The Spymaster's Daughter Read Online Free Page B

unsatisfied desire for something…someone. She had not said the bitter words to Philip that she could have; nor would she ever act the hard-used shrew. Her heart would shrivel and become a parched and withered thing, good only for beating against her breast but not ever used for love. Let it be! She was numb to all emotion. In its place, she would live on within her head, where she found her pride.
    Turning away from the door where he had left her, closing her away, she shut her eyes and, not to be denied, slipped her hand to the burning place and pleasured herself.

CHAPTER TWO

    â€œâ€˜Fool!’ said my Muse to me
    â€˜Look in thy heart, and write.’”
    â€”Astrophel and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney

    F rances knew that she was acting the fool. Still, she refused to listen to her own caution.
    She was determined to approach her father one last time to show him a sealed letter that she had opened and closed. She had broken a short practice cipher from one of her father’s books. It was not a simple one, and she had solved it alone. There was something logical about ciphers that revealed themselves to her as a painting made an image where the colors connected. With practice, she would advance to even more difficult ciphers, perhaps even double substitution. She was convinced she could, if only she had an opportunity.
    And that opportunity would soon be hers. The queen had summoned her to Whitehall! She had not been meant to overhear the news, but like any good intelligencer she had her senses alert toall she was not supposed to know, especially to a lathered horse whose rider wore the royal livery and was then closeted with her father.
    Frances looked again at the letter she’d prepared just this morn. There was no trace of tampering on the signet seal, the Walsingham family device of a cinquefoil five-leaf clover. By the seal he would know that she had done the work, or was it so undetectable that he would think her a liar, a sin that he hated above all things? Still, she must take this chance—nay, take every chance! Perhaps he would see her determination, and surely recognize it as an essential part of a good spy’s character.
    Hurrying around the formal knot garden in front of the manor entrance, she walked along a wide avenue of yew to the rose gardens that fronted the dock on the Thames. Her father’s barge was anchored there, oars up in salute, ready to take him on the flood tide to London. The queen’s urgent summons of her spymaster to Whitehall Palace could not be delayed for even a half day. Her Majesty was upset with the demands that far-flung spying on the continent made on her treasury. Her spymaster would need new evidence-filled reports from his agents to allay the queen’s ever-present suspicion of waste.
    And, Frances reasoned, a good daughter should wish her lord father a safe trip, even if she had secret knowledge that she would follow him to London soon.
    She accepted some roses from a gardener, the thorns having been removed in readiness for her bedchamber, and sat on a stone bench to wait in the heavy, spreading shade of the old elm trees.
    Frances lifted a blossom to inhale its spicy scent. This had been a day for farewells. Just after sunup, she had seen Philip off to London with his servants and baggage wagon. He could not wait to be gone, though she knew that he would need to busy himself with his uncle the Earl of Leicester at Leicester House on the Stranduntil the third hour after noontide, Lady Rich’s appointed time for their tryst.
    Yet it was Frances Walsingham who was Lady Sidney, and not Penelope Rich. She remembered the thrill of first writing that name…Lady Sidney. How young she had been, her head brimming with Philip’s love poetry. Would he write such words for her as he had written for Stella?
That She, dear She, might take some pleasure…
When had she begun to doubt that she would ever be Philip’s “dear