Including Robert. He leaned back and stretched his legs out as he asked, casually enough, “So what do you think of your brother’s French betrothal?”
She didn’t believe in that casualness. With a quick frown, she stopped playing and laid the lute aside. Before answering, she scanned her presence chamber to ensure no one was paying more than the usual attention to her. Her ladies knew to give her space when Robert was with her.
It would have been easy to parry the question back to him, but she didn’t bother. Wasn’t that the point of Robert, that he was someone she didn’t have to always guard against? “I think that I feel rather sorry for the child. I hear that Elisabeth de France is quite taken with my brother. She spends her time practicing her English and learning our history so that she might do him proud.”
“Isn’t that admirable in a girl who will one day be England’s queen?”
“She’s nine years old, Robert! She should be studying for herself, not to impress a man she’s met only once.”
“Not everyone loves learning for its own sake. Not every princess is you. And most men would be delighted with a wife who thinks only of pleasing them.”
“Most men don’t deserve such a wife.”
He grimaced. “You are harsh, Elizabeth.”
And you are married, Robert, she very nearly replied.
But he swung the conversation away with his impeccable instinct for avoiding trouble. “What of your friend, Mistress Wyatt? The king has been most gracious to Dominic—does he mean to bestow any favours on Minuette? If she had wealth, the men of England would be lined up to claim her.”
From one dangerous topic to another. “Perhaps then it is wiser not to endow her with wealth. I don’t believe those sorts of men are the sort she is interested in.”
“Whom is she interested in?”
“Why? Are you thinking of staking your own claim?”
“You know that there is only one woman for me,” he retorted in that carelessly seductive voice that made her want to forget herself. “Constancy to true love—that is something King Henry’s children know all about.” Then his expression turned serious. “William, for one, is a man ripe for constancy. Why do I think it is not directed at his French princess?”
Elizabeth’s heart sank. Only three months, and things were beginning to unravel! William had never been able to control his countenance, and so she’d known it was only a matter of time before people began to realize how he felt about Minuette.
The question was: how did Minuette feel about William? Elizabeth had never asked her, but now she would have to. How could she control the situation if she didn’t know everything?
On a sleety mid-February day, Minuette was summoned to see Elizabeth. The fact that it was a formal summons—a written request from the princess, delivered by a page wearing the crowned falcon badge Elizabeth had taken from her mother—meant that she could guess at the subject. It appeared Elizabeth had finally grown tired of her absolute silence on the subject of William’s secret proposal. There had never been any chance Elizabeth would simply let the situation unfold of its own accord. She wanted a hand in its unfolding.
Indeed, Elizabeth went straight to the heart of the matter once the two of them were closeted in the princess’s private study at Whitehall. The room was lined with shelves of books that most scholars would have sold their teeth to own. Elizabeth approached scholarship the same way she approached everything: with absolute dedication to mastering a subject until all its secrets were known to her. So it was no surprise when she placed Minuette in a chair facing hers and said sternly, “You are going to stay in this room until I know precisely how you feel about my brother and his plans for you. Is that clear?”
After an instinctive moment of stubbornness, Minuette laughed. “Perfectly clear, Your Highness. I am yours to command.”
Elizabeth’s expression softened. “For now. But that’s rather the point, isn’t it? My brother is determined that in future you will answer solely to him.”
“And that troubles you?” Minuette didn’t ask only to deflect the attention, but because she was genuinely curious how Elizabeth felt about William’s proposal. They were friends, yes, but Elizabeth was first and foremost a princess royal. One had only to mark the cloth-of-silver dress she wore with such easy elegance, the pearls studded in the coils of her red-gold hair, the ruby ring she wore on her left hand, the indefinable inheritance of privilege that manifested itself in how Elizabeth moved and even thought. What could she think about her brother intending to marry a woman of no name and little wealth? Not to mention the fact that William’s intentions narrowed Elizabeth’s future course of action considerably.
But Elizabeth proved herself a true and concerned friend when she answered warmly, “The only thing that troubles me is that I haven’t the slightest idea howyoufeel. I can be in no doubt of my brother’s feelings—he can hardly speak of anything else when we are alone. But you have shut me out, Minuette, and not just since William’s proposal. You have kept your own counsel since my mother’s death at Hever last summer.”
Minuette remembered it well—the burning shame of being found by Elizabeth in William’s arms, lost in much more than a kiss in the same room with Queen Anne’s corpse. It was with real remorse that she replied, “I am sorry, Elizabeth. It’s never been about shutting you out. It is only…”It is only that I don’t want to marry Will. It is Dominic I love. And I can’t tell you that because William mustn’t know, not until I figure out how to get all of us out of this without pain.
She couldn’t say any of that, so she said, “It’s a complicated situation. I am doing my best to keep my head and behave well.”
Unusually affectionate for her, Elizabeth took Minuette’s hands in hers. “I know, and you are. But we are alone here, and I miss you. You know more of Robert than anyone living. Can you not speak to me of William?”
Minuette could feel her barriers cracking, and she let some of her heartfelt trouble come through. “I was, of course, astonished at his proposal,” she answered Elizabeth. “I had never dreamt such a thing. I know he is impulsive, but this…my immediate thought was that he wanted to make amends for what occurred at Hever. Not,” she added hastily, “that he needed to make amends. We were equally complicit. But you know how generous he is in his affections. I do not believe William has thought this through.”
“But you do love him.” It was not quite a question.
“You know I do. And because I love him, I would never hold him to an offer made in the heat of the moment.” She could hear the sleet hitting the window with a hiss that sounded disapproving, as though even the weather could see through her half-told truths.
Elizabeth let go of Minuette’s hands. She sat back, once again coolly assessing. “You expect that he will have to retract his offer?”
“He cannot afford to alienate the French now, and with the debts and tax burden from last year’s war, that will not change anytime soon. William’s affections run hot, but for how long?”
