Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

executed traitor looked so supremely contented and satisfied with life. She glided serenely behind her new mistress, her blonde head held high, her calm, blue eyes casting about the chamber with gratification until they happened to light upon Bridget.
     
    Lady Rochford looked at her, and it seemed to take a moment for her brain to catch up and fully register who Bridget was. When recognition dawned, her eyes bulged, as though Bridget were not a person but an apparition, a phantom from the past sent into the present to torment her. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she trod on the hem of the dress of the woman in front of her, causing that lady to stumble a little. The woman, the richly dressed young lady who was directly accompanying the queen, stopped and glanced behind her. She raised her eyebrows in consternation at Lady Rochford before she too spotted Bridget. A burst of confusion, mixed with curiosity, flashed across her features and she frowned. Bridget had been wondering who the woman was, but now she knew. Her close proximity to the king and queen, as well as her stunning dress and fiery Tudor red hair, told the story. This was King Henry’s first daughter, Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, the Lady Mary.
     
    In the aftermath of Anne’s death, the king had reconciled with the only remaining offspring of his first marriage, if “reconciled” was the right term for it. He had not made it easy for Mary to return to the fold. Far from it. The price of re-admittance to her father’s affections had been her signature upon a document in which she had acknowledged, for the first time, that her parents had never been truly married and that she, one-time princess and heiress to the throne, was in reality a bastard.
     
    She must have shed many bitter tears over being forced to put her name to such an instrument; it could only in her eyes have constituted a betrayal of her beloved mother’s memory. Katherine had fought so hard, to her dying breath, to uphold her marriage and thus her daughter’s legitimacy. With a single stroke of the pen, Mary had signed away both. She must have thought that with Anne out of the way, the path back into the king’s heart and court would have been smooth and straightforward. Not so. She had defied her father, she had defied him for years, and for that she must suffer. Henry had set out to teach his daughter a hard lesson: there was no easy way back into his good graces. A price must always be paid and the Lady Mary was no exception to that rule. Perhaps that was the explanation for the sadness in her eyes.
     
    The procession moved with serpentine elegance to the back of the room, then disappeared through a door that led to the king’s presence chamber, the first and most public part of his otherwise private apartments. The company stood up as soon as the door was closed, and the most desperate of the petitioners darted forward and immediately began pestering the guards for admittance.
    “Come, follow us,” Cromwell said, shepherding them expertly through the crush. “I will make sure you gain access. Just follow me and ’twill be no trouble. The king will be wondering where the two of us have gone to, for I do not think he noticed us as he passed by. He will be especially vexed by Will’s absence. He has become a great favourite of His Majesty’s.” Will shook his head but offered no verbal contradiction.
     
    Sir Richard thanked Cromwell profusely for his assistance and they passed through the besieged entryway as forecast without a hitch, the guards standing to one side as soon as they saw the Lord Privy Seal approach. A stilted and over-formal Will walked beside Bridget but kept a wide gap between them and said not a word to her. It seemed to be his policy as far as she was concerned—total and complete silence. As a married woman, it should not have bothered her, but it did. She had done nothing to merit such treatment; in fact, quite the reverse. If anything, it should have