Chapter 14 #2
His humor was grim, and I studied him quietly.
“Let it rest easy on your pillow tonight.” I lightly patted the head in question, finding springy russet hair.
“Although I must say, having slept here the past two nights, that while Elizabeth has awarded you privacy, she must have given you the most uncomfortable bed in the place.”
Colby’s brows went up. “You slept here?”
“I had no way of knowing when you would return, and I was too weary to make my way to my own chamber. No matter, I aired the bedding each morning, so you have no cause to worry.”
“I’d not worry over that.” Colby’s blue eyes fixed on me. “We must invent a better way of keeping you informed that will not endanger your reputation.”
I rose, my cold limbs stiff. “There is no danger in that regard. No one notices what seamstress Eloise does. That is why you chose me to help you, is it not?”
“One of the reasons,” Colby said quietly.
We shared a long look that I could not interpret. He did not rise, as a gentleman should when a lady got to her feet, but his tallness meant I easily met his gaze.
I flashed him a sunny smile as he stared at me, and then left the room for the overly cold passages of Ashridge in December.
Colby disappeared again a few days after that, and I saw nothing more of him for a long while. I reported our conversation to Elizabeth, who listened without a flicker of emotion.
She ordered me, once I finished, to never say anything aloud about it again.
Also, I was to keep everything I knew from Aunt Kat.
I agreed. After the debacle with Seymour, we could not rely on Aunt Kat not to chatter in the excited way she had, wishing to prove to others she knew something they did not.
We spent a quiet Christmas season at Ashridge which led into a dark and cold January. Mary sent Elizabeth religious books, chasubles for her priests, and ornaments for her altar. Elizabeth packed them away and never looked at them.
Mary held lavish entertainments to celebrate Christmas and Epiphany while Elizabeth seethed, knowing Margaret Douglas would be at Mary’s side.
“All will be pitying me,” she said with irritation one evening as we faced each other over a chessboard.
“Or they are gloating. The shunned bastard sister festers in the country, while Margaret plays the virginals and smiles at the queen. Margaret, Countess of Lennox, once sent to the Tower for behaving like a wanton. A plotter and a schemer is Margaret. Now she is the favorite of the queen.” Elizabeth abruptly seized the white marble queen from the board and hurled it into the flickering hearth fire. “Fine company my sister keeps.”
I forbore to remind Elizabeth that she’d loathed being at Mary’s court so much that she’d begged for permission to leave. I feared one of the heavy chessmen would be fired at me if I mentioned it. “Things might be different, come spring,” I said.
Elizabeth’s temper did not ease, though she pitched her voice so only I could hear. “God save me from plotting men. Plans can go wrong, and here I sit, unable to direct them, a helpless pawn.” The chess piece in question flew across the room to splinter against a wall.
Her ladies looked up from their embroidery, but wisely said nothing and resumed stitching.
Earlier that day, a message had come to Elizabeth from one of her gentlemen, Thomas Wyatt, who’d encouraged her to move to Donnington, an estate she owned, carefully not saying why.
“Ridiculous,” Elizabeth had said to me. “How would it look if I fled Ashridge now? Guilty. I must sit here as though I know nothing, as though I am utterly astonished that anyone in the realm could move against the queen. I will wait and do as I see cause.”
She had begun to write as much in a letter to Wyatt, but before she’d penned more than two words, I stopped her with the extreme caution I’d developed since the Seymour affair.
“Easy to deny a spoken word, Your Grace,” I’d said. “But if anything goes wrong, and a letter by you to Wyatt is found …”
“You have become devious, Eloise.” Elizabeth had immediately risen from her writing desk and burned the sheet. “And cleverer than you ought to be. But I believe you advise well. Say no more of this.”
I assured her of my silence, and she sent one of her ushers to Wyatt with a message so banal that no one but the conspirators would be able to make anything of it.
Now, Elizabeth leaned over the chessboard to me, bitterness in her voice. “The trouble with being the second person in the realm is that there are those constantly plotting to make you the first. So that you will reward them well, of course.”
“Not Colby,” I said quickly. “He understands the damage Mary’s marriage will do to the kingdom. He knows that the best person for England is you.”
“Guard your tongue,” Elizabeth said curtly, but she did not look angry. She serenely set up the chess pieces again, though how we were to play without her pawn or my queen I did not know. “These are things women would not think to discuss.”
“Of course, you are correct, Your Grace,” I responded with a nod. “Forgive me.”
“I would, though, devise a way in which I might speak to these men. Writing, as you say, is too perilous.”
“Colby is trustworthy,” I said with great assurance. I’d come to believe in him.
“Indeed, I believe he is, but he can be in only so many places at once.”
She frowned at the chessboard, and I leaned to her, excited I could at last contribute something practical.
“I have had ideas about that,” I said. “I would be honored to use them to assist you, Your Grace.”
“What ideas?” Elizabeth’s eyes glittered as they did when she was adamant about something.
In a low voice I described what I’d pondered when Aunt Kat had been in the Tower, and I’d longed to communicate with Elizabeth.
No one thought anything of me stitching in corners and showing Elizabeth my work.
Sewing messages blatantly into fabric could be found and interpreted, but I’d devised a sort of code using short and long stitches, or knots or edging, each of which could represent certain letters or phrases.
In the few years between the first concept and now, I’d developed the code into what I thought would be most useful.
Elizabeth grew as eager as she listened and agreed my scheme would work, though she wanted a hand in perfecting it.
We drew back from the discussion and composed ourselves, resuming the game of chess, but her confidence had returned.
“You speak of Master Colby much,” Elizabeth said as she moved a knight to intercept one of my bishops. “Are you in love with him?”
I started, dragging my mind from the intriguing business of ciphers. “In love? Goodness no, Your Grace. I do like Colby, though. He is sensible.”
Elizabeth very carefully removed her fingers from the knight. “Because I could not do without you, Eloise.”
So she’d said to me at Richmond after she’d seen me dance with Colby. “I have no intention of leaving, Your Grace,” I answered with all sincerity.
“My affection for you is too strong,” Elizabeth continued in a hard monotone. “And I would be broken-hearted to lose you to marriage.”
“No fear of that,” I assured her.
The wrong husband, I had learned from watching Jane Grey and now Mary, could land a woman in a world of trouble.