The sun continued its speedy trajectory toward the horizon, and G turned back toward London and hastened his trot.
His thoughts didn’t sound like his own. They sounded more like his father’s or his brother’s. G had never fully formed his own opinions regarding the roles of men and women in the world. His partnership with Jane had always naturally felt like that: a partnership. Not a dominion. Not a master/servant situation. Even when they didn’t particularly like each other, they treated each other with disdain equally.
She tried to throw herself into a Pack attack, and he prevented it.
He tried to drink himself into an ale-induced stupor, and she hid the stuff.
She educated him about herbs and . . . that other plants that grew in . . . that one place she was reading about. He educated her to accept that not all E∂ians were good.
She knew about tinctures. He knew about alfalfa.
She had the soft skin and the delicate cheekbones and that strange way her lips moved along with the words when she read a particularly intriguing passage. . . .
G closed his eyes. Her soft skin. Her lips.
Those lips that Love’s own hand did make, he composed wistfully.
As he approached the Tower stables, he wondered who would be there to greet him tonight. Her Majesty the Queen of England . . . or his lady?
He walked into the dining room, prepared to find a lavish supper full of servants and silverware and food befitting a queen, but what he saw utterly surprised him.
Two place settings, two candles, and a platter holding a small roasted duck, surrounded by root vegetables and garnishes, as well as a small bowl of fruit. And the Queen of England sitting at the end of the table.
He looked wary. “Your Majesty,” G said.
“My lord,” she said, nodding her head.
“Where is everybody?”
“Who?”
“Your . . . court? Your ladies? Your servants?”
She shrugged. “Being queen comes with several advantages, one of which is that if I order everyone out of the dining room, they obey.”
“Even my father?” G said.
Jane winced at the mention of his father, but she recovered quickly and replaced the wince with a blank expression. “Even him. You should’ve seen the look on his face, but yes, even him.”
G’s father was obviously a tense subject between them, but right now, everything seemed to be a tense subject between them. G grabbed a flask of wine from the end of the room and two goblets, even though he was pretty sure only one would be used. He sat himself down at his place on her right-hand side. He filled his goblet, raised the flask toward her in a questioning gesture (she declined of course), and then he set the flask on his right, out of reach of the queen. She did not object.
If anything, tonight he would prove he could handle his own goblet. He would be king of his cup.
They served themselves from the dishes before them, and then G steered their conversation to safe topics. They discussed her day of navigating her queenly duties, and his day of navigating the northeastern hills. Her day of picking out the color of her ladies’ brocades, and his day of picking hay out of his teeth with his tongue.
She said his father was at her side all day long and she was quite annoyed with his ever-presence, and she would be glad he was to be gone from the castle the following day.
“My father is going somewhere?” G said. Great. They were back on the subject of his father.
“Yes. I thought you knew. Oh, no, of course you wouldn’t, because he received the message while you were in your . . . four-legged state. He was called away urgently to the countryside. He wouldn’t say why, so I assumed it was a personal matter.” She brought a hand to her lips. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been concerned that the matter might be of import to you as well, since you are Dudley’s son.”
She said it as if blood ties to the man directly spoke to his own character. G fought the urge to engage in the territory they’d already covered and raised a hand. “My lady, I am sure everything is fine with my father.” And the truth was, G wasn’t worried about any sort of family emergency. He could only think that the urgent business calling his father away had more to do with the same business that