The Reluctant Queen Read Free

with intelligence and wit. He was also a man who had cheated death by playing the fool. Margot herself had saved his life more than once, and had ultimately assisted in his escape from the Louvre, where he too had been held under house arrest for four long years; ever since their marriage in that never-to-be-forgotten summer of 1572.
    As Henry was a Huguenot and Margot a Catholic, their marriage had been entirely political and intended to bring peace to the realm. Yet within days of what had become known as the Blood Red Wedding, the massacre of St Bartholomew had taken place, and thousands of innocent souls had been murdered. It was a legacy to blight any marriage.
    On his return to Béarn, Henry had written frequent letters to the Queen Mother, requesting his wife be allowed to join him. But would he still welcome her? Would he even want her?
    In spite of the difficulties between them, Margot was a natural optimist, and loved nothing more than a new adventure. She had great hopes for her future in Béarn, and saw no reason why she couldn’t win over the people of her husband’s court, even if they were sober Calvinists.
    Everywhere they stopped along the way, the people were enchanted by the beauty of the young Queen, and by her eloquence and wit when she addressed them. Margot was twenty-five and fully aware that she was at the peak of her beauty, with flawless white skin, firm bosom and a slender, swanlike neck for which she designed beautiful décolleté gowns. She never failed to enchant, dressing in silver brocade or her favourite orange-gold. The peasants would gaze at her as her litter passed by, as if they looked upon a goddess.
    And if she had not yet won her husband’s heart, quite against all the odds they had formed a certain bond, a friendship which had remained reasonably solid through some testing times. Distance had softened his most annoying habits, and there would surely be the opportunity now to develop that friendship further, once they were reunited.
    Of course, he was not the most faithful of husbands, and they had quite early on reached an agreement upon the nature of their marriage. Margot herself had taken lovers, out of pride and retaliation, at least at first. First, there had been La Molle who had met with a tragic end, and then Bussy d’Amboise, a most impudent, mischievous knave who had amused her greatly.
    Shortly after their departure from Paris, a message had reached Margot informing her that he had been killed. She’d wept copious tears for her one-time lover, the man who had helped her plot and plan her brother Alençon’s escape from the Louvre. And he had brought such pleasure into what would otherwise have been a dull life without his audacious wit to make her laugh, and his sexual romps to excite her.
    Sadly, he’d been caught by a cuckolded husband in the wife’s bedchamber, attacked by a dozen of his men and thrown out of the window to his death. Poor, foolish Bussy.
    But Margot’s true affections lay not with her husband or either of these entertaining lovers, but with Henri de Guise. He had been the love of her life for as long as she could remember, and, as the coach rumbled on, she turned her thoughts back to their last meeting.
    They had lain together in their favourite trysting place in a quiet part of the Louvre, making love for one last time. Margot had been distressed that in future the space in her bed would be occupied by another, even if that man were her own husband. Would he not feel like a stranger, an intruder?
    Guise had lifted the heavy curtain of her dark hair to kiss her slender neck and asked how she could bear to leave him for a Huguenot Prince?
    ‘Because he is my husband, and I would be a true wife to him,’ had been her very right and proper reply, which had amused him greatly.
    ‘Ha, an impossibility! The fellow drives you to distraction with his many amours. Am I not a better man than he?’
    Margot had explained how she had no choice but to go.