All in all, Minuette was rather flustered as she was welcomed into the Hadley home and shown into the same stuffy parlour as on her previous visit. But within minutes she was ready to broach her true purpose. Sideways, of course, for she could hardly let Emma know that the court still had doubts about the nature of her sister’s untimely death.
“Mistress Hadley, I understand that Alyce’s belongings were sent to you after her death. It was such a time of shock to those of us who knew and liked her that it is only now I am beginning to feel the loss of her. I wrote her a few letters over the time we served together in the queen’s household, and I wondered if I might look through her things for them. It would be a great kindness.”
The look Emma gave her was half simpering, half curious. No doubt the woman thought Minuette wanted to remove any possible sources of gossip. But she dared not refuse. “I cannot say that I recall any letters from you amongst her things, but I did not search overclosely. Too painful, as you said.”
“Then I might look myself?”
“Of course. Whenever is convenient for you.”
“It is convenient now.” She would not give Emma time to go through her sister’s effects once more, with Emma’s suspicion sharpened by her request. If there was anything of use, she needed to remove it today.
Though Emma herself was plump and careworn, she kept an impeccably neat household. Alyce’s few belongings were stored in a small chest in Emma’s own bedroom. She politely, though no doubt grudgingly, left Minuette to examine its contents alone.
There was no clothing, which was not surprising. Surely the practical Emma had made use of the rich fabrics and jewelry of her sister’s court wardrobe. The dresses would have had to be shortened and considerably let out, Minuette thought uncharitably.
She and Alyce had shared a chamber almost constantly for two years, so she knew the spines of the few books in her friend’s possession. A Tyndale Bible, In Praise of Folly by Erasmus, More’s Utopia … all in English save for a single volume of Petrarch’s poems. It was that last volume that had contained a cipher key. Dominic had used the key gleaned from its pages to decipher the coded letters sent to Alyce in which she had been ordered to spy on Queen Anne. Surely the man who had given her that book had also been her unknown lover. Minuette would not believe that Alyce had been embroiled in two clandestine affairs at the same time.
She set the books aside and leafed through the personal letters that made up what remained of Alyce’s possessions. There were actually two from Minuette, brief notes rather than letters, and she was touched that Alyce had kept them. The remainder was a motley collection of stilted missives from Emma containing domestic news, a few from other women at court, and one from Queen Anne herself. Minuette gathered these up, though she doubted there were any obvious clues, and returned them to the silver casket that had held them. She remembered that casket well; for many months it had stood near her own smaller case in the various rooms the two girls had shared.
She found Emma and showed her the books and the casket with its letters. “Might I borrow these for a time?” she asked, making it clear from her tone that it was not a request.
Greed warred with Emma’s desire to be useful. “The casket belonged to my mother, and I would like the books to go to my son,” she said finally. “If you will take care to return them.”
“Of course. I also wondered, did you keep the letters Alyce wrote to you?”
She didn’t have high hopes that Alyce would have spilled her indiscretions to her sister, but one never knew what information might have slipped through unexpectedly.
Emma brought them to Minuette, several inches thick and bound with a lavender ribbon. Touched by that evidence of sentiment, Minuette said sincerely, “I do thank you, Mistress Hadley. I liked Alyce very much and I still grieve for her death. I promise to return everything to you in good order.”
Emma nodded, then ruined the moment by adding, “I hear that the new Duke of Exeter is staying at Wynfield with you. Is that quite proper?”
Minuette smiled frostily. “Do you think that I would do anything at all improper?”
As she rode away, however, she couldn’t ignore her own conscience. It uncomfortably concurred with Emma’s question. Seeing as how I feel about Dominic, being alone with him in a private house isn’t proper at all.
After three weeks at Wynfield, Dominic was still marveling at how Minuette had changed upon her arrival. She had lost none of her brightness and spirit, but the nervous energy that had driven her for months had spun itself out. At Wynfield she had gained serenity, a sense of belonging to a world entirely her own.
Dominic’s own nerves had quieted since his arrival. To look at Minuette without fear or guilt, to not have to watch every word or movement, and, above all, to be entirely free of jealousy, was intoxicatingly liberating. They were not indiscreet, not even in Wynfield’s relative safety, but at least they need not jump every time someone came into view.
Riding next to him, Minuette urged her horse forward a little and cocked her head at Dominic in invitation. But he shook his head, in no hurry today. Tomorrow he would ride out early, back to London and the grinding business of paring down court expenditures, while Minuette prepared for departure to France in two weeks. She had suggested a long outing for this last day, to somewhere she would not name. She wanted it to be a surprise, she said. She had even convinced him to leave Harrington behind, persuading Dominic that the two of them would be perfectly safe together. Also, Fidelis loped along beside the horses, and Dominic was persuaded that gentle as the hound was with Minuette, he would make a formidable weapon if needed. It gave him more pride than he dared admit to see the wolfhound alongside the Spanish horse William had given to Minuette on her seventeenth birthday. She seemed to love both equally.
“There it is,” Minuette said proudly as they reached the crest of a gentle hill.
Following her gaze, Dominic looked down to a small structure, nestled in a stand of beeches that shivered in the light wind, their leaves tossing from green to gold and back again. A round Saxon tower rose at one end of the stone structure.
“It’s a church,” he said. Unnecessarily, for even if Minuette had not known where she was bringing him, it could never have been mistaken for anything else.
She let her breath out impatiently. “An ancient church,” she said, as if that explained everything. She clicked to her horse and moved ahead without another word.
When they reached the copse and the church, Minuette allowed Dominic to help her down, but she kept her chin lifted and did not speak all the while he helped her prepare—shaking out a tapestried coverlet on the grass, unpacking the saddlebags filled with food, tethering the horses. Fidelis watched it all with supreme indifference, as though he caught and mirrored his mistress’s every mood.
When all was readied, Dominic extended his hand to help her sit, but she ignored it. Instead, she sank gracefully down with her dark blue riding skirts spread around her and her back straight and high. She was not truly offended—if she had been, she would be spitting words of fire at him—but he could not figure out quite what she was.
At last he ventured a question. “Am I to be allowed to eat?”
“Not until you apologize.”
“For what?”
She looked at him with perfect gravity. “Mocking my church.”
“You can’t be serious …”
It was her eyes that gave her away, shining with an expression he couldn’t place at first, though it was enough to make him pause. And then her lips curved in a smile, and he knew it for what it was. Minuette was flirting with him.
He felt his heart turn over and let himself enjoy the feel of it. Something so innocent and natural. Something they could never do openly away from this place.
Bowing his head, he matched her grave tone. “I apologize. It’s a perfectly lovely church, though do you not fear we shall offend God by picnicking on his very doorstep?”
She laughed, a
nd Dominic marveled at the effect of it on her face and his pulse. Suddenly, he realized that her laughter in public always had a hint of calculation running beneath it, as if she never stopped thinking and was always aware of the multiple lives tangled up in her heart.
“You needn’t worry,” she replied, handing him a loaf of new-baked bread. “This church is no longer consecrated. It was Catholic … of course it was Catholic, they were all Catholic. But it had not been used for years, so Carrie says, and after the break with Rome it was left empty by the reformers.”
As they ate warm bread and fresh cheese and candied orange peel, Minuette told him a little of the history of the church, garnered from Carrie and Mistress Holly. Dominic didn’t take any of it in, but he enjoyed the sound of her voice rising and falling, the animation in her face and hands as she talked.
When they finished eating, she asked, “Would you care to see inside?”
She allowed him to take her hand and help her up. Any other time and place, he would have moved to offer her his arm, but today he kept her hand. He could feel everything, from her linen blackwork sleeves brushing his wrist to each individual finger wound through his.
The interior of the church was surprisingly attractive, with heraldic windows pouring dusky-hued light into the well-proportioned Norman nave. The altar and a stone font remained, but the rest of the building was stripped of furnishings or decoration. Dominic felt a pang at this evidence of Henry VIII’s ruthless plunder of so many churches.
“Carrie’s mother was married here, even though the church had been long empty by then,” Minuette told him. “Not that it needed to be a church, but I suppose she felt that even an empty church would lend a little grace to the event.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It was a di praesenti marriage.” Minuette’s voice had altered, curiously intense as she spoke with a rapidity that betrayed her nerves. “Not that Carrie knew the Latin term, certainly her parents didn’t, but they understood the principle well enough. As long as they each, of their own will, said ‘I marry thee,’ then the marriage was binding in the eyes of the Church. Carrie’s mother was being pressed to marry someone else, someone her parents favoured. So she simply avoided the fuss of parents and priests and came here with the man she wanted. They made their present vows and that was that. No matter how displeased her family, she was married and it could not be undone.”
An uneasy pause followed, in which Dominic could almost hear the beat of Minuette’s heart, quick and uncertain. She said nothing more.
He let go of her hand and stepped away, turning slowly, taking in every corner of the church from ceiling to floor and back again. Without looking at her, he said, “You and I are not tenant farmers, Minuette. We live by different rules.”
“I thought the court lived by its own rules. Dominic, don’t you ever wish—”
He had to cut her off before she could name any of the many things he wished. “Not like that, my love. I will not take you in secret. I will marry you when William gives his consent and not a moment before.”
It was harsh, because it had to be harsh.
Though he had reveled in being alone with Minuette, there were perils in it as well. One night the first week they had stayed up late playing chess. Dominic was not nearly as good a player as William or Minuette, but the attraction had not really been the game but the chance to sit across from her and watch her breathing and the way the tip of her tongue stuck out when she concentrated. By the time Dominic had lost his fourth game to her, he didn’t care about discretion any longer.
They had kissed in the firelit solitude of the medieval hall until he couldn’t think of anything but the feel of her and how badly he wanted his hands on her skin and not the fabric of her dress, and then Minuette had broken away and said, “The hall is not especially private. Perhaps not the wisest place to …”
She had trailed off and though he thought she meant it invitingly, he couldn’t allow himself to follow that thought or the possible invitation. He had turned away so she might not see how she’d aroused him and said shakily, “Not wise at all. Goodnight, Minuette.”
He had put a chair in front of his own door that night, so that if he tried to go to her, he would be reminded that he shouldn’t. Couldn’t.
They had taken care not to stay up so late again.
But as they rode back to Wynfield from her perfect little abandoned church, he found himself thinking, Tonight is our last night. Perhaps I can allow myself to slip just a little.
A hope that was dashed the moment he saw the royal standard flying from the courtyard of Minuette’s home.
William met them in the hall, springing up from his sprawled position in a chair to hug Minuette fiercely.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding not nearly as rattled as Dominic felt.
“I missed you,” he said into her hair and, after much too long, released her. “The French left two days ago and I couldn’t stay away. Thank goodness Dom is here, for needing to meet urgently with my closest councilor is excellent cover.”
Dominic felt his shutters come down hard and fast. “An urgent treasury affair? Does anyone even pretend to believe that?”
“I didn’t say it was a treasury affair. And yes, it is urgent. I wouldn’t want you to miss the ship to France.”
Minuette stilled and so did Dominic, not daring to hope, as she said to William, “France? Do you mean—”
“Do you think I would send my most precious treasure to France without an appropriate guard? Of course Dom must go with you.”
Dominic swallowed, trying to gain control before speaking. “Nothing like leaving things to the last minute.”
“I like to keep my kingdom guessing. It keeps plotting to a minimum.” William stretched contentedly and looked around the hall. “This is a very pleasant house, Minuette. I approve.”
“Thank you. I must speak to Mistress Holly about dinner and an appropriate guest chamber. She will be a little overwrought and need soothing. Your men will mostly have to sleep in the outbuildings, I’m afraid. It won’t be elaborate, I hope you don’t mind.”
The king caught her hand and raised it to his lips. “I would be content to dine with you in a stable, sweetling.”
William could not remember ever being so happy as he was that night, eating simple food in a simple room with only Dominic and Minuette for company. He should remember this feeling, he decided—perhaps when he married Minuette they could make this house their retreat. Of course it would need to be expanded and modernized. New kitchens and bedchambers for those who would need to attend him. Perhaps a tennis court or a maze or both. He would speak to someone about it and then he could present the plans to Minuette later. For Christmas?
He was so content, that it was a pity Dominic insisted on discussing court matters. Although Dominic was now, rankwise, the equal of Rochford, he had not lost his habit of corresponding with his former guardian, and thus he knew all about the competing sermons that had been preached in London the first Sunday of the French visit.
“I hear Latimer greatly offended the French with his opinions of marriage,” Dominic remarked. “Namely, that you should not marry in respect of alliance.”
“Oh, yes, Latimer was quite eloquent on that matter.” William tore off a piece of bread with restless hands. “Truly, it was as though he spoke straight to my own wishes: ‘for God’s love beware where you marry; choose your wife in a faithful stock.’ I cannot quarrel with that.” He grinned at Minuette, then went on, “Though I’ll admit his timing could have been better.”
“And Bonner spoke in favour of the French marriage.”
“Rather more than that,” William replied wryly. “As no doubt my uncle wrote you. Bonner was careful in his wording, but the bishop left little doubt that he hopes a Catholic wife will lead to Catholic children and thus England might be returned to the so-called true faith.”
“Why do you let Bishop Bonner continue preaching?” Minuette want
ed to know. “He’s going to get himself into trouble.”
William shot a glance at Dominic and read there his knowledge of the trouble that had already come. “He has,” Dominic answered tersely. “Bonner was arrested the day after that sermon.”
Minuette looked to William. “What will happen to him?”
William caressed her cheek. “You need not worry about it, sweetling. Politics and religion are not only troublesome but boring. We will speak of other things.”
Dominic did not miss the mutinous expression that briefly crossed Minuette’s face, but she did not argue. For the duration of dinner they spoke of Minuette’s farms and of the visiting Frenchman who had passed out, dead drunk, in the middle of a state dinner and other trivia until she at last excused herself.
Left alone with Dominic, William stretched out his legs and contemplated his friend. After a long moment, right when expected, Dominic asked, “Why are you sending me to France?” He raised a hand when William opened his mouth. “And don’t tell me it’s solely for Minuette. I know what Bonner really preached. You have need of me here.”
It was true that Bishop Bonner had finally crossed the line from religious disagreement to state treason. His sermon had centered on Mary, still confined at Syon House (for her own protection, William thought of it, keeping her away from those who would use her), but Bonner had inflamed sentiment in favour of his half sister, and with the French marriage not precisely what Catholics hoped for …
“I could easily have Bonner tried for heresy for comparing Mary to the Virgin, but as he’s given us so many other ways to attack?” William shook his head. “He’ll end up executed, Dominic. Latimer intends no mercy. And why should he? Bonner was quick enough to torture and burn Anne Askew at the end of my father’s reign.”
It was true that Bonner had plenty of crimes to account for, but Dominic approached the issue practically. “Can you afford to antagonize the Catholics so openly? They might start imagining that they themselves are not safe in their beliefs.”
The Boleyn Deceit: A Novel (Ann Boleyn Trilogy) Page 14