Free The Thorne Maze by Karen Harper

world was falling in love if they weren’t already in that hopeless state, she thought, entirely frustrated, though she made conversation and responded to her ladies’ chatter. Cecil was fretting for his Mildred; Bettina and Templar, though apparently mismatched, seemed to be quite suited. Jamie Barstow had evidently found the chink in Rosie’s armor. The queen herself was attracted to both Robin and Chris Hatton, however much younger Chris was.
    And then there were the politics of love. Cecil, her counselors, and her Parliament had more than once requested that she wed, though she had managed to put them off yet again. Hell’s teeth, Mary, Queen of Scots was looking for a second husband already, and Elizabeth must play a part in that to be certain she wed someone who could be trusted. Someone ambitious but malleable to the will of the Protestant, English queen even when he bedded with the Catholic, Scottish one.
    She strode the rest of the way to the gardens, hardly hearing the chatter and giggles about her. But the moment they reached the flowers, she decided to toss out her bait. “Look at these pretty gillyflowers, everyone. I can smell them from here.”
    “A spicy smell, rather too strong,” Anne Carey put in, wrinkling her pert nose.
    “I like it myself, and so does our queen, even tucking gillyflowers in her bodice or her hair,” Kat declared, stooping to behead a flower and thrust it at Elizabeth. For once she was about to correct Kat when the old woman continued, “Queen Catherine Howard may be too young for your father, lovey, but he’s so enamored of her, that, just like other old husbands with flibbety-gibbety wives, he’d do anything to please her.”
     
     
    “You must take your sister riding while she’s here, as she won’t come out of her chamber for me,” Elizabeth told Robin as they walked toward the vast brick and wood stable block.
    “Mary does ride out, sometimes even alone like last night. I would have gone with her, but I couldn’t leave the foaling and she wouldn’t hear of a guard going along.”
    “At night? Last night? And alone?”
    “Don’t fret,” Robin soothed. “She said she’s likely to go mad cooped up. You know she’s always glad to see you, but just can’t abide anyone else around. Enter my realm, my queen,” he smoothly shifted the subject, and swept Elizabeth a bow as they stepped into the long corridor of slatted wooden stalls.
    Despite her delicate nose, Elizabeth had always loved the smell of the stables, well-tended ones, at least. Once one adapted to the undercurrent of animal smells, the nostalgic ones were discernible: straw, leather, soap, and polish—men. And sounds like the creak of saddles, the snorts and stomping of the big beasts. It all reminded her of the few happy times she’d shared with her father. She had become an excellent horsewoman to please him above all else.
    “What do you think of our new arrival?” Robin asked her and pressed her hand on his arm close to his solid ribs as he swung open a stall door with the other.
    The white mare Fortune, the queen’s favorite mount before the animal’s belly swelled, stepped forward to nuzzle the gloved royal hand and crunch down the offered apple. Robin smacked Fortune’s flank and she sidestepped to reveal her gangly foal, who went noisily back to suckling. For one rapt moment, the queen and her Master of the Horse just grinned and stared at the new stallion.
    “What shall you name him then?” Robin asked.
    “Destiny, I believe.”
    “Ah, Fortune and Destiny, names after my own heart, but it is truly you who are after my own heart—or I wish you were,” he teased, his voice rough with the sudden passion that could flare from him without warning.
    Though her stomach cartwheeled, she decided to ignore that. “You do a fine job with all of this, Robin.” She gazed around the vast stable block with grooms busy at their tasks. “And I hear your implication about your fortune and