The Queen's Captive Read Online Free

throughout the Low Countries, and for those here in Antwerp her house had become a meeting place, a home away from home for hard-up Protestant gentry and scholars. Erasmus, her late mentor, would have loved the constant chatter about books and the New Learning.
    They liked to dance, too. Honor called on the trio of musicians to play, and Isabel and Carlos had just got up to start the first dance when the maid hurried in, wiping her hands on her apron, her eyes shining. “It’s Master Adam!”
    Honor turned with a happy smile. Her stepson had made it, after all. Adam strode in with a burlap sack slung over his shoulder like Father Christmas, and looking as jovial, if not as old, his beard not long and white but trim and black. Isabel cried out with joy and rushed over to her brother and threw her arms around his neck, crying, “You came!” Carlos clapped a congratulatory hand on Adam’s shoulder, saying, “And in one piece.” Honor hugged him in delight and welcomed him home. Richard shook his son’s hand in heartfelt silence.
    The guests hadn’t seen Adam since his return from Russia, and as everyone crowded round, welcoming him, Honor looked on with a swell of pride. She knew from his letter the story of the Merchant Adventurers’ voyage. They had endured terrible privation, he had written, losing ships and men, and were returning with little profit to show for it. Reading between the lines, though, Honor gathered that Adam had acquitted himself bravely, helping to lead the remnant of the expedition overland to Moscow. At the guests’ urging he was telling tales of the extraordinary court of Czar Ivan—of caviar and saunas, and harbors teeming with whales. She watched him gesture as he talked, thinking how, at twenty-nine, he looked so like his father at that age. Tall and sturdy, with the easy movements of a man comfortable in his own skin, and that watchful gleam in his eye, observing others with alertness but never with fear.
    “Where to next, my boy?” old Anthony Cooke asked.
    “Back to Moscow, sir, if the company can raise the funds. They’re refitting Spendthrift. I’ll be captain.”
    Honor caught Richard’s dark look as he quietly left the room. Their son’s advancement was bittersweet. An expert navigator since he was twelve, Adam had been not just captain but master, too, aboard Richard’s ships for years, an equal alongside his father. But the storm off Cadiz four months ago that had sunk their two caravels with all their cargo—a massive, horrifying loss—had left them stranded on the brink of bankruptcy. Richard’s third, much older ship, Speedwell, lay moored in the estuary, derelict, for they could not afford to repair her. To bring in money, Adam had signed on with the Company of Merchant Adventurers. It pained Richard to see his son a mere hired seaman. It pained Honor to see their family breaking apart.
    She slipped out of the room and found Richard starting up the stairs. To rifle through his account books again, she wondered, searching for phantom profits? Several nights she had gotten up and found him poring over the ledgers in candlelight. The futility of it—his obsession to ferret out some cash—tore at her heart.
    “He’ll want to talk to you,” she said. “Richard, come back.”
    He turned on the step. “He doesn’t need my advice. And words are all I can give him.”
    “He’ll want to tell you everything. Let him give you that.”
    He frowned. “Why don’t you wear the things I gave you?”
    Instinctively, her hand went to her neck, betraying her.
    “That’s right, your jewels. You never wear them anymore. Have you suddenly turned Calvinist? No more frippery?”
    “There was so much to organize, the food, the wine, I…I just forgot.”
    He looked at her for a long, sad moment. “I hope you got a good price,” he said, and went on up the stairs.
    She stood still a moment, shaken. Not just at being found out. It was the change in him that unnerved her. She had