Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set

17

I do not remember much about the next few weeks. I performed my duties by rote, an insincere smile pasted on my face. I had to force myself to eat. It seemed unbelievable to me that someone as full of life as Harry Dudley should be so suddenly and finally gone. When Lady Lisle returned to court, we wept together for what we’d both lost.

Soon after that, the queen went on progress again, this time into Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. This time the king did not accompany her, nor did her brother. The days passed with great sameness until, on the return journey, Her Grace decided to stop at Ashridge to visit the king’s younger daughter.

I had seen Princess Elizabeth from a distance when I first joined the court as the queen’s maid of honor, but I had never spoken to the fragile-looking, red-haired, eleven-year-old. As soon as the king returned from France, she’d been sent back to her own household. In Nan Bassett’s opinion, that was because His Grace was uncomfortable in her presence. She had her mother’s eyes.

I was seated by a window, staring out at the bleak November landscape, when I heard the rustle of satin behind me and smelled marjoram, the light fragrance the princess always wore. I rose, bade her good morrow, and dropped into a curtsy.

Her Grace peered into my face, her large black eyes unblinking. “Why are you so sad?” she asked.

Disconcerted by that stare and disarmed by her directness, I blurted out an honest answer. “I lost someone I loved.”

The princess nodded, her expression solemn. “It is best not to love anyone,” she said. “The people you love always leave you.”

She had reason to believe that. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, had been beheaded when Elizabeth was only three and she had since lost two stepmothers and who knew how many devoted servants to the whims of her father the king.

“I am not certain it is possible to stop love,” I said.

Princess Elizabeth considered this, all the while continuing her intense scrutiny. “I love my governess,” she said after a few moments of thought. “Who are you?”

“My name is Elizabeth Brooke. I am Lord Cobham’s daughter and a maid of honor to Queen Kathryn.”

There was something about Her Grace, even as young as she was, that compelled me to answer the questions that followed. By the time she left me at the end of a quarter of an hour, she knew a good deal about me, even that I’d been planning to marry Harry Dudley.

Alone again, I pondered the princess’s philosophy. Was it better not to love anyone for fear of losing them? No doubt it was, but love was not something anyone could control. I loved my parents and siblings. I’d loved Harry, after a fashion. And, God help me, I loved Will Parr.

Months of separation punctuated by fleeting contact had only made the attraction stronger. What I felt for Will defied common sense, but it was very real. As I stared blindly out at the grounds of Ashridge, I accepted a very great truth—I could no longer imagine living the rest of my life without Will in it.