Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,49

servants as soon as I knelt to her. When they had all cleared the room, she said, “Rise. Why are you here?”

I started. Never had Mary greeted me so rudely. “To visit you, my lady.”

“You have not been sent here by my brother’s council?”

“The council? Why on earth would they send me to your ladyship?”

“Your husband is a member, and a favored one from what I hear.”

“My husband trusts me with the management of the household and the management of my younger daughters. Nothing more. He certainly would not send me on the council’s business. Nor would anyone else on the council.”

“You are truly not here at the council’s bidding?”

“Mary, what is this? Our mothers loved each other. We played together as children. As adults we have been friends—or so I thought until now. I came here only because I heard that you had refused to come to the weddings, and I thought you might be ill or troubled.”

Mary stared into my eyes. But I was as much a Tudor as she, and I met her gaze without flinching. Finally, she lowered her gaze. “Perhaps I am wrong. So you will swear that you have not been sent by the Earl of Warwick and his crew?”

“The Earl of Warwick?”

“You were at his sons’ weddings.”

“So was almost anyone else of any consequence. Mary, I should not have to swear to anything. When have I ever given you reason not to trust me? I came here solely out of friendship. No one sent me. No one so much as gave me a message for you. Except for Harry and our household, I doubt if anyone knows that I am here, or would care if he or she did.” I fiddled with the gloves I held in my hand. “I have overstayed my visit. With your permission, I shall be gone within the hour.”

Mary shook her head. “No, stay. I have wronged you.” She stared past me toward the window. “But I cannot help it. Everything has been poisoned for me. I trust almost no one in England now.”

“Why?”

“How can I? They have tried to deprive me of the one thing that matters most to me, my religion.”

I hesitated, then got up my courage. “Harry says that they have only asked you not to hear the Mass. Forgive me, but couldn’t you conform like so many others do, and make your life so much easier?”

“Conform?” Mary put her hands behind her back and began to pace around the room. “You and I are cousins, Frances, yet so different. You speak of conforming as easily as you might talk of replacing a French hood with an English one. As if these differences between my faith and the new one were mere trivialities.”

I dared not utter the thought I sometimes had, which was that they were. “Still, couldn’t you ease your conscience by saying you acted under duress, as you did when you agreed with King Henry that your mother’s marriage was unlawful?”

A look of pain crossed Mary’s face. “That is the most shameful thing I have done in all of my life. I still regret it.”

“You were young and dependent on your father. What else could you have done? It did bring you happiness, did it not?”

“No. It brought me security and wealth. They are poor substitutes when you know yourself to have once known something better.” Mary gripped the rosary she carried at her side as a man might grip a sword. “I dishonored my mother’s memory that day, and for very little purpose. I will die by my own hand before I do such a thing again.”

“Mary!”

“No, I lie. I would not do such a shameful act. I would do something else.”

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering me, Mary turned, bidding me with a motion to follow her. Stopping outside of the manor’s small chapel, she went inside, leaving me to stand self-consciously by its door. When she returned after some moments, her face was entirely at peace. “We may return to my chamber.”

I obeyed. When the door had closed upon us once again, Mary spoke. “I do trust you, Cousin, and I will tell you of my plan now that I have prayed for guidance. But you must promise—I will not make you swear an oath, but merely promise me, as my cousin and my friend—that you will tell no one of this.”

My heart thumped. What in the world had I gotten myself into? “I cannot promise if it involves anything