Brazen Read Online Free PDF Page B

love note?” Madge takes the book from me. Flips through it. Turns it upside down, holding it by its spine to shake it.
    A piece of parchment flutters out. She swoops down on it like a falcon diving for prey and smooths it open.
    “‘For your words,’” she reads aloud.
    I feel like I’m in a crowded room, hardly able to breathe. What does he know about my words? What does he know about me?
    Madge turns the paper over. “That’s
it
?”
    “Well, what did he say?” I ask. “When . . . when he gave it to you?”
    “
He
didn’t give it to me,” she says. “He gave it to someone else, who asked me to deliver it.”
    Of course it was Hal to whom Fitz gave it. And of course it would be Madge whom Fitz asked to deliver it.
    I touch the letters stamped on the front cover.
    “M. F.”
    “Your initials.”
    “M. H.,” I remind her. “I’m a Howard.”
    “Mary
FitzRoy
. Ownership stamped in gold and bound in leather.”
    I run my finger along the two letters again. FitzRoy. Not Howard.
    “Perhaps it’s to write your own love letters in,” Madge continues. “Or poetry.”
    Hal is the poet. I look away.
    “Ahhhh,” Madge croons, leaning close again. “Love poetry, perhaps? Something by your brother. Or Thomas Wyatt? Something swoonworthy and seductive.” She pauses. “Or Chaucer!”
    “I imagine I can write in it anything I please.”
    “It seems a very impersonal gift,” Madge says, taking it from me and flipping through the blank pages. “The least he could have done was to leave a note.”
    But he did. And I’ve got it folded in the palm of my hand.
    For your words
.
    He knows something about me. And I know nothing about him.



I T ’ S SO EASY FOR HIM . H E SPENDS H IS DAYS SURROUNDED B Y friends. Sure of his position. At his father’s side.
    He doesn’t have to think every moment about the way he walks, the way he holds his head, the way people look at him. He doesn’t have to
be
a duke. He just
is
one.
    I wake up every day feeling like me, and then I remember. I’m not me, anymore. I’m a duchess. And I need to act like one. So I spend the entire day as if on a stage. Always watched, but never listened to.
    The entire court moves to York Place—or Whitehall, as it’s called now. But everyone still calls it by its old name. From here, we are close to the City and Westminster, and most of the men find excuses to escape the palace boundaries.
    My freedom is more restricted, but the combination of more space and fewer people gives me a chance to breathe. I find myself a little in love with Whitehall, with its interconnected rooms and the windowed galleries right along the Thames.
    I seek out Margaret Douglas. She was born into this. Her mother was King Henry’s sister, and queen of Scotland. But after the Scots king died, her mother’s second marriage, to Archibald Douglas, went horribly awry, and Margaret grew up under the protection of her uncle.
    Margaret has true royal blood in her veins, not the murky depths the Howards cling to. Or the lineage of treason and betrayal that rocks the foundations of my mother’s side of the family. Not that my mother would ever lose her balance.
    I find Margaret in a bubble of quiet at the far side of a sparsely populated gallery. I thread my way between posturing courtiers to stand in front of her. But I have no idea how to begin.
    “What?” She doesn’t take her eyes off the book in her lap.
    “What do you mean?” I’m embarrassed and pretend to gaze out the window. The fog has rolled in off the Thames and seems to swallow the palace whole.
    “You’re staring at me.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    Margaret sighs and looks up at me. I see a resemblance to Fitz, her cousin. Her hair is less red and her mouth wider, but she does have the slightly pouty lower lip and the long nose, and her eyebrows arch like question marks over her dark eyes. She’s stunning.
    “What do you want, Your Grace?” she asks. “You came here for a reason.”
    I can’t