The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “It will be resolved,” Cecil said soothingly. He glanced around the table. They were all thinking as one man: that these council meetings would be so much easier if only she would marry a reasonable man and let him do the business of kingship.

  To his horror, he saw that her dark eyes were filling with tears. “And Philip of Spain.” Her voice was husky. “Now, I hear that he is to marry.”

  Cecil looked at her aghast. The last thing he had imagined was that she had actually felt anything for the man she had tormented during his wife’s lifetime and then had strung along for months after.

  “A marriage to seal the treaty,” he said hesitantly. “I don’t believe there is any courtship, any preference. There is no attraction, no rival attraction involved. He does not prefer her to …to…”

  “You urged me to marry him,” she said, her voice throbbing with emotion, looking along the bowed heads of her Privy Council. “Still you continually persuade me to one man or another, and see? The man of your choice, your preferred suitor, has no fidelity. He swore that he loved me; but see? He will marry another. You would have had me marry a faithless flirt.”

  “None could suit her better,” Norfolk said, so low that nobody could hear but his neighbor, who snorted with suppressed laughter.

  It was pointless even to attempt reason with her, Cecil knew. “Yes,” he said simply. “We were most mistaken in his nature. Thank God that Your Grace is so young and so very beautiful that there will always be suitors for your hand. It is for you to choose, Your Grace. There will always be men who long to marry you. All we can do is advise your own wise preference.”

  A sigh like a passing breeze passed through the beleagured council. Once again, Cecil had hit exactly the right note. Sir Francis Knollys rose to his feet and guided his cousin to her chair at the head of the table. “Now,” he said. “Although they are less important indeed, we do have to talk about the bishops, Your Grace. We cannot go on like this. We have to make a settlement with the church.”

  Amy’s cousin and her husband, a prosperous merchant with an interest in the Antwerp trade, greeted her on the doorstep on their large square-built house in Camberwell.

  “Amy! You’ll never guess! We heard from Sir Robert this very morning!” Frances Scott said breathlessly. “He is coming to dine this very day, and staying at least one night!”

  Amy flushed scarlet. “He is?” She turned to her maid. “Mrs. Pirto, unpack my best gown, and you’ll need to press my ruff.” She turned back to her cousin. “Is your hairdresser coming?”

  “I told him to come an hour early for you!” her cousin laughed. “I knew you would want to look your best. I have had my cook at work ever since I heard the news. And they are making his favorite: march-pane.”

  Amy laughed aloud, catching her cousin’s excitement.

  “He has become a great man again,” Ralph Scott said, coming forward to kiss his cousin-in-law. “We hear nothing but good reports of him. The queen honors him and seeks his company daily.”

  Amy nodded and slid from his embrace to the open front door. “Am I to have my usual room?” she asked impatiently. “And can you ask them to hurry to bring my chest with my gowns up?”

  But after all the rush of preparations, the pressing of the gowns, the sending the maid out in a panic to buy new stockings, Sir Robert sent his apologies and said that he would be delayed. Amy had to wait for two hours, sitting by the window in the Scotts’ elegant modern parlor, watching the road for her husband’s entourage.

  It was nearly five in the afternoon when they came trotting down Camberwell High Street, six men abreast mounted on the most superb matched bay horses, wearing the Dudley livery, scattering chickens and pedestrians and shouting children ahead of them. In the middle of them rode Robert Dudley, one hand on the reins, one hand on his hip, his gaze abstracted, his smile charming: his normal response to public cheers.

  They pulled up before the handsome new house and Dudley’s groom came running to hold the horse while Dudley leapt lightly down.

  Amy, in the bay window, had been on her feet at the first sound of the rattle of hoofs on cobblestones. Her cousin, running in to warn her that Sir Robert was at the door, found her, quite entranced, watching him through the window. Frances Scott dropped back, saying nothing, and stood in the hall beside her husband as their two best menservants flung open the door and Sir Robert strode in.

  “Cousin Scott,” he said pleasantly, gripping the man’s hand. Ralph Scott blushed slightly with pleasure at the recognition.

  “And my cousin Frances,” Sir Robert said, recovering her name from his memory just in time to kiss her on both cheeks and see her color rise under his touch, which was always the case with women, and then her eyes darkened with desire, which was also a frequent occurrence.

  “My dearest cousin Frances,” Dudley said more warmly, watching her more closely.

  “Oh, Sir Robert,” she breathed and rested her hand on his arm.

  Oho, thought Robert. A plum ripe and ready for the picking, but hardly worth the uproar when we were discovered, which we undoubtedly would be.

  The door behind her opened, and Amy stood, framed in the doorway. “My lord,” she said quietly. “I am so glad to see you.”

  Gently, Dudley released Frances Scott and stepped to his wife. He took her hand in his and bent his dark head to kiss her fingers, and then he drew her closer to him and kissed her cheek, first one and then the other, and then her warm ready lips.

  At the sight of him, at his touch, at the scent of him, Amy felt herself melt with desire. “My lord,” she whispered. “My lord, it has been so long. I have waited to see you for so long.”

  “I’m here now,” he said, as quick as any man to deflect reproach. He slid his arm around her waist and turned back to their host. “But I am damnably late, cousins, I hope you will forgive me. I was playing bowls with the queen and I could not get away until Her Grace had won. I had to feint and cheat and dissemble until you would have thought I was half blind and half-witted in order to lose to her.”

  The nonchalance of this was almost too much for Frances Scott but Ralph rose to the occasion. “Of course, of course, the ladies must have their entertainments,” he said. “But did you bring an appetite?”

  “I am as hungry as a hunter,” Dudley assured him.

  “Then come to dinner!” Ralph said and gestured that Sir Robert should walk with him, down the hall to the dining room at the rear of the house.

  “What a pretty place you have here,” Sir Robert said.

  “Very small compared with a country house, of course,” Frances said, deferentially following them with Amy.

  “But new-built,” Dudley remarked with pleasure.

  “I planned much of it myself,” Ralph said smugly. “I knew I had to build a new house for us and I thought—why try to make a great palace on the river and employ an army to keep it warm and clean? Then you have to build a great hall to feed them all, then you have to house them and keep them. So I thought, why not a snugger, tighter house which can be more easily run and still have room for a dozen friends for dinner?”

  “Oh, I agree with you,” Dudley replied insincerely. “What reasonable man would want more?”

  Mr. Scott threw open the double door to the dining hall which, though tiny by the standards of Whitehall or Westminster, could still seat a dozen guests and their followers, and led the way, through the other diners, half a dozen dependents and a dozen upper servants, to the top table. Amy and Frances followed. Mrs. Oddingsell and Frances’s companion came in as well and the Scotts’ oldest children, a girl and a boy of ten and eleven, very stiffly dressed in adult clothes, eyes down, awed into complete silence by the grandeur of the occasion. Dudley greeted them all with pleasure, and sat down at his host’s right hand, with Amy on his other side. Concealed by the table and the great sweep of the banqueting cloth, Amy moved her stool so that she could be close to him. He felt her little slipper press against his riding boot and he leaned to