for it.” She tugged at the bodice of her gown to cover more of her cleavage. “But it doesn’t suit me, I find.”
The gown was gray velvet, and it cinched her in at the waist and exposed the upper swell of her chest, a side of her that Edward had never seen before, and it made his eyes wander to places they shouldn’t. She was beautiful, but she was right; the finery didn’t suit her. The gown diminished her somehow, pushed and squeezed and swallowed her in yards of fabric.
“Thank you for doing this,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome.” Her hand rose self-consciously to touch the back of her pinned-up hair. “But I don’t really know how I’ll be any help to you with the King of France.”
“Not with the king,” Edward said. “With Mary Queen of Scots. Who lives with the King of France.”
He couldn’t help the shudder that passed through him.
Gracie’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Why, because we’re both Scottish?”
“Because she hates me, and I need her to like me. I think that if anyone can get her to like me, Gracie, it’s you. Because you’re Scottish, yes. And because you’re you.”
Her cheeks colored slightly. She nodded. “So she hates you. Why?”
“Because she was supposed to be my wife.”
“What?” Gracie exclaimed. “When was this?”
“When I was three.”
Yes, Edward had been a lad of three tender years when his father betrothed him to Mary, who’d been a baby at the time but a queen already, since her father had died when she was six days old. Such a match would have unified England and Scotland for good, in the Lion King’s way of thinking. Henry had even wanted Mary to live with them at the palace, so he would oversee her upbringing and teach her to think like a proper Englishwoman.
Mary’s legal guardians had other ideas. They’d signed a treaty approving the engagement, but they didn’t honor it. So later, when King Henry received word that Mary’s regents had accepted another offer of marriage, this one from the King of France, pairing her with the French dauphin, Francis, King Henry had eaten the messenger immediately and remained a roaring lion for days.
Then he’d invaded Scotland.
For years Henry’s soldiers had chased the fledgling queen from place to place all around the Scottish countryside, but they never managed to capture her. It was believed to be E∂ian magic that enabled her to escape them. She had a habit of vanishing like smoke from the tightest of spaces. And so Henry, who was usually more tolerant of E∂ians, since he himself had proved to be one, had punished the Scottish E∂ians for harboring her. This was most likely why, Edward knew, the cottage belonging to Gracie’s family had been burned. Because his father had been angry with a toddler.
The people called it the Rough Wooing. Emphasis on rough.
Edward had been a child through all of this, but he remembered being told that he was going to marry a queen, and he remembered staring up at a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots that hung in one of the palace hallways. The girl couldn’t have been older than four years old when the portrait had been commissioned, yet she still held herself like a queen. She accused Edward with her dark eyes. I loathe you, the painting almost seemed to sneer at him. I will always hate you. You’d better hope that we don’t get married. I will make your life a living nightmare.
That was the one bit of relief Edward had experienced after his father died. He no longer needed to pursue Mary Queen of Scots. She slipped away to the custody of the French king and his family at the Louvre Palace, where she’d been residing ever since.
They’d met once, he and Mary, a few years back. He’d been traveling to Paris to craft a peace treaty with the French king. Mary had been eight. She’d been presented to him as the intended of Francis, the dauphin (which Edward kept thinking sounded like the word dolphin, which seemed an odd term for a prince). Mary had curtsied. Edward had bowed. She’d glared at him, every bit as vengeful as her portrait. He’d tried to ease the tension by complimenting her shoes.
She’d responded by stamping on his foot.
Hard.
She’d been sent straightaway to her chambers, because young ladies should not assault kings, but Edward hadn’t truly minded. He’d been overjoyed, in fact, by the idea that he wouldn’t be expected to talk to her, and