A Constant Heart by Siri Mitchell

Author:Siri Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9780764204319
Publisher: Bethany House
Published: 2008-12-15T06:00:00+00:00

I might have kept my promise to Lytham, but Sir Walter Raleigh got himself placed under house arrest in May. And Lady de Winter told me Lytham would want to know. I found him in his chambers with Nicholas, surprising the both of them with my presence.

"What has happened?"

I took several moments to reply, lacking the breath to say anything at all.

Lytham led me to a chair and bid me sit.

" 'Tis Raleigh."

"What of him?"

"His marriage has been discovered . . . and his babe."

"His marriage?"

"To Bess Throckmorton. Her Majesty's maid-in-waiting."

Lytham's brows rose near to his hairline and I knew then the feeling of sweet triumph. I had told him something that he had not known.

"He has been married?"

"Aye."

"Are you certain? Surely the babe was just . . . an . . . accident.

A singular occasion."

"It has been said that it resulted from a series of several . . . accidents." Such bold behavior by one of the Queen's maids would not be tolerated. Not if the love affair had been carried on beneath that very long, very aquiline, very jealous, vain, malevolent nose.

Indeed, Raleigh was questioned for two days. And then Bess was taken and placed under house arrest with her babe, elsewhere in town. It could not go well for her.

And in some respects, it was not going well for me. My hands were swift becoming useless. And I knew it most upon dressing. One morning I asked Joan for my rope of pearls and a brooch.

She brought them to me and I inclined my head so that she could drape the pearls over it in several loops. She worked some moments to arrange them in cascading lengths. "And the brooch?"

"Fasten it to the sleeve."

She moved to pin it to the left sleeve.

I shook my head. "The right."

Once she had finished, she took up my paints, but my fingers had begun to prick. And in rubbing them, I realized they were unadorned.

"I still need a ring."

She returned to the box and lifted a hand to retrieve what I desired. "Which one?"

"Can I see them?"

She held the box before me, beyond the bounds of my ruff, so that I could look. I decided upon the emerald and reached in to the box to acquire it. It slipped from my fingers at the first. And then it fell away from them on my second attempt. I put my other hand to the box to steady it and tried again. In my scrabbling through the box after the jewel, Joan's hand came to possess it and she offered it to me in her open palm.

Maddened, I reached for it, taking it up between my thumb and finger. But it tumbled from my grasp before I could thread it upon my hand. "Blast the ring! I do not want it now."

But, in truth, I did. And later, after I had dismissed the chambermaid and Joan, I tried for the ring once more.

I opened the coffer and saw it lying upon a tray, hidden by nothing.

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