Read The Virgin's War Online

Authors: Laura Andersen

The Virgin's War (24 page)

BOOK: The Virgin's War
13.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“And that is why I asked you to marry me. In hopes that one day we might meet in the middle.” He looked around them wryly, at their disheveled clothes and her discarded robe. “This was rather more than I expected.” With the lightest touch, he traced her cheekbone and down her throat. “Or dared hope.”

“I suppose I was rather forward.”

“And thank heaven for it, for I'd never have had the nerve. Come.” He shifted and stood, pulling her with him. Then he swung her up and she twined her arms around his neck. He carried her to the door, her light weight in his arms both warm and arousing.

“Wait,” she said. “Won't we shock the servants?”

“You have the best trained servants in all Scotland.” He laughed softly. “And we were not exactly silent. I'll wager they are all of them as discreetly far out of earshot as they can get without leaving the house.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think? We are going, my wife, to a proper bed. And I do not plan to leave it for some hours. We have weeks to make up for.”

K
it had never seen a more depressing view than Lakehill House. True, the whole of the North could appear bleak and barren to those accustomed to more flagrant beauty, but he'd learned to appreciate the stripped-down nature of both the landscape and its people. Eleanor Percy had clearly not even tried. Her farmland was scraggly and unkempt, the farmers resentful and suspicious, and the manor house itself looked fitting to an engraving of hell.

It did not help his opinion any that he kept imagining his father here, brought secretly from the Tower after a feigned execution, chained up for the king's vengeance until Elizabeth became queen and Dominic Courtenay emerged from Lakehill House missing his left hand. It was not a story told within their family. The Courtenay children had to piece it together over the years from gossip. And when approached, the queen had been willing to lay out only the bare facts.

The last time Kit had seen Eleanor Percy, they'd both been guests of the Earl of Ormond in Ireland. The woman had clearly been angling for the earl at the time, and despite his noted toughness of mind, Ormond had succumbed sufficiently to install Eleanor at Kilkenny for two years. Kit wondered if being cast off since had humbled her at all.

It hadn't. When summoned by Kit's abrupt commands to her slovenly steward, Eleanor Percy wafted into the dark hall dressed for court. Everything about her proclaimed charm and availability—from the low-cut square neckline of her wine velvet gown to the delicate curls of her golden hair. Only when she drew closer did Kit note the slight stiffness of that hair, denoting an expensive wig. He imagined she kept the chamber shadowy in order to hide the betraying signs of age in her face.

“Lord Christopher!” she trilled. “What a surprise. Though not as surprising as your recent rise in the world. Your brother's disgrace is certainly working to your advantage. Or is it,” she said with a confidential smile, “that you have learned the trick of pleasing a certain young royal? And here I thought you despised me, but you seem to be following in my steps. What will they call you, I wonder, when the princess seeks your bed rather than her husband's?”

She uttered the insults secure in the knowledge that a gentleman—and the Courtenays were undoubtedly gentlemen—would never lay a hand on her. It was a close run thing, though, and Kit had to deliberately loosen his hands to keep from slapping her.

He had a better weapon at his command.

“Eleanor Percy Howard Gage Stafford.” He used every name she had ever possessed to ensure all was done in proper form. “You are under arrest, charged with high treason. You will be taken from here to a prison of Her Highness's choosing to languish at her pleasure. You have fifteen minutes to gather any personal items you might require. You will not be allowed servants to attend you.”

Silence, broken by Eleanor's voice trying valiantly to convey amusement. “My dear Lord Christopher, you have run mad.”

“We have evidence,” he said tonelessly. “And I expect we will uncover somewhere here the gold you are storing to pay England's enemies.”

It was Eleanor who ran a little mad then. She flew at Kit without warning, managing to score his cheek with her fingernails before he could get a grip on her. It was like trying to subdue a wildcat. She hissed and spat and shouted obscenities.

“I should have killed him when I had the chance! Dominic Courtenay and his little whore…she was no better than me…I never tried to pass off another man's child as my husband's…Bitch, she'll pay for this…”

Kit did have to slap her at last, though he admitted enjoying it more than he should have. It served to stop the stream of filthy accusations, and then he waited, holding her upper arms pinned tight, while Eleanor brought herself under nominal control.

She couldn't quite manage to sound easy. “You will never have enough evidence of this ridiculous charge to even try me, let alone punish me.”

He leaned in slightly, to impress upon her his words, not knowing how much he resembled his grim father. “You have been playing games with royalty,” he said softly. “Royalty does not require evidence.”

—

Pippa spent six weeks crossing the length and breadth of England's North with her husband. Matthew was the official emissary from the Princess of Wales's household, visiting as her treasurer on assignment to assess the various households' financial and practical readiness for war. Unofficially, Pippa had the more critical task of assessing levels of commitment and possible conspiracies.

It was exhausting. She had worn her gift lightly through her life, so deeply was it woven into her awareness. When she was little, she'd thought everyone experienced the world the way she did. She was ten before John Dee recognized her gifts and subtly began to orient her perspective in order to use it. But recognized or not, it had always simply been part of who she was, and as often as not it was outside her command.

“God speaks when it is necessary,” Dr. Dee had long ago advised. “Which is not the same thing as speaking when we
think
it is necessary.”

There were times when Pippa wished she was the witch Tomás Navarro thought her to be. Then she could control events. She could be like the Willow Witches of northern tales, three sisters who had destroyed kingdoms and punished faithless men with spells of great power. During this most recent exhaustive tour of the North, she and Matthew had passed a ruined medieval tower that legend claimed had been home to the sisters. Witch Willow, the tower was called, and though Pippa suspected the name had come from the suggestive shape of a nearby ancient tree, she still wished for one moment that she could call down a spell of her own to blast Tomás Navarro and the Spanish threat out of England once and for all.

God, stars, visions, dreams, uncanny knowledge…Pippa had grown accustomed to the caprice of her gift. But never had it weighed on her as it had this last year.

The physical effects were rapidly becoming the most difficult to conceal. The weakness and coughing and frequent fevers of her illness were exacerbated by the pressure of too much knowledge, especially when that included other people's secrets. As she and Matthew passed from town to town and household to household, Pippa grew steadily more fatigued, making it difficult to sort through multiple impressions of secrecy to pinpoint which ones mattered.

They knew that the Cholmeley family had a Catholic priest in residence, for Anabel had given tacit approval for them to hold Mass within the household itself. That had, naturally, been pressed to its limits, and his services frequently had more than sixty in attendance. But there was no evidence that their involvement with the Spanish went any deeper, certainly not to the point of treason. And they showed no evasion when pressed for their preparations to help defend northern Yorkshire.

York was simpler; the city was unlikely to throw open its gates to welcome a Spanish army unless Anabel herself was present and ordered it. And even then they might well demur. Cities of that size had complicated relationships with sovereigns. Their sympathies might be split where religion was concerned, but the first concern of any city and its merchant guilds was the stability of trade and livelihoods. Pippa found practical people so much easier to deal with than idealists.

By the time they finished up their rounds by meeting with Lord Scrope at Bolton Castle, Matthew had begun to watch Pippa more closely than ever, and she suspected he was one incident away from pulling her out of public affairs. But Pippa knew how critical Lord Scrope's support was for Anabel. They had played a delicate game with these Catholic lords—allowing them greater latitude in order to gain their loyalties. Loyalties that might turn in a heartbeat if they felt themselves manipulated and betrayed. Anabel's gamble—and the queen's—was that their deepest loyalties were to England and their own security first. Would they sacrifice their sovereignty and the safety of their country simply to have a ruler of the same religion? The time was rapidly approaching—perhaps only weeks—before Anabel would have to make plain her absolute loyalty to her mother in order to fight the Spanish. Success in that fight would depend in large measure on how valiantly the northern Catholics came to her side, even at personal cost to themselves.

So Pippa kept herself and her traitorous body under iron control as she and Matthew met with Lord Scrope. She liked the man, one of those individualists the Marches of England seemed to produce, and was fairly confident of his support. But it would not do to make a misstep.

He and Matthew discussed military readiness and matters of supplies in both food and arms for the spring and summer, and then it was Pippa's turn.

As Warden of the West March, Lord Scrope had been informed by his Captain of Carlisle of the Maxwells' lackadaisical cattle raid and the possibility of it having been meant merely as a distraction. The borders were a network of complex relationships and grudges, and Scrope spent some time going down those torturous paths in trying to understand it.

“Might it,” Pippa finally asked directly, “have been directed from outside the Marches itself?”

“You mean Spain.”

“I don't mean France,” she answered wryly.

He gave her a quick, distracted smile. “No. If you are asking me if I have specific and personal knowledge of such an attempt by the Spanish to divert us along the borders, I do not. If you are asking me if I think it likely…perhaps rather more likely than not.”

They had kept back word of Eleanor Percy's arrest, made easier by her isolated position both geographically and socially. Surely whoever had employed her had noted she was gone, but they had also kept the news quiet. To what purpose?

“Lady Philippa,” Lord Scrope said, “it is no secret that the Spanish are already sending out ships to engage with and assess the strength of England's navy. They intend an invasion. Does Her Highness believe the northern border vulnerable to welcoming Spanish troops?”

So much for evasion. But this was precisely why Anabel had sent Pippa—that she might judge in the instant how to proceed with specific men. “Should she believe that?”

He was silent for a long time, gazing down at his linked hands. Pippa sat perfectly still, feeling the whirl of his emotions without being certain which would prevail. Religion or country? Faith or freedom? Loyalty or treason? Next to her, she could feel Matthew's stability anchoring her as always.

When Lord Scrope looked up and met her eyes, Pippa knew the tipping point had been reached.

“I knew the last King Henry—William, as he preferred to be called by his friends. I was never that, exactly, but we were of an age and I spent enough time at court to have a passing acquaintance with him. I never knew a man so quick, so clever, so certain to know his own mind. It was an…intoxicating mixture.”

Pippa could not possibly guess where he was going with this, but instinct kept her quiet.

“But for all his gifts, for all the hopes England invested in him after the tumult of his parents' marriage, William was a disastrous king. He had his father's temper and his mother's suspicions, and his own reckless impulsiveness where your mother, Lady Philippa, was concerned—and I tell you that England has seen no better day for a century than the day Elizabeth Tudor came to the throne. I say that as a faithful son of Holy Church. This queen has done almost the impossible: preserved peace for nearly a generation. Catholic I may be, but I have no desire to see wrought in England the violence done in France in the name of my faith.”

“Violence may come without our desiring it. How we meet it matters a great deal.”

Lord Scrope asked bluntly: “Princess Anne has no intention of aiding the Spanish in taking northern England, does she?”

“What do
you
intend?” She could not take the risk of confirming anything to a man who might, whatever her instincts, be prepared to spring that secret before Anabel was ready for it.

BOOK: The Virgin's War
13.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Man for All Seasons by Heather MacAllister
The Windfall by Ellie Danes, Lily Knight
Battleship Furiosa by Michael G. Thomas
Deviations: Submission by Owen, Chris, Payne, Jodi
CRAVE by Victoria Danann
Pilliars in the Fall by Daniels, Ian