“Intelligent dog.”
He sighed. “Must we always spar when we meet, daughter?”
“I am not your daughter.”
“Temper, temper…do you really want to risk me leaving court without telling you what I’ve learned?”
Since this kind of sparring could go on for hours, Minuette surrendered. “Very well. What have you learned?”
“Precious little. Every trail seems to wander into mist as soon as it’s looked at twice. For instance, I have a correspondent on the Continent who claims that the Spanish navy never set sail for England last autumn.”
“But Lord Rochford said—”
“Rochford has his intelligence and I have mine. Who is to say whose is correct? It may be that his agents wanted him to believe the navy was on the move.”
“Or your agents want you to believe that it wasn’t,” she retorted. “How is one supposed to divine fact from all this?”
He nodded. “Good girl. You have learned the first rule of politics—there is no fact, only interpretation. And that depends entirely on who is doing the interpreting.”
“Well, you and I know the Penitent’s Confession was a slanderous fraud. That is fact. And Alyce de Clare’s death is another fact.”
Howard shook his head. “I wonder, Minuette: if Alyce de Clare had been merely a nameless lady-in-waiting, if she had not been your friend, would you still be so eager to make inquiries? You will make yourself sick caring so much about others. Her family seems content to let it lie—why not you?”
Minuette told the truth with perhaps more force than necessary. “Precisely because her family—and everyone else—is content to let it lie. I failed to help Alyce when I might have. All I can offer her now is the truth.”
Howard shook his head. “You are stubborn and self-righteous, rarely an attractive combination.”
“Then why are you helping me?”
He paused along the path to look out at the Thames, and Minuette instinctively held her tongue as he considered. Finally, he said, “Do you know when it was I fell in love with your mother?”
“No.”
“I first saw her at court in 1528. She was attending Anne at the time, just twenty-one and the loveliest, merriest girl I’d ever seen. Like most men, I suppose, I appreciated her and thought she would be pleasant in…well, you can imagine the thoughts of a man dutifully but not lovingly married.”
“Is this supposed to make me think better of you?” Minuette asked caustically. The last thing she needed was to hear her stepfather wax poetic on her mother’s physical charms.
Howard smiled wickedly in a manner that reminded her of William at his most mischievous. “Don’t fear, our private encounters will remain locked in my memory. But the thing is, that’s not when I loved her.”
“Is there a point to this?” It seemed unfair to Minuette that her stepfather should be alive to talk about his love for her mother when she would never be able to hear her own father do the same.
“The point is, Minuette, that the day I fell in love with your mother was not the day I first fantasized about her but rather the day on which she cursed me soundly for being rude to a serving maid. The girl had spilled something on me—Wine? Fish sauce? I honestly can’t remember—but I told the chit off with more cruelty than was warranted and your mother overheard. I will never forget Marie’s fierceness in defending someone who was not in a position to defend herself. An instinct she most clearly bequeathed to you.”
With a pensive sigh, as though relinquishing a moment he wished he could hold onto, Howard turned away from the river. He addressed Minuette briskly. “And that is why I am helping you. Yes, Alyce de Clare’s mysterious death while engaged in spying on Queen Anne is definitely a fact. As is her pregnancy at the time of her death. As you have pointed out, Alyce did not get herself with child. I am working on that list of men you gave me, but people’s memories are hard to pin down two years after the fact, especially when I cannot tell them why I am asking. That is not to say I do not have ideas, but I will be specific only when I have something more solid than supposition to offer.”
“Thank you.”
“May I ask you something?”
Warily, she nodded.
“Does anyone else know of your continuing queries into Alyce de Clare’s death?”
“Yes, of course. Princess Elizabeth has been most helpful to me.” No need to specify that her help had included securing something so outlandish as a star chart from John Dee.
“But not the king or his newest duke?”
“Do you mean Dominic? They are both of them far too busy with other matters. I will not bother them until I have something more solid than supposition to offer.”
