“Judith, I would like you to meet my wife, Lady Aimee Marcheford.”
Judith’s smiling countenance turned surly in under an instant. Aimee forced a smile and hoped it was warm and welcoming. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Judith. Simon has told me a lot about you.”
“You’re French,” Judith said flatly.
“Judith,” Simon warned.
Aimee put a hand on Simon’s arm. “I am French.”
“I don’t like the French.”
“That’s enough, Judith.”
“Simon, it’s—”
“It is not all right,” he said to Aimee. “Judith, I am disappointed in you. You were not raised to be rude. Please apologize.”
Judith glared at Aimee for a moment before looking chagrined. “My apologies, Lady Aimee.”
“Apology accepted,” Aimee said with a smile. “I know this will take some time to become accustomed to. For the moment I think you and your brother need to catch up on what you have been doing while at court.” She turned to Simon and gave him a pointed look. “I am going to our rooms to rest.”
She was tired as she claimed, and left the brother and sister alone. Clearly Judith loved her brother and had missed him terribly. Aimee couldn’t come between the two of them. She couldn’t force Simon to choose between his sister and her, as the queen was forcing them to do. Because it was no choice at all. He must choose Judith.
Aimee pretended to walk toward their chambers but circled around and headed back to the queen’s Presence Chamber. A guard stood at the door, blocking her entrance.
“Lady Aimee de— Lady Aimee Marcheford to see Queen Elizabeth, please.”
He looked at her with expressionless eyes.
“Please,” she whispered, afraid she would lose her courage. “I don’t know the correct protocol, but I need to speak to the queen.”
His expression cracked, just a bit but enough to give her hope. After a moment he nodded once and motioned to a young boy dressed in livery who scampered over. The guard said something and the boy left.
“Wait here,” the guard said, and pointed his chin to a line of benches against the wall.
Aimee sat, stiff-backed, her hands clutched in her lap. Others were waiting as well, mostly nobles, looking at ease in the elegant surroundings. Aimee’s stomach churned, and she was afraid she was going to be sick. Her throat was closing up with tears, and she felt as if her fledgling life had disappeared. Everything she didn’t want, she’d received, then found that it was everything she actually had wanted.
And now she had to give it all away.
“Lady Aimee Marcheford.”
She stood quickly and hurried into the Presence Chamber.
There were fewer people than before. Queen Elizabeth was sitting by a window, the sun glinting off her very red hair. With every step Aimee took toward the English monarch, she struggled not to cry, to be brave, to do what was right.
She stopped in front of Queen Elizabeth and curtsied.
“Lady Marcheford.”
“Your Majesty. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“I am curious as to what you have to say that you do not want your new husband to hear.” The queen’s eyes flashed distrust.
“I know you do not trust me,” Aimee said. “I know you think that what I did to Queen Mary was wrong.”
“If you are referring to the fact that you were put in her court to spy, then yes.”
Aimee swallowed her nervousness. Luckily the others had drifted away and were involved in their own conversations. “I was put there to spy. It wasn’t my choice, and I wasn’t even very good at it, but you are correct.”
The queen was listening, if not commenting, so Aimee took that as encouragement to keep going.
“I understand your reluctance to release Judith to Simon, and I don’t want to come between Simon and his sister.” Aimee took a deep breath. “If you feel it’s best that Judith not be around me, then I am willing to accept that for Simon’s sake. All I ask is that you give me a place in your court, for…” She swallowed the tears that had clogged her throat. “For I have nowhere else to go.”
Elizabeth contemplated her for a long time while Aimee stood before the English queen with her head bowed and her soul laid bare. She was homeless, wanted by no one.
“Look at me, girl.”
Aimee slowly lifted her head to find that Elizabeth’s expression had softened somewhat.
“Do you love him that much?”
“Very much, Your Majesty.”
“I find that admirable. Some people will never feel a love like that.”
Aimee remembered that Elizabeth had had many suitors in her life, but none had led to marriage. Though several matches had been put before her, she’d declared herself the Virgin Queen and said she would never marry. Was she speaking of herself when she’d said some would never feel a love like Aimee had for Simon?
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Why should I accept a known spy in my court? I have enough wandering around here as it is.”
Aimee remembered La Grange and Will and Tristan. How many more were in Mary’s court, and what about the French court? No doubt there were double that in the English court.
“I was not a very good spy, Your Majesty. In fact, I was quite miserable at it. I didn’t even like doing it, but Catherine…” She didn’t want to tell the queen this but felt that complete honesty was best in the situation. “You see, Your Majesty, I foolishly thought I was in love with a man in France, and Catherine discovered us. She sent me away to Scotland and told me if I spied on Queen Mary, she would consider bringing me back to France and allow me to wed the man I thought I was in love with.”
Elizabeth considered her for a long while. “Does Simon know all of this?”
Aimee lowered her head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Catherine de Medici is not a woman to cross.”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“She also double-crossed you, girl. She promised you one thing and told Mary another. I’m assuming she told Mary to wed you off at the earliest convenience.”
Aimee could feel her face heat in embarrassment. If she’d thought throwing herself on the mercy of Queen Elizabeth would be easy, she’d been gravely wrong.
“I believe that is what happened, Your Majesty.”
“And Mary rightly suspected that Catherine had sent you to report on her.”
Aimee had no more words. Queen Elizabeth was frighteningly astute.
“You are a naive child, but I don’t hold that against you. You were caught in circumstances beyond your control. Very well. I accept your condition. You will have a place here in my court.” Elizabeth held up a finger as if she didn’t want to be interrupted. “But hear this. You will not write to France. At all. You will break all ties with France. Trust me in this. I will know if you communicate with anyone in your home country.”
Aimee spared fleeting thoughts to Pierre and her mother. “I already have, Your Majesty.”
Elizabeth tilted her head. She motioned William Cecil over. “Have someone find Lady Marcheford permanent lodgings inside the palace.” Cecil nodded with no expression and left. “You may go,” Elizabeth said to Aimee.
Aimee hesitated. When a queen dismissed you, that was the end of your conversation. But Aimee had one more thing to say.
“Lady Marcheford,” the queen said sharply.
“What about Simon and Judith?” Aimee blurted out. “Will you allow them to go to Danfield and live in peace? Will you release them from court so they can be a family and get to know each other?”
Elizabeth’s lips thinned. The guard who had been standing behind her moved forward, but Elizabeth raised an elegant, bejeweled hand to stop him.
“I will.”
Aimee’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
—
Simon had taken Judith out to the gardens that bordered the Thames. Barge traffic was steady as the conveyances pulled up t
o the wooden steps that led to Whitehall. This was the main entrance to the palace, not the entrance from the street where Simon and Aimee had come in.
Judith was talking nonstop of her adventures in court. Simon had long ago stopped trying to figure out who was who and just listened to the cadence of her voice, nodding and humming in agreement where it seemed appropriate.
Occasionally she would skip, and then she would realize her faux pas and slow to a sedate stroll while looking out of the corner of her eye to her chaperone. The chaperone seemed to frown a lot, especially when Judith’s voice became too loud or she broke into a few skips.
When Judith came to live with him, he would make sure she skipped whenever she wanted. She was far too young at age twelve to have to worry about decorum. He wanted her to be a child, to skip and laugh and raise her voice.
“How are your studies?” he asked when she finally took a breath.
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like to do numbers. They are boring, and I have to fight to keep awake.”
“Numbers can be boring, but they are necessary. How are you to run your husband’s home if you don’t know your numbers?”
She giggled, probably more at the thought of a husband than doing numbers her whole life. “Maud says that soon I will know who my husband is to be. Lucy found out who hers was just the other week, and she cried because she said he was old.”
“Who is Maud?”
Judith tilted her head to the right toward the frowning chaperone.
“Ah,” he said. “And how does Maud know these things?”
“She said Queen Elizabeth will find me a rich man to be my husband, and it will be soon, because I am coming of age.”
“Twelve years is not coming of age.” He didn’t care what Elizabeth thought or if there were girls, like this Lucy, who were already betrothed.
“I don’t think I would like someone old, though,” she said as she kicked a rock and looked out the side of her eye at Maud. “Old men stink.”
Simon choked back a laugh. “Well, as your guardian, I have the final say on whom and if and when you marry. You will not marry any time soon, and if you prefer someone younger, then we will search for someone younger.”
“Maud says I have to take who is given to me because we are not a grand family. Not like Lucy’s family.”
Simon wanted to strangle Maud. His first order of business would be to replace her.
“It depends on Maud’s definition of grand, I suppose,” he said. While the Marchefords did not come from nobility, Simon had more riches than some of the nobles who owned nothing but the estates that gobbled up their income.
Judith shrugged as if she could care less what Maud’s definition of grand was. She reminded him so much of their mother with her blond hair and the pert shape of her nose. The pointed chin was their father’s for certain. He suddenly missed his parents and wondered if Judith even remembered them. Their father had been a hardworking merchant. Their mother had toiled alongside him. They had created a warm and loving home for Simon and then Judith, who came to them late in life, when they thought they were finished having children.
Consumed with stories of battle and war, Simon had chosen to become a soldier in the queen’s army rather than take over his father’s business, which his father never said he regretted. Simon’s quick wit and agile brain had gotten him noticed, and when he was but twenty-one, he had been taken to the queen’s spymaster, Walsingham, and his spying days had begun.
Judith had been only four years old. After their parents’ death of influenza a few years ago, Simon had taken some time to spend with Judith, but it had been under a year before Elizabeth was calling him back to service.
“Would you mind terribly if we left the court and lived on my estate in Danfield?” he asked Judith carefully now. In some ways, court life was all she had known, even though he’d always taken her away from it during the odd breaks that he’d been given.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It would be strange never seeing Lucy again. But then she’ll be getting married soon and will have to leave to live with her husband.”
Good Lord, but the girl was far too young to talk about living with husbands.
She leaned close to him and tugged on his sleeve. “Would we have to bring Maud?” she whispered.
“No,” he whispered back. “Unless you want to.”
She shook her head and giggled, then sliced a look at Maud, who was frowning. Again.
“What about your wife?” Judith asked in a sullen tone.
“My wife goes where I go.” He was still irked at Elizabeth for saying that Aimee was tainted in a way that might harm Judith. But he was not worried about Aimee living with them. He would convince Elizabeth otherwise. “You know, Judith, I was very disappointed in your treatment of Aimee.”
Judith walked on, her head bowed as if she were in thought, her feet dragging through the dead leaves. “She’s French,” she said.
“She is French. She grew up in the French court, much as you have grown up in the English court.”
“Where did you find her?”
Simon grinned. Judith made it sound like he’d just stumbled across Aimee on the side of the road, as if she were a lost puppy.
“I found her in the Scottish court.”
“Scottish?” She drew her brows together. “Is that not Queen Mary’s court?”
“It is. I see you’ve been studying up on your geography and history.”
She shrugged, dismissing more talk of her studies. “You don’t mind that she’s French?”
“Not at all. Why should I?”
“I don’t know.” But her mind was turning, and he wondered what she had heard about the French.
“Aimee will come to live with us, Judith. And she would like very much to become friends with you. I’d like it if you became friends with her.”
“Like Lucy?”
“No. Not like Lucy. Lucy is a special friend whom you grew up with. Aimee will be a new friend, different from Lucy.”
“Will she be my new mother?”
Simon’s heart twisted. “No, Judith. Our mother was your only mother.”
“I miss her,” Judith said softly.
“I do, too.”
“Very well,” she said in an adult way. “I will be Aimee’s friend if you insist.”
“I want you to be Aimee’s friend because you like her.”
“You ask much, brother.”
Simon laughed, earning himself a quelling look from Maud. He glared back at her until she turned away with a sniff.
“I ask only that you try,” he said.
“I can do that,” she said with a little more enthusiasm. “Do you love her?”
“I do. I really do love her.”
“Then maybe I can, too.”
Ah, to be young and impressionable and to trust those around you to lead you in the right direction.
Chapter 32
When Simon arrived back at their rooms after depositing Judith in hers and promising that he would visit later that evening, he found Aimee standing at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the gardens that Simon and Judith had been walking through.
Aimee turned to him, and he was struck by how sad she appeared.
“What is it?” he asked, taking her hands and kissing her knuckles.
She was still dressed in the beautiful blue and silver gown and wearing his sapphire. It winked in the sunlight and looked perfect against her creamy skin with that black hair.
“I saw you and Judith walking. You seemed to be having a very serious conversation.”
“We talked about her friend Lucy, who is engaged to be married to an old, smelly man, and she told me how she doesn’t like doing her numbers.”
Aimee smiled, but it was a sad, distracted smile. “Is she glad you are back?”
“Yes. She has a horrid chaperone who fills her head with tales, among them that she will be married soon and will be a charity case to her husb
and because she does not come from a good family.”
Aimee’s eyes widened. “She actually said that to poor Judith?”
“I don’t know if it was those words, but the meaning is the same. The woman will be sacked as soon as we leave this place.”
Darkness filled Aimee’s gray eyes. Simon sat in the nearest chair and tugged her down into his lap.
“The servants are in the next room,” she said.
“Am I supposed to care?”
She grinned and settled into his lap to put her head on his shoulder. He ran his fingers up and down her arm and stared out at the clouds through the window.
“I’m sorry for the way she treated you earlier,” he said.
“She’s young and she wants you all to herself. It’s understandable.”
“She said she would try better to like you and said that if I loved you then maybe she could like you.”
Aimee chuckled softly. “How very noble of her.”
“Give her time. She will soon love you as much as I do.”
They fell silent, but Simon felt there was something between them, something that hadn’t been there before. Aimee’s inner light was missing.
“Magpie, if you’re worried about what Elizabeth said—”
She put her finger to his lips, silencing the rest of his words. “Not now,” she said. “I want you to make love to me.”
He drew back to look at her. She was looking up at him, her long black lashes framing her light eyes, her lips parted.
“How can I say no to that?”
She pulled his head down and kissed him, imprisoning him between her hands and ravishing his mouth as if she were starving and he were her only meal.
Instantly his body hardened with a great need that could be fulfilled only by this wondrous woman whom he was so incredibly lucky to call wife.
Frantically her hands roamed his body, her fingertips burning wherever they touched him, even through the velvet of his doublet and the satin of his breeches. He groaned beneath her touch.
Her hands found the outline of his erection and she cupped her hand around it.
Wed to a Spy Page 24