Read Online The Queen's Sorrow by Suzannah Dunn - Free Book Online Page A

modest; the boy was tall, and – Rafael saw it – she was pleased he’d noticed. Sad, too, though – Rafael saw this, too – if only for a heartbeat: a fleeting sadness, perhaps at her little boy growing older and leaving his infant years behind. ‘Nicholas,’ she said. Rafael repeated it with obvious approval. ‘My son,’ he said, making a fist over his heart. ‘Three years. Francisco.’
    ‘Oh!’ Her eyes lit up, and she looked as if she’d like to ask more. Instead, though, a small gesture, and unconsciously, Rafael felt, a reflection of his own: a brief, steadying touch of her own hand to her own heart. Which rather touched him.
    ‘Rafael,’ he said, tapping his chest.
    ‘Cecily,’ she reciprocated. This, he hadn’t expected, and suffered a pang of anxiety that he’d pushed her into it. ‘Madam’would’ve been fine. Again she looked expectant and he guessed that he was supposed to repeat it, to try it out, which he did and to which she looked amused although it had sounded all right to him.
    After that, he’d felt relaxed enough to excuse himself and go up to his room to fetch paper and charcoal, and for the following couple of hours in Cecily’s company he sketched and half-worked on ideas.
    Subsequent evenings, this became the routine, sometimes with him working at the table, sometimes on a letter home. The old man, Richard – and dog, Flynn – would sleep; and Cecily would continue her work on a gown. Fine wool, it usually was: definitely not her own. ‘Frizado,’ she said, once, holding it up for him to see and relishing the texture between her fingertips. Another time, ‘Mockado,’ and another, ‘Grogram.’ Later, every evening, though, she’d put her work aside and then, standing up, standing tall to stretch, she’d reach to the small of her back to release her apron’s bow with a tug. As it dropped away, she’d swoop it up, giving it a shake to release any creases and looping it into a couple of easy, loose folds. Then she’d reach into the linen basket for the little unassuming roll of undyed linen in which were pinned and pocketed her own special needles and threads.
    The first time, she’d held up a needle, presented it to him although it was so fine that it vanished in the air between them, and said, ‘From Spain.’ She said it with a depreciating little laugh: there wasn’t a lot they could talk about and this was the best she could do. For his part, he’d tried to look interested. What did interest him was that she’d made the effort to find something they had in common. That was what mattered; not the actual, invisible, though no doubt very good needle. She turned it in the air: ‘Very, very good,’ she assured him, eyebrows raised and head tilted in a parody of earnestness which he then mirrored so that she smiled.
    Also in that linen pouch were floss silks of various colours. Her method was to lay them on the dark glossy tabletop to make her selection. The skeins were greens and blues, reds and yellows: the greens from fresh and bud-like to velvety firblues; the blues from palest lunar glow to deepest ultramarine; the reds from cat’s tongue rosiness to alizarin; the yellows from the creaminess of blossom to the confidence of lemons and the darker, greeny-gold of pears. The best needles might well come from Spain, but everyone knew the best embroidery came from England.
    Rafael would watch Cecily choosing her colours. She’d feel her way along the range, not touching: fingers walking above the row, rising and falling as if idling on the keys of a virginal. Then – yes – she’d pick one up, pleased to have made the decision but perhaps also a little regretful, Rafael detected, to have committed herself. The selection would be hung over her finger, unregarded, while she made the next few choices, then she’d drape them all in the fold between thumb and forefinger to trail across her palm. That little handful she’d lift into thelight, whatever remained of