The Queen's Captive Read Online Free Page B

absorbed the deep insult and meant to move on, though the anger simmered. Did he love the girl? She was a catch, both pretty and rich, but Honor did not have the feeling that Adam’s heart was broken. His pride, yes. And his lively plans.
    “Don’t tell your father. Not tonight.” She knew it would wound Richard almost as much as Adam, and for the same reason. The Thornleighs were suddenly not good enough for the Kortewegs.
    “I hoped you might do that task. Better than me.” There was a hint of a smile in his eyes, self-deprecating, as though to acknowledge that he lacked her finesse. But she sensed it was to mask the stinging humiliation he felt at his loss. “Money,” he said with quiet fierceness. “It’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” He gave her a determined smile. “Well, from now on, money shall be my guiding star.”
    There was a flurry of sound through the room, voices abuzz with surprise. Honor realized the dancers had stopped. The music dwindled and died. She followed the gaze of her guests to the door. A lanky man stood there, bundled in a russet cloak against the cold autumn night. A draft of frosty air had rushed in with him, but it was not the cold that held the whole company frozen, including Honor. It was the extraordinary fact of his presence.
    Everyone here knew Sir William Cecil, both for his eminence in England as a minister of the late, Protestant boy-king, Edward, and for his tireless support of the exile community. He was thirty-four, and several of the guests were his relations—Anthony Cooke was his father-in-law and John Cheke his first wife’s brother. Honor had known Sir William for years. But his home was London, where he carefully balanced a life of partial retirement under the strict, new Catholic reign of Queen Mary. He rarely left England. What had brought him all this way?
    “You are welcome, sir,” Honor said, going to greet him. “Come in and warm yourself. And sit you down to some supper before these home-hungry souls devour you first.”
    Cecil did not smile. “Honor, I must speak with you.”

    “And what of the people? How did they take the Queen’s rough handling of her sister?” Honor asked Cecil when they were alone, sitting before the fire in her parlor. She had never met Princess Elizabeth, but hearing now of her plight she recalled how everyone, whenever they talked about the clever and striking young Princess, did so with affection. Elizabeth inspired people. It was a power that Queen Mary could not ignore.
    “Widespread dismay,” Cecil said with feeling. “Indeed, they showed their love for Elizabeth when the Queen moved her under guard from the Tower and out of London, to Woodstock. That was in May. They traveled by water to attract as little notice as possible, but when the barge passed the Steelyard, the Hanse merchants had their gunners fire a salute to Elizabeth. It brought Londoners running out into the streets to see what the commotion was, and the event that the Queen had wanted to keep quiet turned into a noisy parade.” There was a flash of pride in his shrewd gray eyes. Five years ago, when Princess Elizabeth was fifteen, he had been named surveyor of her estates, an honorary post. He had been close to her ever since.
    “It was the same when they turned inland,” he went on. “The Princess was carried in an open litter surrounded by guardsmen, and the country people rushed from their hayfields and cottages to see her. They thronged her on roadsides and bridges. They showered her with flowers and cakes at every village, even as the guards bristled around her with their pikes. At Aston Rowant some villagers rang the church bells as she passed.”
    “Which must have put the Queen in a terrible fume?”
    “It did. She arrested the bell ringers. But this love the people bear Elizabeth may be what saved her. The Queen faced much hostility after she executed Wyatt and so many scores of rebels. The people grew sickened by the hangings.