15 May 1555
Wynfield Mote
I have walked out with Carrie every morning for the past five days, hoping that a less formal setting would induce her to talk. It has, little by little. She has shown me the cottage where her children were born and the creekside path they would run along. With each mention of them, the shadows in her eyes have rolled back a little more, until she can speak almost easily of her lost family. Ben, her husband, did the blacksmithing work on the estate and had a marvelous touch with horses. The little boy, named for his father, was an adventuresome lad who walked at nine months and climbed his first tree when he was not quite two. And her daughter—I never knew that her daughter was named Marie for my mother.
18 May 1555
Wynfield Mote
Not all is as perfect on my estate as I had thought. Today I came upon two little girls at the entrance to the kitchens. Both bobbed when they saw me and scurried away before I could speak to them. As I wondered, perplexed, what I had done to frighten them, the cook came out with a basket filled with food. She, too, bobbed an uncertain curtsey and would have fled if I had not stopped her.
When she told me that the food was for a widow and her family, I told her to deliver it herself and then went to find Asherton to demand why I had not been told of such need in my own household.
The father of the family was one of my tenant farmers, Asherton told me, who died from the sweating sickness last summer, along with his two oldest sons. Now there is only his widow, the two small girls, and a twelve-year-old boy who is doing his best to fill his father’s shoes.
“I know I should have told you,” Asherton said, voluble in defense. “It’s your decision what to do with a farm that has no one to run it. You’re within your rights to find another farmer and turn off the family—”
As if I would! I was shocked he would think such a thing of me, and told him so in no uncertain terms. I also told him that the boy is to be given whatever laboring help he needs from my own gardeners and servants, and that of course the family must be fed in the meantime.
I visited the widow and her children tonight. It pained me to see their hollowed cheeks and even more to hear their effusive thanks. I have done as close to nothing as anyone could, and for the first time the words I’ve heard around court have taken on personal meaning: drought, crop failures, starvation.
I will not let that happen to anyone in my care, so far as it is in my power!
22 May 1555
Wynfield Mote
I have been here nearly three weeks now and still I have found reasons to put off visiting Alyce’s sister. Emma Hadley was so unpleasant to me last year that I do not relish being alone with her again. But unpleasantness aside, I need her. I know that Alyce’s personal belongings were sent to Emma after her death, and if there is anything to be discovered about the man who Alyce loved, it will be somewhere amongst her clothes and books and mementoes.
I shall send Harrington with a message today, asking if I may call on her the day after tomorrow.
As expected, Emma Hadley’s permission was instantly granted. She might envy and dislike Minuette—at least that had been the impression she’d given last year—but that same envy meant she would never turn down a personal visit from someone so closely connected to the court. Minuette prepared to grit her teeth and pretend Emma was just another annoying foreign dignitary who had to be flattered.
She decided to take Fidelis with her. The wolfhound, as predicted, had recovered quickly from the adder bite, and she gladly brought him with her to Wynfield. He loved the country and was at her side whenever she rode out or walked. She was glad to have him as steadfast ballast when she rode to Emma Hadley’s home.
Harrington rode with her. Minuette had refused to allow Dominic to come—she could imagine how unbearable Emma would be if the Duke of Exeter showed up at her house—and Dominic refused to allow her to go alone, so Harrington was the compromise. Though Minuette had never spoken more than a few words to Harrington (she wasn’t sure anyone ever spoke more than a few words to Harrington), she was glad of his solid presence.
As the Hadley farm and manor house came into sight, Harrington said suddenly, “I knew her, back when she was Emma de Clare.”
Minuette startled noticeably, and Winterfall shied under her. Reining the horse back in, she said, “You knew Emma de Clare?” But of course, Harrington came from Rochford’s household. She should have remembered that.
“A little. She and her sister.”
Harrington was full of surprises, Minuette thought. “And what did you think of Alyce de Clare?”
“A woman always searching for the next thing. Ambitious, but not cruel with it.”
“Did you like her?”
He shrugged. “She wasn’t the sort of lady I could know well enough to either like or dislike. But I’ll tell you who did like her—Lord Rochford.”
Which squared with what Lady Rochford had hinted—that at one point Alyce had been more than a clerk’s daughter to Rochford himself. Of course, he wouldn’t be the man who’d fathered her child while ordering her to undermine his sister and nephew, but it was interesting. If Lord Rochford was the sort of man Alyce liked, then who else might fit the role of ambitious, proud, charismatic, the kind of man to blind her to danger until too late?
“Well, Harrington,” Minuette said as they reined up in front of the Hadley manor house, “now I’m wondering what sort of lady you could know enough to either like or dislike.”
She meant it to tease him, as she would have teased Dominic, but instead he answered gravely, without even looking at her, “I like you.”
All in all, Minuette was rather flustered as she was welcomed into the Hadley home and shown into the same stuffy parlour as on her previous visit. But within minutes she was ready to broach her true purpose. Sideways, of course, for she could hardly let Emma know that the court still had doubts about the nature of her sister’s untimely death.
