Read Online The Queen's Lady by Barbara Kyle - Free Book Online Page A

writing to open a dialogue with me about you and young Geoffrey. You got along well with the lad when he was here at Christmas, despite his coughs and chills. Good family. And he’s doing brilliantly at Cambridge. He’ll make a first-rate lawyer one day.”
    He watched her for a promising sign, but she offered none.
    Indeed, her obstinate expression suggested the opposite. More sighed heavily. He rose from his chair, turned his back to her, and gazed out the window. “I would like to have seen you safely and honorably married. The world is becoming a dangerous place.” He added quietly, “Sometimes, I fear we may be standing on the brink of the very end.” He could hear his own uneasiness hover in the stillness of the book-lined sanctuary.
    He turned abruptly, suddenly all business. “Her Grace has need of new ladies-in-waiting. Two places have fallen vacant. She has asked that you fill one of them.”
    Honor’s eyes grew large.
    More frowned and added hastily, “I scruple to send a tender mind to court. Much vice breeds there. The Queen herself is the most virtuous of women—else nothing could make me even consider it—still, there is much vice. Had I given my word on you already to Sir John Bremelcum I would not hesitate to send my regrets to the Queen, for she well knows my promise is a thing I would not break, not for a world of court gold. Yet it is not so. There has been no such agreement with Sir John . . .”
    His voice trailed. He had held off asking her inclination outright, hoping that, given a moment to consider, she might yet decline of her own free will. But he could put it off no longer. “What say you, child, to the Queen’s request?”
    She was staring at him, hope glowing on her face. “Are you giving me leave to choose for myself, sir?”
    He hesitated, then answered, “Of course.”
    Suddenly, all her reticence was swept away by a huge, bright smile. More felt a pang of loss. How instantly the siren song of the court had severed her heartstrings from Chelsea—from him! And yet, her eyes were shining so clearly, so openly devoid of guile, that for a moment he could actually believe that she was making the right choice.
    His eyes trailed down to the low-cut bodice of her gown. He noticed, for the first time, the coral and pearls of his gift glistening against the skin above her full, lifted breasts. And she had changed her dress since the morning, had she not? Yes, she had put on a silk one of a gleaming coral color. She must have picked it out especially, for he saw that it perfectly matched the necklace. Saw, too, that it gave fire to her lustrous dark hair and eyes.
    He forced his eyes away. Blindly, he grabbed a sheaf of papers as if he meant to begin work. But it was no good. He turned back to her. “Oh, tread carefully, child,” he said. “At court, many pretty necklaces are dangled before the eyes of the unwary.”

4
At Court
    “T hey’re going to cut off his hand?” Honor asked, horrified.
    She turned to Margery Napier. The two girls were the same age, and for six months had shared duties among the Queen’s two dozen ladies-in-waiting. They had stopped halfway across a colonnaded outdoor gallery at Greenwich Palace with bundles of the Queen’s furs in their arms. “But why?” Honor asked. “What’s he done?”
    The gallery looked down on a cramped quadrangle where a crowd was forming. The quadrangle was hemmed in by the red brick walls of the scullery and spicery, and the gray stone walls of the granary, chandlery, and brewhouse. This jumble of buildings huddled under the perimeter skyline of palace roofs serrated with gables and chimneys where the occasional flash of a gilded turret reflected the watery winter sun.
    “It’s the new penalty for brawling on the King’s tennis courts,” Margery answered blithely. Her eye was following a young lordling with a shapely leg as he and his wolfhound sauntered out of an alley. Man and dog left behind them a pattern of black