At first, I was blissfully ignorant of the crumbling plot. I had concentrated on proving my devotion to Elizabeth, as well as enjoying my newfound haze of love.
Colby and I were able to meet on occasion and share a bed, and the stolen encounters were beautiful. I was new enough to bodily desire that it transported me to great joy, and I thought there was nothing more wonderful than a husband and wife in love.
Colby was always gentle, though he could be teasing and playful, and we laughed a great deal. Marriage so far had been a heavenly state. I was hard-pressed to keep a smile from my lips and a tune from my throat as I stitched jewels into fabrics and chivied my assistants.
Aunt Kat, Uncle John, and many of Elizabeth’s ladies now knew Colby and I had wed. Both Aunt Kat and Uncle John heartily approved of him, to my relief. The ladies all teased me, but I did not mind.
The gentleman who brought the news of Mary’s arrests shattered this fragile happiness.
“They’ve thrown them into the worst of cells,” our messenger reported grimly to Elizabeth in her sunlit chamber. “The queen cares nothing for their rank or family—all have been shoved into a noisome pit that would turn your stomach, and one of them has already been racked.”
Elizabeth listened, her face like cold marble. “What men has she arrested?” she asked, voice brittle.
“Edmund and Francis Verney,” the gentleman replied, his words quiet and angry. “Henry Peckham. James Colby. It’s Colby who’d been racked and then tossed into the foul hole.”
I dropped the stomacher I’d been stitching, and the steel bands struck the floor with a clatter. I’d risen when Elizabeth had, but now my legs gave way, and I sat down hard on my bench.
Elizabeth glanced at me, eyes like night, then signaled to Aunt Kat. Aunt Kat quickly retrieved the fallen stomacher, but I sat frozen, the needle like ice in my fingers.
Colby, my wily, careful Colby, imprisoned and tortured. He’d be tried, certainly condemned, and then executed. The husband I’d loved for a few short, sweet months, the friend I’d known for years, had been abruptly torn from me.
Sudden pain burst through my abdomen, bringing bile to my tongue. The bench seemed to slide out from beneath me, and I covered my mouth with my hand as I tumbled to the floor.
Chapter 24
Aunt Kat cried out in distress. Skirts swished as Elizabeth swung toward me.
“Eloise,” Elizabeth said in alarm.
I heard Aunt Kat’s small scream then the voice of the Countess of Sussex. “She is quite ill, Your Grace. The poor child is bleeding.”
I felt it then, the trickle of blood on my legs, the hurt as though someone had gripped my insides and twisted them. I heard a cry, loud and wailing, and realized it had come from me. Hands reached out to me, some wrinkled and worn, others beringed and soft.
“Miscarried?” Elizabeth’s voice rang among the chatter. “She was with child?”
The ladies broke apart, and Elizabeth stood above me, glaring down like an eagle from an aerie. Tears soaked my face, my entire body wrenched in misery.
“You were with child, Eloise?” Elizabeth demanded of me. “Why did you not tell me?”
“I didn’t know,” I gasped out. I hadn’t understood what the nausea meant, and I’d been too busy to notice I’d missed my courses. “I didn’t know.”
I wasn’t certain whether Elizabeth believed me, but I saw her perceive that bullying me while I curled in pain at her feet would not look well.
She gestured sharply to her ladies. “Get her to bed and send for a surgeon. Hurry.”
Aunt Kat was there, lifting me to her bosom, and then a gentleman usher—a tall, strong man with a kind face—scooped me up and carried me away. Aunt Kat trotted anxiously alongside us and put me to bed in her own chamber.
I lost the child who’d been less than a month along, and then I lay in bed, too melancholy to move. Not only was my babe gone, but my husband was in a foul prison, likely to leave it only to go to his death. I wept for hours, tears quietly leaking from my eyes, and I could eat nothing.
Aunt Kat hovered at my side, trying in vain to persuade me to take food. I wanted news of Colby, but we could discover nothing. Aunt Kat had no idea what was happening, and Uncle John learned little more than that Colby was being questioned repeatedly with the others.
Once when I awoke, it was Elizabeth’s long-fingered hand holding a cloth to my forehead. She gave me a smile, her affection in place, which loosened a tightness in my heart.
“Poor, Eloise,” she said softly. “We must get you well.”
“Are there gowns to be made?” I whispered.
Elizabeth laughed her charming laugh and dabbed at my face with the cool cloth. “Always impertinent, is my Eloise. We must get you well for your sake, and to reunite you with your husband.”
