The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “Well, you were not missed here. There has been nothing here but courtships and suitors and romancing.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said, smiling down at her. “For you missed me so little that you thought me in Kendal.”

  She pouted. “How am I to know where you are, or what you do? Aren’t you supposed to be at court all the time? Is it not your duty to be here?”

  “Not my duty,” Sir Robert said. “For I would never neglect my duty.”

  “So you admit that you neglect me?”

  “Neglect? No. Flee? Yes.”

  “You flee from me?” Her ladies saw her face alight with laughter as she leaned forward to hear him. “Why would you flee from me? Am I so fearsome?”

  “You are not, but the threat you pose is dreadful, worse than any Medusa.”

  “I have never threatened you in my whole life.”

  “You threaten me with every breath that you take. Elizabeth, if I let myself love you, as I could do, what would become of me?”

  She leaned back and shrugged. “Oh, you would pine and weep for a sennight and then you would visit your wife again in Camberwell and forget to come back to court.”

  Robert shook his head. “If I let myself love you, as I want to love you, then everything would change for me, forever. And for you…”

  “For me what?”

  “You would never be the same again,” he promised her, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Your life would never be the same again. You would be a woman transformed; everything would be …revalued.”

  Elizabeth wanted to shrug and laugh but his dark gaze was utterly hypnotic, far too serious for the flirtatious tradition of courtly love. “Robert…” She put her hand to the base of her throat where her pulse was hammering, her face flushed pink with desire. But experienced philanderer as he was, he did not attend to the color in her cheeks but to the slow, revealing stain that spread from the base of her neck to the tips of her earlobes where two priceless pearls danced. It was the rose-red stain of lust and Robert Dudley had to bite his lip not to laugh aloud to see the virgin Queen of England as red as any slut with lust for him.

  In the house at Camberwell Amy went into the parlor with the Scotts and Mrs. Oddingsell, swore them to the strictest of confidence, and announced that her husband was to be given the very highest order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter, a pretty little house at Kew, a grant of lands, a profitable office, and that best of all he had asked her to find them a suitable house in Oxfordshire.

  “Well, what did Mrs. Woods tell you?” Mrs. Oddingsell demanded of her radiant charge. “And what did I say? You will have a beautiful house and he will come home every summer, and perhaps even the court will visit on progress, and you will entertain the queen in your own house and he will be so proud of you.”

  Amy’s little face glowed at the thought of it.

  “This is to rise high indeed,” Ralph Scott said delightedly. “It’s no knowing how far he may go on the queen’s favor like this.”

  “And then he will need a London house, he will not be satisfied with a little place at Kew, you will have Dudley House or Dudley Palace, and you will live in London every winter, and give such grand feasts and entertainments that everyone will want to be your friend, everyone will want to know the beautiful Lady Dudley.”

  “Oh, really,” Amy said, blushing. “I don’t seek it…”

  “Yes, indeed. And think of the clothes you will order!”

  “When did he say he would join you at Denchworth?” Ralph Scott asked, thinking that he might call on his cousin in Oxfordshire and promote his relationship with her husband.

  “Within a fortnight, he said. But he is always late.”

  “Well, by the time he comes, you will have had time to ride all around the country and to find a house he might like,” Mrs. Oddingsell said. “You know Denchworth already, but there are many old houses that you have never seen. I know it is my home, and so I am partial; but I think Oxfordshire is the most beautiful country in England. And my brother and sister-in-law will be so pleased to help us look. We can all go out together. And then, when Sir Robert finally comes, you will be able to ride out with him and show him the best land. Master of the Queen’s Horse! Order of the Garter! I would think he could buy up half of the country.”

  “We must pack!” Amy cried, seized with urgency. “He says he wants me to go at once! We must leave at once.”

  She dragged her friend to her feet, Mrs. Oddingsell laughing at her. “Amy! It will take us only two or three days to get there. We don’t have to rush!”

  Amy danced to the door, her face as bright as a girl’s. “He’s going to meet me there!” she beamed. “He wants me there now. Of course we have to go at once.”

  William Cecil was in low-voiced conference with the queen in the window embrasure at Whitehall Palace, a March shower pelting the thick glass of the window behind them. In various states of alertness the queen’s court waited for her to break from her advisor and turn, looking for entertainment. Robert Dudley was not among them; he was in his great chambers organizing river barges with the head boatmen. Only Catherine Knollys stood within earshot, and Cecil trusted Catherine’s loyalty to the queen.

  “I cannot marry a man I have never seen.” She repeated the answer she was using to everyone to delay the courtship of the Archduke Ferdinand.

  “He is not some shepherd swain that can come piping and singing to court you,” Cecil pointed out. “He cannot come halfway across Europe for you to look him over like a heifer. If the marriage is arranged then he could come for a visit and you could be married at the end of it. He could come this spring and you could be married in the autumn.”

  Elizabeth shook her head, instantly retreating from the threat of decisive action, at the very mention of a date on the calendar. “Oh, not so soon, Spirit. Don’t press me.”

  He took her hand. “I don’t mean to,” he said earnestly. “But your safety lies this way. If you were betrothed to a Hapsburg archduke, then you have an alliance for life, unbreakable.”

  “They say Charles is very ugly, and madly Catholic,” she reminded him.

  “They do,” he agreed patiently. “But it is his brother Ferdinand that we are considering. And they say he is handsome and moderate.”

  “And the emperor would support the match? And we would have a treaty of mutual support if I married him?”

  “Count Feria indicated to me that Philip would see this as a guarantee of mutual goodwill.”

  She looked impressed.

  “Last week, when I advised you in favor of the Arran match, you said you thought this match the better one,” he reminded her. “Which is why I speak of it now.”

  “I did think so then,” she concurred.

  “It would rob the French of their friendship with Spain, and reassure our own Papists,” he added.

  She nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

  Cecil sighed and caught Catherine Knollys’s amused sidelong smile. She knew exactly how frustrating Elizabeth could be to her advisors. He smiled back. Suddenly there was a shout and a challenge from the doorway and a bang against the closed door of the presence chamber. Elizabeth blanched and started to turn, not knowing where she could go for safety. Cecil’s two secret bodyguards stepped quickly toward her; everyone looked at the door. Cecil, his pulse hammering, took two steps forward. Good God, it has happened. They have come for her, he thought. In her own palace.

  Slowly the door opened. “Beg pardon, Your Grace,” the sentry said. “It’s nothing. A drunk apprentice. Just stumbled and fell. Nothing to alarm you.”

  Elizabeth’s color flowed back into her cheeks, and her eyes filled with tears. She turned into the window bay to hide her stricken face from the court. Catherine Knollys came forward and put her arm around her cousin’s waist.

  “Very well,” Cecil said to the soldier. He nodded to his men to step back against the walls again. There was a buzz of concern and interest from the courtiers; only a few