“There was in this dance. The two of you…” Dominic stopped, his jaw tense. “There was a heat to it that only a fool or a saint could have missed. And Lord Rochford is neither. I’ll warrant he’ll have something to say about it before long.”
“What of it?” she shot back. “Perhaps that is what we need—to have it confronted so William can realize it will never come to work and he can release me.”
Dominic was no longer touching her, but his eyes riveted her in place and she remembered Hampton Court two years ago and the rain falling on them as they faced off in a malodorous kitchen lane. She longed to lean into him, to close her eyes and touch the black hair that tumbled to his collar and have his hands on her…
“Do you want William to release you?” he whispered intensely. “Sometimes I wonder.”
He turned and left her.
The moment William saw Rochford’s face the morning after the ducal investitures, he knew he was in for an unpleasant conversation. No guessing needed—he knew what his uncle was going to say. Even before Rochford went to the trouble to take William into his privy garden where they could walk alone out of earshot.
Still, he said it more bluntly than William had expected. “Your Majesty, you must send Mistress Wyatt away.”
“Must?” William could not keep the flash of anger out of that word, although he knew it made him sound like a petulant child.
With effort, he managed to repress the other hasty words that sprang to mind. Instead, he continued, “You oversee my government, Lord Rochford, not my court. Keep to administration and leave personal matters to me.”
“There are no personal matters where kings are concerned. Particularly not a king’s marriage.”
“The council approved my betrothal to Elisabeth de France.” William bent over and snapped off several tulips in particularly pleasing shades of cream and pink. They would look very well in Minuette’s hands.
“Your betrothal is why we are preparing to receive French envoys in ten days’ time. They will be here for a month, including Elisabeth de France’s uncle, and they must go back to Henri convinced of your intent in this matter. You cannot hope to have Mistress Wyatt at your side every moment of every day without causing insult to the French. Even if she were no more than your mistress—”
“If?”
Rochford regarded him coolly. “Have you forgotten I once served your father? I know the look of the Tudors when they are still anticipating their desires. You’ve not had the girl yet. And she’s shrewd enough to make certain you don’t until she has what she wants.”
“As shrewd as my mother, then.”
“We are not discussing your mother.”
“Aren’t we? How many people lined up to say precisely the same things to my father? If he had listened to them, you would be nothing more than a country gentleman of limited means.”
“And you would never have been born.” Rochford waved his hand in an impatient gesture. “That is not the point. As your chancellor, I see to England’s interests. Your position is not as secure as you would like, Your Majesty. That is why I support Elisabeth de France. In spite of my distaste for the Papists, a Catholic father-in-law will be a useful tie. With any luck, useful enough to keep plotting to a minimum.”
“You overestimate the appeal of the plotters. I’m popular with my people. And no one seriously wants a woman ruling England.”
“You are popular,” Rochford agreed in a more measured tone. “You might be able to pull it off. But not without splitting the nobility of England right down the center. The rifts your father created are still echoing. You are meant to close those rifts, not widen them.”
“I will be patient and careful, Uncle. I will do nothing in haste that might injure our security. But,” William added, “my marriage will be, in the end, my own choice.”
“Unless you are prepared to break the treaty at once and lose what you have gained, I would advise that, for the duration of the envoys’ visit, you give no cause for discontent. If you will not send Mistress Wyatt away, at least make her presence less prominent.”
William turned his back on Rochford and tossed away the tulips—he had crushed the stems in his displeasure. “I’ll consider it.”
All through the endless afternoon of meetings and audiences that followed, William did consider it. He was skilled at listening with half his attention and even replied sensibly when necessary, while the rest of his mind churned over the conversation with his uncle. Rochford had been wise enough to disengage for the moment, but William was under no illusions that this was the end of it. They would fight this battle again.
When the last applicant for position had bowed humbly away, William returned to the privy garden and walked alone among the bravest of the spring flowers. It had rained since this morning: the ground was damp, but the sky was beginning to clear and the newness of the air eased a little of his tension.
His uncle was right. He’d known it from the moment Rochford had given his measured advice. England could not afford to break with France yet, not with the treasury depleted, the last harvests poor, and the Catholics held at bay by promises and hopes.
On the other hand, William had just spent two weeks without Minuette at court and had not liked it at all. He would not send her away, so he would simply have to grit his teeth and be as publicly indifferent to her as possible while the French were here.
It won’t kill me not to touch her, he decided, as long as I can still look at her.
Two days after Dominic’s investiture as Duke of Exeter, Minuette went walking with her stepfather along the river gardens at Richmond as the noon sun peeked through the clouds with a fickle promise of warmth. Fidelis accompanied her, as he nearly always did these days. Large dogs were required to remain in the stable precincts at court, but William had made an exception for Fidelis. She liked that the enormous hound gave her a measure of gravity, and it meant that few approached her rashly. Stephen Howard shook his head when he saw them together.
“Are you certain he’s not a hellhound?” he asked. “He’s looking at me quite suspiciously.”
