The Boleyn Reckoning Read Online Free PDF

England had kept to the terms. William’s betrothal to the young Elisabeth de France still officially held—so what had prompted the French to make that savage thrust across the border and then withdraw?
    Obviously they were unhappy with the English gains two summers ago, when they’d picked up Le Havre and Harfleur, and wanted revenge for their losses. But the fact remained that the French had not moved against those cities, but across the English border. A much more intimate threat. Because they had learned that England had approached Spain and (rightly) guessed that William intended to marry his sister to King Philip and then himself abandon the French princess to whom he was betrothed.
    William did not mean to marry the young Elisabeth de France, that much was true. But he’d thought he would have more time, that the French betrothal had bought him several years of peace, as Elisabeth was still only ten years old. But someone didn’t want him to have those years. Someone was pressing the matter to a head, certain that outside pressure would force him to withdraw from Minuette.
    Someone was very much mistaken.
    That
someone
might simply be the nameless French observers and politicians who had watched Dominic and Minuette and Elizabeth during their visit to France last summer, but William did notdiscount the possibility that there might be a very specific someone, perhaps even in England, who had alerted the French to the peril. There were more than enough Englishmen who did not want him to marry Minuette.
    He’d kept his suspicions to himself thus far. The obvious person to discuss it with was Dominic—but their friendship had altered in the previous months. And not as a result of the smallpox.
    When William had woken from danger and begun his slow recovery from the illness, everything that had come in the weeks before had been blurry and unfocused. He could remember the outline of events—fighting in Scotland, arresting Northumberland—but details and emotional contexts eluded him.
    Except for one very detailed, very emotional memory: the look on Dominic’s face when he’d realized how William had used him to trap his friend, Renaud LeClerc.
    Not that the trap had come off. The French commander had been meant for death, not a botched assassination attempt that left LeClerc furious and still very much in control of the French armies. But Dominic had seen only his king’s betrayal. William knew that, to his dying day, he would remember the contempt in Dominic’s voice when his closest friend told him, “You used me … and you lied to me about it.”
    They had not discussed Renaud and Scotland since. William had allowed Dominic to believe the details of their argument had vanished in the mists of his illness and Dominic had not pressed, perhaps remembering his own folly in walking away from the fight in Scotland in a luxury of pride and hurt. It was for the best—let them both forgive the errors they’d made in judgment—but he had not forgotten. And he was certain that neither had Dominic.
    William had felt the constraint between them immediately when he’d woken to see Dominic’s face. His friend’s eyes, though grateful, had been shuttered against him even then, and Williamknew there were parts of himself Dominic was keeping carefully away from him. William veered between guilt that he’d caused that constraint and fury that the one man he’d always trusted no longer entirely trusted him in return.
    There was a discreet knock on the oratory door. William said without turning, “Let Lord Exeter in, and then you are dismissed.”
    He made a final obeisance to God and stood to face Dominic. “How did it go?”
    “As well as could be expected. Northumberland was gracious. And the crowd was less unruly than I’d feared. It was a clean death.”
    “And now?”
    Dominic didn’t need to ask what William meant; though there was constraint between them, that didn’t change the fact that Dominic knew