To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court Read Online Free PDF Page B

my dear—my very dear—Ursula, that is all I can say. You will hear the rest when Cecil arrives. He is with the court at Richmond, but young Tom from the lodge has gone off by boat to tell him that you’re here. Ah.” A butler had come into the room and was clearing his throat. “I think, Ursula, that your meal is nearly ready. There should be hot water in your room, if you want to wash before you eat.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “Listen, Rob. I want to be reunited with Meg as soon as possible and I then intend to take her straight home to France and I am not prepared to take no for an answer.”
    “I said you’d say that. But,” said Rob, with a glint of disquieting laughter in his blue eyes, “you’ll have to fetch her first.”
    He wouldn’t explain further. I must wait until Sir William Cecil arrived and then I would understand everything. I ate my meal, fuming. After that, I roamed restlessly from room to room and asked questions which Rob wouldn’t answer, until I realized that I was wastingmy time. On Dale’s sensible recommendation, I then settled in the parlor and tried to play backgammon with Rob’s twelve-year-old son, Harry, a jolly lad with a marked resemblance to his merry dumpling of a mother.
    In the early evening, glancing out of the window at the sweep of lawn and the river beyond, I saw a barge draw quietly alongside the Thamesbank landing stage, and tie up. Whereupon, I sat down again and remarked to Harry that we needed to light the candles if we were to play another game. I would not hurry out to greet Cecil. I had come to find Meg as a hawk comes to the lure and he had known I would. But I would take wing at his bidding no longer.
    Within a few minutes, however, there were voices outside the room. Rob was speaking in quiet, respectful tones. Then the door opened and his head came around it. “I am sorry, Harry, but I must interrupt you. Ursula, will you come to the study?”
    Beyond the tall leaded windows of the study, a quiet blue dusk was falling across the land but the room itself, with crimson velvet curtains and cushions and vivid rugs, was bright and welcoming. It was quite a big room, and I saw that a supper table laid for four had been placed at one side. There were lighted candles on the table and in wall sconces, and a small fire burned in the hearth, for the evenings were still cool. Sir William Cecil was there, standing beside a chair in which a cloaked woman was seated. I looked at her and as I did so, she raised a long-fingered hand, laden with rings, to push back her hood. She smiled and automatically I dropped into a curtsy.
    “Good evening, Ursula,” said Queen Elizabeth sweetly.
    She looked older. Elizabeth was senior to me by only a few months, but had I not known this, I would have said three or four years. Her golden-brown eyes had always been watchful but now I would have called them wary, and there were tiny scars at her temples, where the light red hair was drawn back into its crimpings. She had had smallpox since I saw her last but she had been luckier than my Gerald. She had escaped not only with her life but with most of her complexion.
    Her pale shield of a face was as I remembered it, though, and so were those long, jeweled fingers, and so too was the curious quality of unexpectedness, which was one of her most outstanding characteristics.
    Elizabeth lived, for most of the time, just as her father, King Henry, had done, wielding her power openly, amid splendor and protocol, in ornate rooms, surrounded by a crowd of people. Yet she could at will detach herself from all of it, wrap herself in an anonymous cloak, take a journey by barge with no escort beyond Cecil, seat herself in the parlor of a private house, and look as though she had grown there. Like the ermine whose white winter fur was part of her regalia, she could change to match her surroundings, taking one by surprise.
    I sometimes thought that this mercurial side of her perhaps came from her