“Aye,” I answered glumly. “Aunt Kat says the same.”
“Cunning is always better. Remember that.”
I did not understand her, but I murmured, “Yes, Your Grace.”
Elizabeth halted so suddenly that my momentum propelled me forward a few steps before her fierce grip on me hauled me back.
“Is someone there?” Elizabeth demanded, peering into the opening between tall, carefully pruned bay trees. She spoke to me, but I sensed she’d called her question into the dark walk that awaited us.
I fancied I spied movement beyond the hedges, and my skin began to prickle. “A gardener?” was my faint suggestion.
Elizabeth’s eyes glittered, but not with fear. “Let us catch him, whoever he is.”
“Take care, Your Grace,” I said in alarm. “It might be a robber.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Not in my stepmother’s gardens. They would not dare.”
They would indeed dare, I knew for a fact. I’d heard of gentlemen and ladies set upon at the edges of their own estates. Some bandits did not care how highborn their victims, only wanting the riches they’d carry away. That Elizabeth hurried to confront such a thief with no more weapon between us than the scissors in my pocket horrified me.
“Your Grace,” I tried.
Elizabeth’s breath quickened with our pace. She pulled me relentlessly between the hedges into the shadowed walk.
Let it be a gardener, I prayed. Or a rabbit. Even a rat.
Our quarry sprang from the shadows, roaring and growling and waving his arms like a madman. Elizabeth screamed, but it was the squeal of an excited girl. My own cry tore from my throat in genuine terror.
“Run, Your Grace!” I shouted, and we wheeled about to flee.
Chapter 3
Elizabeth shrieked in the high-pitched bursts of a lady pretending to be afraid and pulled me down a side path. Not back toward the house, I noted to my dismay, and she did not run very quickly.
“Your Grace …”
“Let us hurry, Eloise,” Elizabeth said in merriment. “Or he will be upon us.”
The man pursued us. Did he curtail his steps, or was that my imagination? Elizabeth jogged along more slowly still. I wanted to rip my hand from hers and race to my chamber high under the eaves, but Elizabeth held me so fast I’d need ten armed soldiers to pry myself from her.
We rounded a corner to another long trail, this one lined with yews. I saw ahead of us, unbelievably, Queen Catherine, who bobbed up and down on her toes, laughing.
“This way, my dears,” she called. “Come, come, else he catches us.”
And what shall he do if he does? I wondered as we scampered after her. Surely, with Catherine there, Seymour, our pursuer, could do nothing.
Two weeks ago, I would have believed this a harmless game. But I remembered the dark, cold passageway, the soft cloth in my arms, and the sour taste of fear as Thomas Seymour’s hand covered my breast. I felt again his fingers squeezing, the startling pain of it, the curling disgust deep inside me.
There are three of us, I told myself. We can hold him off.
“Come along,” Catherine shouted. “Hurry, do.”
We ran after her, skirts fluttering, Elizabeth laughing.
Catherine led us down a path and around a corner to a dead end. A high green hedge faced us, the boundary of the park. Here a stone bench offered the passer-by a place of peace.
For us, it was a trap.
I shrieked. “The other way!”
