The Virgin's Lover Read online

“But such a test of fortitude! Never to argue when they were so overbearing!”

  Amy giggled. “I cannot begin to tell you,” she said. “And the worst of it is that Sir Robert is not like that. When I first met him at my father’s house he was such a boy, so sweet and loving. We were going to take a little manor house and keep sheep and he was going to breed horses. And here I am, still waiting for him to come home.”

  “I always longed to go to court,” Mrs. Woods remarked into the wistful pause. “Mr. Woods took me once to see the old queen at her dinner and it was very grand.”

  “It takes forever,” Amy said flatly. “And the food is always cold, and half the time it is so badly cooked that everyone goes back to their own rooms and has their own food cooked for them there, so they can have something good to eat. You aren’t allowed to keep your own hunting dogs, and you cannot have more servants than the Lord Chamberlain allows, and you have to keep court hours… up late and to bed late till you are so tired you could die.”

  “But that life pleases Sir Robert?” Mrs. Woods observed acutely.

  Amy nodded and turned her horse for home. “It does for now. He was born in the palaces with the royal family. He lived like a prince. But in his heart I know that he is still the young man that I fell in love with who wanted nothing more than some good pastureland to breed beautiful horses. I know I must be true to that—whatever it costs me.”

  “But what about you?” Mrs. Woods asked gently, bringing her horse alongside the younger woman.

  “I keep faith,” Amy said staunchly. “I wait for him, and I trust that he will come home to me. I married him because I loved him just as he is. And he married me because he loved me, just as I am. And when the newness of this queen and the reign has worn off, when all the pensions and the places have been snapped up and the privileges all dispensed, then, when he has the time, he will come home to me, and there I will be, in our lovely house, with his beautiful foals at foot by the mares in the field, and everything just as it should be.”

  Elizabeth’s flirtation by private letter with Philip of Spain went far enough to alarm William Cecil, went far enough to alarm Catherine Knollys. But Mary Sidney, in low-voiced consultation with her beloved brother Robert Dudley, was reassuring.

  “I am certain she is only securing him as an ally,” she said quietly. “And amusing herself, of course. She has to have constant admiration.”

  He nodded. They were riding together, ambling home from hunting on a long rein, both horses sweaty and blowing. Ahead, the queen was riding with Catherine Knollys on one side and a new, sweet-faced young man on the other. Robert Dudley had taken a good look at him and was not concerned. Elizabeth would never fall for a pretty face; she needed a man who would make her catch her breath.

  “As an ally against France?” he suggested.

  “It’s the pattern,” she said. “Philip stood with us against France when they took Calais; we stood with him when they threatened the Netherlands.”

  “Does she want him to stand her friend so that she can go against the Scottish regent?” he asked. “Does she like Cecil’s plan to support the Scottish Protestants? Does she say anything when she is quiet and alone with you women? Is she planning for war, as Cecil says she must?”

  Mary shook her head. “She is like a horse with flies. She cannot be at peace. Sometimes she seems to think that she should help them, she shares their faith, and of course the French are the greatest threat to our peace. But other times she is too afraid to make the first move against an anointed monarch. She worries what enemies she might unleash here. And she is in living terror of someone coming against her secretly, with a knife. She dare not do anything to increase the number of her enemies.”

  He frowned. “Cecil is very sure that France is our greatest danger and that we must fight them now, while the Scots themselves are turning against their masters. This is our moment while they are calling on us for help.”

  “Cecil would have her marry Arran,” Mary guessed. “Not Philip. Cecil hates the Spanish and Popery more than anyone, though he always speaks so calmly and so measured.”

  “Have you ever seen Arran?”

  “No, but Catherine Knollys speaks very highly of him. She says he is handsome and clever, and of course his claim to the throne of Scotland is second only to Mary, Queen of Scots. If the queen marries him and he defeats the regent and takes the throne, then their son would unite the kingdoms.”

  She saw Dudley’s face darken. “He is our greatest danger,” he said, and she knew he was not speaking of the danger to England but the danger to themselves.

  “She likes you better than any other man at court,” she said, smiling. “She is always saying how skilled you are and how handsome. She is always remarking on it, and even the youngest maids-in-waiting know that if they want to please her they only have to say how well you ride, or how well the horses are managed, or what wonderful taste you have in clothes. Laetitia Knollys is positively unmaidenly in the way she talks about you, and the queen laughs.”

  She had thought he would laugh, but his face was still sullen. “What good is that to me, since I have a wife?” he asked. “And besides, Elizabeth would not marry to disoblige the throne.”

  He shocked her into complete silence.

  “What?” she asked.

  He met her astounded gaze frankly. “Elizabeth would not marry against policy, whatever her desires,” he said flatly. “And I am not free.”

  “But of course not!” she stumbled. “Robert, brother, I knew you were her favorite—all the world can see that! We all tease the queen that she has eyes only for you. Half the men at court hate you for it. But I never dreamed that you thought of anything more.”

  He shrugged. “Of course I think of it,” he said simply. “But I cannot imagine how it might come to me. I am a married man and my wife is not strong; but she is not likely to die within the next twenty years, and I would not wish it on her. Elizabeth is a Tudor through and through. She will want to marry both for power and for desire, just as her sister did, just as her father always did. Arran would be a brilliant match for her; he could unite the Scots against the French and defeat them in Scotland, then he could marry her and make England and Scotland into one unbeatable kingdom. Then he would dismiss me.”

  Mary Sidney shot an anxious sideways glance at her brother. “But if it is best for England?” she suggested shyly. “Then we should side with Arran? Even if it might be against our own personal desires? If it is best for England?”

  “There is no England,” he said brutally. “Not as you mean. There is no entity that knows itself as England. There is just a neighborhood of great families: us, the Howards, the Parrs, the Cecils, up-and-coming, the Percys, the Nevilles, the Seymours, and the greatest bandit-tribe of them all: the Tudors. What is good for England is good for the greatest family of them all, and the greatest family of them all is the one that manages its own business the best. That is what our father knew; that is the plan he had for us. Now, the greatest family in the land is the Tudors, not so long ago it was us. It will be us again. You watch for the good of our family as I do, sister, and England will benefit.”

  “But however you plan for our family, you cannot hope to marry the queen,” she said, her voice very low. “You know you cannot. There is Amy… and the queen herself would not.”

  “There is no point in being the favorite unless you raise yourself to the first man in the land,” Robert said. “Whatever title you take.”

  Just as suddenly as she had arrived at the Woods’ house, in mid-March Amy told them that she must leave them.

  “I am so sorry you are going,” Mrs. Woods said warmly. “I had hoped you would be here in time to see the May in.”

  Amy was distracted by happiness. “I will come another year, if I can,” she said rapidly. “But Sir Robert has just sent for me to go to meet him at Camberwell. My mother’s cousins the Scotts have a house there. And of course, I have to go at once.”

  Mrs. Woo