Free The Thorne Maze by Karen Harper Page B

block, a groom led a limping roan with what appeared to be long cuts across its throat and neck.
    “I’ve warned him, but I’ve a good nerve to beat that spoiled, sadistic bastard Darnley to a pulp for whipping every horse he rides,” Robin muttered, as he smacked a fist into a wooden gate then kicked it open. His sudden shift to violence upset the queen as much as the sight of the poor horse. “He whips his hunt dogs, too,” Robin raved on. “The little priss is not quite twenty, so he’ll only get worse. He looks like such a handsome, graceful lad, then acts like a brute in private.”
    “Then I must admit I hardly know him—and he sounds like his mother’s boy indeed,” Elizabeth said and tucked that new bit of knowledge away for dealing later with the Stewarts and her Scottish problem. For first, in the moonlit maze tonight, she had her own to solve.

Chapter the Fifth
    “IS YOUR HEAD PAIN BETTER, MY DEAR?” CECIL ASKED his wife, as he hurried into their small suite. It consisted of a bedchamber and outer room, the latter which, when Mildred was not here with him, was filled with his own scriveners and secretaries. The household maid they’d brought from London peeked her head out of the bedchamber, saw it was him, and dosed the door to give them privacy. Mildred turned slowly toward him from where she’d evidently been staring out the casement window.
    “Like you, my head pain comes and goes,” she said, standing her ground. “I didn’t want any of that elixir, even if it is from the queen’s herbalist. It makes me sleepy, and I don’t want to sleep. There is much too much to do around here.”
    He assumed she was being shrewdly flippant, for he’d not spent much time with her since they’d arrived. He’d been late to bed, risen early. He’d left for the Privy Plot Council meeting last night and would be back out in the maze after dark tonight, none of which Mildred could know about.
    “This evening, let’s go over our plans for building Theobalds,” he proposed with a smile, as he dropped his leather satchel on the table and gave her a quick hug. “It will have to be before dark as I have a meeting later.”
    “You’re the one who loves poring over the minutiae of measurements on those diagrams, Will,” she protested as she weakly returned the hug. Mildred was a hardy, vigorous woman, so her apparent feebleness dismayed him. He needed some better tonic for her and soon. “When they become reality,” she went on, “I shall advise you on furnishings and ornaments on little Robert’s behalf.”
    “Since the house is to be his inheritance, I thought you’d be pleased to contribute even in the planning stages.”
    “If you put one tenth of the funds and time into Theobalds as you have into expanding and refurbishing your family’s ancestral Stamford home for your Tom, I’ll be eternally pleased.”
    “The queen may visit Theobalds soon, and I’d like to have Templar come see that water maze, too,” he said, bending over the table to roll open a parchment diagram of the ground floor. “They’ll be excited to see it early.”
    “Ah,” she said, remaining at the window while he poured himself a glass of ale, “Bettina will be excited to see it, too, I suppose.
    “I’m not certain, but the Suttons seem to be inseparable.”
    Glancing up, he could tell she almost said “lucky them,” or something of the sort. His hopes fell that being here at court would buck her up. Mildred’s mental malady baffled him. She had once been so calm and confident, so sure of him and proud of his achievements. But since Robert had been born lame with a bent backbone, icicles could have hung from her, though that was better than her occasional fiery outbursts.
    Surely, he agonized, as much as she knew he admired Elizabeth Tudor, it couldn’t be jealousy for the time he spent with his royal mistress. She wasn’t that sort of mistress, and he’d never been untrue that way in all their years of