Free The Twylight Tower by Karen Harper

now, my pet,” he went on, “we have the opportunity to regain some of our lost lands and ruined wealth from those disasters.…”
    Disasters,
she understood that, all right. She squirmed off his lap, though she would have loved to cling to him, more fool she.
    “Monarch, you called her,” Amy said, blowing her nose again. “As if she is not a flesh-and-blood woman to you, as if she could be a man just as well.”
    “She intends to rule like a man, mayhap without a man, so she needs advisers who—”
    “You think she needs you as a man, as
her
man!” she exploded. She wanted to break the porcelain pomander over his head, to gag or strangle him with that new scarf.
    “Amy, don’t you turn on me too,” he said, rising and coming to pull her gently to him. His voice wassilky smooth. She tried not to cling, but she turned her head and rested her wet cheek on his leather doublet. Through its thickness, she fancied she could hear his heart beating right over the sound of the abbots’ songs.
    “Who else dares to bear you ill will if she is your friend?” Amy choked out.
    “Ah, to know so little of how the world works. Many resent that I fly high and fast and they yet hate my father for taking the badge of the earls of Warwick. Some cannot abide he named himself Duke of Northumberland, the first subject unconnected with royal blood to hold the ducal rank.”
    Amy lifted her head as his voice rose. She saw his neck veins throb. “They are all hellfire, raving jealous, and I must show them they need me,” he went on, glaring into space. “Sometimes, I almost think, all but her—and you—hate me. My beloved, I can still count on you?” he asked, and held her at arm’s length and bent down to look straight into her eyes.
    Amy sighed, and nodded. What little strength she’d summoned flowed from her, and she sagged against him. He lifted and carried her to the bed and sat perched on it, holding her hand as daylight fled the room. Soon she fell asleep and when she woke, Mrs. Pirto was sitting by the hearth in lamplight, and Amy could hear Robert’s voice somewhere below … entwined with his steward’s … if the voices weren’t the monks’ singing their sad chants from their graves out back again.

    “DEAR HARRY, I AM GLAD TO SEE YOU!” ELIZABETH TOLD her Boleyn cousin Henry Carey, now Baron Hunsdon, as he bowed before her in her withdrawing room. Harry had been gone just over a week and, in truth, she’d hardly noticed, even if he was the captain of her personal guards, the Gentlemen Pensioners. Robert had been away only one day and night, and she missed him like the very devil.
    “How did you find your lady wife and the children, my lord?”
    “Good news, Your Grace, as Anne is with child so soon again.”
    He looked as proud as he did pleasant, the queen thought. The thirty-four-year-old son of her mother’s sister was a bluff, forthright man, but one who also appreciated fine things in life. Harry was russet haired, but with that and his prominent nose, the family resemblance stopped. He was stocky, broad faced with wide-set eyes, blunt fingers, and a deliberate, stiff walk. But he was stalwart in tournaments and would serve well in war, God forbid, she thought.
    “Harry, I share your joy and will be honored to stand godmother to the babe. And how did you find your lands at Hunsdon?” She rose, indicating they should stroll toward the gallery. It was then she noted another man, a stranger to her, in the shadows across the room, mayhap waiting for Harry. She shivered as if someone were spying on her again, or as superstitious folk used to say, someone had walked on her grave.
    “And who have you brought to court this time, my lord?” she inquired, for Harry was always mentoring young men of talent. This one would have done for one of her guards or porters with his height and clean, good looks were he not already attired in the new buff-and-brown Hunsdon colors.
    “Your Grace,” Harry said,