subject, LeClerc. Although speaking of that, I don’t suppose Lord Exeter would be any too pleased to know how desperately you are pining after his eldest daughter.”

Julien shoved himself away from the wall. “Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. But I will not discuss Lucette Courtenay with you—or anyone. Am I clear?”

Walsingham’s rare smile was laden with meaning. “More clear than I think you care to be. You are right, proving a negative is troublesome. But not impossible. All you need do for the next week is enjoy yourself at my illustrious queen’s court. At the end of that week, I shall decide what to do with you.”

“I can’t wait.” Julien’s head was near to splitting. He threw open the door to the chamber and stalked past the single guard. Surely there was wine to be had in England.

Maybe if he got drunk enough he would forget the feel of Lucie beneath him on her bed. The last night he would ever touch her.

NINETEEN

E
lizabeth was snappish and irritable as July progressed under serenely sunny skies. The weather was oppressively hot and she could hardly wait to leave Richmond for the cooler North. By the time she left, Walsingham assured her, the Nightingale mastermind would be in the Tower—she assumed, if he could not positively identify either of the LeClerc brothers he would simply throw them both into prison and sort it out in the aftermath—and upon her return to London Elizabeth could begin to contemplate her future without even an absent husband to consider.

Against Walsingham’s advice, Elizabeth granted a brief audience to Nicolas and Julien LeClerc the day after their arrival at court. “If one of them is bent on killing me, I should like to look him in the eye,” she snapped at her Lord Secretary, and so he stood behind her throne today, no doubt glaring balefully at the Frenchmen.

Dr. Dee and Lucette attended them, and Elizabeth greeted the doctor warmly. “I trust you have brought back many fine books for
my libraries,” she teased. “I shall look forward to examining them in future.”

To Lucette, she merely nodded in acknowledgment of the girl’s curtsey. She had noted yesterday this new composure of Lucette’s—disconcertingly like her mother’s when Minuette had been keeping secrets from Elizabeth. The queen was in no doubt that Lucette’s emotions had been engaged by the brothers, though she showed no obvious signs of affection toward her supposed-intended.

Nicolas and Julien LeClerc were clearly brothers, with a marked similarity of colouring and features, but also undoubtedly individual. Nicolas a shade darker of hair and carrying more weight, Julien taller and grimmer. She suspected Julien would have a dashing smile, but it showed no evidence today.

The men bowed and rose at her gesture. “So,” she said sternly, “what is this about wishing to remove one of my favorite subjects from England?”

“Your Majesty,” replied Nicolas in accented English, “I doubt any force short of heaven could persuade Mademoiselle Courtenay to abandon her allegiance to Your Grace.”

Elizabeth sniffed, not displeased. “Still, as you have not yet obtained the Duke of Exeter’s permission, I suppose I need not worry overmuch. I am not certain there is a man on earth to whom Dominic Courtenay would willingly entrust Lucette.”

Through the banter, neither Julien nor Lucette moved, hardly even blinked. Without showing the least outward sign, somehow Elizabeth knew that they two were powerfully, almost painfully, aware of the other.

Interesting, she mused afterward. Lucette fell in love in France, all right—but not with the man she’s linked to now.

She found the problem mildly diverting until, with a suddenness that shocked her, there was another assassination attempt.

In her oft-threatened years as queen, there had never been two so close together. The second attempt was not a direct physical threat
such as the man with the misfiring pistol had been, but the more subtle and disconcerting use of poison.

It had been planted in her drink—a cup of sack, the dry Spanish wine sweetened with sugar—brought to the tennis courts where Elizabeth was the center of a crowd watching Brandon Dudley and Kit Courtenay play. The queen had a small round table next to her canopied seat on which sat a variety of treats. Of course, like all royals, Elizabeth had a taster. Nothing came within her reach that had not been tested on someone less exalted. Nothing had ever happened, as usually nothing ever did. This was England, after all, not Italy.

But this time the drink had not been set down for five minutes when there were shouts from the kitchen buildings and then the running feet of guards, with Walsingham in black swooping among them like a crow of foreboding. Elizabeth rose, expecting violence, but the guards surrounded not her, but her refreshments. Bewildered, she met Walsingham’s eyes as he reached her and, forgetful for once of status, ran frantic hands down her arms.

“Are you well?” he demanded urgently.

“Yes, of course, what has—”

In the rarest form of discourtesy, he turned away while she was still speaking and seized the goblet. “You did not touch this?” he asked her brusquely. His face was pale.

Understanding began to dawn. “No,” she said softly, “I have not. Who has?”

But with the knowledge that his queen was not about to fall dead at his feet, Walsingham gained control of himself and the situation. “Let us walk,” he urged her.

She allowed herself to be led away, the two of them flanked by armed guards. “Poison?” she asked, voice carefully pitched so as not to carry beyond the knot of guards.

He nodded grimly. “Your taster collapsed within minutes of the drink leaving the kitchens. She was dead when she fell.”

“Nightingale?” Elizabeth asked.

“It must be.”

“Nicolas LeClerc was at the tennis match, sitting not ten feet away from me for the last hour.”

“Whoever did this will have taken care to be blamelessly elsewhere. They pay men to do their dirty work.”

“But?”

“I already have men turning out the chambers of the LeClerc brothers. If they are lucky, evidence will be forthcoming.”

“How would that be lucky for them?”

“For one of them, at least—the innocent one. If I do not find evidence, then both of them will be locked up by nightfall.”

Elizabeth shivered once, seized by that feeling of someone walking on her grave.
Not yet
, she told the shadows firmly.
Death cannot have me yet. Not for many long years, and not by violence
.

—

Julien did not attend the tennis match. He was moodily alone in his chamber—a tiny rectangle that at least he did not have to share with Nicolas, and certainly cleaner than his rented space in Paris—when the door was flung wide and a man in clerkly black flanked by two guards rasped, “On your feet. Don’t touch anything.”

Slowly, Julien rose to his feet from where he’d lain stretched full-length on the bed, jerkin unlaced over his shirt, boots tossed carelessly on the floor.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“For you to stand still in the corridor and go nowhere.” The man stepped aside for Julien to exit the chamber, but the guards remained in place. No doubt to keep him from fleeing. Every inner alarm that had kept him alive so long in a dangerous profession was ringing, but he knew how to feign ease.

Even the most thorough search couldn’t last long, for there was nothing in the chamber except the bed, a chair, and Julien’s trunk. The clerk (or whatever he was) removed everything from the trunk, shaking out the clothes, running his hands along the interior looking
for secret hiding places, then swiftly dismantled the bed and mattress. He was too well-trained to express frustration, but there did seem to be a remoteness to his face when he finally conceded there was nothing to find.