SEVEN

Julien whistled his way down the stairs next morning, jubilant at the thought of several hours alone with Lucette. Not even his brother’s troubled expression as they passed on the steps bothered him.

“Don’t worry, Nic, it’s just an hour or two of riding. Even I can manage to be polite for that length of time.”

“Rather more than polite,” Nicolas said slowly. “Julien, this is not one of your Paris society ladies. Don’t insult her—and don’t get either of your hopes up.”

That sobered Julien, for he knew Nicolas was right. Whatever Charlotte’s plans (and his own rebellious emotions), there were no marital options for Lucette, he thought as he strode out to the courtyard. Not here. How disappointed Charlotte would be when Lucette returned to England without a husband, leaving him to his dissolution and Nicolas to his solitude.

Lucette was already mounted in the Blanclair courtyard, atop a fine-boned chestnut mare that might have been chosen to highlight her appearance. She could not have looked more lovely if she were deliberately trying to snare him. Though they had shared the road for three days from Paris, today she wore a riding dress he hadn’t seen before. Rather than a ruff, an organza partlet rose from the square neckline to her throat in a maddening tease of sheerness; the dress itself was black embroidery on a white background. She might have been one of the ancient Greek deities condescending to visit mortals for her own pleasure: Aphrodite, perhaps, or the more elusive Athena.

Julien felt the hard truths of his life slip away and, with reckless abandon for either of their hearts, decided to revel in the pleasures of the moment.

As he took his reins from a groom and swung into his own saddle, he said lightly, “Good morning, Lucie. May I call you Lucie?”

At his request to address her so familiarly, she blushed but her voice was steady in reply. “I suppose since you’ve actually known me longer than my own siblings, you may as well.”

The two of them rode out of the courtyard unaccompanied. He carried two long daggers about him, and they would not go farther than the village. St. Benoit sur Loire was not Paris; there was little need to suspect violence at every moment. When they were well down the long, tree-lined road that led away from the chateau, Julien picked up the previous conversational thread. “What I recall of you as a baby is precious little, I’m afraid. I hardly paid any attention to my own little sister in those days.”

“And my mother? Did you pay her as much attention at Blanclair as you did when you came to Wynfield Mote?”

“Ah.” Julien fumbled for a moment, then remembered that honesty was his only hope. “Lady Exeter was an uncommonly kind woman to a small boy, though I do remember that she rarely smiled. Only at you, in point of fact.”

“You were…seven years old then?”

“Yes. I knew that your mother had lost her husband in England—at least, we all thought so at the time—and that the king was angry with her. Nicolas had a memory of Dominic visiting Blanclair years before that. I was too young to remember him, but Nic told me he was that rarest of creatures—an honest Englishman.” Julien paused. “Do you know, the first time I ever saw my father cry was the day he got the news that Dominic Courtenay was still alive.”

Lucette drew a breath that might have had a slight hitch to it. He had not thought to wonder what reactions might be called forth by her return to the place of her birth. But she did not linger on that point. “Then you all came to Wynfield that long ago summer. Where you were old enough to realize how very beautiful my mother is.”

Julien spoke carefully, knowing he had to get past this particular issue, upon which she seemed so fixed. “I hope…I have always remembered what you overheard between Nic and me that day at Wynfield. I do hope you have never allowed it to trouble you. I thought myself very adult at sixteen, but of course I was barely more than a boy with a silly infatuation. I never meant disrespect to your mother.”

What he left unsaid was an apology for his first words to her the other night: You’re not very like your mother, are you? Why had he even said that? Shock, he supposed. For all that he proclaimed it now an infatuation, he had indeed been dreadfully in love with Minuette Courtenay. That summer at Wynfield had been passed in a state of heightened sensitivity, an alertness to her presence, the painful hope that she would speak to him, dreams of her looking at him warmly and letting him touch her…

What a fool he’d been—but no more a fool than most boys that age. If nothing else, that hopeless calf-love had kept him away from any enticements the local girls might have offered. Nicolas had not been so circumspect. Julien wondered what Lucette would say if he told her how his brother had graced the bed of more than one young woman in the Wynfield household and its surrounding neighbors. He had covered for his brother against Renaud’s suspicion, and he remembered how little Nicolas had cared for the feelings of the girls he so casually used. Julien may have been two years younger and desperately in love with a married woman twice his age, but even he had noted his brother’s callousness.

Of course he said nothing about that now. Because for all Nicolas’s faults when young, the price his brother had since paid for Julien’s own faults had been grievously high. And if heaven had disapproved of Nicolas’s past lechery, then it had found the most cruelly ironic punishment possible.

“You’ve no need to apologize.” Lucette’s voice dragged him back to the present moment and the more than pretty woman riding beside him. “Any man who doesn’t appreciate my mother’s beauty does not have eyes. And of course I never suspected you of anything…base.”

The number of base things he’d done in the last eight years was too high to count. But he appreciated the effort and, with that reckless abandonment she called forth so easily, let himself flirt with danger. “I promise you one thing, Lucie—I have never in my life kissed a woman who has not asked it of me.”

He captured and held those blue eyes with his long enough that he was dimly grateful both their horses knew their way along the road. A spark had kindled in Lucette’s that he wanted to believe meant she took his words as a challenge rather than an apology.

A swift smile, like spring sun, crossed her face and she turned her attention back to the road. “Where are you taking me today?” she asked.

He easily tipped into one of his more seductive smiles. “I want to show you off around the village. Most of them have never seen an Englishwoman, so don’t be surprised if there’s staring. They’ll be wondering where you hide your Protestant horns.”

Her eyebrows shot up, but she smiled in response. “I suppose the same place all of you hide your Catholic cloven hooves.”

Julien laughed in true delight. “I begin to believe I was a fool not to appreciate you properly when you were young, Lucie. Your tongue and your wits have not faltered.”

But beneath his genuine appreciation, Julien could only hope those wits of hers would not delve too deeply into his own secrets.

—

In just a few days at Blanclair, Lucette had already begun to amass a tidy collection of intelligence. She stored it all carefully away, bit by bit, in her Memory Chamber ledger and didn’t try yet to force a pattern. She knew from experience that the pattern would come when it was ready. One trifle, one fact, one overheard remark, would be the tipping point when the chaos became a design centered on a true north point and there could only be one answer to the variable she sought.

The household of Chateau Blanclair was serene on the surface but swirling with unnamed tensions just below. It was as though there were strings run between people, and some of them were pulled so taut as to practically vibrate. Lucette categorized them by colours, the deeper the colour, the more tense the connection: every string running to and from Julien was red, but even Nicolas had a good many blue threads between him and his family members. Renaud watched both his sons with a concealed caution that spoke of concern. The only truly open person in the household was Felix (his threads were all a sunny yellow).

As for the household and outdoor servants, Anise was Lucette’s entry point. She could hardly pop into the kitchens or the stables for a friendly conversation (though her Englishness was a convenient mask behind which to hide impertinent questions), but Anise liked to talk and soon Lucette had odd and intriguing bits to store in her ledgers: there was a groom who rode out a great deal more than the others and often spent days away from Blanclair; half the staff had Huguenot relatives who’d fled to England; the steward knew to the penny the state of the Blanclair accounts at any given hour; in the last five years, four maids had quit the household with no notice.

Felix’s tutor was someone Lucette could speak to without comment, and she did. With difficulty. Richard Laurent did not like her; whether because he disliked females on principle or just Protestant Englishwomen, she wasn’t clear. Laurent was obviously a committed Catholic and had even studied in a Jesuit seminary. He spent most of his hours with Felix, and though Lucette believed in keeping an open mind, she refused to believe that a seven-year-old was the Nightingale connection Walsingham was searching for. But Laurent himself might be a possibility.

On the fifth day—Sunday—Lucette claimed a headache when it came time for church, and the LeClercs accepted the polite fiction that would keep a Protestant away from a Roman mass. Lucette had little moral issue in attending a Catholic service, in truth she was rather curious, but it was her first time in the house without family and the bulk of the staff. Only a skeleton few were left in the chateau and Lucette drew a deep breath to suppress her ethics and set about searching her hosts’ bedchambers.

She began with Renaud, because she might as well do the most uncomfortable first. Logically, she supposed there was no reason her host could not be the Catholic mastermind: he was intelligent, he was dedicated to his kingdom, as a soldier he was accustomed to following orders, and no doubt he could be ruthless. Against the logic was only this: that she could not bear that it be Renaud. He was as honourable a man as Dominic, and she did not want to believe that, having met Elizabeth in person, as Renaud had when visiting England, he would countenance a plan to kill her.

She was not here for emotional reasons, however, but logical ones, so she shoved aside her distaste and searched Renaud’s bedchamber and adjoining small study. His were the surroundings of a soldier, such as she was accustomed to from Dominic. Spare without quite being impersonal, nothing cluttered, paperwork neatly ordered and put away. Although Lucette made a quick search of his clothing and bed itself, it was the paperwork she concentrated on. It was mostly personal—no doubt the account books and ledgers would be kept by the steward—but she plowed on through the neat journal that mostly recorded the weather and harvests and cloaked emotional subjects in the sparest prose. There was a gap of six months that she calculated was at the time of Nicole LeClerc’s death.

The only thing she would not search was the collection of letters from Nicole to her husband, kept in their own coffer and tied with a length of black silk ribbon. Lucette returned everything to its proper place—that useful visual memory of hers—and tackled Nicolas’s chambers next.

For all that he looked like Renaud, Nicolas’s surroundings were much different. Both more luxurious and more careless, as probably befit one who had not followed his father into the military but spent his days as a gentleman widower, looking after his son and running the estate under his father’s eye. Anise had elaborated on the image of Nicolas as entirely broken by the death of his wife and his withdrawal from Parisian society. He must have loved his young bride very much to mourn in such determined fashion for such a length of time. Lucette could not fathom why he had not remarried. But that thought took her to her unstated reason for being at Blanclair and she shied away. She did not want to think of Nicolas as a potential husband. For one thing, she was not Catholic. For another, she would never settle out of England.

From the carpets on the floors to the tapestries on the walls, from the brocaded silk of the bed hangings to the whisper soft linen in the chests, everything about Nicolas proclaimed quality. But his clothes were folded a degree less precise than Renaud’s, the down pillows were askew on the bed, and the inlaid desk in his personal alcove was awash in letters and books.

He apparently had a fondness for Italian poetry, judging by the number of volumes she counted. Catholic writers like Thomas More jostled for space with Machiavelli’s The Prince and Dante’s Divine Comedy. He, too, had a journal, but it was written in even sparer form than his father’s—often no more than a series of initials and dates and cryptic notes that Lucette stared at, imprinting in her ledger, before finally laying the journal aside.

His books were stamped with his personal badge, a silver cinquefoil that Lucette remembered from childhood. Nicole had decreed that each of her sons bear a cinquefoil for a badge—Nicolas in silver for peace and sincerity. He certainly appeared to live a peaceful life.

Unlike Renaud, Nicolas had kept nothing from his wife, unless the St. Catharine’s medal she found mixed in with several heavy rings had belonged to her.

She had left Julien for last and wondered if that was because she hoped to be interrupted by the family’s return from church. Not the mark of a very good intelligencer, she supposed, and with compressed lips and thudding heart hurried about her task.

Of course Julien had spent very little time at Blanclair for years—and not at all since Nicole’s death. Anise had overflowed with stories of that scandal: that Julien was summoned from Paris when his mother’s condition worsened, but delayed his coming until it was too late. He had arrived in time for the funeral mass, where he sat apart from his family and left abruptedly after an hour closeted alone with his father. This was his first visit home since then.

He was messy, no surprise. A jerkin and shirt tossed across the top of a chest, the bedclothes rumpled and untouched by maids. Interesting. She would have to ask Anise if Julien forbid servants in his chamber, which might argue a desire to avoid prying eyes. Or maybe he just couldn’t be bothered. There were books—more liberal and humanist than those of Nicolas—that she guessed had been there since he was young. Aside from clothing, the personal effects he’d brought with him from Paris consisted of a string of silverwork beads, a carved wooden soldier that matched the set Lucette had seen in Felix’s care, and two exquisite miniatures: his mother and his sister.

No journal. No letters. Not even a sign of his own cinquefoil badge except on the frontspiece of dusty books: his badge blue, for truth and loyalty. There was nothing in the chamber except cryptic clues as to his character and no evidence of deeper conspiracy. If Julien were the Nightingale mastermind, he’d either left any evidence in Paris or else he carried it all in his head.

Either way, she wouldn’t be able to lay her hands on anything in the way of physical evidence.

She returned to her chamber and, before the family returned from church, wrote a brief note to Paris. This time she created an equation that, when solved for x, gave the number seven. Creating the resultant code in an apparently innocent letter kept her ruthlessly focused on the business at hand, leaving no time for qualms of conscience.

When deciphered, Dr. Dee would read the following message: The house is full of secrets, none of which may be relevant. I shall look to the village for more information.

—

Elizabeth received her daughter in royal state at Hampton Court Palace on the first stage of the court’s progress to Portsmouth. Anne arrived by barge to all the fanfare and pomp accorded the Princess of Wales, and as she watched her daughter approach, Elizabeth felt for a moment that if she blinked, she would be the princess presenting herself to the king, her brother…

But Elizabeth was a master of time and memory, and she knew perfectly well who she was. Anne made a gracious obeisance and, at her mother’s command, drew ahead of her attendants to walk alone with her mother toward the palace.

“You look well,” Elizabeth said, and heard an echo of her own youthful impatience at her mother’s formality thirty years ago. Why can we never talk about any but trivialities? she’d wondered then—and wondered now. And it wasn’t simply the conversation. Sometimes she wished that she had not given her mother’s name to her heir, for Anne Tudor occasionally manifested the brilliant, biting wit of her grandmother. Not to mention her stubbornness, although that could also be easily explained by either of her parents.

“I am delighted to return to court, my lady mother.” Anne always knew to the precise word and shade of tone how to judge her conversations. Today she meant to come near to intimacy.

“I should think so,” Elizabeth replied tartly. “Seeing as how you have been hounding me and my ministers for months.”

Anne slid her gaze sideways. “It was you who taught me the virtues of judicious pressure applied with a modicum of charm.” Her grin, which flashed and vanished, was so redolent of William that Elizabeth nearly faltered.

“Very well,” Elizabeth conceded. “We two are here and as alone as we are likely to be anytime soon. Let us speak plainly. You are at court to ensure your father’s welcome and ease the discomfort of our divorce. Philip will want to assure himself of your health and education and, no doubt, the firmness of your religious sentiments. You know as well as I do that your father’s first order of business upon leaving England will be to remarry. He has no heir for Spain as long as you remain firmly Protestant and firmly in England. Encourage him, Anne, to marry quickly. It will be to your advantage.”

“To have a royal stepmother?” she asked lightly. “Perhaps. And you, Mother? Shall I soon be required to endure a royal stepfather?”

“Don’t be impertinent. I am wed to England, and always have been. That is why my marriage to Philip has faltered—no man can endure a rival.”

“And what of my marriage, Your Majesty?” Nicely judged use of her title, for Anne knew that her marriage would be decided by the monarch and not the mother.

“I am pleased with how you have begun your correspondence with James. I will be pleased if it continues in the same vein. Equally, there will be more than one English noble in our entourage to meet Philip who might be seen as a possible domestic match for you.”

“Francis Huntingdon and Robert Devereux.”

“Naturally. As well as the soon-to-be-invested Earl of Leicester, Brandon Dudley.”

Anne stopped walking abruptly. Elizabeth did not. The Queen of England did not alter her stride or her destinations for anyone. She counted to twelve before Anne caught up with her once more, this time with an attitude edging toward insubordination.

“I am not going to marry Brandon Dudley, Mother.”

Or perhaps throwing herself right off the edge into absolute insubordination. “You will do as you are told,” Elizabeth said coldly.

“I apologize, Your Majesty.” Anne knew how to pull herself back. “I meant to say that I cannot envision the political advantage of matching the Princess of Wales with a newly made noble. Particularly one born in the Tower, and whose father and grandfather both met their ends at the hands of a royal executioner.”

“You must learn to see the wider view, daughter, and not simply details. Brandon Dudley will make people nervous, particularly your father. That makes him useful in this context without any commitment to a final outcome.”

“Are you trying to make people nervous,” Anne asked with low intensity, “or are you trying to re-create your own past? You know people say that Brandon only flourishes because of his resemblance to his uncle Robert. Is it wise to give further ammunition to such rumours?”

No one spoke to Elizabeth of Robert Dudley—absolutely no one. “That is enough. You will behave with impeccable courtesy to every member of my court and will not presume to tell me what is wise.”

She knew that particularly intent look on her daughter’s face meant she was thinking furiously. Philip looked the same when he was about to propose something unexpected.

With perfect humility, Anne curtsied. “I am, as always, yours to command. My lady mother, I would never presume to know more than you, but may I make a request?”

“You may ask.”

“If your intent is to unsettle the king, my father, and give room for all manner of speculation throughout Europe as to my future marriage, then I would suggest one more addition to the royal party.”

“And that would be?”

Anne met her gaze steadily. “I want Kit.”

“Christopher Courtenay?” Elizabeth barked a laugh. “I hardly think a second son would be considered a serious contender for your hand.”

“The second son of England’s wealthiest duke, and with the closest of personal ties to the throne. Besides, I rather thought you were fond of Kit.”

Elizabeth was very fond of Kit Courtenay. Precisely because he was so little like his father. Stephen Courtenay was exactly what one would wish for in an eldest son and future duke—steady, serious, and contemplative—in other words, a perfect mirror of Dominic. But Kit…ah, Kit Courtenay was Minuette reborn. Tumbled blond hair, laughing hazel eyes, and charm enough to spare.

It was precisely for those reasons that Elizabeth did not want Kit Courtenay tied, even obliquely, to her daughter as a possible mate. That would never do.

But beneath her discomfort and dislike of being manipulated, Elizabeth grudgingly conceded Anne’s point. Also, it would keep her daughter amenable, which was not a gift to be overlooked.

“I suppose, as Philippa Courtenay is wherever you are, that we might as well include her twin.”

Anne smiled, and it was so like her grandmother that Elizabeth nearly shuddered. Anne Boleyn had looked just as unnerving when she’d got her way. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I promise to give you no cause to regret that decision this summer.”

Only later did Elizabeth remember the subtle emphasis on the last two words.