“Where is their wing?”
“The family’s in the first section of Sharrington range. But if it’s her you want to see, best hurry. Lord Robert’s taking her home straightaway.”
Is he indeed? Minuette thought. I think I shall have to simply barge in and introduce myself to Amy Dudley.
Because the maid’s phrase about Italian poetry was fluttering in her skull like a nervous butterfly.
It was easy enough to find the chamber Amy Dudley had been assigned to (and which, incidentally, it appeared she had slept in alone—there were no signs of a man’s presence), for there was a banging and general noise level that Minuette was long familiar with from serving the late Queen Anne. It meant the woman in question was out of temper and letting it show.
Minuette knocked on the frame of the half-open door. “May I be of some assistance?” she asked. Doing what, she wasn’t sure. Her talents ran more to flirting for information and writing flattering letters that appeared to promise without actually promising. She supposed she could pack dresses if forced to do so.
Amy whirled and eyed her carefully. “You’re withher,aren’t you? No one bothered to give me your name last night.”
“Genevieve Wyatt,” she supplied, ignoring Amy’s impertinent reference to Elizabeth.She is Robert’s wife, after all,Minuette reminded herself. And it must have taken all Amy Dudley’s nerve to walk into that room last night and face down the Tudor princess who had ensnared her husband’s heart. “I simply wished to introduce myself and ask if there was anything you needed.”
“Yes, there is something I need.” Amy snapped at the two maids packing, “You may go.” When they had gone, Amy shut the door behind them and said to Minuette, “I need to know how far things have gone between Robert and her.”
The way she avoided saying Elizabeth’s name reminded Minuette forcibly of Mary Tudor. She had spent some weeks with her last year and even after all these years Mary still referred to Anne Boleyn as “the person” or “the woman.”
“I assure you, your husband has not compromised your honour.” Which wasn’t precisely true. To be precisely true, Minuette would have had to answer,Robert hasn’t slept with Elizabeth and never will, because she is far too smart to allow that to happen. But no doubt he’s slept with any number of more willing women, and he would bed Elizabeth this very minute if she allowed it.
Sometimes it was best not to be precisely honest.
Amy’s lips tightened, as though she had heard every unspoken version of Minuette’s thoughts, and she sniffed. “He’ll never get out of this marriage. My family will see to it. My father is quite an important landowner.”
Minuette thought pityingly, And Elizabeth’s brother is the King of England. Care to wager who would win if they went against each other? But she let Amy rant, as surely the woman had come here to Dudley Castle to do. As she couldn’t do it to Elizabeth’s face, she might as well spill it all to Elizabeth’s dear friend.
“She thinks he’s so faithful, so undyingly loyal to the romance of loving a woman he cannot have. That’s how little she knows Robert. He could not be faithful if his life depended on it. He confined himself to my bed alone for no more than a month after our marriage before he required other women as well. Does she believe she is different?”
No, Minuette thought, but she manages not to think about that part. And Robert is careful not to flaunt his women before her. As apparently he has not been with you.
“They’re not all serving women, either,” Amy challenged. “There was a court woman, he was quite infatuated with her for a time. He even brought her into our home.”
Minuette startled, and Amy laughed bitterly. “No, he’s not quite that wretched, he didn’t know I would be there. I mostly live near my parents, so give him his due, when he came waltzing into Kenilworth with his court whore, he was quite as shocked to see me as I was to see them. Not that it prevented him from sending me away without even pretending to be kind. The servants say Robert kept this woman with him a whole month. I wonder what he told your mistress about where he was while he played house with a woman neither his wife nor his precious princess.”
The same butterflies that had alarmed at the phrase “Italian poetry” were winging madly now in Minuette’s skull. I don’t want to know this, she thought, but she also knew it was too late to back out now.
“Did you see this woman?” Minuette’s voice sounded distant and flat in her own ears.
“I saw her. Proud, she was, though dressed no better than me. Dark colours for a dark countenance, I remember that.”
“How old was she? What did she look like?”
Amy paused. “Don’t tell me you’re one of his conquests! If you’re the jealous type, then you should keep well away from Robert.”
Summoning up her most imperious tone, Minuette said, “I am not jealous, and I have never looked twice at your husband in that manner. But it is of great importance that you tell me details of this woman’s appearance.”
Cowed, Amy muttered, “She was younger than me. Eighteen or nineteen, maybe? Dark, like I said. Not as dark as Robert, but nothing like the princess either. Brown eyes, she had, and straight brown hair to her waist. Shorter than you, and more generous in her figure.”
Minuette longed to close her eyes and curse, but she had one more question. “When did Robert spend that month with her at Kenilworth?”
“Late winter two years ago. Almost spring—March, I think it was.”
She did close her eyes then, though she kept her swearing silent. Alyce de Clare had spent four weeks away from court in March of 1553—Alyce, with brown eyes and brown hair to her waist—and less than four months later she had been with child at the time of her sudden death.
Robert was the man she’d been searching for. The man who’d gotten Alyce with child. The man who’d used her to spy on Queen Anne—using a cipher contained in an Italian poetry book. The man—the link—to the fraudulent Penitent’s Confession and the subsequent downfall of the late Duke of Norfolk.
Robert was the traitor.
