A Court Affair Read Free Page B

there is something he worships and adores more than England’s Virgin Queen—Ambition is his guiding star. I’ve seen men ruined before by this elusive, tantalising, sparkling star that they spend their whole lives chasing after, leaping and grasping for, sometimes snaring a little stardust but more often crashing empty-handed back down to earth. And Robert, for all his fine qualities—his smouldering dark eyes, his heart-melting, knee-weakening smile, towering height, handsome horseman’s legs, and hands both gentle and firm, callous and soft, his intelligence, charm, wit, and passion, his showmanship and debonair flair on the tennis court, dance floor, and tiltyard, his supreme confidence and courage riding to the hunt or charging into battle, his feats of daring at the gambling tables—is still Ambition’s catamite and fool.
    My eyes are not starry-blind with love for him; romance doesn’t soften and tint everything all rosy pink and beautiful for me. I love Robert, but I see him for what he is, and, though I love, I often do not like. There is ice beneath the fire, steel beneath the softness, and the hard armour of cruelty beneath the plush velvet cloak of kindness. I have often wondered if I were a mere woman—a squire’s daughter perhaps, just like Amy, instead of England’s Queen—would his passion for me have ever flared so high or burned so brightly and constantly? I think not. Or perhaps it is merely that I have lost the ability to believe in anyone’s sincerity. I trust no one; I cannot afford to. I am a queen before I am a woman, England
always
comes before Elizabeth, and though there are times when my passions flame high and I resent and rage against Fate, I will
not
bankrupt my soul or my realm by giving too much of myself to the
wrong
people. My subjects as a whole always come before any individual, and that includes myself. Though I am the Virgin Queen, I regard myself as the mother of many.
    There’s something in Robert’s blood he inherited from his father and grandfather that makes him willing to do
anything,
and risk
everything,
to rise the highest and shine the brightest, to eclipse even Ambition’s own lustre and luminescence. But all that glitters is not gold. My mother once spoke those very words to my father when he asked why she preferred the doltish Harry Percy, who was, I have heard, as clumsy as a newborn foal, to the more elegant, polished, and cocksure men of the court.
    Robert and I, we are the scandal of the civilised world. There are many who would wager all that they possess that I would have him for my husband and no other. I have at times indeed spoken such words myself to confound and cloud the issue of my refusal to marry; the more perplexed and puzzled my suitors are, the better I like it. Even my cousin, the Queen of Scots, has been heard to quip that the Queen’s Master of the Horse murdered his wife to make room for her in his bed. Well, let the gaggles of gossipmongers wager all they wish—
they will lose!
I let them think that, but it was all part of the merry dance and mad whirl that always kept them guessing and wondering as so many men vied for my hand; but though the dance must of necessity go on, it must slow now to a stately pavane from a galloping galliard. I am Elizabeth of England, mistress with no master; I call the tunes, and my musicians play them, and my courtiers dance to them; and so it has ever been and always will be until the day I die. There will be no King Robert I of England, or a king by any other name, in
my
lifetime!
    I reached out and gently straightened a ruffle of lace on Amy’s wedding apron and tweaked a silk bow, adjusting the sunny yellow ribbon streamers and the strands and loops of tiny seed pearls until they lay just right. I could still smell the lavender and rosemary from when the apron had been lovingly packed away, no doubt with dreams of the daughter Amy longed to have, and of tying it around her waist, with a mother’s love