The Fatal Fashione Read Free Page B

her heartfelt admiration of the man would suffer. Too, she had heard that he and his wife were not getting on of late, and she never approved of marital discord among her closest subjects.
    “I shall look forward to the visits and encourage both ladies,” Thomas assured her, but he still looked annoyed. Men would ever be men, she thought. She told herself again: Though she could hardly rule without them, she’d never take one on as mate or king.
    Carting four hemp sacks of walnut-sized cuckoo-pint roots, two sacks knotted over each shoulder, Meg Milligrew left the palace through the kitchen block and headed for Kings Street at midmorning the next day. Under the Court Gate, she nearly bumped into Ned Topside. Ned, whose real name was Edward Thompson, was the queen’s principal player for court entertainments.
    With roguish green eyes, chiseled nose, curly hair, and well-turned legs, Ned was beguiling and knew it. Talented, too, for the clever thespian could become a prince or a pauper in the blink of an eye. When Elizabeth Tudor was still a princess and struggling simply to remain safe, Ned had taught Meg not only to read and write but to mimic the queen in stance and speech, so that she could serve as Her Majesty’s counterpart upon occasions of the queen’s choosing.
    Ned was witty, besides, with his glib tongue and teasing ways, a man women adored on stage and off. Though she’d lied to herself about it for years, Meg knew she not only hated but loved Ned, and had since she’d laid eyes on him eight years ago. She considered herself a reasonable person, but, curse the man, he always managed to make her sound like a ninnyhammer.
    “Mistress Milligrew,” he declaimed, and swept off his cap in a bow, “as they used to say in days of yore, whither goest thou?”
    “Where you’d like to go, you blackguard, but Her Majesty has sent me this time instead. To Hannah von Hoven’s with roots to make starch.”
    “Her Grace only sent me once to her with your cuckoo roots when you were puking, as I recall. After all, I deem you the real stiff and prickly Mistress Starch, not her.”
    “That isn’t funny. And one official visit doesn’t mean you didn’t go back to see her on your own and more than once, smelling of pomade, I heard you did.”
    “Did Jenks tell you that?” he inquired, taking two of the sacks from her shoulders so fast that, suddenly unbalanced, she almost tipped into him.
    “What if he did?” she challenged, her voice rising.
    “Jenks is still sweet on you and wants you to be angry with me, that’s all. I don’t love Hannah.”
    “Love?” she screeched, snatching back her sacks. “When did that ever enter into the talk between you and one of your—”
    “I missed you, too, the week you were away,” he interrupted, and darted a quick kiss on her forehead. He wedged her in with one arm on the arched wall of the gate, heedless of how people stared. To her amazement, he tenderly brushed her flyaway hair from her face and tucked the loose tresses behind each ear.
    In a silky voice, he said, “You always did have the most lovely skin, and your ears are like little sea shells. Meg, Hannah may be fair of face and form, but you are—”
    “—onto your seductive flatteries, Ned Topside, actor extraordinaire. Save your lip for Her Majesty—or both lips for Hannah. Now leave off and let me pass!”
    Instead, he stepped closer and put both big, warm hands on hers where she gripped the tied necks of her sacks. Her voice came out breathy this time. “Don’t trifle with me, Ned.”
    “You are not a trifle to me, lovey.” His voice, too, was husky, which only made the butterflies in her stomach beat their wings harder in her wretched need for him. “Let me go with you,” he whispered, “and after we can—”
    “I have business with Hannah and don’t need you underfoot!” She wrenched herself from his touch. Devil take it, she should have wed Jenks when she had the chance two years ago, but