But beneath the frustration was the fact that he had been lying to Elizabeth and her friends for months. All right, be honest, it was more like years. It had begun in the late autumn of 1552, when Rochford suggested Alyce de Clare as a likely instrument in their plans. Alyce had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne and was thus ideally placed to report gossip and pass on carefully calculated rumours of Catholic conspiracy. She was also ambitious, which made her susceptible to flattery and promises. Robert had latched on to Alyce enthusiastically when he’d troubled to study her a little closer. Though not really beautiful, Alyce had possessed an excellent figure and a streak of something in her nature—Wildness? Calculation? Animal cunning?—that had readily appealed to him. More than once in the months of flirting and intimacy that followed, he’d guessed that Rochford knew firsthand of Alyce’s physical appeal, but he had never asked.
“Contemplating your sins, Lord Robert?”
Not only could the Lord Chancellor move almost silently, it also seemed he could read minds. His voice made Robert twitch in annoyance and surprise.
“Contemplating how many of them I can lay at your feet, my lord,” he rejoined smoothly.
“Not a one,” Rochford answered with equal smoothness. “A man’s sins are his own.”
“And you’ve made sure nothing I’ve done can be directly traced to you.”
“Of course.”
Robert sighed. “What untraceable task am I to be given next?”
“One very much to your taste and talents: I want you to attend Elizabeth assiduously this winter. Make yourself indispensable, so that my niece does not have a need that you have not anticipated. I want you in her presence chamber and her privy chamber. I want to know who else is there, and what they discuss when they are.”
“I will not spy on Elizabeth.” Robert said it flatly. “Not for anything.”
“I think that point is debatable, but it is also irrelevant. It is not Elizabeth I want you watching—it is Mistress Wyatt.”
“Minuette? Whatever for?” But Robert was afraid he very much knew what for.
“I told you she bears watching. My instincts are never wrong. It is for you to tell me why the girl makes me uneasy.”
Because she killed Giles Howard, Robert thought. But even if Rochford knew that, he didn’t think the Lord Chancellor would care. Giles Howard had been the last and least of the Duke of Norfolk’s sons and he had earned his death with his own violence. Not a matter to sharpen Rochford’s interest—so what about Minuette made the Lord Chancellor so uneasy?
“It is in your own interest as well,” Rochford said now. “Mistress Wyatt is the one who made all the fuss over Alyce de Clare’s unfortunate and untimely death. She suspected Giles Howard was responsible, but does she still? If she believes the pregnant Alyce’s tumble down the stairs is not to be laid at Giles’s feet, she will not rest until she has found the guilty party. And you wouldn’t want her stumbling over your mistakes, would you?”
Robert most certainly didn’t want Minuette stumbling over his connection to Alyce. The first person she would tell would be Elizabeth, and their relationship was already complicated by his wife. How could he explain a pregnant mistress as well? Especially one who had died so inconveniently while spying on Elizabeth’s mother.
The damned man was so certain of Robert’s acquiescence that he didn’t even wait for it. The only satisfaction Robert could get was calling out a question as Rochford retreated. “Why on earth has the Earl of Surrey not been brought to trial? I thought your goal was to eliminate the Howard family. And yet Surrey continues to sit in the Tower without any charges being brought.”
That stopped Rochford, just long enough for him to look over his shoulder dismissively and say, “Don’t attempt to know my mind, Lord Robert. You might not like what you find.”
If there was one part of being king that William would have abolished if possible, it was council meetings. Here it was Christmas day, and still his privy council would not let him be. The aftereffects of drought and poor harvests, Rochford said. Torrential rains. People starving. Not to mention Mary imprisoned and the death of a duke of England under taint of treason. A realm does not sleep, Rochford insisted, and her king must be willing to do likewise.
So as the sun rose behind leaden clouds, here was assembled his much reduced privy council, more or less the remains of the regency council that had ruled in his name for years. Six months ago William had turned eighteen and gone immediately to war. Followed by his mother’s death, and then more weeks in France negotiating, and then Minuette …
William imagined announcing his engagement this very morning, having it preached of in the chapel, setting the bells to ring out his love. Then he imagined the shouting that would follow—mostly from Rochford—and sighed. Not yet.
As Lord Chancellor, his uncle opened the council, which this morning consisted of just over half a dozen men: Rochford and Dominic, naturally, along with the Earls of Pembroke and Oxford and Archbishop Cranmer. Sir Ralph Sadler ran the household and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the treasury. Most of them were in their forties or fifties—Cranmer was actually in his sixties, though still active in both mind and body—and even Burghley, who was only thirty-four, behaved like a cautious old man.
Age and temperament aside, there were not nearly enough members of the privy council. And that was the true purpose of this meeting. His uncle had been pressing him for a decision for three weeks, and now he meant to force the matter.
“Your Majesty,” Rochford began, “before the new year dawns, we must have a complete council. You cannot long afford to overlook some of the realm’s most powerful men.”
William slouched back in his chair, willing to allow his uncle the chance to drone on and list his no doubt well-thought-out and even better phrased arguments to press his point. Why deny the man his pleasure? William meant to agree—if only to stop the endless tide of pressure—but he could afford to be generous this early in the morning. The Christmas service was still two hours off.
Dominic was not so patient. “Who?” he asked. “With Norfolk dead, and his heir imprisoned, the council already holds the only two remaining dukes in the kingdom.”
Rochford himself and Northumberland, easily the two most Protestant lords in England. There had been four dukes appointed to the regency council, but the Duke of Suffolk had died of apoplexy when William was sixteen. Suffolk had had only daughters—Jane Grey his eldest—and there had been no question of naming another duke since then. It was unlike Dominic to make a political point, and William wondered where he was headed with this one.
So was Northumberland. His blunt face (the rough edges of which so perfectly mirrored his soldier image, a man uncomfortable with pomp and elegance) looked skeptical as he asked, “What are you implying, Exeter?”
Even though he had named Dominic Marquis of Exeter just six months ago, William still wasn’t used to hearing Dominic called as such.
Northumberland pressed on. “Do you think the realm needs another duke?”
