The Virgin's War (10 page)

Philip knew how to wait, and he was genuinely glad to greet his sons: Charles, the elder by five minutes, and Alexander. Now three and a half, they were bright and cheerful, with the reddish hair of both their parents and a delight in life that lightened Philip's heart whenever he was with them.

After an hour with the boys, Philip and Mary withdrew. If she had any sense of what was coming, she hid it behind the royal facade that was her birthright. A queen from six days old, raised in exile in France at that wariest of courts, condemned by her own faults to more than a decade in confinement—Mary Stuart had learned her lessons in a hard school.

Philip had learned in a harder one.

“Maria,” he asked in the quiet voice that everyone in his court knew to fear, “tell me about Nightingale and the assassination of Renaud LeClerc.”

Mary might have a royal facade, but she had a desperately impulsive spirit and a fierce belief that whatever she did must be right. She did not bother to pretend ignorance. “You know all about Nightingale, as you were part of that plot yourself.”

“Nightingale was accomplished five years ago, with your release from England, and it in no way involved the Vicomte LeClerc.”

“It involved his son, Nicolas, who was martyred in the course of freeing me. Murdered viciously by his own brother, no less.”

“Four years ago, and it is not Julien LeClerc who has been recently assassinated.”

“Because he has retreated to England and taken refuge behind the skirts of your former wife!”

Philip studied her intently. “Let us not play games, Maria. It is not the LeClercs themselves who are the target of your furious vengeance. It is Stephen Courtenay. He hurt your pride and you want to hurt him in turn. Until very recently, Stephen Courtenay and his brother were in France with the Vicomte LeClerc. They fled after the man's death—perhaps to preserve their own lives? Tell me just one thing, Maria—did you, at any point, imply that this ridiculous plot of secret assassins had my personal approval?”

It was impossible for even the most self-centered of women to miss how very angry he was. “I do not need any man's approval to defend my own honour!”

“Not only is it dishonourable to kill a man who has never offered you harm, it is the sheerest folly. Spain is surrounded on almost every side by enemies. Our forces are split between Ireland and the Netherlands. England and your own rebellious Scotland are threatening to combine in a marriage that will lock you out of your home forever and steal my daughter from me. In all of that, the last thing we can afford is to make an active enemy of France!”

“France will not care.”

“That the Vicomte LeClerc has been murdered? They care, Maria. Of course they care. Even if he has been less trusted by the current regime, he has royal ties. If ever his death is traced directly to Spain, they will demand redress.”

He leaned forward and fixed her in his gaze. “And if that demand comes, I may very well offer them a redress they cannot dream of. I may offer them you.”

She flushed, then paled—with fury, rather than fear. “I am a queen. I cannot be touched.”

“Ask Elizabeth Tudor if that is true.”

“What do you want from me?”

He could see how it pained her to ask, and he was glad of it. She should be pained by her foolishness. “I want you to remain in Segovia with our sons.”

“For how long?”

“Until I say otherwise.”

He expected her to press, to ask what would happen if she refused. But despite her tendency to act impulsively, she was not stupid. As she knew she would not like the answer, she did not ask.

“I am, of course, yours to command. In this.” Her tone was not quite as conciliatory as her words.

No matter. Philip had what he wanted. Because of it, he offered the incentive for her to comply with grace. “If things go well in Ireland this summer, it would be useful for our troops to be visited by one of those for whom they are fighting. If Dublin can be taken and securely held, then you and Alejandro might profitably travel there for him to be introduced to his future subjects.” He carefully did not indicate a time frame.

That both soothed her pride and flattered her vanity. Philip trusted that she would soon enough notice that he left orders behind him at the Alcazar: any letters she wrote were to come first to him, visitors or messengers denied private access to her, and if she tried to leave Segovia…she would be stopped. By force, if necessary.

Philip was not about to allow his present queen to wreck the plans he had for his previous queen.

It took Kit almost a full day to realize how very tense Pippa was. It should have taken him much less than that, but he had been wonderfully, joyously, distracted by his reunion with Anabel. She hardly let him out of her sight for hours, cancelling who knew how many appointments in favour of sitting with him and talking. Their words spilled over each other at first, both almost giddy at the relief of being able to talk rather than merely write, but it didn't take long to settle into the rhythm they had always had. Either Pippa or Madalena was present most of the time, but so quietly in the background they might as well have been alone.

Kit hardly even spared a thought for Felix until food was brought to them. “He's perfectly well,” Madalena said in response to his ashamed questions. “Your sister has taken him in hand. And Matthew Harrington is talking business with Sir Andrew Boyd of the Sinclair Company.”

“Did Boyd come merely to escort you?” Anabel asked.

“I believe he has some business to communicate from Mistress Sinclair to your household. I told him once we were here, we would be perfectly safe and he could transact his own concerns.”

“So you are here to stay?”

“As long as you want me, in whatever position you choose. But first I must take Felix on to Compton Wynyates. He belongs with his uncle.”

“He must be rather overwhelmed by the rapid disasters and changes in his life.”

If he was, Felix had made little of it. Kit thought the boy had learned entirely too much from Stephen—his damnable self-control chief amongst those traits. Surely Julien and Lucette would know how to handle him. Felix had accepted the necessity of going to his uncle, though he seemed more resigned than pleased. Kit told himself it was only to be expected after his grandfather's death.

Anabel said, “You might as well press on quickly. Take Pippa with you.”

He might have asked her why, but by then Anabel had moved to sit next to him on a stool hardly large enough for the both of them. He had to put his arm around her to hold her there, and when she laid her head on his shoulder, Kit was unable to think of anything else beyond the feel of her body next to his.

Two days after his arrival in York, Kit and Pippa took Felix and a contingent of Anabel's guards to make the 150-mile journey to Compton Wynyates. They had to go at some speed, for Anabel desired them to be back in time for the Council of the North. Felix, neatly engaged in conversation by some of the men, left Kit and Pippa to bring up the rear and talk.

For once, Kit was the one pressing his twin to speak. “What is wrong?” he asked gently.

That gentleness blew away into irritation the moment she widened her eyes and said with blank innocence, “Nothing whatsoever. Is something wrong with you?”

“No, you are not doing this, Pippa. Not to me. Talk or don't—but do not pretend I am someone else. You can be a brat elsewhere. With me you are honest…or you are nothing.”

He felt her flinch, and then he felt much, much more. His hands slackened on the reins as he was hit by an enormous wave of emotion. From Pippa, all of it, all at once, two years' worth of fear and pain and worry launched at him like a weapon. She had never used their bond like this before, and it nearly staggered him.

Almost as quickly as it came, it abated to a more manageable level. As Kit regained a tighter grip of his horse, Pippa said, “Sorry. It seems I have missed you more than I knew.”

“Next time bash me over the head with a rock, why don't you?” Kit answered wryly. “It would be softer.” Then, more kindly, “Why will you not speak to Matthew?”

“I speak to Matthew every day. Just this morning you heard me.”

He had grown too much to let her tease her way out of this. “Why have you not told him how you feel?”

She did not answer, not aloud. But Kit felt the brushing of her mind and he let himself reach for it. This time the emotion was focused and subtle, words mixed with thoughts and images. The brush of dank fog against his skin…the hiss of arrows in his ears…urgent voices…pain, low and sharp…
Run, Pippa. Run.

“Pippa, what is it you see?” Kit asked urgently.

“This is for me alone.”

“But it's keeping you from Matthew.”

She urged her horse forward, and said over her shoulder, “All the better for him.”

They stayed in Doncaster that night, and Kit wrote a letter to be dispatched straight back to Anabel's household.

Matthew,

I know that you are the very essence of reserve and respect. I know you would never make presumptions of any sort. Since I have none of those qualities, I take leave to say something presumptuous.

If you love my sister, you must tell her so.
Let me rephrase that
—I know that you love Pippa. I also know that you are waiting for her to make the choice. In this matter, you are wrong. She will not come to you. You must go to her and break whatever fear is holding her silent. Her Highness has failed—I have failed—you are the only one who can reach her now.

C. Courtenay

T
heir brief visit to Compton Wynyates turned out to be even more fraught than Pippa had expected. It had been difficult enough to keep her secrets from Kit, with a twin's far too intimate knowledge. But Compton Wynyates, the beautiful house belonging to Lucie and Julien, had welcomed the Duke and Duchess of Exeter two days before the northern party rode in. Pippa sighed inwardly at the thought of meeting her parents and braced herself to tell more lies to more people.

The Courtenay reunion, however longed-for, took second place. They had sent a messenger ahead, so that the appearance of Kit and Felix had been anticipated. Pippa and her family held back while Julien crossed the open space to the horses in three long strides and pulled Felix into an enormous hug.

Pippa knew she wasn't the only one who noted Felix's stiffness as he spoke to his uncle. But the boy was well-bred and old enough to behave properly and greet Lucette with courtesy. Looking at her sister's face, Pippa knew Lucie had been expecting something warmer than courtesy. On their journey from York, Pippa had felt the tenor of Felix's anger and knew it was underlaid with grief. And why not? Whatever sins Nicolas LeClerc had committed, he'd been Felix's father. Understanding his father's crimes did not lessen the hurt. How was Felix supposed to respond to the uncle who'd killed his father and the woman who had betrayed him?

Compton Wynyates was as well-run as any Courtenay household, and quickly enough Felix and Julien had gone off together, the older man speaking in rapid French, and three of the four Courtenay children sat down with their parents in a sunny solar that had the stamp of Lucette all over it. Like Dr. Dee, with whom she had long studied, Lucie tended to collect a wealth of books and papers and objects that looked chaotic to an outsider but amidst which she moved with absolute ease.

“How is Stephen?” their mother asked, and Kit launched into the events of the last few months.

Dominic listened without comment to his son's account of Renaud's death, though his hand tightened reflexively. Did her father have any friends? Pippa wondered. She didn't think so. Only Renaud and Edward Harrington, Matthew's father, who had died in Ireland four years ago…and long before her birth, William Tudor. Now all three men were dead.

“Stephen won't come to England?” Lucette asked. Outwardly, she appeared unchanged: dark hair with glints of red, bright blue eyes, dressed in an understated gown of verdant green suitable for a woman of her class in her own home. But there was a tautness to her body and a discipline to her expressions that confirmed what Pippa had already known—the pain of multiple miscarriages had begun to wear down her sister in both body and soul.

“You know Stephen better than that,” Kit answered wryly. “He will accept his banishment to the very letter. I doubt he'll ever set foot in England again unless specifically asked for by the queen.”

As Stephen had written to everyone (Kit had brought the letters south with him), they soon left that topic and broached the unusual—for them—topic of politics.

Minuette took the lead. “Your father and I have agreed to be a visible presence at Elizabeth's court during this next year. He has refused a seat on the privy council, but has accepted command as Lieutenant General of the South. That puts us squarely into the queen's camp.”

“As opposed to Anabel's camp?” Pippa asked.

“Precisely.”

“How has Tomás Navarro's arrival as a Spanish envoy been received in London?”

“The people are surprised, but muted in their discontent. They are watching the queen to take their cues from her. As long as mother and daughter refrain from an absolute split, there is room to maneuver.”

There would always be room to maneuver. No matter how closely the queen and princess danced to the edge of disaster, there would never be an absolute split. That was the entire point—two women, both clever and popular and talented, were seeing just how far they could push the limits of their authority. History was rife with examples of kings clashing with their crown prince heirs; to the point, sometimes, of facing each other in battle. But where was the precedent for a queen present and a queen future sharing the public sphere? It was no mistake that these two women were exploiting that natural question. It had been a forgone conclusion almost since Anabel was born.

Both royal women had been smart enough to recognize the coming struggle. And, in recognizing it, had possessed the wit to turn it to their own—and England's—advantage.

Now, nearly two years after its hazy inception, the plan hatched between queen and princess was taking on a life of its own. The Tudor women's intention had been to offer Philip and the Spanish a believable picture of Anabel as restless and discontented, stalking off to the North of England to soothe her wounded pride and evade the heavy controlling hand of her mother. A half-Spanish princess who allowed the English Catholic recusants a royal hearing they had often been lacking. A willful, steely minded girl who did not want to marry into Scotland if she could help it.

An emblem of hope for those Catholics who disliked and distrusted the current canny Tudor queen—and a prize figurehead for the Spanish to capture to their cause.

Of necessity, open communication between mother and daughter had been stilted and infrequent. The Spanish intelligence networks were fearsome, and there were Jesuits in England—besides Tomás Navarro—keeping watch on the queen and the princess. Ciphered letters could only help so far, and were too often a giveaway of the very plotting they wished to conceal. And now, with the situation ripe for exploitation, they must appear more than ever to be distant from one another.

Enter the Courtenays. With the royal family split, so they would apparently split along the same generational divide. Dominic and Minuette at court with the Tudor queen they had known all their lives; Pippa, and now Kit, attached to Anabel as they had been since birth.

And to navigate the space between camps? Lucette Courtenay LeClerc. Rumoured niece of the English queen, married to a Frenchman and former Catholic, known for her interest in scholarly pursuits and dislike of courtly games. Lucette had a correspondence nearly as wide as the queen; she could write to everyone and filter the necessary information between camps with greater ease than anyone else just now. That was the assignment on which Pippa had come.

The difficulty was in persuading her sister to care.

Lucette would not even agree to hear the proposition in its fullness that first day, insisting that Felix's comfort and welfare must necessarily come first. However, it was obvious to all within twenty-four hours that, whatever enthusiasm the boy had once had for Lucette, it was now tainted by abandonment and violent death. With Kit anxious to leave and return to Anabel, Pippa more or less commandeered her older sister after dinner the second night and dragged her outdoors to talk.

“You cannot stay shut up here with nothing to do all day, Lucie. Julien is worried about you.”

“There is Felix. If I cannot manage to produce a child of my own, why not help care for the son of the man I helped murder?”

The bitterness broke Pippa's heart, but she knew better than to let it divert her. Lucie didn't need sympathy—she needed a purpose. “Felix does not seem to want your care. Not at the moment.”

“Tell me something less obvious, Pippa. Isn't that your specialty? Tell me, dear sister, when you saw my French husband, did you see any half-French children in our future?” Abruptly, Lucette stopped walking and gripped Pippa above the elbow. Her voice was suddenly frantic. “Tell me, please. Tell me my future is not to remain barren.”

“Lucie—”

Lucette dropped her hand and swung away. “Never mind. I know what you're going to say—it doesn't work like that.”

If Pippa knew anything about her sister, it was Lucette's fierce ability to set aside pain and do what she thought she must. For years, that fierceness had kept her apart from their parents—particularly Dominic. It was her gift and her curse: whatever emotional maelstrom she might be drowning in, Lucette's mind would always demand that she
think.

So it was no great surprise when she added, “Of course I will do what I can to keep both sides informed. Letters find me very easily here. But I won't leave Compton Wynyates. Not now.”

Pippa watched Lucie walk away, her heart aching for her sister. Why could not the happy remain happy? Lucette had passed through much to make her beloved marriage, but that was not proof against further heartache. At the moment, it seemed the daughters of the family were destined for hurt, while the sons were better at living in whatever moment they found themselves in. Kit could not see far past his joy at being with Anabel again, and Stephen…Pippa knew enough to have a good idea of what would happen for Stephen in Scotland. It made her smile now despite all the reasons for sorrow.

Lucette had never been one for much weeping, but when she left Pippa it was to retreat to one of the lesser-used wings of her too large house and cry alone. She had discovered many such spots over the last two years, for she did not want Julien to catch her in tears. His concern for her was heavy enough to bear as it was.

And that was a constant annoyance in the back of her mind—since when had avoiding Julien become something to be considered?

Perhaps Pippa had alerted Julien to their conversation, for she had not yet pulled herself together when her husband found her.

She only knew it when his hands settled on her shoulders from behind—gently, as though fearing she would pull away. He treated her with such delicate politeness these days. As though passion of any sort would break her.

Perhaps it would. And perhaps she didn't care.

She turned quickly in his grasp and pulled his head down to kiss her. For a few blessed moments he responded, but then he remembered and pulled away.

“Kissing will not hurt me,” she told him.

“But what follows will. We must be wise, Lucie mine.”

“If we must be wise, then you should not call me that.”

They separated, several steps between them now. It was a matter weighing heavily on them these last four months, ever since the physician had advised that, for her health, Lucette should take measures to ensure she not become pregnant for at least a year.

It was a matter Julien avoided discussing. As he did now. “I think you should go north with Pippa and Kit.”

“So eager to rid yourself of me?”

He was impossible to fight with these days—and perhaps that was what Lucette missed most of all. They had always sparred, from the very beginning, with a teasing tension that brought colour to her life. Now he was so damnably courteous it was like being married to a stranger.

“Felix is miserable and difficult,” Julien answered reasonably. “And not simply because of my father's death. He is…troubled. Angry. About Nicolas, about all of it.”

“I know.” The boy she'd known in France, who had treated her as though she were the coming of an angel to brighten his life, had become an undeniably hostile stranger since his arrival the day before.

Going to Anabel's court would allow Julien time and space to help Felix come to terms with the traumas of the last five years. And it would certainly make her husband's insistence on celibacy easier to maintain. How could she be expected to live chastely when everything about Julien seemed designed to draw her in? From the first moment she'd met him again as an adult—tall and messily elegant, wheat-coloured hair falling across his eyes, the cynical smile that hid his gentleness—Lucette had wanted to touch him. In the five years since, that had not changed.

If he would not let her touch him, then she might as well go north. But she would not be happy about it. “I will go, since it seems to be in everyone's best interests—except possibly mine.”

“Lucie—”

“If I am to set out with my siblings tomorrow, I must give instructions as to packing now. Go tell Felix that he shall have you to himself for a time.”