Chapter Thirteen
Getting the women out of France was even worse than getting them there in the first place.
They were fewer than half in number: only Lady Rochford, Elizabeth, Minuette, and their attendants.
The young girls remained at the French court to serve in Elisabeth de France’s household.
But the women who departed were all of them difficult.
Lady Rochford was restless and discontented at leaving the French court (or perhaps at having to return to her husband), and Elizabeth was at her most exacting and capricious.
Minuette refused to speak to him at all, which he did not find surprising, for when they left Fontainebleau she was wretched from the aftereffects of immoderate drinking.
Good, Dominic thought. She will not make that mistake again.
So he had let her alone, and letting her alone became easier the farther they traveled and the quieter she remained.
She rode in a carriage with Lady Rochford until they reached the Seine, not once joining Elizabeth on horseback, and on the river she always contrived to be in a different barge than he was.
They spent one night in Harfleur, Dominic rounding the garrison and making notes on their readiness against possible French incursions in future.
Harfleur, Le Havre, and Calais were all that remained of England’s once vast holdings in France, and Dominic did not mean to lose them through any oversight of his.
They took ship at Le Havre and Minuette went below before they’d even lost sight of the coast. He stared after her bleakly, wondering if she ever meant to speak to him again, wondering how he was supposed to apologize for a most private matter when they were always in public.
Elizabeth came noiselessly beside him and, with her characteristic insight, observed, “You’ll have to settle this before we return to court. William will want to know why you two are quarreling. I know you don’t want to tell him she got drunk and slapped you.”
“You don’t think someone else will report it?” Dominic said savagely. “Lady Rochford is no friend of Minuette, and surely your uncle has informants in France.”
She shrugged, steady on her feet despite the rolling of the ship’s deck. “My brother can ignore everyone but you. Fix it, Dominic. Otherwise, he will be displeased.”
At the moment, he didn’t particularly care if William were displeased. In fact, he was tired of everything being about William all the time. But for his own sake he desperately wanted this fixed, so he went below and knocked on Minuette’s door.
Carrie opened it. “May I speak with her?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, my lord, she is resting and does not wish to be disturbed.”
She smiled helplessly, as though in sympathy with him but bound to follow her mistress’s orders. Dominic swore under his breath as she closed the door in his face.
Elizabeth must have appreciated his attempt—or at least recognized he was out of his depth—because she took the matter out of his hands once they landed at Dover.
There were royal men and horses at Dover Castle prepared to ride on with them the next morning, but Elizabeth took Dominic aside.
“My aunt and I will be quite all right now. I thought you might like to visit your mother, since we are somewhat near Maidstone. Take Minuette with you.”
He would have protested, but in a move remarkably like William, she simply walked away. Knowing the folly of arguing with a Tudor, Dominic set his jaw and had Harrington arrange horses for a separate small party.
Minuette, however, was prepared to argue with the princess. The next morning, when Dominic approached them in the courtyard of Dover Castle, he heard her say sharply, “I do not need to be sent off like a child because you think I’m in a temper.”
“Then prove you’re not a child and do what I ask.” Elizabeth’s reply had the ring of royal steel in it. “I will make it an order if I must.”
Minuette whirled so suddenly that she stumbled into Dominic.
He put a hand out to steady her. It was the closest they’d been since that last night at Fontainebleau, and her eyes held more than anger and disdain—though those were present.
But there were also tears, like a deep well that has been troubled by a stone and not yet come to rest.
“Minuette,” he said beseechingly, and his tone must have warned her of his wish to take her in his arms right here, princess and royal guards be damned.
“Not here, Dominic.” She lifted her chin and her eyes blazed with fury. “People will talk.”
And so they rode together to his mother’s home, Dominic not sure which fears to focus on: his mad mother, his need to set things straight with Minuette, his duty to return to William and persuade him of the importance of the French marriage …
He’d once worried about his mother burning the house down around him. Tonight he would almost welcome it. At least it would be a distraction.
In preparation for dinner, Carrie brought Minuette a simple gown of moss green with embroidered cream flowers. Minuette shook her head. “I need something more … elaborate.” As armour, she meant.
“I’m sorry, mistress, it’s what there is. Most of your things went on to court with the princess.”
She searched Carrie’s guileless face and knew that her maid wanted her vulnerable tonight. Fine, she would prove that she could hold her own without finery and jewels. And since when do I need to hold my own against Dominic? she thought, a little forlornly.
Of course Carrie was right, for more reasons than one.
When Minuette joined the table, she knew that she would have been wildly inappropriate dressed as a court lady.
Dominic’s mother, Philippa, wore a simple dress of midnight blue and no jewelry except a rosary that her son tactfully ignored.
It had a familiar look to it, and Minuette wondered if, like her mother’s, it had been a gift from the late Queen Anne.
Philippa Boleyn Courtenay had been Anne’s cousin, and as young girls they had been very close.
Before Philippa’s unhappy marriage and Anne’s turn to Henry and Protestantism.
There was also a clerk at dinner, a man named Michael, dressed with equal soberness.
A skillful conversationalist, he had traveled extensively in Europe and entertained them with stories of scholars and sailors.
Dominic, as usual, spoke little and seemed absorbed in watching his mother.
Philippa appeared a little distracted and unworldly but not dangerous.
Until she brought up a dangerous subject. “I see you took care to be out of the country when your king burned a saint,” she said to her son.
Bonner was dead? Minuette opened her mouth in surprise, but Dominic cut her off. “Bonner was no saint, Mother. He preached treason, and would gladly have practiced it at any opportunity.”
“Men aren’t burned for treason, but for heresy. How could God not strike down your king for this? William is the heretic! Denying the presence of Christ, daring to take on himself the power of God. Your king—”
“He is your king as well, Mother. He’s the one who allows you this home, the clothes you wear, the food you eat. You would do well to remember that.”
“I would be damned if I acknowledge him as my king. Mary should have the throne. And she will when the world is set right.”
“Do you have anything to say to this?” Dominic demanded of Michael, who had listened with a closed-off expression.
He looked at Dominic mildly enough, but something in his eyes shook Minuette, and suddenly she realized what she should have seen before—Michael was no clerk. “The wicked take the truth to be hard,” the priest—for that he surely was—murmured.
“You will watch your words, and ensure my mother watches hers, or I will see to it that you are put out of England for good.”
Michael almost smiled. “You are not hard enough for the quarrels of religion, Lord Exeter. You have not studied your king so well to learn that.”
Philippa rose abruptly. Leaning down to take Minuette’s face in her hands, she rasped urgently, “My son is hard, though, child. Don’t you mistake it. The Courtenay men are all of them hard. His love will crush the life right out of you.” Her eyes glittered unnervingly.
“Mother!”
The priest intervened. “I’ll take her to her chambers. Come along, Philippa.”
He led her away and suddenly it was just Minuette and Dominic, and she knew the moment had come for confrontation.
Trembling, she braced herself for his recriminations about her drinking and her appalling behavior that last night at the French court.
She also braced herself to be angry about Aimée coming from his bed, but she was unprepared for what Dominic said first, or how he said it.
“My mother is right, you know. You have ample cause to regret that I fell in love with you.”
At once, her anger dissolved into bewilderment and hurt. “Do you mean that you are regretting having fallen in love with me?”
“Unlike you, Minuette, I mean exactly what I say.”
Oh, here came anger again. With a vengeance. “What are you implying?”
“I have watched you with William, and I have heard him speak of you, and I know that he has not the slightest doubt you love him. And I honestly don’t know if that is a result of his own delusions, or a measure of your ability to dissemble, or the simple fact that you are truly in love with him.”
“So this is my fault,” she said, feeling a stab of pain behind her right eye. “You think I’m a liar—to William or to you or perhaps both. That would be convenient for you because, if I am false, then what does it matter whom you take to bed?”
He flinched and she was savagely glad of it. “I did not take Aimée to bed.”
“Really? So it is only in public corridors that you kiss a woman while completely naked?”
“I did not sleep with her,” he said stubbornly. “She caught me unawares while I was asleep and I put her out at once.”