Ladies in Waiting Read Online Free

not like these others.” She jerked her flashing beak at the courtiers, who were torn between mirth and revulsion. “In those idolatrous nations like Portugal you know men for the evil creatures they are, scourge of women, carriers of filth, great hungry maws that drain us of all our virtues and leave us as you see me now. Your husband is such a man. You don’t believe me, I see in your eyes, but those eyes will open soon enough.”
    Catherine wanted to flee, but the woman was so close now, her beak thrusting forward, that Catherine could not stand without almost touching her. Where were the guards?
    “Ha!” the countess went on. “I loved my husband once. Now there’s not a man I wouldn’t crush beneath my heel if I could.” She turned to a nearby fop holding a nosegay to his powdered cheeks. “You.” She ground her foot into the tile, and turned to a big, virile golden-wigged man, the notorious Duke of Buckingham. “You, for certs.” She dug her heel in again and looked to the queen. “And your husband, too, dear. He’s a man, like all the others, and will break you if he can. Make yourself hard, Your Majesty. Deny him everything and you might survive. Be soft and love him, and you will end like me.”
    She broke off in a fit of coughing. “Take her if you will!” she said between hacks. “Take her, but remember, I’ll be watching.” She shuffled off, and the courtiers parted before her, covering their faces with scented handkerchiefs.
    Beth stood through all this with her head bowed, like a dog well accustomed to the whip. Could this gentle, pretty girl truly have sprung from the loins of that monster?
    Catherine stood abruptly. She would show them what it meant to be a queen. Perhaps the Countess of Enfield was right about one thing. She might grant Charles any other request, but she would die before she let his mistress among her most personal attendants.
    “Come, child,” she said to Beth. “You will begin serving me at once. And my lady Suffolk, please amend this list and return it to me for my consideration.”
    Beth trailed behind the bouncing farthingale, believing that the little queen was leading her away from the hell she’d endured since she was first brought to court—on the market as her mad mother’s only commodity, a world of disease and duty, love and disgust, shame and longing—to a paradise of safety and comfort as one of Catherine’s maids of honor.

Chapter 3
    The Peculiar Specimen
    “W HAT ON EARTH do I do with this?” Zabby Wodewose asked herself as she pulled yard upon yard of rich copper material out of her sea chest. Her father had it sent aboard without letting her see, telling her only to wait until she was ashore in England before wearing it, lest it spoil in the sea air.
    “It’s the latest fashion from France, so they tell me,” her beloved Papa had said to her as she sat with him on the eve of departure, staring into the low hearth, her head resting on his knee. “You will set the Thames on fire, my girl.”
    “I’m not going to England to impress anyone,” Zabby said. “I’m going to learn everything I can—and not about clothes. I can wear any old thing in Godmother Cavendish’s library, and I’ll certainly wear an apron when I mix compounds and grind lenses.”
    He kissed her on the top of her very fair head and said, “Ah, my dear, do it for my sake, if not your own. I’ve kept you like a wild thing here in Barbados, and it would please me to see you in some finery.”
    “You’ve had too much Rhenish wine, Papa!” she’d said with a laugh. “Your reasoning is faulty—you won’t be seeing me when I’m there.”
    “All the same, my dear, wear it, and have a few more made up once you’ve settled. There is nothing in this world so pure as the unruffled, chill beauty of youth. Like rarefied metal, a serene, airless vacuum. Like a theorem proven.”
    She laughed and tried to argue, but he only kissed her again and went to his bed. She sailed