Chapter 11

“LADY JANE GREY was born on the twelfth of October, 1537,” Jane recited. “Her parents were Lady Frances Brandon, niece of Henry VIII, and Henry Grey. Her great-grandfather was King Henry VII, whom everyone hated because he was just a jumped-up accountant, but that put her in line to the throne after Henry VIII’s children. She had two younger sisters, Katherine and Mary.”

I yawned ostentatiously.

Jane looked up from her papers. “See? I told you she was boring.”

“Tell me something interesting.”

“We have the same birthday. My birthday’s the twelfth of October, too. Next week.”

I sat up straighter. “Really? That is interesting.”

“No,” the girl retorted. “It’s weird.”

“Tell me something else that’s interesting, then.”

“Well . . .” Jane shuffled through her papers. “Her mother hit her.”

“Really? She was abused?” I remembered reading a historical novel about Queen Jane’s cruel parents, but I’d just thought it was the author’s imagination. As a teenager, though, I had wallowed in self-pity and taken great pleasure in silently condemning poor Jane’s heartless mother, so much like mine. (Of course, my mother was more removed than cruel, but I was only fifteen and had a lively imagination.)

“I don’t know about abused, but her mother hit her and was really mean to her. Her parents made her marry Guildford Dudley even though she hated him. And then on their wedding night, he—” She paused, blushing.

“He what?”

“He made her . . . you know.” Jane’s hands twisted nervously in her lap, and I stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending. “You know,” she repeated. “And she hated it. She ran away from him, and her parents forced her to go back.”

“Do you mean he had sex with her? But Jane, they were married.”

“So? He still can’t, you know, force her!”

“Well, of course not. But in the sixteenth century, the main purpose of a royal marriage was to beget a male heir; they both would know that. Surely Jane’s husband would expect her to cooperate?”

Unexpectedly, my thoughts flashed back to Lucian. “Just lift up your skirt,” he had hissed into my ear, his breath hot and panting.

“Oh, Lucian, no, I don’t want . . .”

We were pressed together in the tiny washroom off his office; he had texted me a 911 urgent message and I had raced in, my heart pounding with anxiety: Had the Fed finally raised interest rates? I needed to short my positions immediately—

Instead, Lucian had grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the small room.

“I want you,” he’d muttered, pulling up my skirt. “We just made twenty-four million on the Blackwell’s deal, and I’m hot. We’re hot!”

Briefly, I had stopped fighting him. “Twenty-four?” I had breathed. “Really?”

Taking advantage of my distraction, he had torn away my panties and forced himself inside me. The cold, hard sink had pressed painfully into my back, and his rough hands had left bruises on my arms.

When it was over, my eyes had been perfectly dry. I had wadded up the shredded panties and tucked them into my purse.

“God, you’re hot,” Lucian had said with satisfaction as he did up his pants.

Now, that was what it meant to force a woman. And why, oh why, had I let him do it?

With an effort, I brought myself back to the present. “Anyway, how do you know this?” I asked. Could five-hundred-year-old primary sources really be that explicit?

“Oh, everyone knows it! Jane was a really boring girl; she loved to study, and all she cared about was religion. She wrote these incredibly long and dull letters about religion to old church people all over Europe.”

“That’s not so—”

“And when she died, she wrote a letter to her sister Katherine the night before. Do you know what it said?”

I shook my head.

“She told her sister that she should spend the rest of her life preparing to die! Can you believe it? I mean, who talks to her sister that way?”

I had to smile at the girl’s indignation. “Put like that, Jane does seem a bit of a goody-goody,” I admitted. “But how do you know it’s true?”

“Everyone knows it,” she repeated stubbornly. “It’s in the books.”

My smile widened. “I can’t resist a challenge like that. So I have a dare for you: We spend a week researching Lady Jane Grey. One week, that’s all I ask.”

A calculating look crossed the girl’s face, and once again I sympathized with my long-suffering mother and nannies. “If I’m right,” she said, “and you find out that Jane was really a prig, you will never nag me about riding again. Agreed?”

“But if I’m right and she turns out to be much more interesting,” I retorted, “then I get to give you a riding lesson. Agreed?”

Jane hesitated, then gave me a decisive nod. “Deal,” she said.