Free To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court by Fiona Buckley Page B

for Lady Thomasine.”
    “I hope I shall hear you play during my stay,” I said civilly.
    Beyond the blue parlor was another room of similar size but more masculine, with a bigger hearth and a lot of antlers on the wall. Still trying to map the castle in my head, I worked out that the door to the left must lead into the great hall. But Rafe, explaining that this was called the tower parlor, because it was at the foot of the Mortimer Tower, made for a spiral stone staircase in one corner. “This leads up into Mortimer. The steps are narrow, but there’s a handrail.”
    He offered me his hand again but I declined it. The wedge-shaped steps were not unduly steep. After two flights, we came to a door on which he tapped. Lady Thomasine called to us to enter.
    “I’ve brought Mistress Blanchard,” said Rafe, opening the door and then flattening himself against it to let me go in first. I had to turn sideways to get my farthingale past him and as I did so, I had momentarily to press against him. It occurred to me, uncomfortably, that he had placed himself against the door for that very purpose. I could still feel in my right palm the pressure of his thumb when he took my hand at the door of Aragon. I caught his eye with a reproving frown, and was answered by an amused and knowing glint. Drawing my stomach muscles in, I eased myself and my farthingale safely by and turned my back on him.
    “Here I am, Lady Thomasine. Good morning.”
    “Good morning, Mistress Blanchard.” Lady Thomasine was sitting at a toilet table, examining her face in an antique silver hand mirror while her pale-faced maid put finishing touches to her mistress’s hair.
    “Very well, Nan. That will do.” Lady Thomasine held up the mirror, sighed, and regretfully fingered the very faint lines at the corners of her eyes. “If only I could pull these out, or dye them, as I do with gray hairs. Thank you for bringing Mistress Blanchard across, Rafe. I’ll see you later. Nan, go and tell Olwen to bring breakfast.” Rising, she moved over to a window seat. “Come and sit beside me, Mistress Blanchard. We have much to talk about.”
    I would have liked it to include Rafe’s behavior but after all, what could I say? That he had given me a challenginglook when talking about the haunted tower, had held my hand too closely as he helped me over a step, and that it had been difficult to squeeze past him in a doorway? I pushed Rafe out of my thoughts, and joined my hostess on the window seat.
    The window, which looked down toward the courtyard, was no dismal arrow slit, but was large and handsome with diamond-leaded panes and decorative mullions. No doubt it had been put in by the up-to-date Sir Thomas Vetch. It shed rather too much light on Lady Thomasine, though. She was beautifully dressed, in a loose gown of oyster damask, with a fresh pair of slippers, high-heeled and very pretty, of tawny velvet embroidered with roses in gleaming cerise silk. But although her skin had been powdered, I could see a cobweb of lines not hitherto visible, and the amethyst and agate rings on her fingers could not quite conceal her thickening knuckles.
    She wasted no time on small talk. “You know why I have asked you here,” she said. “Cecil has sent you to help me, has he not?”
    “Yes, Lady Thomasine.” I studied her gravely, and then put into words the problem that had been worrying me since I first agreed to undertake this inquiry. “But I must say I am puzzled as to how I can help. I believe you are anxious to learn what is going on in your son’s mind but if you, his mother, are not in his confidence, how may I hope to do better? I have said I will try, and I will, but all the same …”
    “How much did Cecil tell you, Mistress Blanchard?”
    “He told me that Sir Philip wishes to get back theproperty and honors which belonged to his Mortimer ancestors, or at least their equivalents, and that he seems to think he can persuade the queen to give them to him. Do I