Chapter Fourteen #4
Minuette stared as Eleanor swept away. What was she implying—that Minuette was in actual peril?
That was absurd. Beyond Elizabeth and Dominic, no one knew for certain that William wished to marry her.
Minuette shook her head and went back to her rooms, convincing herself as she went that Eleanor’s words had been nothing more than an attempt to rattle her.
Robert’s words, though, had been meant to do more than that.
Combined with her stepfather’s insinuations and her own increasing uneasiness with the Dudley men’s alibis, how could she not perceive it as a threat?
But how could she believe that Robert, a man she’d known since childhood, actually meant her harm?
Carrie met her at the door to her chamber with a note in Dominic’s familiar handwriting.
He wrote that he would meet her in the gardens as soon as she could be there.
Though there had been tension between them since his mother’s house, just the thought of seeing him lightened her mood.
Compared to the murky depths of court politics, Dominic was like a refreshing dose of clear water.
She would tell him everything and welcome his opinion.
She briefly considered changing clothes, but she didn’t want to waste the time.
At the last moment her gaze fell on the star pendant lying neatly on the dressing table.
She hadn’t worn it since leaving the French court, and had laid it away in the small, locked casket that kept her few valuable pieces.
Carrie must have pulled it out for some reason.
Perhaps it was a hint from her discreet maid. Well, she would take the hint.
It took her three tries to catch the clasp blindly, but at last it settled into place, the filigreed star nestling into the hollow of her throat. With footsteps as light as her heart, Minuette went down the stairs, through the courtyards, and into the gardens.
She saw Dominic, dark and watchful near the fountains, and increased her pace.
At the last moment Elizabeth decided it was too hot to go hawking with William and the French ambassador.
She was practicing with her lute master when Robert Dudley appeared in her presence chamber.
Although she was still annoyed with him in proxy for his family, it was hard to remember that when she saw him.
He was such a familiar presence—both comforting and arousing—a reminder of herself as Elizabeth first and a princess second.
She finished the lute arrangement of her father’s song, “Pastyme with Good Company,” then waved Robert to join her near the window while the lute master took her instrument and bowed himself away.
“You’re looking terrifyingly solemn,” she remarked. “What dreadful crisis has brought you to that?”
He hesitated, as though deciding which flippant response to give. Then he settled on truth. “I expect to be an uncle within a fortnight.”
“I know.” Margaret Clifford was hugely pregnant.
She remained confined to the Tower, as was Guildford Dudley, though the two of them were kept strictly apart.
She didn’t need Robert to elaborate on the solemnity—if Margaret’s child was a son, it would be the first boy born in the royal line since William.
A Protestant boy, thus less dangerous than a Catholic one, but no doubt there would be treacherous whispers about moving him up in the line of succession.
At the least, a boy would give Northumberland, as the child’s grandfather, a good deal too much power.
Elizabeth added, “You know William has moved to annul the marriage.”
“And you know that isn’t always an answer. Your father kept Mary in the line of succession despite the dissolution of his marriage to Catherine.”
“That’s not going to happen here,” she warned. “If it’s a boy, the council will ensure he has no legal claim at all.”
Robert shrugged and leaned back, but there was an underlying anxiety to his movements.
“That’s not really my concern. I am not interested in maneuvering five steps from the throne for a shadow of a possibility that will never come to pass.
Your brother will marry and produce any number of sons.
And I will be glad of it, for your sake. ”
“You do not think I could rule England if called upon?” she demanded, piqued.
There was his lightning-quick grin. “You could rule England better than any twenty men I know. But is that the life you would choose—always answering to others? Never doing something merely because you wish it?”
“William does any number of things merely because he wishes it.”
“William is a king, and you, my dear, would be a queen. A ruling queen, but a woman nonetheless. You know the expectations would be vastly different.”
“And entirely theoretical. As you point out, no doubt William will have sons and to spare.”
But would he? Their father, virile and powerful as he’d been, hadn’t.
William had already fathered one daughter.
And she remembered John Dee, studying her palm last winter, promising something that she’d been afraid to grasp at, afraid to know, so that she’d snatched her hand away at the last moment rather than see it …
“Truly, Your Highness, I did not come to discuss our brothers, at least not directly. My mother has written and asked me to remind you that you promised to consider visiting Dudley Castle this autumn. It would please her greatly if you consented.”
“Please her?” she asked archly.
And now his other smile, the intimate, private one that Elizabeth hoped she alone ever saw.
Surely he didn’t smile at his wife this way?
“Do I need to tell you how it would please me?” he whispered.
“There are so many ways …” He leaned in, until she could feel his breath on her cheek.
“Perhaps you will let me enumerate them one at a time when you are in my home.”
William won’t want me to go, she thought. Not with the crisis looming over Guildford and Margaret. But I’ve done any number of things I don’t want to please him.
“I’ll come,” she said softly. “But don’t tell the king. I’ll work it out myself.”
She closed her eyes as lips brushed her cheek.
Just as she shivered, there was a tumult across the room.
Her eyes flew open as Robert drew back and shot to his feet.
Dominic was pushing his way through the door, carrying someone in his arms and his voice strained beyond recognition. “She needs a physician. Now.”
When Elizabeth saw the bright gold hair spilling over Dominic’s arm, her heart turned over in fear.
Dominic paced the length of Elizabeth’s presence chamber for the agonizingly long minutes until the physician’s arrival.
The man was taken straight through to the princess’s bedchamber, where Minuette lay with labored breath and slowing heart.
Dominic could still feel each beat of it as he’d rested his palm against her chest …
It had taken him agonizing moments to realize something was wrong.
When she approached him in the gardens, he’d seen only what he always saw—her hair shining in the patchy sunlight, the lightness of her walk, and the star pendant circling her long, white neck.
But when she drew near enough, he saw the crease between her eyebrows, as if she were worried or in pain.
“Are you hurt?” He reached instinctively to touch her, but stopped.
“No, I …” She put a hand to her chest. “I’m just having a hard time catching my breath.”
Dominic led her to the nearest bench and made her sit. He knelt before her and studied her face. “Are you ill?”
“No, it’s just a momentary weakness. It will pass.”
Minuette had never suffered a momentary weakness in her life. Dominic was debating whether to get her inside when she gave a breathless little cry. “I feel odd, like tingling in my chest. But my skin is numb. I can’t feel my throat.”
Heedless of decorum, Dominic put his palm to her bare skin, between her throat and the neckline of her gown.
He felt her heartbeat, and his fear grew.
It was slow—too slow. What was wrong with her?
There’d been no recent cases of sweating sickness or plague and he couldn’t think of another illness that could come on this fast.
Through his worry he could feel his mind trying to tell him something. Something not right. As he pulled his hand away, he realized that the tips of his fingers were tingling. Minuette had said her chest was tingling. I can’t feel my throat.
This was no illness.
“Oh, God,” he prayed. Poison, it must be poison. And if it had gotten on his fingers, it must be on her somehow, absorbing through the skin.
The pendant. He had brushed against the pendant when he put his hand to her chest—he remembered the feel of the star against his fingertips.
He wrenched the pendant off her in one sharp movement. Dropping it to the ground, Dominic swung her up into his arms. She was awake and aware, but she was focused only on breathing, on the effort needed to draw in breath after breath.
“Where is she?” Carrie’s voice pulled him back to his surroundings. Carrie looked as though she had run to Elizabeth’s chambers. Her normally neat presence was betrayed by red cheeks and the locks of hair that had slipped from beneath her linen coif.
“She’s in the princess’s bed. The physician is with her.”
When Carrie had vanished within, Dominic forced himself to think. He should retrieve the pendant. Before whoever had poisoned it had a chance to get rid of it.