Free The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) by Fiona Buckley Page A

been very carefully guarded. Hardly anyone knows of that.”
    Brockley rested on his oars, letting us drift on the ebb. “Well, madam, I can tell you one thing for sure, and that is that neither Fran nor I have been indiscreet. When I first heard about that letter and felt doubtful, I asked her if she’d said anything about your affairs—about Master de la Roche or Lockhill—to anyone, and she said no. I believe her because if she’d been careless, I’d have got it out of her. Fran doesn’t lie to me.”
    I nodded, understanding him. Brockley was not the sort of man to whom it would be easy to lie. There was something in that calm, steady gaze of his that always made you feel he knew what you were thinking.
    “She wouldn’t have been able to look at me,” Brockley said. “She’d have admitted it, and cried. But she looked at me straight, and said it was a shameful suggestion. I know my Fran. She hasn’t talked and I certainly haven’t.”
    “I accept that. I have never known either of you to be indiscreet,” I said.
    “Maybe someone else has talked,” Brockley said. “Someone from Sir William Cecil’s house, could it be?”
    “That’s ridiculous!” I protested. “Leonard Mason is the master of his own house, presumably! If he heard something about me that made him feel he didn’t want me at Lockhill, all he had to do was to write and say it wasn’t convenient, or that he was making other arrangementsfor his girls, or that the children were coming out in spots and there might be infection in his home! It would be easy to keep me away. There was no need for all this nonsense about abducting me and locking me in a boathouse!”
    “Then why were you abducted, madam? Do you think your husband arranged it after all and that you really were going to be taken to him?”
    “God alone knows, Brockley. I certainly don’t. I can’t believe that Matthew arranged it—unless there’s been a muddle. Unless he gave orders that were misunderstood, or some of his people meant to please him by bringing me to him, but went about it stupidly . . . I just don’t know.”
    Brockley took up his oars again and began once more to pull. “Let us get off this chilly river. I take it you’ll be reporting what has happened to Sir William Cecil?”
    “Not at once,” I said. “I want to think.”
    “And Lockhill? Do you intend to go, or not?”
    I considered, while Brockley rowed us steadily on downstream. On the face of it, the notion that my imprisonment in that boathouse had anything to do with Lockhill seemed as unlikely as the idea that Matthew had organised it. Neither theory made sense. And yet . . . if Cecil’s suspicions were right, then who knew how far this mysterious conspiracy extended, how many people were involved? Mason might be only one among many. How could I read the minds of these hidden adversaries?
    How could I know what was really absurd and what was likely?
    I was never one to heed warnings. Last year, I had run into danger largely of my own choice, and my first marriage, to Gerald Blanchard, had been an elopement in the face of outraged objections from both our families. I had taken plenty of chances in my time.
    But now, as we moved along the cold river in our small and solitary craft, and I remembered that lonely boathouse and its locked, unyielding door, I felt that all this amounted to a very ominous warning. Dared I ignore it?
    I shivered. “I don’t know,” I said.
    But even as I spoke, I knew that I did. The decision had taken itself.

CHAPTER 6
Vision of Wings
    “W e are going to Lockhill,” I said. “Or I am. I have no choice. I’ve given my word already and unless I go through with it, I risk offending the Queen. And I want to make sure I still have permission to go to France in May. There’s no question now of travelling sooner, of course.”
    I had been badly frightened. Whatever the truth of the matter, Matthew’s name had certainly been used to get me to that boathouse. I