.c.h.i.q.u.i.t.a.

The vines trailing over the wall sift in the breeze and within their shadows quiver on a strip of polished moonlight. Over Mistress Parry's snores she can hear the soft padding of footsteps and the whisper of silk over stone. Disembodied sounds, like fragments of a nightmare. She pinches her arm, wondering whether it is a nightmare. And then she feels a warmth that has nothing to do with the coverlet of quilted silk draped over her legs. The whisper of perfume threads the air and so low, so faint that she strains to hear a murmur.

"Hush, child, Mother's here."

And the warmth envelops her.

000

To say the sprite was puzzled would be the understatement of the sixteenth century. It staggered back in a – for a gentleman – unseemly fashion. In a lady, it would have been charming and delicate. On that tall, strapping Spanish gallant it was positively unmanly and Susannah said so. She would have been more discreet in expressing her opinion had it been alive. As it was not, she felt that her manners were entitled to some license.

"Good sir, I would much appreciate it if you were to comport yourself with more dignity," she said, taking a seat at the pew. "I have not come to pay you a social call, that is true, but I see that as no reason to lax my standards. It would befit you to follow my example. You may sit."

The ungentlemanly sprite did not. It continued to gaze at her in the way a rank kitchen-maid might at Her Majesty – in awe and something faintly akin to terror. She sighed and wondered if he had died from a wound to the head – that might explain his lack of good sense.

"I have precious little time to spare," she said curtly, "So I think it would be much easier for both of us if we were to proceed swiftly. I shall ask you a question and you shall answer." She didn't wait for a reply before plunging ahead. Her duty was to send this creature on to, well whatever awaited it, not to mollycoddle it. "What is your name?"

His voice was thick, furred and his lips moved tentatively as if it had been a long time since he'd shaped them into words. Quite understandable. "Hector – Hector de Santiago. And you, M'lady?"

You hardly look the part of a lord, Susannah thought with an inward sniff. Really what is the Spanish nobility coming to? "When did you die?"

"When did I…?" He stared at her as though he couldn't believe she could ask such an unladylike question. Well, it was unladylike to frame questions so directly, but really what was she to do? She wasn't here to entice him into asking for her hand in marriage – this was strictly business and ladylike manners and business simply did not mix, Heaven knew.

She drew her knees up and rested her chin exasperatedly on them. "Good sir, I am a humble Maid of Honor to the Queen and being humble, I am made to endure the sort of labor a draft mule would scoff at. In the Maidens' Chamber, my fellow maids are now at work undoing my reputation – a virgin to wander the corridors of Whitehall Palace by night, you understand – and my weary spirit yearns for the warmth of my bed. So you might understand my plight and why I do not wish to prolong our interview." That was a pretty speech and if he were a gentleman it would appeal to his better sentiments. If he were not… well, she'd learnt how to deal with sprites of the lower order over the year.

His eyelids crinkled at the corners and he nodded slowly. "Go to bed, chiquita," he said, a hesitant smile tracing itself over his comely face.

She drew out a long-suffering sigh. Hadn't this creature understood anything? "I am here to help you," she said, in the slow tone she might use with a backward child – or her stepbrothers. "I may not rest until I have helped you. To help you, I must know more about you. If I am to know more about you…"

"Then I must tell you myself." He shook his head. "These are not hours for a maiden to be out," he chided her. "Take heed to your honor, chiquita, and help yourself before you help others."

If only I could. She yawned. "You are not the first to tell me so. Rest assured that I am still…" She blushed and realized at that moment that though he might be dead, he was still male. "Valuable in the marriage market," she had to finish lamely. She frowned at him.

He swept her a courtly bow and gallantly answered, "I have no fear for I trust Her Ladyship is as wise as she is fair. Perhaps it would be best to defer our interview to a later date, madam?"

She looked uncertainly up at him. The offer was... tempting, to say the least but... oh what harm could a few hours do? "My conscience would prickle my soul as a burr would my skin," she said gravely. "But since you press me..." She hesitated.

"Yes?"

"You leave me with no option," she said, rising. "We shall defer our interview till..." she pursed her lips. "You keep to the chapel most hours, do you not?"

He swept his hand in a vague gesture. "Perhaps. If I might make so bold as to suggest that you set a time for me to..."

She arched her brows disdainfully. "You seem unacquainted with the customs of this Court - our duties as ladies to Her Majesties bind us to no specific hours - we must always be at hand."

"Then," he said grandly, "I shall always be at hand for you."

She loved him. She would die and marry him and they'd wander around Whitehall Palace and mock the courtiers. Or maybe not. She picked up her taper and arranged the folds of her cloak neatly about her. "Then I shall see you soon. Good night, good sir." She strode towards the door, already dreaming about her bed, when she noticed that he was following her. "Yes?" she asked, trying to be polite. In the back of her mind she wondered whether he was the cold-blooded, axe-wielding type of murderous sprite she was better acquainted with than she wanted to be. There were plenty of axes and other weapons strung up all along the corridors... if he chose to slit her throat, what would she do?

"It would not be proper for a maiden to traverse thus freely at night, unescorted," he said, giving her a little bow. "May I offer you my services?"

"Indeed no," she said coolly. You could be just waiting to kill me for all I know. She swept out of the chapel and before he could follow her, she said sharply, "It would befit one of your station to heed my words. Mediators are not to be trifled with."

And then she swept grandly out, as though she were at a ball, her cloak fluttering in the draught.

000

When she'd finally tumbled into her bed, even Lady Deborah (known for reveling late of nights) had already disrobed and was untying the garters that held her silk stockings in place. "Fancy seeing you not abed at this hour," she'd said, with a significant arching of her eyebrows.

"I would that I could say the same of you," Susannah had said and stopping only to strip off her cloak, practically fallen into her bed.

It would have been nice to lie abed late into the morning - she would not be called in attendance upon the Queen until late in the morning, after Her Majesty had finished putting on all her make-up, an ardous task indeed these days for she was quite old and (those who'd seen her in her natural state said) decrepit. But, alas, it had been Susannah's curse - some would say good luck, but she knew better - that she could not abide lying in after the cocks had crowed. At the crack of dawn, she woke. A sickly trail of pale winter sunshine filtered through the chamber, illuminating the peaceful, sleeping faces of the girls. Dear hearts, they looked so innocent while abed.

As had been her custom since childhood, she slid out of her cot and knelt on the hard, cold flagstones next to it, to pray. Since childhood, her prayers had been the same. And since childhood, her most dearly yearned for prayer had failed to materialize. There were some who might have taken that as a sign that there was no God up in Heaven, but Susannah was not that sort. The Good Lord had his reasons for everything and she would simply have to be content until He chose the moment to heed her prayers.

When she'd finished praying, her knees stiff from kneeling for so long, most of the girls were still abed. Only Lady Katharine was up. She was sitting at her vanity stand, combing out the silken strands of her long, honey-hued hair with a comb of ebony-and-silver. Attired plainly in her nightgown and morning-robe, she was as breathtakingly beautiful as ever. Susannah brutally shoved back a pang of envy. There was surely a reason God did not listen to her. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. If she couldn't even heed the Ten Commandments, why should he care to listen to her?

"You seem to be pious," Katharine said, drawing out the word 'pious' tauntingly.

Susannah shrugged noncommitally. Self-consciously she smoothed her hair. She knew she must look a fright, with her unruly locks and nose and eyes puffy and red from the cold.

"Oh no, cher ami, you mustn't take it in the wrong way!" Katharine said, with a lilting laugh. "A pious nature in so young a maiden... well, it's unusual to say the least in our naughty little court. What a jewel you must be!"

Susannah was fumbling in the wardrobe for suitable undergarments. "Perhaps," she said, her voice guarded.

"Well His Lordship certainly won't have any trouble finding you a suitable husband," Katharine continued blithely. "A flower with the dawn dew still sparkling on it..."

She selected her gown. It was plain, suitable for daywear, and white. The Queen required her maids to dress only in black or white, except for special occassions, so that the striking hues and embellishments of her own garments would stand out more sharply. If she were not a queen, Susannah would have been forced to concede the fact that she was an unbelievably vain creature. Pansies in purple and yellow linen thread were embroidered all over it - a touch of grace that might please the Queen as her favorite flowers were pansies.

"You are wondrously silent, Lady Susannah. Can it be that you consider yourself above poor little me?" There was a teasing note in Katharine's voice, but beneath it lay something deeper and darker.

What, your lover had enough of your harlotish ways and now you've come to torment me? "If I am silent, madam, it is because I have nought to say," Susannah said. "Your Ladyship's skill with your lips is well known."

"What mean you, Lady Susannah?" Katharine asked sharply, shaking out her glossy hair, an unpleasant look marring the beauty of her features.

"My words are all that my words are and nought more," Susannah said. "You might take them as you please." And then she strode away to the antechamber off the Maidens' Chamber, to change into her clothes.

000

Having a mother lauded by court wits as a 'second Sappho, a peerless gem of inestimable value' was no guarantee that one would take up aforementioned mother's mantle as soon as entered public life, so as to say. Susannah had never thought of her mother as an erudite Latin scholar, but apparently that was how those at court who still remembered her - among who, the Queen was unfortunately one. She'd thought that she was an adequate enough scholar - and more than adequate when she compared herself to her stepbrothers - back at home, but at court she suddenly realized that she was but a minnow in the sea.

The Queen's ladies did not come by their lauded reputations as easily as Susannah had fancied.

She'd been called to read Plutarch's Lives - in original Latin - to the Queen in her private apartments, Her Majesty apparently being under the impression that Lady Helen's daughter would be as seraph-tongued as Lady Helen herself. Within a few minutes of her taking up the heavy volume however, Her Majesty grew impatient and being Her Majesty did not hesitate to show it.

"God's death!" she swore, laying down the packet of letters she'd been glancing over. "What mean you by this, maiden? If we wished for a half-wit to cant Plutarch to us, we would have sent for Lady Deborah!"

"A thousand apologies, Your Majesty," Susannah said, crimsoning as a few of the Queen's ladies tittered, and bobbed a curtsy.

"And if we wished for such genuflections as you perform before us, we would have sent for the scullery maid," the Queen said crisply. "Your Lady Mother has been lax with your upbringing we see - or perhaps even her best efforts failed to turn a girl like you into a gentlewoman. Lady Katharine!"

"Yes, Your Majesty?" Katharine said, stepping forward and curtsying.

"We wish you to take the girl in hand," the Queen said, nodding to Susannah, who was still standing. "You are known for your grace and charm - and we would well advise you to exercise those charms more discreetly, lest they lead you to peril - and it is our hope that you manage to inculculate some of it into yon forward lass."

"Of course, Your Majesty," Katharine said. She smiled sweetly at Susannah, her long lashes veiling her hazel eyes.

"Get thee hence, child," the Queen said sharply to Susannah. "We have no desire to keep thee near us. Lady Katharine, take her place."

Susannah hurried out of the chamber, Lady Katharine's mellifluous voice floating behind her.

000

Dearest Lady Mother,

The snow at London is not nearly as pretty as that back home. It scarcely reminds one of snow. At the present, I am cold and miserable and wretched and made to slave away like a servant. Do write to me telling me you will always love me no matter how much of a 'forward lass' I am. I need your love at the moment.

Your affectionate yet sorrowing daughter,

Susannah

000

"And then Her Majesty says to me, we wish you to take the girl in hand… well you can just imagine how I felt, Deborah!"

The sound of titters halted Susannah in her tracks. She leaned against the stone wall, trying to draw in deep, steadying breaths, wishing her stays were not so tightly laced. In. Out. In… It was no use. She clenched the folds of her gown till she felt her knuckles would crack under the strain, feeling the unevenness of the linen broidery on the tips of her fingers. She remembered the fishwives' gossip and silently called Katharine ever foul word she'd ever heard.

Hedge-born clotpole. Paper-faced canker-blossom. Swag-bellied ratsbane.

It was unladylike. It was intensely comforting. Turning, she marched away, not caring if they heard the slap of her silken slippers on the flagstones. There was work to be done.

She wove around the gaily-clad mass of courtiers all heading toward the Great Hall for the noonday meal, not even pausing to eye the handsome ones as was her wont. The chapel floor was blessedly empty – clearly belly-cheer was more important to the gallants of the day than devotion. What an age, she thought wryly. She picked the hem of her trailing skirts daintily off the ground and walked down the corridor, enjoying the quietness, the feeling of being alone. It was rare, this feeling, at Whitehall Palace, a constant and painful remainder about how far she'd come from her country manor. She walked slowly, hoping to prolong her inevitable meeting with the dashing – yet unfortunately, deceased – sprite.

As she neared the chapel, she heard it. A muted, muffled whisper. Curious, she slid into the shadows, straining her eyes to see. The corridor looked deserted but… ah, there it was again. "My lord… my lord… please…" There was a pillar in front of her, not slender and gilded like the ones lining the floor, but thick. There must be people behind it! Lord a'mercy, she thought. Had she intruded into some important nobleman's private rendezvous? Lord have mercy, she thought fervently.

"My lord…"

And then louder, a man's voice, a voice that she recognized – and was hardly pleased to hear. "Hush, wench or you'll have the whole castle upon us!"

Why it was Bradley.

"Bradley!" she said sharply, sweeping out from her hiding spot as grandly as a state barge. "What is…" She stopped, appalled at the scene before her eyes. "Why, really," she gasped, glaring ferociously at her errant stepbrother. "Have you no shame? No sense of propriety? Get your hands off that poor child!"

The 'poor child' slipped to the floor, her arms covering her bosom which had been exposed by the long rip at the front of her dress. Bradley released her and straightened, glaring at Susannah. "I see no reason for you to interfere in my private affairs," he said roughly. "Lady Susannah."

"Your private affairs?" Susannah sneered, not troubling to hide the contempt in her face. This was her stepbrother after all, not a suitor she would ever have to impress, thank goodness. "Toying with a maid? In front of a chapel no less? Brother, I'm ashamed of you."

"The likes of her exist to serve the needs of the likes of us." Bradley's voice was cold and there was an odd flatness in his eyes that would have made her wary, had she noticed. Instead, she continued to rage, her ire taking precedence over discretion.

"The needs? You dare call your… your filthy carnal urges needs?!" Susannah's voice soared shrilly. Men were vile, disgusting, warped… she could see why the Queen preferred to remain unwed, a virgin for life! "Heed my warning well, for this is the last one you shall receive from my lips. If I ever – and I mean ever – catch but the whisper of scandal about you and any of these poor wenches, I shall… I shall write to your father!" She smiled grimly. "And I suppose we both know what would be the end of that."

Bradley's lips tightened and without a word, he swept past her. She could hear his steel-toed boots clattering noisily as he stomped down the corridor. Really, how childish. She knelt down to the girl's level and opened her mouth, in an attempt to comfort her. But when she got a closer look, she gave a surprised yelp and jumped up. "Faith!" she cried, "Why you're a… stand up, child, let me see you in the light."

Unwillingly the girl stood up, still clutching her torn dress. She was pale, as pale as alabaster, her skin so flawlessly white that even a noblewoman would have envied her. Long hair, the palest shade of flaxen, streamed out from beneath her kerchief. Her eyes were like molten silver, as pale, as bright. Why how extraordinary. "Who are you?" Susannah gasped.

"Cicely," the girl said slowly, shooting a guarded glance at her rescuer. Susannah expected her to curtsy, but she didn't. Instead she glowered at her.

Puzzled by her behavior, Susannah said, "Well… Cicely, then, I suppose you'd be best off to your duties."

"What games would you play with me, lady?" The girl's voice was sharp and scornful. She looked Susannah carefully over, her contemptuous glance resting long on Susannah's slender, delicate hands and the lovely pansies broidered in linen all over her gown. "You're a new one, aren't you?"

"Yes," Susannah said, wondering why she was having a conversation with a maid. A maid she'd rescued from her dastardly stepbrother, but all the same ladies and maids did not talk on such equal terms. The girl clearly needed to be reminded of her position. But… pity whelmed her heart as she saw the way the poor child clutched her hideous dress – she shuddered, imagining herself ever donning such a garment –, and at the bruises that marked her pale temple. She'd humor the creature a while – there was no shame in kindness. "Have you ever been subjected to such… treatment?" she asked, trying to phrase it as delicately as she could.

The girl gave an odd laugh, a hoarse, guttural sound that made Susannah wince. "Not fit for your ears, lady," she said. "Well I suppose I'd best be 'off to' my duties, Your Ladyship wouldn't care for the likes of me to spoil your assignation."

"Assignation?" cried Susannah, hardly believing that the creature before her was insulting me. "What, pray, do you take me for, child?"

The stinging look Cicely shot her was answer enough. "Good day, lady," she said. If she had been a lady, Susannah would have said she swept away. But as she was just an uneducated country lass who hadn't been brought up to mind her manners where her superiors were concerned, she didn't sweep away. She strode.

Susannah turned, sighing and saw the sprite – Hector, she remembered, he'd called himself – leaning against the chapel door. She stormed inside the chapel, and he floated by her until she'd taken a seat at one of the pews. "Not many ladies would have done what you did," he said quietly.

"They would not deserve the epithet 'lady' then," Susannah said shortly. "Certainly I doubt the likes of Lady Katharine and Lady Deborah would have… but I'm sure there would have been others who would have rushed to the poor creature's defense."

"They would not," Hector said. "They would have looked the other way. Trust me, M'lady, I've been in this court for three generations and I know as much about it as any silver-haired grandee." He paused and looked towards the window. "It is beautiful, is it not?"

Susannah turned and felt the first smile – unwilling, but a smile no less – of the day break over her face. Light filtered in through the high, stained-glass windows and shifting patterns of rose, amethyst and topaz-yellow brightened the flagstones. Columns of powdery golden light shot through the higher windows and pooled before the altar.

"There are others," Hector said, while she drank in the beauty before her, more dear to her for its simplicity, its solitariness. "Soon they will sense your presence and they will come to you, for you are… I know not what, but I wager their only hope of salvation." Gently, he rested his hand on her shoulder. It tingled, not unpleasantly. "Forget me, chiquita, there is nothing you can do for me. But the others…" He let his sentence trail off.

"What mean you by 'others'?" she asked, wondering why she felt so disappointed when he let his hand drop from her shoulder.

000

An hour later she understood. Hector had shooed her away, reminding her that she would be late for the noontide meal – at which her presence, as one of the Queen's ladies, was required – and reluctantly she'd hurried away to the Great Hall. The Queen ate at the highest table, under the cloth-of-gold canopy of state, served by her fairest and youngest handmaidens, while courtiers, according to their prominence, occupied successively lower tables. There was not room at the tables for all the ladies, with their gowns made so wide by their farthingales, and so they were forced to eat sitting on the floor, over which sweet-smelling rushes had been spread.

Susannah was just taking a bite of her manchet bread when she heard the sound. It was a curious noise, rather like a wail, low and long-drawn. Once, ages ago, there'd been a maid who'd fallen into an empty well back at the manor. Susannah had heard her wailing piteously for help. It had been a dreadful sound, for help could not be found and eventually the woman had died of starvation down in the well. For nights, she'd had frightful dreams but thankfully the poor woman must have been passed on peacefully to the next world for Susannah never encountered her phantom. That was how the sound she heard sounded like.

She was not the only one who had heard it, she realized. Some of the elder courtiers looked up and the senior-most of the Queen's ladies – who'd been chatting gaily to her mistress a moment before – shuddered and turned very pale. The Queen herself showed no outward sign of discomposure, only drew out a long-suffering and – to Susannah's ears – sad sigh. "Poor soul," she said, before turning once again to her companion.

Susannah shook the girl next to her and whispered, "Elizabeth, what means this?"

Elizabeth looked oddly at her, but the girl next to her – another Elizabeth, Susannah remembered – leaned towards Susannah and said, "Marry, did you hear it as well? What did it sound like?"

The undisguised eagerness in her eyes surprised Susannah. Court ladies were rarely so free with their emotions and if there was one thing she'd learned about her fellow Maids of Honor in the short time she'd been with them, it was that curiosity about anything, anything at all, was vulgar and above one of the Queen's ladies. She tried to describe it as best as she could and when she finished, the first Elizabeth nodded, looking impressed. "So that was what it was all about."

"Poor soul," the second Elizabeth said, raising her eyes virtuously up to the heavens. "But then it's no wonder…"

"No wonder, what?" Susannah asked. "I cannot guess at your meaning."

"But how could you?" the second Elizabeth demanded, but somehow her tone did not make the remark seem as unkind as Lady Katharine would have made it sound. "You being a country lass and all…"

"It was Catherine Howard," the first Elizabeth explained. "You would have heard of her. The fair rose without a thorn?"

"Oh… yes," Susannah said slowly, remembering the story. The King's child-bride, beautiful beyond compare but with maggots for brains. "And that would be…"

"Aye," the second Elizabeth said. "Her phantom." She rolled her eyes gruesomely. "The Queen hears her, and some of the old wartbags insist they do. Hogwash, thought I." Her eyes rested significantly on Susannah. "And yet, you…"

"It is not for us to question what gifts the good Lord has seen fit to endow us," Susannah said primly, trying to look virtuous.

The second Elizabeth laughed. "Katharine told us that you were pious," the first Elizabeth said smoothly. And then her face hardened and with a malice that Susannah would not have expected of so gentle-looking a girl, she spat out, "Base-born whore. She's cheated me of a husband and verily I'll see to it that she pays some day."

Susannah took a more careful look at her. She was very pretty – but of course all the Queen's ladies were acclaimed beauties – but there was a tired, washed-out look about her. There was an unhealthy grey pallor to her alabaster-white skin and a fragility about her too-slender frame. She wished she knew what Katharine had done to 'cheat' this Elizabeth of a husband. Probably lured away one of her choice suitors… but then that was a threat that every girl at court faced, when there was a beauty like Katharine about.

"The more I hear of her, the more I wish to spew a fair mouthful of fishwives' curses into her pretty face," Susannah laughed.

The second Elizabeth giggled and nodded fervently. "And that is what every respectable virgin well-acquainted with her ways, wishes to do!"

"Yet is too craven to do," the first Elizabeth said disdainfully. "We are ladies, Betsy my love, and we must remember that our place is by the hearth and that milk ought to run through our veins while the fire of the family runs through our brothers," she said, in such a perfect imitation of Deborah that both Elizabeth and Susannah laughed.

Now Susannah knew that she was a pretty girl – she would never have been accepted as a Maid of Honor if she was not – but she'd felt rather like a wallflower in this court of lovelies. But when she looked up, laugh-lines still crinkling about her vivid green eyes, she saw a few men's admiring eyes on her. Blushing at this sudden attention, she looked down. Sunlight, sieving through the rafters, caught in her glossy brown hair in a delicate web of gold.

"My, my," the second Elizabeth said, "that was very well done."

"What?" Susannah asked, still blushing, though she felt like she already knew.

"Don't be a goose, child," the first Elizabeth said loftily. "Look up, our bonny Katharine's looking at you."

Obediently, Susannah looked up. Katharine was staring directly at her and the look in her eyes was not lovely at all.

000

"Your deportment at luncheon left me wordless," Katharine raged, pacing through the Maidens' Chamber like a lioness in white. As though they were at a tennis match, the girls' eyes flitted from Katharine to Susannah, who was lying on her cot, trying to read a book she'd found in the Royal Library. "Crude and vulgar are not words adequate enough for me to express my…"

Deborah was nodding in time with every word her best friend said.

"The Queen asked me to keep you in hand," Katharine's voice rang. "Rest assured, Lady Susannah, that I will not be tardy now that I know where my duty lies."

"If you do not keep your voice down, Lady Katharine," Susannah said lazily, looking up from her book. "The Queen might ask me to keep you in hand."

Someone chuckled. Still lying on her cot, Susannah drawled, in perfect imitation of the Queen, "You are known for your grace and charm - and we would well advise you to exercise those charms more discreetly, lest they lead you to peril. Just Her Majesty's way of reminding you that you are nothing but a whore whose only purpose remains to ornament the court and serve as a toy for the men to divert themselves with, Lady Katharine."

There were more than a few gasps and she saw the first Elizabeth's mouth drop open dramatically. So that's that for craven ladies with milk in their veins. Suddenly she felt more alive than she had in a long time. She stood up and faced Katharine. They were both of a height, though Susannah fancied herself taller. "You have warmed my brother John's bed many a time, I know. Rest assured, Lady Katharine, that I will not be tardy now that I know where my duty lies."

"How dare… how dare…" Katharine spluttered, truly wordless. "Her Majesty shall hear of this!"

"Indeed," the first Elizabeth said, rising from her cot. "And she shall hear what I have to say as well, Katharine." She fixed her cold eyes on Katharine. "Lady Susannah has uttered no lies, as you very well know."

"You've chosen a fine creature to shelter you," Katharine spat, a scornful smile twisting her face. "Within a few months she'll be lying in her grave, the poor dear. Did she give you that spiel about how I cheated her of a husband, Lady Susannah? My lord knew she would never live long enough to bear him a healthy son and that is why he chose to move on to greener pastures. As Lady Elizabeth very well knows, but did not deign to tell you." Whirling she called out imperiously to Deborah, "Come," and marched out of the Maidens' Chamber.

Susannah sank down to her cot, horror filling her at the insults she'd hurled at Katharine. They had been true, but…

What have I done?