Colby gazed at me for a long time, his eyes almost azure in the firelight. “You have guessed correctly. I can give you no details, but things are in motion. There will be a French fleet. Elizabeth was able to speak to the French ambassador before she left court. We will succeed.”
I digested all this in silence. I remembered Mary’s anger when she’d discovered Elizabeth’s meetings with the French ambassador. Had she an inkling of what was going on, or had she simply been annoyed at Elizabeth for charming the gentleman behind her back?
“You are putting our lady in grave danger,” I said. “Any move against the queen will draw Mary’s attention to Elizabeth like a hound on the scent of the largest hart.”
“There will be no communication with Elizabeth directly,” Colby said. “That is why we need you. You will tell her all, but she must do nothing. Like you, she need not have all the details. If it comes to pass that the plot is revealed, she will know no more about it than do her questioners.”
I recalled Aunt Kat’s lurid descriptions of the dark Tower room in which she’d been confined, with no fire to warm her and no certainty she’d live to return home.
Aunt Kat had been ashamed that the threat of torture had loosened her tongue, but I could wholly understand why it had. The same fate might come to me, or Aunt Kat again, or to Elizabeth herself.
“I am not afraid,” I said, my voice steady. “I can keep my silence.”
Colby’s glance was approving. “You are a good and loyal friend to her.”
“It is more than loyalty. Elizabeth has a nasty temper, and she can be haughty and selfish, but that does not matter. She is who she was born to be, and I will protect her from Mary as long and hard as I can.”
“You are an unusual woman, Mistress Rousell,” Colby said in a tone of respect.
I shrugged. “Perhaps because I was rejected by my own family. Her family cast her off when she was a child, so we have that in common. Elizabeth has rewarded me well for my service, even befriended me, and now she trusts me. Perhaps I took to her as an orphaned lamb might take to a shepherd boy.”
One corner of Colby’s mouth turned up. “Either that, or you lie very skillfully, and tomorrow my head will be on the block.”
His humor was grim, and I studied him quietly. “Let it rest easy on your pillow tonight.” I lightly patted the head in question, finding springy russet hair. “Although I must say, having slept here the past two nights, that while Elizabeth has awarded you privacy, she must have given you the most uncomfortable bed in the place.”
Colby’s brows went up. “You slept here?”
“I had no way of knowing when you would return, and I was too weary to make my way to my own chamber. No matter, I aired the bedding each morning, so you have no cause to worry.”
“I’d not worry over that.” Colby’s blue eyes fixed on me. “We must invent a better way of keeping you informed that will not endanger your reputation.”
I rose, my cold limbs stiff. “There is no danger in that regard. No one notices what seamstress Eloise does. That is why you chose me to help you, is it not?”
“One of the reasons,” Colby said quietly.
We shared a long look that I could not interpret. He did not rise, as a gentleman should when a lady got to her feet, but his tallness meant I easily met his gaze.
I flashed him a sunny smile as he stared at me, and then left the room for the overly cold passages of Ashridge in December.
Colby disappeared again a few days after that, and I saw nothing more of him for a long while. I reported our conversation to Elizabeth, who listened without a flicker of emotion.
She ordered me, once I finished, to never say anything aloud about it again. Also, I was to keep everything I knew from Aunt Kat. I agreed. After the debacle with Seymour, we could not rely on Aunt Kat not to chatter in the excited way she had, wishing to prove to others she knew something they did not.
We spent a quiet Christmas season at Ashridge which led into a dark and cold January. Mary sent Elizabeth religious books, chasubles for her priests, and ornaments for her altar. Elizabeth packed them away and never looked at them.
Mary held lavish entertainments to celebrate Christmas and Epiphany while Elizabeth seethed, knowing Margaret Douglas would be at Mary’s side.
“All will be pitying me,” she said with irritation one evening as we faced each other over a chessboard. “Or they are gloating. The shunned bastard sister festers in the country, while Margaret plays the virginals and smiles at the queen. Margaret, Countess of Lennox, once sent to the Tower for behaving like a wanton. A plotter and a schemer is Margaret. Now she is the favorite of the queen.” Elizabeth abruptly seized the white marble queen from the board and hurled it into the flickering hearth fire. “Fine company my sister keeps.”
I forbore to remind Elizabeth that she’d loathed being at Mary’s court so much that she’d begged for permission to leave. I feared one of the heavy chessmen would be fired at me if I mentioned it. “Things might be different, come spring,” I said.
Elizabeth’s temper did not ease, though she pitched her voice so only I could hear. “God save me from plotting men. Plans can go wrong, and here I sit, unable to direct them, a helpless pawn.” The chess piece in question flew across the room to splinter against a wall.
Her ladies looked up from their embroidery, but wisely said nothing and resumed stitching.
Earlier that day, a message had come to Elizabeth from one of her gentlemen, Thomas Wyatt, who’d encouraged her to move to Donnington, an estate she owned, carefully not saying why.
“Ridiculous,” Elizabeth had said to me. “How would it look if I fled Ashridge now? Guilty. I must sit here as though I know nothing, as though I am utterly astonished that anyone in the realm could move against the queen. I will wait and do as I see cause.”
