“Your hair truly is remarkable,” she coos. “What an extraordinary color.”
I fight not to run my hand through it. “Thank you, Your Highness. It was my ma’s color.” And I’ve been told more than once that on the color alone, I could take my pick of work the same way she did. But she made me promise I wouldn’t follow in her steps. That I’d do better.
But the way Mary’s looking at me…
There’s one way I could get farther into her rooms.
I blanch. Can’t help it. It comes on me in a spasm, and Mary frowns, offense sharp.
“Do my compliments repulse you?” she asks, her words all tight, tinged with a French accent that intensifies in her displeasure.
“No, Your Highness,” I say quickly. “It was merely a sad association. My mother’s dead, you see. And being reminded of her—”
Mary softens. A little. Her expression tells me she’s fixed to slip back into offense if I don’t play along.
“I lost my own mother as well,” Mary says, but there’s no grief in her tone. “I understand the pain.”
My head dips in a bow. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“I had hoped Latimer would be in attendance.” She comes around the desk.
I follow her movements until she’s next to my chair. A shudder tries to climb up my spine, but I knock it right back down.
“He sends his apologies, Your Highness,” I tell her.
Mary hums thoughtfully. “But you are to act in his stead, in all things?”
She’s so close to me, I can feel the heat coming off her body.
What’s she implying?
My throat’s bone-dry. “Yes, my queen. Of course.”
“Hm.” Mary reaches toward me and takes a lock of my hair in her fingers.
I fight the stiffening that cramps my spine. That’s not what she’s implying, is it?
“You won’t fail me, will you, Samson?”
I shake my head, and it dislodges my hair from her fingers. “No, Your Highness.”
A satisfied smile pulls across her mouth. She watches me for a long moment, like she’s trying to pry out what I do or don’t know, what Latimer might’ve told me.
No, this won’t be like pulling a con on a mark in London. Not at all.
There, I knew the board, even with Cecil’s manipulations. But here?
There are secrets I don’t know, secretsCecildoesn’t know, and every move I make knocks into pieces I’m not even aware are in play.
“You are dismissed,” Mary tells me. She stays against the chair, but I rise slowly, keeping my body angled forward. Not brushing against her, not leaning into any of the flirting.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” I say, then step aside to drop into a low bow.
“I will see you at the meeting of my lords. And, Samson?”
I’m still in that bow. I hold it.
“You do not have to fear me,” she says softly.
