me!” Kat hissed urgently. “Are you with child?”
The girl could only nod mutely, her eyes dark pools of terror.
“When was your last course?” Kat demanded.
Elizabeth gulped.
“Just after Easter, I think,” she whispered.
“The beginning of April,” Kat recalled, “and we are now in late June. When did you…When did the Admiral…?” She could not utter the words: They only compounded her own guilt.
“Once, at the beginning of May,” Elizabeth said, beginning to weep. “I tried to stop him—he was insistent. I loved him too well!” She was sobbing bitterly now.
“Never mind that. You must be nearly two months’ gone,” Kat calculated, seeking refuge in briskness. “Are there any other signs? Are you passing water more often? Are your breasts tender?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth sniffed.
“Then God help us, you must be with child,” Kat said, feeling near to tears herself. “Whatever possessed you to let him get near you? You were warned never to see him alone.”
“I loved him!” Elizabeth burst out. “I could not resist him. Oh, what am I to do?”
“God knows,” Kat replied. “Let me think.” She stood there for a moment breathing heavily. “I shall have to tell my sister. I have no choice.”
“What did she say?” Elizabeth asked anxiously, the moment Kat stepped back into the room.
Kat sighed and sat down heavily on a bench.
“She was shocked—rightly, of course. And she would do nothing without her lord’s sanction. She called Sir Anthony and told him everything.”
Elizabeth hung her head. She liked the Dennys, who had been kind, generous hosts to her, and she valued their good opinions. But now they would, quite justifiably, despise her…
“I was mortified,” Kat was saying. “The way Sir Anthony looked at me…” She felt like howling. “He wants to see you—now.”
Elizabeth entered the Dennys’s parlor in trepidation. Lady Denny, seated by the hearth, rose and curtsied, then seated herself primly in her chair. Sir Anthony, standing with his back to the fire with a pained look on his face, bowed, then fixed his gaze at a point above Elizabeth’s head, as if he could not bear to look at her.
“My Lady Elizabeth,” he said stiffly, “I am exceedingly distressed to learn of your condition. If a serving wench in this house were in such trouble, I would dismiss her at once. But I have a long-standing loyalty to the Crown, and to the memory of your late father, King Henry. For his sake, I will succor you in your trouble.”
“I thank you,” Elizabeth faltered, dismayed at his cold manner. “I do not deserve such kindness.”
“It is no more than my duty,” he replied, his tone still chilly. “You will stay here until the child is born. For as long as your condition can be concealed, you may join us at meals and go for walks in the gardens and park, although I should prefer it if you would keep within a mile of the house. Later, of course, you must keep to your rooms. We shall give out that you are sick, and keep the details as vague as possible. Kat alone will attend you. No one else must know the truth.”
“I am so grateful,” Elizabeth whispered. “But what of the child?”
“It will be put out to nurse on one of my Norfolk manors, and then placed with a reliable family. We will say that it was a foundling, left in the church porch. None shall ever discover its identity.”
“And you must needs forget about it, my lady,” his wife added.
“I will,” Elizabeth promised. She felt faint, and the nausea was threatening again. But at least she was safe—for the moment, anyway, and if everything went according to plan.
She would never have believed she could feel so sick. Every morning she awoke nauseous, and had literally to run to the basin. The only thing that helped was eating meat or fish, but she could hardly send Kat to the kitchens demanding those things at eight o’clock in the morning, for people might become suspicious. So she suffered.
“Try an apple,” Kat would urge. “Joan said it helped her.” But Elizabeth could not face an apple. She took one bite and spat it out.
Mealtimes were purgatory. She would be ravenous, but after tasting the food, the desire to gorge deserted her, so she sat there pushing the morsels around her plate until everyone else had finished. Wine tasted oddly metallic, and she could only drink a few sips.
Then there was the tiredness—it was overwhelming. Sometimes she could have slept standing up. She might have the freedom