Dee had found himself being “honored” by having his own niece swept away from him and taken into the Queen’s care, with vague assurances of access to her that never quite materialized. Then Lord Brighton had shown up, and all too quickly Sophia’s betrothal had been announced—with no apparent word from Dee on the subject. The astrologer barely darkened our doors after that, preferring to stay cooped up in his library at Mortlake, a western district of London that was a good hour’s ride from Windsor Castle.
It appeared all the same to Sophia. She swooned at least three times a week to avoid confrontation, she suffered from terrible headaches, and she was as pale and trembling as a newborn lamb. Her greatest fear appeared to be of her own betrothed. And truth be told, for all his generosity, Lord Theoditus Brighton was about two decades too old to be considered a decent choice for the girl. Sophia was only now nearing her sixteenth birthday!
I frowned, a new thought striking me. What would the Queen do with not just one of her Maids of Honor being married (myself) but two? How would she shore up the corps of spies she herself had created? Had she even given the matter thought?
Knowing Elizabeth, she had. Her Maids of Honor were important to her. We were governed by Cecil and Walsingham in our day-to-day spying activities, but in the end we were the Queen’s women.
“Sophia,” I said gently now, returning to our less than easy conversation. “Have you learned something to make you particularly afraid?”
“Ah. Well, then, yes,” Meg interrupted. I shot her an annoyed glare. I was speaking here!
But Meg and Jane were looking at each other fiercely, and I straightened to take their measure. “I think,” Meg said carefully. “I think it’s time that we share some news of our own.”
I narrowed my eyes. If one of them had become betrothed without my knowing it, I truly would lose my temper. There were certain things that were not to be borne, and the marriage of a common thief or a deadly assassin before mine was one of them. “What sort of news?”
Sophia had turned as well, her eyes impossibly wide now. Jane just grinned, leaning up against the wall. “One less secret to keep,” she acknowledged, and Meg gave a short laugh.
“Should I give them the long version or the shorter one?” Meg asked.
“I think you’ve already strayed into the long version,” I said, folding my arms. “Does this news have a beginning point? Or should we just start guessing?”
“Briefly, then; briefly,” Meg mused, looking up at the ceiling. I knew she was doing it just to bait me, and I was all the more irritated that it was working. I seethed quietly, about to burst, when she finally began speaking.
“In the hunt for the killer of Marie Claire last month, Jane and I stumbled on secret passages cut into the very walls of Windsor,” she said. “Quite by chance, I assure you.”
“Quite,” agreed Jane, with the slightest twist of her lips.
“But something found cannot be unfound, and so of course, we began mapping the passageways below the castle.”
“Are we drawing near a point sometime soon?” I asked. “What is this great discovery you are dying to share?”
“I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it!” Meg grinned at me. “In our searching we encountered a section that stretches all the way down to the Lower Ward, into the areas behind the Cloisters.”
Beside me Sophia gave a little gasp, and even Anna was leaning forward now. I’d known about the passageways—well, some of them—for many years. But before Jane and Meg had begun their mapping, even I had had no idea of the labyrinth of corridors that had been cut beneath Windsor. You could spend days trying to find their ends, as Jane and Meg certainly had. But this was the first they’d spoken of what they’d found down there.
“Once we’d found our way behind the Cloisters,” Meg continued, “the passage allowed us access into the apartments. We were running late, and, again quite by chance, we stumbled into the living quarters of Lord Brighton.”
Sophia stood frozen, but it was Anna’s turn to gasp. She clapped her hands to her face. “Oh, say that he wasn’t there!” she moaned. “That would be a disaster!”
“It would have been at that, but we, um, were lucky. He wasn’t in residence. However, his papers were.”
I lifted my brows, approval curving my lips. “Do you mean to tell me that you spied on Lord Brighton? Rifled through his belongings?”
“It wasn’t like that!” Meg protested, but Jane just shrugged.
“The papers were there and we were there, and the good lord wasn’t,” Jane said.
“But it wasn’t like we went looking for things,” Meg countered quickly. “And we stole naught but information, if you can even call that a theft.”
You could, and I certainly did. “So what is it you found?” I prompted, if only to allow Sophia’s heart to beat again.
Meg took a deep breath. She walked over to Sophia and took the girl’s hand in her own. “We learned why you are so worried about Lord Brighton, Sophia. Do you already know the truth?”
Sophia had begun trembling again, and I looked from one maid to the other. What is this? “I . . . I couldn’t be certain,” Sophia said. “It is all so confused!”
“Of what couldn’t you be certain?” Anna demanded, saving me the trouble. “What is it you learned about Lord Brighton?”
“He’s been carrying on a gambit of his own, he has,” Jane said, gesturing toward Sophia with her knife. I frowned at her. When had she pulled out her blade? And was now truly an appropriate time for her to be cleaning it with the edge of her kirtle?
“He has, yes,” Meg said, her eyes still trained on Sophia. “He has masqueraded as a suitor to ensure that Sophia is not married off to anyone while she is still so young.”
“But why would he go to the trouble?” I asked, barely repressing my need to stamp my foot. Elegant noblewomen didn’t stamp their feet. Even when their need was great. “I mean, if he didn’t want to marry her himself, then why would he—”
“Because he is my father,” Sophia said, her voice a tortured whisper. She stared from Meg to Jane and back again, as Anna and I both stiffened in shock. “That’s it, is it not?” she asked. “That’s what I have feared all these months, since he first stepped foot in the Queen’s Presence Chamber. That’s what I have seen. Lord Brighton is not Lord Brighton at all—but a wraith, a ghost, a—”
Meg closed her fingers over Sophia’s hand. “A father, Sophia,” she said quietly. “He lost your mother years ago, when you were barely a babe in arms. Then you were taken from him— The papers were not clear on what had happened, but it appeared that from that moment forward your father was determined to find you and ensure your safety. He sold all of his belongings and arranged his own death. He re-created himself as Lord Brighton. He amassed great wealth and security, and then he came looking for you.”
“He found me,” Sophia said, her words stronger now even though she had begun to tremble again. “He found me and tried to protect me, by offering his hand for mine.”
I pursed my lips, trying to make sense of it. A father who’d lost his daughter and then found her again, in service to the Queen. What choice did he have? He could not demand Sophia’s return—the Queen had already claimed her, and her trusted astrologer had presented the girl as his own niece. Brighton could not even declare his own existence as a father wronged, for fear those who’d stolen Sophia away from him long years ago would return to repeat the act. And so, he betrothed himself to her, perhaps never seeking to fulfill that contract, just to keep Sophia unwed until he had time to come up with a plan. It made a certain sort of sense, I supposed.
Oddly enough, Sophia did not seem as shocked as she should have been. Relief shone in her eyes; the most important prediction of all had just been verified. Then her expression dimmed and her skin turned noticeably paler.
“My head . . . ,” she murmured, lifting a hand to her brow. “Whenever I listen to thoughts such as these, it hurts so bad—”
; “I’ve just the thing for that,” Anna said quickly, hopping off her perch and bustling over to Sophia, some random posset in her hand. “I have been wanting to try this. Mix it in with mead, and you’ll be right as rain.”
Sophia smiled, accepting the posset. “I thank you, Anna,” she managed, but Anna was already looking back at me.
“ ’Tis a dangerous game her father is playing,” she said. “No monarch would take kindly to being toyed with, our Queen least of all. If she were to find out—”
“Well, she cannot find out,” I said, surprising even myself with the firmness of the statement. “It is not her place to stand between a father and a daughter, no matter who she is.” Or thinks she is. “However”—and here I slanted a glance at Meg—“Lord Brighton also can’t stay betrothed to Sophia. That’s just . . . unseemly.”
Jane barked a laugh, and even Meg looked at me in amusement. “Unseemly!” Meg repeated. “Yes, yes, it is at that, Beatrice.” She grinned. “But how in heaven’s name will we unshackle Sophia from her father’s well-meaning chains? Do you know how it’s done, the unmaking of a betrothal?”
I paused, considering. I knew, certainly. I’d been working so hard to get and stay betrothed, however, that the dissolution of such a happy event seemed foreign even to consider. But there were ways, of course . . . ways that could be put into motion . . .
“It can be done,” I said. “But it would help if—” I shot a glance toward Sophia and drew in a tight breath. “I don’t suppose your, um, father . . . has any affection for a woman in the court?”
“Surely he wouldn’t dare!” Anna breathed, outraged at the betrayal of even a sham romance.
“Why wouldn’t he?” Jane shrugged. “He was at the wedding this morning with a woman, was he not? Some older woman—but not too old—a widow or some such, I think?”
“Lady Ariane,” Anna supplied, as of course she would. “Her husband died this Christmas past, and Lord Brighton has taken to squiring her to official functions when Sophia is not in a mood to endure festivities.”
“Which is often,” Meg put in with a grin, and Sophia blushed.
“Still, she is the soul of propriety,” Anna protested. “There has not been a whisper, nor even a hint—”
“There doesn’t have to be.” I waved Anna off, my mind churning now. If Sophia’s father were to be caught in the arms of another woman—no matter how innocently, no matter how chaste—it would be cause enough for the Queen to withdraw her blessing from the forthcoming union. Elizabeth was ever going on about the virtue of her court and the value of marriage for everyone but herself. Now we would see how much she truly believed her own prattle.
Now I could disrupt the Queen’s own plans, as surely as she had disrupted mine.
I allowed the first genuine smile to form on my lips since the moment Elizabeth had arrived in Saint George’s Chapel.
“I have an idea,” I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
No sooner had the words come out of my mouth than a clatter sounded down the hallway. Moments later the door to our chamber was swept open. Cecil stood there, glowering at us.
“Good,” he said sourly. “You’re all here, though I refuse to speak with you in your bedchamber. Meet me in my offices at the quarter hour, and for the love of heaven, Jane, sheathe the knife.”
Jane started, and as quick as a breath, her knife slid out of view. Cecil continued to stare at us a moment more, nodding. “You’re at least dressed presentably. I suppose I have the wedding to thank for that.”
He reddened then, and his gaze swept to mine. I met it evenly. I didn’t need the man’s pity, and he knew it. But Cecil, for all his many flaws, was at least becoming more predictable in his changes in temper. Now I could see that he felt bad for how my day had turned. Still, I tilted up my chin a little higher, silently reassuring him that I was well able to carry out any task he might have in mind. I could not afford to have him thinking of me as weak. If my father had taught me nothing else of value, he had taught me that.
Cecil nodded. “You, if anything, should choose something a bit less dramatic, Beatrice. The task at hand this day requires discretion and humility. Try to remember that, all of you.” He swept out of the room with a rustle of his black cape, and the five of us split off—Sophia and Anna to go find some mead to help Sophia choke down whatever refined poison Anna was experimenting with, and Jane and Meg to help me unlash myself from my wedding finery. I would swear the gown was more stitches than fabric, but we still managed to get all of its pieces disassembled without creasing the garment. It would keep until month’s end, if I would wear it again at all.
I sighed then, fingering the heavy cloth. Everything I had worked for all these long years, gone just like that. I shook myself. Of course I would wear it again. Of course I would still marry Cavanaugh.
Of course I would.
We gathered in Cecil’s office less than a half hour later, as he’d requested. To get to his chambers we had to run the interminable gauntlet of Spaniards who seemed to have made the public antechamber off the main Presence Chamber their personal gathering spot. I saw Meg brush by Rafe with the barest of nods, but I watched closely and was rewarded for my care. He’d given her a letter in that brief moment, and Meg’s color was just a tiny bit higher in her cheeks as she strolled into Cecil’s office.
I found myself unaccountably annoyed, and stiffened my spine against it. I should not care about Meg and her grubby Spaniard. I had problems of my own to solve.
But now Cecil was talking. “What do you know about the Scottish rebellion?” he asked, looking pained.
Anna jumped in immediately. “It’s been an uneasy thing for the Scots for nearly two decades,” she said. “With King James dying seventeen years ago, and his French wife, Mary de Guise, remaining, the Scots have chafed under the threat of French control for longer than they ever expected. Now Mary de Guise serves as regent for her and King James’s daughter, Mary, the true Queen of Scots—but young Mary just wed the French dauphin last year. So the French remain a threat, and Mary de Guise is of a mind to make trouble. Especially of late, she seems determined to enforce French will upon the Scots.” Anna made a wry grimace. “The trouble is, you can’t force a Scotsman to do much of anything unless you’ve got him at the edge of your sword, and that never works for long. I should think Mary de Guise is making more enemies than friends for her daughter, and that will not serve the young Queen of Scotland in the end.”
If anything, Cecil now seemed more irritated. “I did not ask you what you thought, Miss Burgher, merely what you know.” He rubbed a hand over his brow. I wondered if he had a headache like Sophia, who was looking markedly better than she had in weeks. Well, he would spend a cool day in hell before Anna would give him a posset, if he expected her to stop thinking.
“My apologies, Sir William,” Anna said smoothly. She then launched into a purely factual accounting of how the devoutly Catholic Mary de Guise, mother and regent of the young Scottish Queen Mary, was advocating for French (and Catholic) rule of Scotland. And, further, that while most of that barbarian land was, in fact, Catholic, they most certainly weren’t French. Nor did they like France. Of course, they didn’t like England, either, but at least we weren’t trying to rule them. Yet.
“Now even more Scotsmen are opposing Mary de Guise, including the clergyman John Knox, who is the loudest of them all. With him having just returned to Scotland after more than a decade in exile, there will be only upheaval to come,” Anna said. Then she colored again, immediately recognizing that she had employed her mind once more without express permission. “Forgive me, Sir William. I mean only to say that John Knox has returned, and rumors have started that he also means to incite the Protestants to rebellion against Mary de Guise and her Catholic sympathizers.”
“Knox isn’t alone,” I put in, carelessly. “He’s finding able support from the Lords of the Congregation.”
Cecil’s gaze sharpened on me, and I instantly realized my mist
ake. Anna was the only one of our number whose brain was supposed to be sharp. I was merely the manipulator, the wide-eyed miss whose cunning was confined to the way I played the people around me. But truly, I wasn’t an idiot. Since the Scots had deposited themselves on our threshold in early August, they’d talked—and I’d listened. Even my own father muttered on about the Scots and their rebellion when he was in his cups, which was often. Our estate was well south of the Scottish border but still well north of Windsor. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that he would care about a war that close to his home.
“What do you know about the Lords of the Congregation?” Cecil demanded. I felt even Anna’s eyes on me, though Anna, God bless her, wanted only for me to do well. I didn’t like the set of Cecil’s jaw, however. “Where have you heard them mentioned?”
“Oh, la,” I said, airily waving a hand. “You can’t expect me to be surrounded by Scotsmen morning, noon, and night without hearing them go on about the most audacious of their countrymen playing ‘wreck the church hall,’ ” I said. “I’m not certain which of them started the conversation, but they seemed all to know the Lords well enough, though none could say for certain who these august lords truly were. It seems to be something of a grand secret, though they’ve spent endless hours of speculation on it.” When they weren’t busily draining the Queen’s store of ale, that is.
“Pay closer attention going forward, then,” Cecil said. He didn’t snap the words, but they were an order nonetheless. “The Lords of the Congregation are, in fact, a group of staunchly Protestant noblemen who would rather not see France hold sway in their homeland. To that end, they are approaching us for our aid. Secretly, I might add, as far as the bulk of the court is concerned. We expect them to join us within the next few days, and to remain for a week, little more.”
“They’ve called before and met with grief,” Sophia said, her voice striking and lyrical in the musty half darkness. “Lord and servant to their belief.”
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