Keeper of the King's Secrets Read Online Free PDF

looked down at his papers. “There are candles in that cupboard over there.”
    She rose, wanting to stretch, to lift her arms above her head, but the hot, dark look in Wolsey’s eyes when she had caught him staring made that impossible.
    She pulled a tapestry across the window. Despite the glass, cold seeped into the room, and she felt instantly warmer as she twitched it into place.
    She lined the desk with as many candles as practical.
    Had Parker come? She had not heard him outside the door, but it was comforting to know Simon and Peter Jack were just beyond in the antechamber. And that Wolsey knew that, too.
    Despite the lust she had seen on his face, he surely wouldn’t try anything when a single cry from her would bring in two protectors.
    She looked across at him, but his head was bent to his work and he did not look up. The tension in her neck and shoulders eased a little.
    She worked on the head and shoulders portrait of Henry, then moved on to the D , until she had only the border left to do. She mixed her pigments, working her small stock of lapis lazuli with white until she had a sky blue. The color of loyalty, of dependability. However fast Wolsey wanted this done, she would put every nuance of her work to the King’s advantage.
    The birds, hounds, and cat looked beautiful against the blue; she had used bright jewel colors, and she wanted to scoop them up and let them chase and leap across her palm.
    She finished with pen work in powdered gold, adding it first to the miniature portrait to create gold embroidery on Henry’s shirt and doublet.
    She had plenty of gold left, since she was planning to use it for the border, but she suddenly decided, extravagantly, to also use it in the letter D. To thread the whole letter with gold. It would frame the head and shoulders of the King beautifully.
    She picked up her pen and began on the intricacies of her design. The Italian flourishes and curves, the tiny bracelet of cameos around the middle of the stem and the outer curve ofthe D , one of the King, the other of the Queen. It was so finely rendered, she doubted many would notice it, but it gave her pleasure to know it was there.
    No doubt Wolsey would consider the time she had spent on it to be time wasted.
    At last she moved to the border, and traced the Tudor roses and the pomegranates of the Queen in gold as well. Finally, she added a tiny gold bell around the cat’s neck, to warn the birds of its approach.
    Finished, she leaned back, closing her eyes and rolling her shoulders. Then she stood and, without looking at Wolsey, walked to the door and back.
    She looked down at her work and thought it was good, and, given the time she had had, no ill reflection on her or her father’s atelier.
    “It is done?” Wolsey sat in shadow, and she wondered how long ago he had put his papers aside and begun watching her. When he had let his candle go out.
    She nodded, sorry the King would never see this letter before it was sent. He was always a most appreciative patron, and he seemed to enjoy discussing her techniques with her.
    Wolsey stood and crossed over to her.
    She took a step back to give him better light, but also to put some distance between them.
    Wolsey stared down, and when he turned to her his mouth was as severe as ever. She wondered, suddenly, if it was not the wait to have the document illuminated that so enraged him, but rather the document itself.
    “When will it be dry enough to roll and seal?”
    “If you leave it in a warm room, it will be dry by morning.”
    He gritted his teeth. “Very well. You may leave.”
    Susanna moved forward and began to pack her things away. Wolsey stood too close and she took less care than she would usually have done, hastily shoving everything back into her satchel.
    He lifted a hand and for a moment she thought he was going to strike her, and she jerked back.
    He stood, fingers extended, as if to brush her cheek, but his eyes were anything but tender. “Whatever you