“And entirely theoretical. As you point out, no doubt William will have sons and to spare.”
But would he? Their father, virile and powerful as he’d been, hadn’t. William had already fathered one daughter. And she remembered John Dee, studying her palm last winter, promising something that she’d been afraid to grasp at, afraid to know, so that she’d snatched her hand away at the last moment rather than see it…
“Truly, Your Highness, I did not come to discuss our brothers, at least not directly. My mother has written and asked me to remind you that you promised to consider visiting Dudley Castle this autumn. It would please her greatly if you consented.”
“Pleaseher?” she asked archly.
And now his other smile, the intimate, private one that Elizabeth hoped she alone ever saw. Surely he didn’t smile at his wife this way? “Do I need to tell you how it would please me?” he whispered. “There are so many ways…” He leaned in, until she could feel his breath on her cheek. “Perhaps you will let me enumerate them one at a time when you are in my home.”
William won’t want me to go, she thought. Not with the crisis looming over Guildford and Margaret. But I’ve done any number of things I don’t want to please him.
“I’ll come,” she said softly. “But don’t tell the king. I’ll work it out myself.”
She closed her eyes as lips brushed her cheek. Just as she shivered, there was a tumult across the room. Her eyes flew open as Robert drew back and shot to his feet. Dominic was pushing his way through the door, carrying someone in his arms and his voice strained beyond recognition. “She needs a physician.Now.”
When Elizabeth saw the bright gold hair spilling over Dominic’s arm, her heart turned over in fear.
Dominic paced the length of Elizabeth’s presence chamber for the agonizingly long minutes until the physician’s arrival. The man was taken straight through to the princess’s bedchamber, where Minuette lay with labored breath and slowing heart. Dominic could still feel each beat of it as he’d rested his palm against her chest…
It had taken him agonizing moments to realize something was wrong. When she approached him in the gardens, he’d seen only what he always saw—her hair shining in the patchy sunlight, the lightness of her walk, and the star pendant circling her long, white neck. But when she drew near enough, he saw the crease between her eyebrows, as if she were worried or in pain.
“Are you hurt?” He reached instinctively to touch her, but stopped.
“No, I…” She put a hand to her chest. “I’m just having a hard time catching my breath.”
Dominic led her to the nearest bench and made her sit. He knelt before her and studied her face. “Are you ill?”
“No, it’s just a momentary weakness. It will pass.”
Minuette had never suffered a momentary weakness in her life. Dominic was debating whether to get her inside when she gave a breathless little cry. “I feel odd, like tingling in my chest. But my skin is numb. I can’t feel my throat.”
Heedless of decorum, Dominic put his palm to her bare skin, between her throat and the neckline of her gown. He felt her heartbeat, and his fear grew. It was slow—too slow. What was wrong with her? There’d been no recent cases of sweating sickness or plague and he couldn’t think of another illness that could come on this fast.
Through his worry he could feel his mind trying to tell him something. Something not right. As he pulled his hand away, he realized that the tips of his fingers were tingling. Minuette had said her chest was tingling.I can’t feel my throat.
This was no illness.
“Oh, God,” he prayed. Poison, it must be poison. And if it had gotten on his fingers, it must be on her somehow, absorbing through the skin.
The pendant. He had brushed against the pendant when he put his hand to her chest—he remembered the feel of the star against his fingertips.
He wrenched the pendant off her in one sharp movement. Dropping it to the ground, Dominic swung her up into his arms. She was awake and aware, but she was focused only on breathing, on the effort needed to draw in breath after breath.
“Where is she?” Carrie’s voice pulled him back to his surroundings. Carrie looked as though she had run to Elizabeth’s chambers. Her normally neat presence was betrayed by red cheeks and the locks of hair that had slipped from beneath her linen coif.
“She’s in the princess’s bed. The physician is with her.”
When Carrie had vanished within, Dominic forced himself to think. He should retrieve the pendant. Before whoever had poisoned it had a chance to get rid of it.
It lay where he had dropped it, sparkling pretty and harmless on the cobblestone path. Picking it up by the broken clasp, Dominic dropped it into a leather pouch and pulled the lacing tight. His fingertips were numb where he had touched it earlier. He wasn’t worried about himself—he was bigger and stronger by far than Minuette, and he had brushed only briefly against the jewels. But she had worn them against her bare skin for…what? Five, ten minutes? Longer? How much poison had her body absorbed?
Though his hands were steady, he felt as though he were shaking to pieces from the inside out. Dominic closed his eyes, hoping that would help, but it only increased his sense of instability. And in the darkness of his mind, all he could see was Minuette swaying into his arms.
He opened his eyes and returned to Elizabeth’s rooms, where the physician was waiting for him. The man sniffed the pendant delicately, then touched one finger to the star before returning it to the pouch.
“Can you tell what poison it is?” Dominic demanded.
“Given her symptoms, likely monkshood. You’re right, it’s on the pendant itself. Monkshood is just as deadly when absorbed through the skin as when ingested.”
