The Virgin’s Lover

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‘Hush!’ Elizabeth reprimanded them primly; she was always sensitive to the status of a fellow monarch. ‘He is very distinguished. And anyway, I daresay he is eating. It is just poetry, Catherine. He is just saying it to please me.’

‘Just nonsense,’ Catherine said under her breath. ‘And Papist nonsense, at that.’

‘He says he has struggled with his conscience, and struggled with his respect for my faith and my learning, and that he is sure that we can somehow find a way that allows us both to continue in our faith, and yet bring our hearts together.’

‘He will bring a dozen cardinals in his train,’ Catherine predicted. ‘And the Inquisition behind them. He has no affection for you at all, this is just politics.’

Elizabeth looked up. ‘Catherine, he does have an affection for me. You were not here, or you would have seen it for yourself. Everybody remarked it at the time, it was an utter scandal. I swear that I would have been left in the Tower or under house arrest for the rest of my life if he had not intervened for me against the queen’s ill wishes. He insisted that I be treated as a princess and as heir …’ She broke off and smoothed down the golden brocade skirt of her gown. ‘And he was very tender to me.’ Her voice took on its typical, narcissistic lilt. Elizabeth was always ready to fall in love with herself. ‘He admired me, to tell the truth; he adored me. A real prince, a real king, and desperately in love with me. While my sister was confined we spent much time together, and he was …’

‘A fine husband he will make,’ Catherine interrupted. ‘One who flirts with his sister-in-law while his wife is in confinement.’

‘She was not really confined,’ Elizabeth said with magnificent irrelevance. ‘She only thought she was with child because she was so swollen and sick …’

‘All the kinder of him then,’ Catherine triumphed. ‘So he flirted with his sister-in-law when his wife was ill and breaking her heart over something she could not help. Your Grace, in all seriousness, you cannot have him. The people of England won’t have the Spanish king back again, he was hated here the first time, they would go mad if he came back again. He emptied the treasury, he broke your sister’s heart, he did not give her a son, he lost us Calais, and he has spent the last few months in the most disgraceful affairs with the ladies of Brussels.’

‘No!’ Elizabeth said, instantly diverted from her love-letter. ‘So is that what he means when he says he neither eats nor sleeps?’

‘Because he is always bedding the fat burghers’ wives. He is as lecherous as a sparrow!’ Catherine beamed at her cousin’s irresistible giggle. ‘You must be able to do better than your sister’s left-overs, surely! You are not such an old maid that you have to settle for cold meats, a second-hand husband. There are better choices.’

‘Oh! And who would you want me to have?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘The Earl of Arran,’ Catherine said promptly. ‘He’s young, he’s Protestant, he’s handsome, he’s very, very charming – I met him briefly and I lost my heart to him at once – and when he inherits the throne, you join England and Scotland into one kingdom.’

‘Only if Mary of Guise were to helpfully drop dead, followed by her daughter,’ Elizabeth pointed out. ‘And Mary of Guise is in good health and her daughter is younger than me.’

‘Stranger things happen to further God’s will,’ Catherine said confidently. ‘And if the regent Mary lives, why should she not be pushed off her throne by a handsome Protestant heir?’

Elizabeth frowned and glanced around the room to see who was listening. ‘Enough, Catherine, matchmaking doesn’t suit you.’

‘It is both matchmaking and the safety of our nation and our faith,’ Catherine said, unrepentant. ‘And you have the chance to secure Scotland for your son, and save it from the Antichrist of Popery by marrying a handsome young man. It sounds to me as if there is no decision to take. Who would not want the Earl of Arran, fighting on the side of the Scottish lords for God’s kingdom on earth, and the kingdom of Scotland as his dowry?’

Catherine Knollys might be certain in her preference for the young Earl of Arran, but at the end of February another suitor appeared at Elizabeth’s court: the Austrian ambassador, Count von Helfenstein, pressing the claims of the Hapsburg archdukes, Charles and Ferdinand.

‘You are a flower pestered by butterflies,’ Robert Dudley smiled, as they walked in the cold gardens of Whitehall Palace, two of Elizabeth’s new guards following them at a discreet distance.

‘Indeed, I must be, for I do nothing to attract.’

‘Nothing?’ he asked her, one dark eyebrow raised.

She paused to peep up at him from under the brim of her hat. ‘I invite no attention,’ she claimed.

‘Not the way that you walk?’

‘For sure, I go from one place to another.’

‘The way you dance?’

‘In the Italian manner, as most ladies do.’

‘Oh, Elizabeth!’

‘You may not call me Elizabeth.’

‘Well, you may not lie to me.’

‘What rule is this?’

‘One for your benefit. Now, to return to the subject. You attract suitors in the way that you speak.’

‘I am bound to be polite to visiting diplomats.’

‘You are more than polite, you are …’

‘What?’ she said with a giggle of laughter in her voice.

‘Promising.’

‘Ah, I promise nothing!’ she said at once. ‘I never promise.’

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘That is the very snare of you. You sound promising, but you promise nothing.’

She laughed aloud in her happiness. ‘It’s true,’ she confessed. ‘But to be honest, sweet Robin, I have to play this game, it is not just my own pleasure.’

‘You would never marry a Frenchman for the safety of England?’

‘I would never turn one down,’ she said. ‘Any suitor of mine is an ally for England. It is more like playing chess than a courtship.’

‘And does no man make your heart beat a little faster?’ he asked, in a sudden swoop to intimacy.

Elizabeth looked up at him, her gaze straight, her expression devoid of coquetry, absolutely honest. ‘Not a one,’ she said simply.

For a moment he was utterly taken aback.

She crowed with laughter. ‘Got you!’ She pointed at him. ‘You vain dog! And you thought you had caught me!’

He caught the hand and carried it to his mouth. ‘I think I will never catch you,’ he said. ‘But I should be a happy man to spend my life in trying.’

She tried to laugh, but at his drawing closer, the laugh was caught in her throat. ‘Ah, Robert …’

‘Elizabeth?’

She would have pulled her hand away, but he held it close.

‘I will have to marry a prince,’ she said unsteadily. ‘It is a game to see where the dice best falls, but I know that I cannot rule alone and I must have a son to come after me.’

‘You have to marry a man who can serve your interests, and serve the interests of the country,’ he said steadily. ‘And you would be wise to choose a man that you would like to bed.’

She gave a little gasp of shock. ‘You’re very free, Sir Robert.’

His confidence was quite unshaken, he still held her hand in his warm grip. ‘I am very sure,’ he said softly. ‘You are a young woman as well as a queen. You have a heart as well as a crown. And you should choose a man for your desires as well as for your country. You’re not a woman for a cold bed, Elizabeth. You’re not a woman that can marry for policy alone. You want a man you can love and trust. I know this. I know you.’