The Virgin's Lover Read online

  Dudley tossed him a purse of coins from a drawer in the desk. “Watch him, as you would watch your own baby,” he said shortly. “Tell me when he sees the queen. I want to know every detail, I want to know every word, every whisper, every creak of the floorboard.”

  “He has seen her already,” Blount said with a grimace. “He came here under cover of darkness last night and she saw him last night, after dinner, after she withdrew for bed.”

  Dudley had a very vivid memory of the previous night. He had knelt at her bare feet and her hair had tumbled over his face as she leaned toward him, enfolding him in her arms. He had rubbed his face against her breasts and belly, warm and sweet-smelling through her linen.

  “Last night?”

  “So they say.” Thomas Blount thought that he had never seen his master look so grim.

  “And we know nothing of what was said?”

  “I didn’t pick up the trail until this morning. I am sorry, my lord. Cecil’s men had him well hidden.”

  “Aye,” Dudley said shortly. “He is the master of shadows. Well, watch Arran from now on, and keep me informed.”

  He knew he should mind his temper and bite his tongue but his quick pride and quicker anger got the better of him. He flung open the door, leaving the papers blowing off his desk, and stormed out of his room and down the twisting private stairs to the garden where the court was watching a tennis match. The queen was in her chair at the side of the court, a golden awning over her head, her ladies around her, watching two players jostle for the prize: a purse of gold coins.

  Robert bowed and she smiled on him and gestured to him to come to sit at her side.

  “I must see you alone,” he said abruptly.

  At once she turned her head, took in the white line around his compressed lips. “Love, what is wrong?”

  “I have heard some news which has troubled me.” He could hardly speak, he was so angry. “Just now. I must ask you if it is true.”

  Elizabeth was too passionate to tell him to wait until the end of the tournament, even though there were only a few games left to be played. She rose to her feet and all the court rose too, the men on the court let the ball bounce off the roof and roll out of play. Everything was suspended, waiting for the queen.

  “Sir Robert would speak with me privately,” she said. “We will walk alone in my privy garden. The rest of you can stay here and watch the tournament to the finish and…” She glanced around. “Catherine can award the prize in my place.”

  Catherine Knollys smiled at the honor, and curtsyed. Elizabeth led the way from the court and turned into her privy garden. The guards on the wooden door set into the gray stone wall leapt to attention, swung it open. “Let no one else in,” Elizabeth commanded them. “Sir Robert and I would be alone.”

  The two men saluted and closed the door behind them. In the sunlit empty garden, Elizabeth turned to Robert. “Well, I think I have done enough to earn me another lecture from Kat on indiscretion. What is it?”

  As she saw his dark expression the smile drained from her face. “Ah, love, don’t look like that, you are frightening me. What is it? What is wrong?”

  “The Earl of Arran,” he said, his tone biting. “Is he in London?”

  She turned her head this way and that, as if his glare was a beam of light shining on her. He knew her so well he could almost see the quick denials flying through her head. Then she realized she could not lie directly to him. “Yes,” she said unwillingly. “He is in London.”

  “And you met with him last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “He came to you in secret, you met him alone?”

  She nodded.

  “In your bedchamber?”

  “Only in my privy chamber. But, Robert—”

  “You spent the first part of the night with him and then came to me. All that you told me about having to wait for Lettice Knollys to fall asleep: all that was a lie. You had been with him.”

  “Robert, if you are thinking—”

  “I am thinking nothing,” he said flatly. “I cannot bear what I might think. First Pickering, when my back is turned, and now Arran while we are lovers, declared lovers…”

  She sank down on a circular seat built around a wide-trunked oak tree. Robert rested one boot on the seat beside her so that he towered over her. Pleadingly, she looked up at him.

  “Must I tell you the truth?”

  “Yes. But tell me everything, Elizabeth. I cannot be played with as a fool.”

  She drew a breath. “It is a secret.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Before God, Elizabeth, if you have promised yourself in marriage to him you will never see me again.”

  “I have not! I have not!” she protested. “How could I? You know what you are to me! What we are to each other!”

  “I know what I feel when I hold you in my arms and I kiss your mouth and bite your neck,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know what you feel when you meet another man just moments before you come to me, with a pack of lies in your mouth.”

  “I feel as if I am going mad!” she cried out at him. “That is what I feel! I feel as if I am being torn apart! I feel as if you are driving me mad. I feel that I cannot stand another moment of it.”

  Robert recoiled. “What?”

  She was on her feet, squaring up to him like a fighter. “I have to play myself like a piece in a chess game,” she panted. “I am my own pawn. I have to keep the Spanish on our side, I have to frighten the French, I have to persuade Arran to get himself up to Scotland and claim his own, and I have nothing to bring to bear on any of these but my own weight. All I can promise any of them is myself. And …and…and…”

  “And what?”

  “I am not my own!”

  He was silenced. “You are not?”

  Elizabeth gave a sobbing breath. “I am yours, heart and soul. God knows, as God is my witness, I am yours, Robert…”

  He reached out for her, took her hands, started to draw her close.

  “But…”

  He hesitated. “But what?”

  “I have to play them, Robert,” she said. “I have to make them think that I will marry. I have to look as if I will take Archduke Ferdinand; I have to give Arran hope.”

  “And what d’you think happens to me?” he asked her.

  “You?”

  “Yes. When you are known to be spending hours of time with Pickering, when the court is abuzz with the word that you will marry the archduke.”

  “What happens to you?” She was genuinely puzzled.

  “Then my enemies mass against me. Your kinsman Norfolk, your advisor Cecil, Francis Bacon, his brother Nicholas, Catherine Knollys, Pickering, Arundel, they hunt in a pack like hounds waiting to bring down a stag. When you turn from me they know that their time has come. They will bring charges against me, pull me down, accuse me. You have raised me so high, Elizabeth, that I am envied now. The hour that you announce your betrothal to another man is the hour that I am ruined.”

  She was aghast. “I did not know. You did not tell me.”

  “How should I tell you?” he demanded. “I am not a child to run crying to my nurse because the other children threaten me. But it is true. The moment they know that you have turned from me to another man I am ruined or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “Dead,” he said shortly. “Every day I half expect to be dragged into some dark alley and knifed.”

  She looked up at him, still clinging to his hands. “My love, you know I would do anything to make you safe and keep you safe.”

  “You cannot make me safe, unless you declare your love for me. Elizabeth, you know that I would do anything to love you and protect you. Marry me, for God’s sake, and let us have a child. Marriage and a son and heir will make us safer than any other way, and you will have me at your side forever. You need not play yourself like a pawn. You can be yourself, your dear, lovely self, and belong to no one but me.”

  Elizabeth twisted her hands from