Blood Between Queens by Barbara Kyle

Author:Barbara Kyle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780758273222
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

At the Bolton Castle stables Justine left her horse with the groom and hurried across the courtyard. The gusting wind rattled a loose door and whistled over the steel helmets of soldiers coming out of the mess. It snapped Lord Scrope’s flag atop the southwest tower, sounding like cracks of a whip, and it plastered Justine’s skirt against her thighs as she made for the southern range. She was late for the noonday meal in Mary’s suite. She couldn’t eat a bite, but she wanted out of this wind. Wanted refuge from her wretchedness. She had left Will like a nervous thief, with no kiss of good-bye, no smile, only a few abrupt few words about how she had to get back.

Margaret Currier caught up to her. “Dear me, I nodded off in the solar,” she said. Wearing no cloak, she was hugging herself as she fell in beside Justine. “We’d better run. Cook will be in a fume if we miss her roast partridge. Where were you?”

“Master Tudholm’s. Delivering my lady’s note.”

“Ah, that man can talk your head off. No wonder you’re late. Come!” She hooked her arm around Justine’s to urge her on, and together they hurried to the arched door that led into the southern range. Inside, blessedly out of the wind, they hastened along the corridor, tidying their hair, making for the staircase that led up to Mary’s rooms. A door opened ahead, and a young man came out, tugging his cap into place. Justine knew him, a gentlemen usher from Aberdeen, one of the handful of Scottish servants Mary had been allowed to admit to her small court here. He gave her and Margaret a casual nod and carried on past them. Justine halted. He had left the door open and she looked in at the candlelit room. The chapel. A wisp of incense reached her. It tugged a thread of memory, a thread of promised comfort.

“Come on,” Margaret urged.

“You go ahead, Margaret. I see Master Forbes in there, and I need a word with him about repairing my lady’s desk.”

Margaret frowned with disapproval. The chapel, with its ornate Catholic trappings, was an indulgence that Elizabeth accorded to Mary out of respect to her foreignness and her rank. English men and women were officially Protestant, and none more so than Margaret. “I’ll tell my lady you’re on your way, shall I?”

“Thank you. I won’t be a moment.”

Margaret hurried on up the stairs. Justine stepped into the chapel. Forbes was not there—she had said so only to give credence to her detour—but a few of Mary’s small entourage were. A master clerk from Fife kneeled at the rood screen before the altar. The pretty Paris-born lady’s maid who dressed Mary’s hair stood at an alcove lighting a votive candle. A jowly Edinburgh chaplain sat with the white-haired priest at the end of the last row of padded benches, chatting in hushed tones, two old friends. Justine hung back, wary of the impulse that had drawn her here, not sure why she had come, but savoring a deeper breath of the fragrant incense.

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