The queen of Scotland looks up at me when I enter her private quarters. She sits at her desk, but when I draw closer, she shuffles some papers she was reading into a lockbox. I raise an eyebrow, but she doesn’t even try to hide the fact that she’s unwilling to share whatever private notes she had with me.
Fine. I can do the talking. Because there’s something…off about everything that’s been happening, and after seeing the way Samson spoke with Darnley, I’m starting to wonder if Latimer’s secretary is tied up in all this, no matter how much I get lost in those green eyes of his.
“Oh, you’re back.” She watches me coolly.
“Aye.” Two can play this game.
Mary sniffs. “You should never leave without my express permission.”
“Why?”
I state the word flatly, and I don’t break eye contact with her when she looks up at me in surprise. She’s not used to having her authority questioned.
She’s not used to me asserting my own.
Finally she sighs, leaning back in her seat. She has yet to offer me a chair. “It was highly inconvenient of you to just disappear like that.”
It was highly inconvenient to race to the border and murder a man,I think.
She’s waiting. For an apology, I realize.
Well, she can keep waiting.
“I needed you here,” she continues, a hint of whine in her voice. And part of me sympathizes, even though I know in my absence, the other Leths amped up their protection of the queen.
She is so desperatelyalone.When Mary lived in France, she was treated as if she had to do nothing more than look pretty all her life while everyone fawned over her. And she excelled at the role of cherished princess, truthfully. Tall and regal, the queen is the picture of beauty, her skin like porcelain, her hair soft, her eyes clear.
And that would have been her life if her first husband hadn’t died when they were both about my age now. She would have been thequeen of France and Scotland, making her the most powerful woman in Europe, poised to take England too, and her husband, the Dauphin of France, would be king and do all the work for her.
But she lost him, and she lost France, and now all she’s left with is Darnley and Scotland, a husband who hates her and a land that demands labor, not beauty.
Mary shifts in her seat, and the morning light makes the gold around her neck glimmer, the pearls in her hair shine. When she moves, her silk skirts rustle, heavy with handmade lace imported from Italy and embroidered with details made by at least a dozen women working for weeks, months even.
It is a difficult thing, pitying a queen.
I let out a breath. Some things aren’t worth saying aloud.
Mary rolls her eyes. “I needed you,” she continues, accusation still laced in her voice, “because I wanted you to inspect my lords.”
She still doesn’t say that word the way we do. Scots stretch the vowels like bread dough; “lord” becomes “laird.”
“Why?” I ask. “Did something happen?”
“I called them here. For a…private meeting.”
My eyebrows shoot up. All of noble Scotland will be here for the prince’s christening, but this “private meeting” and my need to weigh in on the lairds seems to be something more.
“Which you would know all about,” Mary adds snidely, “if you’d bothered to listen before traipsing God knows where.”
I don’t deign to reply to that. “Why did you summon your lairds?” I frown. “And Lord Darnley?” I always pronounce the titles of Scottish men correctly—laird. But I force my tongue to say “lord” the English way when I talk of Darnley, a subtle insult even he cannot reprimand me for.
Mary scoffs. “I didn’t summon my husband to arrive early. He just turned up.”
Like a dead rat a cat leaves on the step. I suppose it is his son getting baptized too. But whatever bonus meeting Mary has planned is going to get mucked up with her husband’s arrival if we’re not careful.
“Very inconvenient,” Mary mutters.
“Being married to a traitor with the emotional depth of dog shite?” I ask. “Yes, extremely inconvenient. Why did you call for a special meeting?”
