The Queen's Lady. Shannon Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ who knew this as home. Foreboding, perhaps, for those accustomed to blue skies. He shifted his gaze to the Royal Mile, a fine thoroughfare offering shops that sold goods from around the world. Holyrood was a fine palace, Edinburgh a fine city. Surely the queen would find much to love here and in her people, people who had cheered for her arrival.

      Perhaps he was being too defensive, worrying for naught. And yet…He knew that many members of Queen Mary’s French escort mocked this land. It was cold, they said. Hard, like the unyielding, rugged rock of Edinburgh Castle. French shops were finer, French palaces far more beautiful—even if French laborers had worked on Holyrood.

      Rowan forced himself to look on his city as others might see it. In the gray, foreboding day, the castle rose like a bleak and terrible fortress. The people themselves were as rough and hard.

      Rock versus marble. Wool versus silk.

      He gritted his teeth. They simply needed time. Time would bring the changes the young queen and her entourage needed.

      The ties Scotland had shared with France were long-lived and strong. And yet….

      No alliance was founded purely on friendship. Both the Scots and the French had fought the English, and that shared enmity had made them allies, even friends. But friendship was so often only on the surface, easily broken when more selfish needs intruded. And therein lay the dilemma.

      What really simmered beneath the deeper waters of that alliance now that the French-raised queen had come home?

      CHAPTER TWO

      “I AM EXHAUSTED,” MARY sighed, throwing herself onto the bed in her chamber. She stared up at the ceiling and laughed softly, sounding for a moment like any young woman. “Actually, this is quite lovely,” she said, surveying the room. She rolled to stare at Gwenyth, who was standing nearby. “It is, isn’t it?” she whispered, and Gwenyth knew she was missing France.

      “It is magnificent,” Gwenyth assured her.

      Mary leaned back on the bed again. “Crowns,” she murmured. “They do weigh heavily.”

      “My queen—” Gwenyth began.

      Mary rose to a sitting position, shaking her head. “For now, I beg of you, please drop the formality. We are alone, and I must trust in you. You’ve not been gone so long from here, and you’re not after any reward, nor testing me, weighing me. Use my given name, as if we were nothing more than a pair of friends. For you truly are my friend, and that is what I need now.”

      “Mary, I believe your arrival here was a complete success. Your people are delighted to have their young and beautiful queen returned.”

      She shook her head. “These people seem so forbidding”

      “They’re…” Gwenyth paused, not sure what to say. She shrugged. “They’re forbidding,” she agreed. She hesitated, then went on. “It’s due to John Knox and the way they have embraced their church.”

      “Right. They can’t follow the English, heaven forbid, but they don’t want to believe in the old religion, either, so they must have their own church.” She sighed, then patted the side of the richly canopied bed to urge Gwenyth to join her. As soon as Gwenyth sat down, Mary gave her a fierce hug. “It’s cold here, have you felt it?”

      “There’s a lovely fire burning,” Gwenyth said.

      “You’re right. And it will be warming soon. This is so strange a place, though. In France, while my husband lived, there was such a marvelous sense of security in being queen. And here…it is as if I am being tested because I am queen.”

      “You must remember, your half brother, Lord James, has been the power behind the throne since the death of your mother. Time has passed, and things have changed. But now, both lords and churchmen have gathered to welcome you home. You must remember that. Everything is going to be wonderful.”

      “Is it?”

      Mary rose and walked toward the fire to warm her hands. For a moment she looked lost, even tragic. “If only…” Then she steeled her shoulders and swung around. “I have barely arrived, we’re all dressed in the grays and blacks of our mourning, and do you know what was on the mind of those great and noble lords who greeted us and rode as our escort here to the palace?”

      “What?”

      “My remarriage.”

      Gwenyth smiled. “My dear queen—”

      “Friends, we are friends here tonight.”

      “Mary, I’m sorry to say this, for I know your heart and know that you were deeply grieved by the death of your husband, but from the instant the king of France died, nobles and monarchs across our world were discussing your next marriage. You are a queen, and your alliances, both personal and political, can change the face of history. This is a sad truth to face when the soul is in pain, but it is the way of the world.”

      “I am a commodity,” Mary said softly.

      “You are a queen.”

      Again, Mary paced. “You are right, I know. I scarcely had time to bury my husband with the honor that was his due before I, too, realized my future had to be decided. Today, when we stepped ashore, I had to wonder if perhaps I made a grave error. There were offers, you know, offers from Catholic royal houses. There is no right step to take, I fear. Were I to marry into such a house, I would turn Scotland against me. But here, today, I learned the minds of these men. They want me to choose one of their number as consort, a man who honors all that is Scottish, who bleeds pure Scottish blood, who will compensate for what they consider the disadvantage of my upbringing. Oh, Gwen, what is the matter with the people? How can I be anything less than true to what I have been taught all my life, to what I have read, to God as I know Him?”

      “No one expects that of you.”

      Mary shook her head in denial, and Gwenyth thought that, sadly, she was most likely right.

      “They expect everything of me. But I am not an inconstant queen. I will honor and worship God as I see fit. But…” She turned away, lowering her head.

      “But?” Gwenyth started to smile. She thought she had seen something in Mary’s face.

      “Well…” Mary inhaled deeply. “I loved him, but my late husband…he was never well.”

      “There was no romance,” Gwenyth whispered.

      Mary spun and rushed back to the bed. “Am I terrible? I have seen someone who…well, I was newly widowed when I saw him. He is a distant cousin, in fact.” She looked at Gwenyth mischievously. “He is most handsome.”

      “Who is he?”

      “Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley.”

      “Ah,” Gwenyth murmured, looking away, thinking that Mary deserved some genuine happiness. She had spent her life doing what was expected of her, performing her duty. To hear that whisper of excitement in her voice was, Gwenyth thought, most gratifying.

      Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, was, like Mary, a grandchild of Margaret Tudor, the sister of the late English king, Henry VIII. Gwenyth СКАЧАТЬ