broke off, her voice cracking.
‘Please, my lady,’ Frances said, as she took her arm and steered her back into the apartment, closing the door behind her. Once the young woman was comfortably seated, she busied herself with plumping the cushion at her back and pouring her a glass of water. Then she took a seat opposite and waited.
‘I am not used to such kindness,’ Lady Somerset said quietly. On the few occasions they had talked in the past, Frances had never warmed to her. She was typical of so many other members of James’s court, whose true thoughts and motives were concealed behind a veneer of charm and flattery. But it was clear that she was not dissembling now.
‘You may have known my husband’s former friend, Sir Thomas Overbury?’
The name was familiar to Frances. She remembered some gossip about the nature of their friendship, but that had been swiftly silenced by Somerset as he had risen in the King’s favour. Not long after she had left court two years earlier, Thomas had told her that Overbury had been committed to the Tower, charged with contempt for refusing the King’s offer of an embassy abroad. James had long been jealous of the intimacy that had existed between the two men. Overbury had died before the King could take any further action against him.
‘I do not think I ever met him,’ she replied.
‘Then you are fortunate indeed, Lady Tyringham,’ she retorted, her voice edged with bitterness. ‘He was a dark-hearted villain, intent upon destroying anyone who threatened his hold over my husband.’
Including you, Frances thought, but kept her counsel. She had heard it said that Overbury had violently objected to Somerset’s plan to marry the beautiful Lady Essex.
‘He even defied the King, though he would have found Moscow a good deal more temperate than the Tower. Well, God saw fit to punish his defiance. You know that he died after only a few months of imprisonment?’
Frances nodded. She saw the other woman’s hand tremble as she sipped the water.
‘No doubt he choked on his own bile,’ she went on. ‘I confess that I rejoiced at the news, for I would no longer be plagued by him – and neither would my husband.’ Her chest heaved as she struggled to control her emotion. ‘But it seems that he is resolved to torment me from the grave.’
Her face was now deathly white and Frances saw the same fear in her eyes that she had in Somerset’s. She wished she had ignored the impulse to help and continued walking back to her own chambers. She knew all too well that words could carry as much danger as deeds in this court.
‘The King has received a letter from Sir Gervase Helwys containing such calumny that I hardly know how to respond.’
‘The lieutenant of the Tower?’ It had been with some satisfaction that Frances had heard of Sir William Wade’s dismissal from that post. He must have expected to live out his days in his comfortable lodgings there: just reward for having hounded Tom and the other Powder Treason plotters to their deaths.
Lady Somerset nodded miserably. ‘He alleges that Overbury was poisoned at my orders.’
Frances felt suddenly cold.
‘My husband has denied it, of course, but he suspects me still,’ she continued, twisting the russet silk of her skirt between her fingers. ‘How could he believe that I, his own wife, would stoop to murder?’ She clamped her hand over her mouth as if to suppress another onslaught of sobbing.
‘Did Sir Gervase provide any proof, my lady?’ she asked.
Her companion looked utterly wretched. ‘He claims to have the written testimony of an apothecary from Yorkshire. Yorkshire!’ she cried, her voice rising in agitation. ‘I have no connection with that part of the kingdom and have never travelled further north than Oxford.’
Frances regarded the young woman closely. She seemed in earnest, and her panic-stricken eyes reminded Frances of a rabbit caught in a trap, the jagged spikes cutting ever deeper into its flesh as it struggled to free itself. ‘How did His Majesty respond to the claims?’ she asked.
Lady Somerset gave a heavy sigh and pressed her delicate white fingers to her brow. ‘Robert says he has persuaded him that it is nothing but slander and the King seems inclined to let the matter rest. But already there is gossip. I wish I was far from here. I cannot bear to hear the lies that they will whisper against me – against my husband, too.’
‘There is always gossip, my