The Fatal Fashione Read Online Free PDF Page B

probably hearing their raised voices, too—but Ned Topside, half behind a tree, no less, gesturing madly to her in a most rude way. She was briefly grateful that Paulet couldn’t see well, either, these days. Whatever was the matter with her man to insist she come to him straightaway? More often than not, Ned Topside was saucy and needed his ears boxed, yet he seemed confident and almost commanding right now.
    “I must leave you, my lord,” she shouted at Paulet. “We will unfortunately continue this important discussion further.” As the old man went into a creaky bow, she hurried toward Ned.
    However much the buffoon Paulet sometimes seemed, she knew from privy reports he could wreak havoc and never forgot an insult. Then again, neither did she. He was fortunate she abided him at all. If he hadn’t had one secret thing in his favor, the great mark against him she would never forgive would have had him in permanent rural retirement by now—and that leech Dauntsey with him.
    “Ned, whatever is it?” she demanded when she reached him. “There will be hell to pay if Lord Paulet learns I left him for my principal player. I swear that if you—”
    “It’s Meg, Your Grace. I hustled her into a downstairs anteroom, as I didn’t want her riling your maids or courtiers. She’s come back nearly hysterical from the starcher’s loft and says she has to see you, only you. I tried to comfort her, but she’ll have none of me lately.”
    Elizabeth did not comment on that last remark but, with her heartbeat thudding like horses’ hooves, hurried into the palace.
    The queen found Meg crumpled onto a bench in a small, windowless room lit by a single lantern. The light was bright enough, though, to gild the tear tracks on her cheeks.
    “Ned, step out and watch the door so we are not disturbed,” Elizabeth ordered.
    “But—” he began, then did as she said, quietly closing the heavy door she assumed he’d be trying to listen through.
    “Tell me,” the queen said only, and thrust the lacy handkerchief from up her sleeve into Meg’s trembling hands.
    “Someone’s dead.”
    “In the streets? Who and where?”
    “A woman. In the starch vat at Hannah’s. I couldn’t see a face, but a hand—attached to an arm, I’m sure—floated to the top of the milky stuff. No one else was there—deserted.”
    “That’s dreadful,” Elizabeth whispered, as her insides cartwheeled and her knees went weak. “Could it be Hannah or one of her workers?”
    “I don’t know, Your Grace! I didn’t”—she blew her nose hard—“just couldn’t bear to pull the body up and look. I dropped my bags of roots and ran back here.”
    “And well you did. But where were Hannah’s women?”
    Meg shook her head wildly. “Don’t know. Don’t know anything, if it was her or one of her women or a customer or that whitster friend of hers, Ursala something … No one with a wrist ruff, that’s all I know.”
    “But you’re certain,” Elizabeth muttered more to herself, “it was not a man? I commanded Thomas Gresham to visit that shop, and if he arrives to find a corpse—or worse … He has enemies, but usually takes at least one guard with him.”
    She shuddered. Something had to be done about this now beyond summoning the constable and coroner. She hardly wanted Gresham walking in to find and report a body in a place she’d ordered him to visit. Perhaps it could be proved an accident or even a suicide, because the third alternative would open Pandora’s box.
    “Meg,” she said, gripping the woman’s shoulder, “you must go back. I’ll send Ned, Jenks, and another guard with you. Put the guard on the door to seal the scene. Then see if you can discern who the dead woman is. Look for signs she might merely have slipped or tumbled in. I hear wet starch is slippery, so you never know. Then I will have Cecil speak to the local authorities to report the death. You are quite sure you saw no one suspicious fleeing the scene or lurking