A VERY TUDOR CHRISTMAS Read Free

Beatrice again and twisted her head so she could see her parents’ faces. They looked at each other in that quiet way they always had together, as if they could communicate with their gaze alone. It was always maddening to try and decipher what they thought.
    “Our Meg is young yet,” her father said. “And she has little training for a court life. This news is a surprise, and a great honor. We must think about it.”
    Lady Erroll shrugged. “As you think best, of course, Master Clifford. But court is truly the best place to secure a family’s fortune. Our own daughter is but sixteen and has been a maid-of-honor for a year now. And our son...” Her languid voice suddenly turned proud. “Our son has a great career ahead of him. Her Grace is sending him as part of a delegation to Paris. He will be gone for at least a year, and when he returns we have hopes of a very great marriage for him with one of the Howard girls.”
    “If he can cease to be such a care-for-nothing,” Lord Erroll grumbled into his wine. “Running about London with those young bravos....”
    Lady Erroll shot him a scowl. “Robert is young and handsome. Why should he not enjoy himself now? He has a brilliant future ahead of him. The right marriage will surely...”
    Meg could hear no more. She broke away from Bea and scrambled out of the closet. Lifting the heavy hem of her skirt, she ran as fast as she could along the corridors and down the stairs.
    “Mistress Margaret!” a maidservant called as she dashed past. “Wait! I have...”
    But Meg could not stop. She feared her tears would blind her, and worse, people would see them. Her hood tumbled from her head and her hair fell free, but she scarcely noticed.
    On the staircase landing, she paused to catch her breath. She stared out the small window there as she gasped for breath past her stays. The night sky was clear, the stars glittering sharply with the cold, and the moon gleamed on the rutted driveway beneath. Everything was perfectly still, as if frozen.
    Suddenly there was one spark of movement, just beyond the line of trees that led to the gates. Meg went up on tiptoe, trying to see what it was.
    For just an instant, a stray beam of moonlight caught on a figure on horseback. A face, pale in the night, peered up at the house from beneath the plumes of a fashionable cap.
    Meg’s heart pounded again, and she felt the spark of excitement, of distant hope, break over her cold disappointment. Robert Erroll—it had to be. Had she not seen that very hat tumble from his head only that afternoon?
    She ran down the stairs and through the doors into the cold night. But there was no one there, no horse, no plumes, only the brush of the wind through the bare trees.
    “Hello?” she called. “Are you out there?” Nothing. And her hopes plummeted yet again.
    “Meg!” Beatrice cried, and Meg spun around to see her cousin running out of the house after her. “Why did you leave like that?”
    Beatrice’s golden hair shimmered in the night, and her blue eyes looked big and shocked in her pretty child’s face. Meg suddenly felt ashamed of her wild behavior, her silly hopes that a man like Robert Erroll, a man going to France on a mission for the queen and with a future marriage to a Howard, could have had serious intentions toward her. It had all been a foolish dream. Lady Erroll was right: they all had to look to their own futures.
    But, oh! It had been such a sweet dream while it lasted.
    Meg walked slowly back to Bea, her feet feeling as heavy and slow as an old woman’s. She took her cousin’s arm and smiled at her, glad of the covering darkness.
    “I just needed some fresh air,” Meg said as they turned toward the house. “It was very stuffy in that closet.”
    “But isn’t it exciting, Meg?” Beatrice said, bouncing on her toes. “You might go to court, to see the queen herself! You will dance and sing, and have such pretty clothes....”
    Meg had to laugh at Bea’s bubbling