Chapter 40
Margaretha
Several days passed with no word or looks from the prince, and as I awoke to soft sunlight and the clinking of dishes, I anticipated this day would be no different.
Across the room, Ilsa poured a cup of wine, but the chamber was otherwise empty.
“Where are the other ladies?” I pulled myself to sitting.
Ilsa looked up at the sound of my voice. “All gone to mass.”
“No one bothered to wake me?”
She set the wine jug down and crossed the room to put a tray of food on my lap. “I think they all assumed your nights have been busy and you needed the rest.”
I choked on my wine and was in a fit of coughs when a knock called Ilsa to open the door. Standing outside the room with disheveled hair and his jerkin half unbuttoned was Felipe, looking much altered since our row.
“Your Grace!” I pulled the coverlet up to my shoulders for modesty, knocking over the tray of food and spilling grapes and oatcakes. It earned me his amused smile.
“I was hoping we might speak,” he said.
At my hesitation, he added, “I shall behave, I promise. I only want to talk.”
“Very well. Did you . . . right now?”
He glanced down the corridor and stepped out of the doorway, letting the returning ladies-of-honor file past. Their eyes trailed over his untidy state, and with me still in bed in my chemise, I could easily guess the thoughts inspiring their knowing grins and behind-the-hand snickers.
He gave them a gracious smile, then turned his attention back to me.
“When you’re ready.” He bowed and disappeared into the hall.
While Ilsa dressed me, I lamented Belinda’s absence.
Like the prince, she’d been aloof the last few days, claiming she was working hard for Samuel’s freedom and too busy to see me.
I suspected she still hadn’t forgiven me for botching things with Felipe.
But now with him wishing to speak to me, causing me to hope I might still have a chance to help my brother, I wished Belinda was here to advise me.
Taking a fortifying breath, I joined the prince and his attendants in the corridor. He shrugged away from the wall, offering his arm, and I found it strange touching him again with my feelings so conflicted.
“I’ve missed you, Margaretha,” he said, his voice quiet as we turned our way down the turret stairs. “I haven’t slept well or thought clearly since we parted.”
“If you were so troubled, why stay away? Why send me no word?”
He looked down at my hand on his arm and covered it with his own. “I needed time. To decide what to do. To speak to my father. I toyed with the idea of forgetting you entirely.” He gave an embarrassed chuckle. “But it wasn’t possible.”
“You’ve spoken with your father? You asked if we might marry?” My stomach twisted into anxious knots. “What did he say?”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw and let out a long breath. “Everything I’d predicted and more.”
A wave of relief overtook me, but I chided myself for such self-interest. Samuel fell further into danger every day. “I wonder why the kaiser doesn’t release my brother and send us both home if he’s so keen to keep you and me apart.”
“Father knows me better than that. I won’t give you up so easily, and the harder he works to separate us, the more determined I’ll be to keep you.” Felipe’s voice was taut, but then it softened. “Though after your censure the other night, I’m not sure you still want me.”
My hesitation lasted a beat too long, but I used a swallow as excuse. “I do.”
He tucked my hand deeper in the crook of his arm, pulling me close, and I was grateful for the warmth as we strolled past the frost-covered statues in the gallery.
“Margaretha, I know my father will never agree to our marriage. He’d sooner have one of his bastard sons on the throne than a Lutheran empress at my side.
I fear for you. I fear the harm that may come if you persist on this course, and I beg you”—he stopped to face me, taking both my hands in his—“abandon your schemes of marriage. Admit that constancy of affection is the only true union of two souls. It needs no sanction from pope or emperor.”
So he was pressing forward on that selfish tract, was he? “And I’m to feel this constancy of affection while I share my bed with another woman’s husband?”
“Whip me for a villain, you think me so base! I’ve no love for Mary Tudor. It’s she who steals her way into your husband’s chambers. It’s she you should abhor, not me. I have no part in it.”
“Felipe.” I shook my head over our clasped hands. “If it’s real love you feel for me, don’t ask this of me. Free my brother and . . .” I hesitated, adding with caution, “and let me go.” When I lifted my face to meet his gaze, his expression was clouded with confusion.
“Let you go? You censure me for fickleness, then tell me to forget you? You call that fitful, irregular, capricious thing love?” He dropped my hands, chuckling without humor.
“Margaretha, to be with me would injure no one. You haven’t even your own reputation left to protect.
The courtiers all murmur that you are my mistress; your name and honor are sullied and paraded about without any regard for you.
What care you for their condemnation? Care for me,” he pleaded.
I needed to put him off a little longer, to give the kaiser time to change his mind, or give Samuel the time to miraculously recover, or give space for any other unlikely and utterly impossible occurrence to save me from this fate. “I’ll consider it.”
Looping my arm with his once again, I directed us back through the gallery.
“Very well,” he answered. “I only pray you don’t lay blame at my door when your delays cost the young comitem his life.”