The Virgin's Lover ttc-4 Read online

  She looked disapproving. “And would Cecil have lived there with his wife?”

  He was pleased to be on safe ground. “Cecil has not seen his wife since the queen’s accession,” he said. “She is overseeing the building of his new house, Burghley. He is in the same strait as I. He wants to get home but he is kept too busy. And I want you to be like his wife; I want you to build a house for us, that I can come to in summer. Will you do it for me? Will you find us a really lovely house or site, and make a home for us, a proper home at last?”

  Her face lightened as he knew it would. “Oh, I would love to,” she said. “And we would live there and be together all the time?”

  Gently he took both her hands. “I would have to be at court for much of the time,” he said. “As you know. But I would come home to you, as often as I could, and you would like to have a proper home of your own, wouldn’t you?”

  “You would come home to me often?” she stipulated.

  “My work is at court,” he pointed out. “But I never forget that I am married and that you are my wife. Of course I will come home to you.”

  “Then yes,” Amy said. “Oh, my lord. I would like it so much.”

  He drew her toward him and felt her warmth through the thin linen gown.

  “But you will take care, won’t you?”

  “Take care?” He was cautious. “Of what?”

  “Of her trying…” She chose her words carefully so as not to irritate him. “Of her trying to draw you in.”

  “She is the queen,” Robert said gently. “It flatters her vanity to be surrounded by men. I am a courtier; it is my work to be drawn in by her. It means nothing.”

  “But if she favors you so much, you will make enemies.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I just know that anyone who is favored by the king or the queen makes enemies. I just want you to take care.”

  He nodded, relieved that she had nothing more to go on. “You’re right, I have my enemies, but I know who they are and what they threaten. They envy me but they are powerless against me while I have her favor. But you are right to warn me, wife. And I thank you for your wise counsel.”

  That night Robert Dudley and his wife slept in the same bed in some accord. He bedded her as gently and as warmly as he could, and Amy, desperate for his touch, accepted the false coin of his kindness as love. She had waited so long for his kiss, for the gentle press of his body against hers, that she whimpered and cried with joy within the first few minutes, and he, falling easily into the well-known rhythm of their lovemaking, with her familiar body surprising him with pleasure, found her easy to please and was glad of that, if for nothing more. He was used to whores, and the ladies of the court, and it was a rare pleasure for him to bed a woman whom he cared for; it was strange for him to hold back out of consideration. As he felt the sweet rush of Amy’s response, his mind wandered to what it would be like to have Elizabeth cling to him, as Amy was clinging now—and the fantasy was so powerful that his lust came like a storm and left him gasping with the thought of a white throat flung back, dark eyelashes fluttering with lust, and a mass of tumbled bronze hair.

  Amy fell asleep at once, her head resting on his shoulder, and he leaned up on his elbow to look at her face in the moonlight which came, all pale and watery, through the glass of the leaded window pane. It gave her skin an odd, greenish pallor, like that of a drowned woman, and her hair spread out on the pillow was like that of a woman rocking on the deep water of a river and sinking down.

  He looked at her with irritated compassion: this wife, whose happiness was so solely dependent upon him, whose desire revolved around him, who was lost without him and infuriating with him, the wife who could never now satisfy him. He knew too that, although she would deny it to her very death, in truth, he could never make her truly happy. They were two such different people, with such different lives, he could not see how they could ever now be joined as one.

  He sighed and leaned back, his dark head resting on the crook of his arm. He thought of his father’s warning against marrying a pretty face for love, and his mother saying sourly to him that little Amy Robsart was as much use to an ambitious man as a primrose in his buttonhole. He had wanted then to show his parents that he was not a son like Guilford, who would marry a girl who hated him, at his father’s command. He had wanted to choose his own wife, and Amy had been so young and so sweet and so willing to agree to anything he proposed. He had thought then that she could learn to be a courtier’s wife, he had thought she could be an ally to him, a source of power and information—as his mother was to his father. He had thought that she could be a loyal and effective partner in the rise of his family to greatness. He did not realize that she would always be the contented daughter of Sir John Robsart, a big man in a small country, rather than an ambitious wife to Robert Dudley, a man who was finding greatness so unreliable, and so hard to win.

  Robert woke early and felt the old familiar rush of irritation that the woman beside him in bed was Amy, and not some London whore whom he could dismiss before she had the temerity to speak. Instead, his wife stirred as he stirred, as if even in sleep every sense had been on the watch for him. She opened her eyes almost as soon as he did, and as soon as she saw him she smiled that familiar, vacuous smile, and said, as she always said, “Good morning, my lord. God be with you. Are you well?”

  He hated too that when he replied brusquely, a shadow passed across her face as if he had slapped her in her very first moments of waking, which forced him to smile in his turn and ask her if she had slept well, with extra concern in his voice in an attempt to make amends.

  The repetitive dullness of it made him grit his teeth and spring out of bed as if he were urgently needed elsewhere, though in fact, he had told everyone at court that he would spend some days with his wife in Camberwell. The predictable interplay of his irritation and her hurt was unbearable.

  “Oh, are you getting up?” she asked, as if she could not see him swing his cloak around his naked shoulders.

  “Yes,” he said shortly. “I have remembered something I should have done at court; I shall have to go back early.”

  “Early?” She could not keep the disappointment from her voice.

  “Yes, early,” he said abruptly, and went quickly from the room.

  He had hoped to break his fast alone and be on his horse and away before the household was stirring, but Amy flung herself from their bed and wakened everyone. Mr. and Mrs. Scott came tumbling down the stairs, Mrs. Scott pinning her hair as she trotted in her husband’s wake, Mrs. Oddingsell behind them; he could hear the heels of Amy’s expensive shoes rattling along the wooden floorboards as she hurried down too. He forced a smile on his face and prepared himself to repeat his lies of urgent business overlooked.

  A more sophisticated family would have guessed at once the simple truth: their noble guest could not endure another minute. But for the Scotts, and for their cousin Amy, it was a surprise and a disappointment, and Amy in particular was worried that he was overburdened by the business at court.

  “Can they not get someone else to do it for you?” she asked, hovering over him with maternal concern and watching him drink ale and eat bread.

  “No,” he said, his mouth full.

  “They ask you to do so much,” she said proudly. She glanced at Mrs. Scott, at Mrs. Oddingsell. “Can they not manage without you? They should not put so much on your shoulders.”

  “I am Master of Horse,” he said. “It is my duty to do the task she has given me.”

  “Can’t William Cecil do it for you?” Amy asked at random. “You could send him a note.”

  Dudley would have laughed if he had not been so irritated. “No,” he said. “Cecil has his own work, and the last thing I want is him interfering in mine.”

  “Or your brother then? Surely you could trust him? And then you could stay here another night.”

  Dudley shook his head. “I am sorry to leave you all,” he said, including
the Scotts in the charm of his apology. “And if I could stay, I would do so. But I woke myself in the night with the sudden realization that there is to be a great outing on barges after the ceremony of the Order of the Garter and I have not ordered the barges. I have to get back to court and put it all in hand.”

  “Oh, if it is just ordering some boats you can do it by letter,” Amy reassured him. “And one of the pages can take it at once.”

  “No,” he repeated. “I have to be there. The boats have to be checked and the rowers allotted. I have to prepare a water pageant and get a boat for the musicians; there’s a lot to do. It’s not just a matter of ordering the boats. I cannot think how I could have overlooked it.”

  “If I came too, I could help you, perhaps.”

  Robert rose from the table. He could not bear the wistfulness in her face. “How I wish you could!” he said warmly. “But I have another job for you, a far more important task. Don’t you remember? And you have promised to undertake it for me, for us.”

  The smile came back to her face. “Oh, yes!”

  “I want that done as soon as possible. I will leave you now, and you can tell our friends all about it.”

  He was out of the door before she could again ask him to stay. His men in the stable yard were saddling up, ready to leave. He ran an expert eye over them. Dudley was famous for having his escort as smart as outbound soldiers. He nodded and took the reins of his big hunter and led him round to the front of the house.

  “I must thank you for your hospitality to me,” he said to Mr. Scott. “I know that you require no thanks for my wife’s stay; I know how dear she is to you.”

  “It is always a pleasure to have my cousin here,” the man said smoothly. “And a great honor to see you. But I was hoping to have time for a little word.”

  “Oh?”

  Mr. Scott drew Robert Dudley to one side. “I have some difficulty in reclaiming a debt from a merchant in Antwerp; I have his bond but I cannot make him honor it. I would rather not present it to the magistrates; there are some clauses in it which are rather complicated for their simple minds, and my debtor knows this, and is taking advantage of it and will not pay.”

  Robert decoded this at his usual speed as meaning that Mr. Scott had lent some money to an Antwerp merchant at an illegally high rate of interest and that now the man was reneging on the debt, secure in the knowledge that no reputable London merchant would want it known that he was lending money to the vulnerable at twenty-five percent.

  “What’s the total sum?” Robert asked cautiously.

  “Nothing, to such a great man as you. A mere three hundred pounds. But a worry for me.”

  Robert nodded. “You can write to Sir Thomas Gresham at Antwerp, and say you are my wife’s cousin and I am asking him to act in this matter,” he said easily. “He will oblige me by looking into it for you, and then you can tell me what he concludes.”

  “I am most grateful, cousin,” Mr. Scott said warmly.

  “It is my pleasure to be of service to you.” Robert bowed gracefully, and turned to kiss Mrs. Scott and then to Amy.

  At the moment of his leaving her, she could not hide her distress. Her face drained of color and her fingers trembled in the confident clasp of his warm hands. She tried to smile but her eyes filled with tears.

  He bent his head and kissed her on the lips, and felt the sad downward curve under his mouth. Last night, underneath him, she had been smiling as he kissed her, she had wrapped her arms and legs around him and whispered his name, and the taste of her had been very sweet.

  “Be happy, Amy,” he urged her, whispering quietly in her ear. “I hate it when you are sad.”

  “I see you so seldom,” she breathed urgently. “Can’t you stay? Oh, please stay, just till dinner time…”

  “I have to go,” he said, holding her close.

  “You’re hurrying away to see another woman?” she accused, suddenly filled with rage, her voice a hiss in his ear like a serpent.

  He pulled away from her grasp. “Of course not. It is as I have told you. Be happy! Our family is on the rise. Be happy for me, please, send me away with your smile.”

  “As long as you swear to me on your mother’s honor that there is no one else.”

  He grimaced at the exaggerated language. “Of course, I promise,” he said simply. “Now you be happy for me.”

  Amy tried to smile, though her lips trembled. “I am happy,” she lied at once. “I am happy for you in your success and I am so happy that we are to have a house at last.” Her voice dropped. “If you swear you have kept faith with me.”

  “Of course. Why else would I want you to make a home for us? And I will meet you at the Hydes’ at Denchworth, within a fortnight or so. I will let you know by a note to Mrs. Oddingsell.”

  “Write to me,” she urged him. “I like it when they bring your letters to me.”

  Robert gave her a little hug. “Very well then,” he said, thinking it was like pacifying a child. “I will write to you and seal it, and it can come to you and you can break the seal yourself.”

  “Oh, I never break them. I lift them off the page and I keep them. I have a whole collection of them in my jewel-box drawer, from all the letters you have ever sent me.”

  He turned away from the thought of her treasuring something as trivial as his sealing wax, and ran down the steps and vaulted into the high saddle of his horse.

  Robert swept his hat from his head. “I’ll say farewell for now,” he said pleasantly. “And look to our next meeting.” He could not bear to meet her eyes. He glanced at Mrs. Oddingsell and saw that she was nearby, ready to support Amy once he had gone. There was no point in prolonging the farewell. He nodded to his company of horse and they fell in behind him, his standard-bearer ahead, and they trotted off, the noise of the horses very loud as the street narrowed toward the end of the road.

  Amy watched them go until they turned the corner and were out of sight. Still she waited on the steps until she could no longer hear the clatter of the hooves and the jingle of the bits. Even then she waited in case he miraculously changed his mind and came riding back, wanting a last kiss, or wanting her to go with him. For half an hour after he had gone, Amy lingered near the front door in case he would come back. But he never did.

  Robert rode the long way back to court in a circuitous route at breakneck pace that tested the horsemanship of his escort, and the stamina of their mounts. When they finally rattled into the stable yard of Whitehall Palace the horses were blowing, their necks darkened with sweat, and the standard-bearer was gritting his teeth on the pain in his arms from riding one-handed at a half gallop for almost an hour.

  “Good God, what is burning the man?” he asked as he fell from the saddle into the arms of one of his companions.

  “Lust,” said the other crudely. “Lust or ambition or a guilty conscience. That’s our lord in a nutshell. And today, seeing that he is riding hell for leather from his wife to the queen, it’s guilty conscience, then ambition, then lust.”

  As Robert dismounted, one of his household, Thomas Blount, stood up from where he had been lounging in the shadows and came forward to hold the horse’s reins.

  “Some news,” he said quietly.

  Robert waited.

  “At the Privy Council meeting, the queen tore into them over the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis failing to return Calais to England, and not forcing the French princess to surrender the English coat of arms. They agreed to build two new warships, by subscription. You’ll be asked for money, as well as everyone else.”

  “Anything else?” Dudley asked, his face a mask.

  “About the church. Cecil to draw up a bill to go through parliament to decide what the services are to be. Agreed that they should base it on King Edward’s prayer book with some small changes.”

  Dudley narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Did they not press her to go further?”

  “Aye, but Cecil said that anything more would provoke a rebellion from the bishops a
nd the lords. He couldn’t promise to get it through as it is. And some of the councillors said they were opposed anyway. It’s to go before parliament by Easter; Cecil hopes to work on the opposition by then.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing of matter. Some outburst of jealousy from the queen about Philip of Spain’s marriage. And some discussion among themselves when she was gone that she would do best to marry Arran. Cecil in favor of Arran. Most of the council in agreement, especially if Arran can deliver Scotland. Some harsh words against you.”

  “Against me?”

  “For distracting her from marriage plans, turning her head, flirtation, that sort of thing.”

  “Just hard words?”

  “Norfolk said you should be sent back to the Tower or he’d run you through himself and think it a job well done.”

  “Norfolk is a puppy; but watch him for me,” Robert said. “You’ve done very well. Come and see me later today; I have some other business for you.”

  The man bowed and faded into the background of the stable yard as if he had never been there. Robert turned for the palace and took the steps up to the hall two at a time.

  “And how was your wife?” Elizabeth asked sweetly, the demure tone quite contradicted by the sharp glance she threw at him.

  Robert was too experienced a philanderer to hesitate for a moment. “Well indeed,” he said. “Blooming in health and beauty. Every time I see her she is prettier.”

  Elizabeth, who was ready to crow over any admission of Amy’s imperfections, was caught unawares. “She is well?”

  “In the best of health,” he assured her. “And very happy. She is staying with her cousin, a very prosperous lady, married to Mr. Ralph Scott, a London merchant, a very successful man. I had to drag myself away from them; they were a merry party indeed.”

  Her dark eyes snapped. “You need not have put yourself to any trouble, Sir Robert. You could have stayed as long as you wished in— where was it?—Kendal?”

  “Camberwell, Your Grace,” he replied. “Just down the road from London. A pretty little village. You would like it. I’m surprised you have never heard of it. Amy adores it there and she has wonderful taste.”