The Virgin's Spy (10 page)

Just as well, as her proposal was meant for an older man.

“How was Ireland?” she began after she'd seated herself and invited Kit to do the same. She had chosen not to use her canopy of estate, in order to lessen the formality, but her chair was still heavily carved and gilded. Though Kit had known her all his life, he did no more than perch on the edge of his seat as though ready to jump up at a moment's notice. Or perhaps he was only that eager to escape her.

In answer to her question, he began, “Stephen hasn't said much—”

“I don't mean Carrigafoyle or what followed with your brother. I meant yourself. Did you enjoy your time with Lord Leicester? Make yourself useful?”

“If you find it useful to parry wits with a woman like Eleanor Percy.” Ah, there was the impulsive boy she knew and loved.

“Your mother used to do that very well—so well, in fact, I wager Eleanor has never forgotten it. You must watch yourself with her. She has no love for the Courtenays.”

“She had no need to trouble herself with me in Ireland, not when she had an earl to charm.”

“Eleanor Percy and my own Black Tom?” Elizabeth did not like that at all. Surely the Earl of Ormond was too canny a man to fall for Eleanor's tricks.

But men had been falling for her tricks ever since she'd charmed the late king. Elizabeth had thought her brother a fool then. Time had not changed her opinion of the woman.

This was not a subject to discuss with a curious boy. Elizabeth forcibly returned to the subject at hand. “I did not mean to inquire about women in Ireland. I meant your time as…what was your position? Seneschal? Clerk?”

“Secretary,” he said stiffly. “I learned a great deal.”

“And were bored out of your mind by three-quarters of it.”

For the first time since entering, Kit's face brightened. “Closer to four-fifths.”

“Then it's as well that what I need you for now is nothing like being a secretary.”

He had his mother's lightheartedness—and his father's wariness. “Your Majesty, I cannot imagine any royal task for which I would be fitted—”

“I'm not asking you to imagine. I'm asking you to listen.”

She could see the flicker of fear subsumed by stubbornness and knew he was afraid she was going to order him to Anabel's household. Elizabeth had a general awareness of why that would be troublesome—an awareness she had not wished to explore deeply—and wasn't bothered about using it against him.

“Some years ago—far longer ago than I truly care to examine—my uncle, Lord Rochford, trained your father as a personal envoy. Everyone thought Dominic a most unusual choice, considering that his strengths have always been of the straightforward variety. Your father despises politics and officials in almost equal measure. Which was precisely why he made such an effective envoy. People were blinded by what they knew of him, which made them careless. Expectations are such a useful tool.”

If she had been anyone else, Elizabeth was certain Kit would have been on his feet by now, demanding that she either get to the point or leave him alone. But he managed to swallow his instinctive reactions. “What is it you expect of me, Your Majesty?”

“Mary Stuart, lately our reluctant guest, has given birth to twin sons to the King of Spain. I am preparing gifts, and I require envoys to present them.”

“You have ambassadors for such a task.”

“And intelligencers and diplomats…of course I do. And of course those men are going. But I also need a friendly face for Philip to welcome. He is looking for something more personal from England, considering that his sons are also half brothers to the Princess of Wales. I propose you travel to Spain next spring, after spending the winter being trained as my envoy by Lord Burghley.”

“You're using me to make King Philip think that his daughter is truly congratulatory.”

“I am using you to make Philip think that his daughter truly misses him. He knows you, Christopher. He never forgets those who surround his daughter and he is perfectly aware of your particular closeness to Anabel.” Using her pet name was a gamble, designed to make Kit soften. “Philip will expect that you are there simply to be friendly. And while he is blinded by your—innocence, shall we say?—some things might be let slip.”

She'd expected one of two reactions. Either he would continue to protest his uselessness or he would flat-out refuse.

But Kit surprised her—which was probably why she liked him so much. “When do I report to Lord Burghley?” he asked, and his smile was a perfect match to his mother's most impulsive, most dangerous, smiles.

Anabel had expected to remain in Ludlow for some weeks after her investiture, but with the news from Ireland, she had chosen to follow her mother back to London. Taking up residence for the first time at Charterhouse—where Lord Rochford had both lived and died—she waited. Her household kept her very well informed; she knew to the day when Kit arrived at court and knew to the hour when he met with her mother. She even had a fairly good idea of what the queen was asking of him. And because she knew Kit, she knew he would say yes.

What Anabel didn't know was if he would come to see her of his own accord.

He did, a nicely judged two days after his audience with her mother. Though she considered herself nothing if not meticulously prepared for every eventuality, her heartbeat quickened a little when Madalena announced, “Lord Christopher Courtenay.”

Madalena Arias had been part of Anabel's life as long as she could remember. At the age of ten, Madalena was chosen by King Philip to leave her native Spain and come to England to serve his young daughter. Raised in wealth and luxury in Seville, Madalena had grown into an exotic beauty thanks to her mixed heritage of aristocratic Spanish blood and a Moorish grandmother. But she seemed to have no life beyond serving Anabel, a fact that occasionally bothered the princess but just as quickly was pushed aside. If Madalena wanted anything, she had only to ask. It wasn't Anabel's job to pull ambition out of her.

The princess received Kit as no doubt her mother had, seated in royal state with her own coat of arms as Princess of Wales on the canopy over her chair. She always dressed with care, and was cross to catch herself wondering if Kit liked the peacock blue shade of her gown.

In just the few steps needed to stand before her and bow, Anabel thought Kit had aged far more than just the four months they'd been separated. For the first time she caught sight of him as a stranger might, rather than simply the boy she'd known all her life. She could also see the man he would be—in perhaps a far shorter time than she'd expected. Everyone thought him so like Minuette, but there was nothing soft or warm about his stance. Only his hazel eyes were familiar.

At least his voice had not changed. “You look well, Your Highness. Suitably royal.”

“It's all stagecraft, you know that. The dress, the setting, the arrogance—”

“Oh, no. The arrogance is all yours.”

And just like that they were grinning at each other as though nothing uncomfortable had ever happened between them. It made it easier for Anabel to ask, “So you've agreed to go to Spain at my mother's request?”

“The queen requested. But I did not agree for her sake. I did it for yours.”

“You think I am so anxious to send you away? As I recall, you were the one who declined to serve in my household.”

“I think that there might be things you would truly like to convey to your father that you would not feel comfortable confiding to professional diplomats. They see him only as the King of Spain. I see him, first and always, as your father.”

Damn Kit. There was no one in the world who could burrow into her secrets half as easily. Except, of course, Pippa. Because being so easily read annoyed and agitated her in equal measure, Anabel rose from her seat and began to pace. Kit continued to stand solidly where he'd begun. Watching her. She could feel him watching her, as though his gaze were as tangible as silk.

When had he learned to be still?

“My father has two new children to concern himself with. Two new sons. It is surely what he wanted. Now he can safely consign me to the fiery Catholic hell awaiting.”

“Your brothers,” Kit said unexpectedly.

“What?”

“His sons are your half brothers, Anabel. Now you at last have siblings of your own. I know you always wished for them.”

“Only until I was old enough to realize that I've had siblings all along. I've had you—all of you.”

“Anabel—”

“I have no need to be loved by two babies who will be raised to hate me and all I stand for—if not by our mutual father, then certainly by their mother. Mary Stuart will never let her sons forget how England kept her prisoner. She will raise them to take vengeance.”

“Is that the message you wish me to carry?”

“I have prepared gifts for the boys, and a personal letter to my father. I should like to ensure that he is given it without interference from any diplomats or clerics, English or Spanish.” She turned to face him, startled to realize he'd moved closer without her hearing. She could see the ring of green that circled and bled into the gold of his eyes.

“Will you do that for me?” she asked, feeling more vulnerable than she liked.

He was close enough to touch, though he didn't. Quite. His hand came up and hovered at her throat, where she wore the enameled green panther on a black velvet ribbon, then dropped to his side. “I am yours to command.”

“I'm not commanding. I am asking.”

When the corners of his mouth tipped up, she had to stop herself from touching the dimples that formed. What was wrong with her? She was never this…whatever this was. She was always, perfectly and absolutely, in control of herself.

“I will go to Spain. For your sake, Anabel, no one else's.”

It was the first time he'd called her by name since entering, and she thought she might cry from the tone of it. Or laugh. Or slap him on the arm to stop him from sounding so…intimate.

It was a very good thing, she decided at that moment, that Kit was going as far away from her as possible. That would give her time to flirt with the Duc d'Anjou and charm the Scots ambassador and, in general, do everything she could to remember that it was her hand and her future crown at stake in the marriage market.

Not her heart.

S
omehow Stephen made it through the days by sheer force of will. He was disciplined and trained and self-controlled and his Somerset estates were run with care and efficiency. But force of will could not control the nights.

Only weeks after leaving Ireland did Stephen realize that he'd expected time to make it better. Surely he couldn't continue to dream night after night about what had happened, reliving his men's fall, the prisoners' slaughter, Roisin's death, Harrington…

But he did continue to dream. When winter arrived at Farleigh Hungerford in force in early December, Stephen had not slept more than two hours at a time since Ireland, with no sign of reprieve. He had left Wynfield Mote so his family wouldn't realize that his state of mind was much worse than the injuries to his body, hoping that being away from the living reminders of his failure—not having to see the widowed Carrie and fatherless Matthew every day—would allow him to grow numb. But again, numbness was only something he could control during the day.

So he did what countless men before him had done—he drank. Heavily and indiscriminately. If his steward and household servants were concerned, he made sure they had no legitimate cause for complaint by concentrating ferociously on his work. The harvest was accomplished, the estate ledgers balanced, his tenants and servants healthy insofar as he could provide, and his soldiers well drilled. What could they say? That he looked unhappy? That where before he had been unfailingly polite, even kind, to those around him, now he was abrupt? Those were not sins, not even legitimate failings. His household said nothing to him, even when they must have been counting the number of bottles he got through in a week.

He was not afraid of his household or his men. And those he was afraid of kept well away from him. Until he received a letter from his sister, Lucette, announcing that she and Julien intended to spend Christmas at Farleigh Hungerford with him.

He stared at the letter for a long time, considering. Only Lucie would have dared to announce rather than ask. And unlike his other correspondents, she did not lace her letter with concerns about his health or well-being. She simply said that their parents, in an unprecedented move, had agreed to spend Christmas at court. “Because Pippa has been missing Anabel,” she wrote, “and Kit is still in London preparing to sail to Spain in the spring.”

As Julien, Lucette continued, was not comfortable with spending Christmas at the English court, they would come to Stephen instead.

Stephen might have forbidden her, if he hadn't known she would just go ahead and come anyway. And if this was the family's plan to see how he was doing, better Lucie on her own than all of them at once. He wrote back to his sister, just two lines, and said she would be made as welcome as a single man's household could make her.

That night he drained twice the usual amount of wine.

Lucette and Julien arrived five days before Christmas, and Stephen nearly lost control at his first sight of them. He watched from an upper window as Julien helped Lucie out of the coach. Instead of simply handing her out, he put his arms around her waist to swing her out and held her tightly to him so he could kiss her. Lucie's hands were in Julien's hair as he teased her with light kisses at the corner of her mouth and along the line of her jaw. Stephen could almost hear his sister's breathless laughter.

Their joy was sickening.

He allowed his steward to greet them and get them settled into the suite carefully prepared by his household. But he couldn't avoid them forever. Better to meet Lucie on his own terms rather than wait for her to waylay him. So he made his way to the Lady Tower, where he'd installed them at a safe distance from where he slept, and knocked twice for warning on the frame of the open door.

At least Lucie didn't fly to him, or hug him or stare at him or anything he could not have borne. But nor did she look abashed at inviting herself to Farleigh Hungerford; clearly her joy ran too deep for anything but surface concern. All the better for him.

Julien, on the other hand, watched him warily, and Stephen wondered what the Frenchman thought he might do. Yell at Lucie? Order them to leave? There was protectiveness in every line of his body, and Stephen didn't relish coming up against Julien in a dispute.

But there would be no disputes. If there was one thing the Courtenays knew how to do, it was behave properly.

Stephen took the first step, striding to his sister and lifting her hand for a light kiss. “I hope your journey was not too taxing.”

“The cold at least makes the roads easier to navigate. You look…” She could not bring herself to openly lie and say
You look well,
and settled instead for the ambiguous, “better…You have healed?”

“I can breathe without feeling my ribs piercing my insides. The arm is still a little weak—the arms master has ordered me to switch sword hands for a while in order to strengthen it.”

“I can help with that,” Julien offered. “It's a handy skill, in any case, being able to use both hands.”

Before there could be any awkward silences, Stephen said smoothly, “I'll leave you to rest and change. My cook is overjoyed to have visitors—no doubt the kitchens will provide enough food for twenty. I'll see you then.”

He escaped to his own chamber, hands trembling. This was going to be harder than he'd thought. Just two minutes with his sister and part of his mind was shouting that he couldn't do this, she would see right through him, how was he ever going to cope for a fortnight or more without drinking? His household might hold their peace, but Lucie would not be so circumspect. She would task him with it, and then, more likely than not, would go straight to their parents.

He forced himself to breathe in and out slowly, the chaos of his mind forced back into the shadowy corners where his memories usually lurked during the day. Then he poured himself a drink from the bottle of malmsey. He relished the sweet, sharp taste and told himself,
I don't have to stop drinking entirely. Just control it better.

Only at dinner did he realize he might not have struck quite the balance he'd meant to. He wasn't drunk, but he wasn't entirely sober, either. That was not a mistake he'd made before, as he'd previously confined drinking to nighttime. But it did help, otherwise he'd never have been able to sit through a meal with someone who knew him as well as Lucie did. She had always been, rather of necessity, the closest to him—for who could be expected to break into the charmed twinship of Kit and Pippa? And if her tone tonight was mild, her eyes were sharp.

Julien did much to carry the conversation, which tended to the general, such as the weather and the state of the roads and the scandalous behaviour of one of Elizabeth's women who had been discovered six months pregnant with no husband in sight. Stephen gave a silent sigh of relief when they rose to disband. One evening down. Only thirteen more to go without giving something away.

But Lucette knew how to choose her moments. As Julien started up the stairs of the tower, she lingered near her brother. He braced himself for whatever she meant to say—but not well enough.

“You have not asked about Carrie.”

His vision swam and he swore he could hear the clash of arms and the screams of the dying, smell the copper tang of blood…

Lucette touched his arm, and Stephen flinched away as though she'd struck him. His voice was harsh. “What is there to ask? She has been left desolate because of my mistake. Because of me, Carrie is bereft. Because of me, Matthew has no father. If I thought asking after either of them would make it better, then I would ask. But the only service I can imagine they want from me is not to be reminded of my existence.”

He felt Lucie watching him as he stalked away, and prayed that she would not follow. He could not swear he would not strike her if she did.

As Christmas approached at Carlow Castle, Finian Kavanaugh's splinter of the clan settled in to make winter bearable. Dampness made the cold go straight to the bones, but the imposing castle could at least keep out the harshest of the winds, and much could be mitigated with fires, braziers, tapestries to cover the walls, and layers of clothing. The castle had been bought by Finian from the English crown thirty years before, and its location gave it the now precarious position of being within reach of the Pale. But as the Kavanaughs had no plans for active lawbreaking or rebellion this winter, it was as well to be seen to be blameless in comfort.

Ailis Kavanaugh knew Carlow Castle as well as she knew any other place. Hers had been a peripatetic childhood; her most stable home had been the convent at which she'd been educated for several years in western Ireland (where the English policy of dissolution had encountered distinct opposition). She was glad enough to have been itinerant, if only because it meant she was free of that dangerous attachment to specific places that often clouded the judgment of men in staking their claims. As far as she was concerned, Ireland as a whole was her home, and it was for Ireland as a whole that she resented the invaders.

Four months into his third marriage, Finian Kavanaugh himself was newly sleek and satisfied, though Ailis suspected that had more to do with pride of possession than any overwhelming passion. No surprise—he was more than sixty and his new bride was not a figure to inspire rampant desire. Not that Ailis didn't like Maisie. Frankly, she was glad not to have competition as the most desirable female in the clan, and however small and unremarkable Maisie might be physically, she had a keen mind and cynical humour that Ailis appreciated.

She'd never had a female friendship. It was a bit of a shock to realize she might have stumbled into one without meaning to.

Two days before Christmas, a nondescript rider on a sturdy pony of the kind often found in Ireland's more mountainous regions rode into Carlow. Divesting himself of a muddy, well-patched woolen cloak, the upright, gray-haired figure of Father Byrne was revealed.

Ailis, as always in the last four years, met the Kavanaughs' household priest on equal footing with her uncle Finian. “Followed?” Finian asked.

Father Byrne snorted. “I was noted coming out of Wicklow. But even the English don't care to stir too far from their warm fires in December. They'll watch for me coming back. It's not as if they don't know I was coming here. They'll only move if they think I'm staying too long.”

Waving him to a thickly padded settle, Finian took his own seat near the fire roaring in the medieval, five-foot-high fireplace and poured Father Byrne a drink from the table set to hand. Ailis sat straight-backed and sober where she could watch them both. It was always wise to watch Irishmen when drink was involved.

“And how are our guests?” Ailis asked the priest.

“Complaining. About the cold. The clouds. The rain. The poverty. The lack of cathedrals and church gold. God knows we need the Spanish. But if they don't learn to shut their mouths, some of our men might do it for them.”

Ailis waved off that expected issue. “Work them all hard enough and both sides will be too tired to fight. We're most curious about how quiet their location has been kept. We know the English are aware of the vanished Spanish soldiers.”

“Aware, but in disagreement as to the why,” Finian corrected. “A fair number of the English think they simply miscounted. And with the blood Pelham and Dane shed at Carrigafoyle, no one can be absolutely certain that the supposed missing soldiers weren't among the slaughter victims. It was all set fire to after, so who's to say for sure?”

Ailis made an impatient noise; she and her uncle had been disagreeing about this for months. “All it takes is one canny, careful Englishman who doesn't trust to the easiest answer and has the wits to use his eyes and mind to undo all of that. But of course, we don't intend to keep the secret forever. We would simply prefer to keep the advantage of surprise on our side until summer. Can the Spanish be controlled in the Wicklow Mountains until then?”