The Virgin's Lover Read online

  He nodded.

  She hesitated. “Brother, you must tell me. What did she say to you yesterday? She looked as if her heart was breaking, and now she looks halfway to death.”

  “She has given me up,” he said shortly.

  Mary Sidney gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “Never!”

  “Indeed, yes. She has asked me to stand her friend but she knows she has to marry. Cecil warned her off me, and she has taken his advice.”

  “But why now?”

  “Firstly the rumors, and then the threats against me.”

  She nodded. “The rumors are everywhere. My own waiting woman came to me with a story of Amy and poison and a whole string of slanderous lies that made my hair stand on end.”

  “Beat her.”

  “If she had made up the stories I would do so. But she was only repeating what is being said at every street corner. It is shameful what people are saying about you, and about the queen. Your pageboy was set on at the stables the other day, did you know?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not for the first time. The lads are saying they won’t wear our livery if they go into the City. They are ashamed of our coat of arms, Robert.”

  He frowned. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

  “My maid told me that there are men who swear they will see you dead before you marry the queen.”

  Robert nodded. “Ah, Mary, it could never happen. How could it? I am a married man.”

  Her head came up in surprise. “I thought you… and she …had some plan? I thought perhaps…”

  “You are as bad as these people who dream of divorce and death and dethroning!” he said, smiling. “It is all nonsense. The queen and I had a summertime love affair which has been all dancing and jousting and flowery meadows and now the summer is ended and the winter is coming I have to visit John Hayes with Amy. The country has to go to war with Scotland—Cecil predicted it; and Cecil is right. The queen has to be a queen indeed; she has been Queen of Camelot, now she has to be queen in deadly reality. She has had her summer at leisure, now she has to marry to secure the safety of the kingdom. Her choice has fallen on Arran if he can win her Scotland, or else Archduke Charles, as the best choice for the safety of the country. Whatever she may have felt for me in July, she knows she has to marry either one of them by Christmas.”

  “She does?” Mary was amazed.

  He nodded.

  “Oh, Robert, no wonder she sits and stares and says nothing. Her heart must be breaking.”

  “Aye,” he said tenderly. “Her heart may break. But she knows it has to be done. She won’t fail her country now. She has never lacked courage. She would sacrifice anything for her country. She will certainly sacrifice me and her love for me.”

  “And can you bear this?”

  Her brother’s face was so dark that she thought she had never seen him so grim since he came out of the Tower to face ruin. “I have to face it like a man. I have to find the courage that she has to find. In a way, we are still together. Her heart and mine will break together. We will have that scant comfort.”

  “You will go back to Amy?”

  He shrugged. “I have never left her. We had a few cross words when we last met, and she may have been distressed by the gossip. In my temper, and in my pride, I swore I should leave her, but she did not believe me for a moment. She stood her ground and said to my face that we were married and could never be divorced. And I knew she was right. In my heart I knew that I could never divorce Amy. What has she ever done to offend? And I knew that I was not going to poison the poor woman or push her down the well! So what else could happen but that the queen and I would have a summer of flirtation and kissing …yes! I admit to the kissing… and more. Very delicious, very sweet, but always, always, going nowhere. She is Queen of England, I am her Master of Horse. I am a married man and she must marry to save the kingdom.”

  He glanced over. There were tears in his sister’s eyes. “Robert, I am so afraid that you will never love anyone but Elizabeth. You will have to live the rest of your life loving her.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “That’s true. I have loved her from childhood and in these last months I have fallen in love, more deeply and more truly than I every thought possible. I thought myself hard of heart, and yet I find she is everything to me. Indeed, I love her so much that I am going to let her go. I am going to help her to marry Arran or the archduke. Her only safety lies that way.”

  “You will give her up for her own safety?”

  “Whatever it costs me.”

  “My God, Robert, I never thought you could be so…”

  “So what?”

  “So selfless!”

  He laughed. “I thank you!”

  “I mean it. To help the woman you love to marry another is a truly selfless thing to do.” She was silent for a moment. “And how will you bear it?” she asked tenderly.

  “I shall treasure a memory of loving a beautiful young queen in the very first year of her reign,” he said. “In the golden summer when she came to her throne in her youth and her beauty and she thought she could do anything—even marry a man like me. And I shall go home to my wife and make a nursery full of heirs and I shall name all the girls Elizabeth.”

  She put her sleeve to her eyes. “Oh, my dearest brother.”

  He covered her hand with his own. “Will you help me do this, Mary?”

  “Of course,” she whispered. “Of course, anything.”

  “Go to the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, and tell him that the queen needs his help in concluding the match with the archduke.”

  “I? But I hardly know him.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He knows us Dudleys well enough. Go to him as if you were coming directly from the queen, not at my request. Tell him that she felt she could not approach him directly, not after this summer when she has blown hot and cold on the plan. But if he will come to her with a renewed proposal, she will say ‘yes’ at once.”

  “This is the queen’s own wish?” Mary asked.

  He nodded. “She wants to signal to everyone that I have not been rejected, that she stands my friend, that she loves me and you too. She wants the Dudley family to broker this marriage.”

  “It’s a great honor to take such a message,” she said solemnly. “And a great responsibility too.”

  “The queen thought we should keep it in the family.” He smiled. “Mine is the sacrifice, you are the messenger, and together, the deed is done.”

  “And what of you, when she is married?”

  “She will not forget me,” he said. “We have loved each other too well and too long for her to turn from me. And you and I will be rewarded both by her and by the Spanish for faithful dealing now. This is the right thing to do, Mary; I have no doubts. It ensures her safety and it takes me out of the reach of lying tongues… and worse. I don’t doubt that there are men who would see me dead. This is my safety as well as hers.”

  “I will go tomorrow,” she promised him.

  “And tell him you come from her, at her bidding.”

  “I will,” she said.

  Cecil, sitting at his fireside in the silence of the palace at midnight, rose from his chair to answer a discreet tap at the door. The man who entered the room put back his black hood and went to the fire to warm his hands.

  “Do you have a glass of wine?” he asked in a light Spanish accent. “This mist on the river will give me an ague. If it is this damp in September, what will it be like in midwinter?”

  Cecil poured the wine and gestured the man to a chair by the fire. He threw on another log. “Better?”

  “Yes, I thank you.”

  “It must be interesting news to bring you out on such a cold night as this,” Cecil remarked to no one in particular.

  “Only the queen herself, proposing marriage to Archduke Charles!”

  Cecil’s response was wholly satisfying. His head came up; he looked astounded. “The queen has proposed marriage?”