The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “Because I am one of the greatest men at her court!” he exclaimed, slamming his fist down on the saddle and making his horse jump and then sidle nervously. He held it on a hard rein, pulling on its mouth. “The queen herself will come and stay at my house to honor me! To honor you, Amy! I asked you to find us a house to buy. I wanted a place like Hatfield, like Theobalds, like Kenninghall. Cecil goes home to Theobalds Palace, a place as large as a village under one roof; he has a wife who rules it like a queen herself. He is building Burghley to show his wealth and his grandeur; he is shipping in stonemasons from all over Christendom. I am a better man than Cecil, God knows. I come from stock that makes him look like a sheepshearer. I want a house to match his, stone for stone! I want the outward show that matches my achievements.

  “For God’s sake, Amy, you’ve stayed with my sister at Penshurst! You know what I expect! I didn’t want some dirty farmhouse that we could clean up so that at its best, it was fit for a peasant to breed dogs in!”

  She was trembling, hard put to keep her grip on the reins. From a distance, Lizzie Oddingsell watched and wondered if she should intervene.

  Amy found her voice. She raised her drooping head. “Well, all very well, husband, but what you don’t know is that this farm has a yield of—”

  “Damn the yield!” he shouted at her. His horse shied and he jabbed at it with a hard hand. It jibbed and pulled back, frightening Amy’s horse who stepped back, nearly unseating her. “I care nothing for the yield! My tenants can worry about the yield. Amy, I am going to be the richest man in England; the queen will pour the treasury of England upon me. I don’t care how many haystacks we can make from a field. I ask you to be my wife, to be my hostess at a house which is of a scale and of a grandeur—”

  “Grandeur!” she flared up at him. “Are you still running after grandeur? Will you never learn your lesson? There was nothing very grand about you when you came out of the Tower, homeless and hungry; there was nothing very grand about your brother when he died of jail fever like a common criminal. When will you learn that your place is at home, where we might be happy? Why will you insist on running after disaster? You and your father lost the battle for Jane Grey, and it cost him his son and his own life. You lost Calais and came home without your brother and disgraced again! How low do you need to go before you learn your lesson? How base do you have to sink before you Dudleys learn your limits?”

  He wheeled his horse and dug his spurs into its sides, wrenching it back with the reins. The horse stood up on its hind legs in a high rear, pawing the air. Robert sat in the saddle like a statue, reining back his rage and his horse with one hard hand. Amy’s horse shield away, frightened by the flailing hooves, and she had to cling to the saddle not to fall.

  His horse dropped down. “Fling it in my face every day if you please,” he hissed at her, leaning forward, his voice filled with hatred. “But I am no longer Sir John Robsart’s stupid young son-in-law, out of the Tower and still attainted. I am Sir Robert Dudley once more; I wear the Order of the Garter, the highest order of chivalry there is. I am the queen’s Master of Horse, and if you cannot take a pride in being Lady Dudley then you can go back to being Amy Robsart, Sir John Robsart’s stupid daughter, once more. But for me: those days are gone.”

  Fearful of falling from her frightened horse, Amy kicked her feet free and jumped from the saddle. On the safety of the ground she turned and glared up at him as he towered over her, his big horse curvetting to be away. Her temper rose up, flared into her cheeks, burned in her mouth.

  “Don’t you dare to insult my father,” she swore at him. “Don’t you dare! He was a better man than you will ever be, and he won his lands by honest work and not by dancing at some heretic bastard’s bidding. And don’t say yields don’t matter! Who are you to say that yields don’t matter? You would have starved if my father had not kept his land in good heart, to put food on your plate when you had no way of earning it. You were glad enough of the wool crop then! And don’t call me stupid. The only stupid thing I ever did was to believe you and your braggart father when you came riding into Stanfield Hall, and not long after, you were riding into the Tower on a cart as traitors.” She was almost gibbering in her rage. “And don’t you dare threaten me. I shall be Lady Dudley to the day of my death! I have been through the worst with you when my name was a shame to me. But now neither you nor your heretic pretender can take it away from me.”

  “She can take it away,” he said bitingly. “Fool that you are. She can take it away tomorrow, if she wants it. She’s supreme governor of the church of England. She can take away your marriage if she wants it and better women than you have been divorced for less than this… this… shite-house pipe dream.”

  His big horse reared, Amy ducked away, and Sir Robert let the horse go, tearing up the earth with its big hooves, thundering away along the lane, leaving them in a sudden silence.

  When they got home there was a man in the stable yard waiting for Robert Dudley. “Urgent message,” he said to William Hyde. “Can you send a groom to guide me to where I might find him?”

  William Hyde’s square face creased with concern. “I don’t know where he might be,” he said. “He went for a ride. Will you come into the house and take a cup of ale while you’re waiting?”

  “I’ll follow him,” the man said. “His lordship likes his messages delivered at once.”

  “I don’t know which direction he took,” William said tactfully. “You’d better come inside to wait.”

  The man shook his head. “I’d be obliged to you for a drink out here, but I’ll wait here for him.”

  He sat on the mounting block and did not shift until the sun dropped lower in the sky, until finally he heard the clip-clop of hooves and Robert rode up the lane and into the stable yard and tossed the reins of his weary horse to a waiting groom.

  “Blount?”

  “Sir Robert.”

  Robert drew him to one side, his rage with Amy all forgotten. “Must be important?”

  “Sir William Pickering is back in England.”

  “Pickering? The queen’s old flirt?”

  “He was not sure if he would be welcomed, not sure how long her memory would be. There were rumors that he had served her sister. He did not know what she might have heard.”

  “She would have heard everything,” Dudley said dourly. “You can trust to me and Cecil for that. Anyway, did she welcome him?”

  “She saw him alone.”

  “What? A private audience? She saw him in private? Dear God, he’s honored.”

  “No, I mean alone. Completely alone. For all the afternoon, five hours he was locked up with her.”

  “With her women in attendance,” Robert stated.

  The spy shook his head. “Completely alone, sir. Just the two of them. Five hours behind a closed door, before they came out.”

  Robert was staggered at a privilege that he had never had. “Cecil allowed this?” he demanded incredulously.

  Thomas Blount shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. He must have done, for the next day she saw Sir William again.”

  “Alone?”

  “All the afternoon. From noon till dinner time. They are taking bets on him being her husband. He’s the favorite; he’s overtaken the archduke. They are saying that they’ve wedded and bedded in private, all that is lacking is an announcement.”

  Robert exclaimed and whirled away, and then turned back. “And what does he do now? Is he to stay at court?”

  “He is the favorite. She has given him a suite of rooms near to hers in Greenwich Palace.”

  “How near?”

  “They say there is a passageway that he can go to her at any time of the night or day. She has only to unlock the door and he can walk into her bedchamber.”

  Robert suddenly became very still and calm. He glanced at his horse as the groom walked it up and down the yard, noting the sweat on its neck and the foam at its mouth, as if he were contemplating starting his journey at once.