across the room to the window. It looked like a summer day outside: birds singing, green grasses swaying in a half-tended garden below, sky so blue you would doubt that it had ever rained.
“How long have we been here?” he asked.
“You arrived early this morning,” Bess provided.
Less than a day, then. Gracie had run them here in less than a day. He glanced back at her. “You can run pretty fast, for a girl.”
“Well, I may have held up a nobleman on the road and borrowed his horse,” she confessed.
A crime punishable by death, he remembered. “I owe my life to you,” he said.
Her dimples appeared. “A girl does what she can, Sire.”
“Oh, I like her,” Gran announced. “Can you play cards, my dear?”
“A bit. And I hear you’re the queen of hearts,” Gracie answered, which clearly pleased the old lady even more.
“There’s no time for cards, Gran.” Bess’s expression was so solemn that she vaguely resembled Mary for a moment. Which made Edward remember Mary. And her soldiers, marching toward his castle.
Gran sighed. “True enough for you, but not so for me. Come along, you,” she said to Gracie, grabbing the girl’s arm and towing her toward the door. “I’ll show you how to play trump.”
“Keep an eye on her sleeves,” Edward called after them. “You never know what she might be hiding up there.”
Gracie made a face that said, Do I look like an amateur to you? and he was tempted to warn Gran, too, that the Scot was more than what she seemed. But then they were gone.
“We need to talk,” Bess said in a low voice.
He crossed back to the window and leaned against the sill. Bess closed the door, then pulled a chair up beside him. “All right, Bess,” he murmured, suddenly tired again. “Tell me what’s happened.”
“Jane became queen, as you intended.”
“As Dudley intended,” he corrected darkly.
“The duke also attempted to capture Mary and me and throw us in the Tower, so we would pose no threat to Jane’s rule,” Bess continued. “But I slipped out when I heard them coming, and Mary caught wind of it through one of her craftier spies, and escaped to her estate at Kenninghall, and from there she went to Flanders to enlist help from the Holy Roman Emperor. She raised an army, of course, and from what I understand, she took back the throne this morning.”
“We need to go,” Edward said. “I need to be there, now.”
Bess shook her head. “Mary wanted this—for you to be dead and the crown upon her own head—to rid the kingdom of E∂ians and return to the purity of the old days. She will stop at nothing.”
He remembered the bite of poisoned pudding that his sister had pressed firmly to his lips. To ensure that very thing.
“So she was in on it all along?” he asked. “With Dudley.”
“No.” Bess’s mouth tightened. “It was by chance that Mary and I found out about Dudley poisoning you. One day, on our way to see you, we happened to overhear a conversation between the doctor and the nurse concerning an extra ingredient they were adding to your blackberries. When Mary confronted Dudley about it, he claimed that he was paving the way for Mary to take the throne, although I think he always intended for Jane to rule, and for Gifford to rule over Jane, and Dudley himself to rule over Gifford. But Mary bought his story, and played along, as did I, although all the while I was trying to find a way to save you.”
“Like with the jar of apricots,” he remembered. “You did save me.”
She nodded and smiled at him tenderly. “You’re my little brother. I could not stand by and let any harm come to you.”
“But Mary is my sister, too,” Edward said. “She’s my godmother, for heaven’s sake. How dare she try to steal away my birthright! I am the rightful king!” He was overcome by another wave of fatigue, so much that Bess rose to offer him her chair, and he couldn’t help but accept.
“I am the king,” he muttered.
“Not to Mary, you’re not,” Bess said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Not anymore.”
SEVENTEEN
Jane
There was no battle for the kingdom.
Within minutes of Mary’s arrival, red-coated soldiers had swarmed in, wrested Gifford’s sword away from him (not that he really attempted to use it), and bound Jane and Gifford’s hands with ropes. In short order they were marched down the stairs and through the Tower at sword point.