Chapter 10: The Road to Morland

The road north was a ribbon of mud and lingering frost, and Edmund Ashworth cursed every mile of it. His horse, a placid grey gelding named Clover, was more accustomed to ambling between the hedgerows of his own estates than to carrying a man who had not slept properly in two days. Edmund’s eyes burned, his back ached, and the lute case strapped behind his saddle had begun to feel like a millstone. He had composed a small, melancholic air during the night to steady his nerves—something in a minor key, full of unresolved cadences—but it had done little to answer Phelippes’ parting words.

*She is not what she appears.*

The phrase gnawed at him like a rat in a granary. Cecily Thorne, with her quick wit and sharper smile, who had seen through his pretence of indolence within an hour of their first meeting at the court masque. She had called him lazy to his face, and he had laughed, delighted, because no one had ever been so honest with him. But now he wondered if that honesty was itself a mask. He had kissed her cheek in the garden, and she had let him. He had believed it a small, pleasant victory. Now he was not certain who had won.

The village of Morland lay in a shallow valley, its stone church tower visible long before the rooftops emerged from the mist. Edmund drew a breath of relief as Clover picked up her pace, sensing the familiar scent of home. The manor house had been in his family for six generations, and its walls were thick, its chimneys warm, and its library—so he flattered himself—better stocked than half the colleges in Oxford. He intended to collapse into his favourite chair, ring for a pot of mulled wine, and not move for a week. The spy’s letter, the coded ciphers, the Queen’s pale, sharp face—all of it could wait until his bones had thawed.

The servant who took his horse was a boy of fourteen, newly hired, and he stared at Edmund with the wide-eyed reverence that the household had long since learned to temper. Edmund, in turn, nodded gravely and did not dismount until the boy had brought a mounting block. Dignity, even in exhaustion, was a matter of habit.

The great hall was empty, which was a relief. But the fire had been lit, and the chairs arranged with a precision that was not his own. He had sent no word of his arrival. The housekeeper, a formidable woman named Mistress Havelock, appeared in the doorway before he had taken off his gloves.

“My lord,” she said, with the tone of one who had discovered a stain on a favourite tablecloth. “You have a visitor.”

Edmund paused, one glove half off. “A visitor? At this hour?”

“She has been here since Tuesday. Lady Thorne.”

The name hit him like a bucket of cold water. He stood very still, the glove dangling from his fingers, and for a long moment he considered the possibility that he had misheard. But Mistress Havelock was not a woman who dealt in fancies.

“Lady Thorne,” he repeated. “Here. In my house.”

“She said you had invited her to consult on the matter of your mother’s portrait,” the housekeeper said, her eyebrows drawing together in suspicion. “She has been very courteous, very quiet. I gave her the blue room, as you would have wished.”

Edmund’s mother had been dead for eleven years, and her portrait had hung in the gallery since before he could walk. He had invited no one to consult on it. And yet, as he stood in the cold hall, he felt the stirrings of something that was not quite anger—curiosity, perhaps, or a reluctant admiration. Cecily Thorne had not waited for him to seek her out. She had come to him.

He found her in the library, seated by the window with a book open on her lap. The late afternoon light caught the copper threads in her dark hair, and she looked up as he entered with a smile that was entirely too composed.

“My lord,” she said. “You look dreadful.”

Edmund closed the door behind him. “I have ridden forty miles in two days, dodged a spymaster’s questions, and been told by a man with a face like a funeral that you are not what you appear. I think I am entitled to look dreadful.”

Cecily set the book aside. “Phelippes told you that, did he?”

“He did.”

“And you came home to brood on it.”

“I came home to sleep,” Edmund said. “But it seems my house is no longer my own.”

She rose, and for a moment he saw something flicker in her expression—a crack in that composed surface. “I am sorry,” she said, and the words seemed genuine. “I did not mean to ambush you. But you left London in such haste, and I—I had to speak with you before Walsingham’s men swallowed you whole.”

“Walsingham’s men?” Edmund moved to the table, where a half-eaten plate of bread and cheese sat beside a decanter of wine. He poured himself a glass with the careful deliberation of a man who needed it. “I thought you were merely a widow with an interest in lute music.”

Cecily’s smile did not waver. “I am a widow with an interest in many things. The lute is one of them. The safety of the Queen is another.”

“You are one of his.”

“I was,” she said. “I am no longer. That is why I am here.”

Edmund drank deeply, the wine warming a path down his throat. He studied her—the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the way her hands remained still even when her voice quickened. She was not lying, he thought. Or if she was, she had practised until it became truth.

“Tell me,” he said, setting the glass down. “What are you, if not one of Walsingham’s creatures?”

Cecily took a step closer. “I was his best agent in the Low Countries for five years. I read letters, poisoned wells, and once—once I persuaded a Spanish courier to defect by pretending to be his long-lost sister. I am very good at what I do. But I am also tired, Edmund. As tired as you are. And when Phelippes began to suspect me of keeping secrets, I knew my time in the cipher house was done.”

“What secrets?”

She reached into her bodice and withdrew a folded paper, sealed with a broken ribbon. She held it out to him. “The letter you intercepted was not meant for Mary, Queen of Scots. It was meant for me.”

Edmund took it, his fingers brushing hers. The seal was unfamiliar—a rose, twisted with thorns.

“Then why,” he said slowly, “did you let me believe otherwise?”

Cecily’s smile was small, and sad, and utterly disarming. “Because I needed to see what you would do with it. And you—you did the one thing I did not expect.”

“Which was?”

“You came home.”

She met his eyes, and Edmund felt the words settle in his chest like a stone. He had come home. He had ridden north, with a lie in his pocket and a question burning in his mind. And she had been waiting for him, in his library, with the light in her hair and a piece of paper that might yet unravel everything.

“What is in the letter?” he asked.

“A name,” Cecily said. “The name of the man who intends to put Mary of Scots on the throne. And he is closer to the Queen than any of us imagined.”

Outside, the wind rose against the windows, and Edmund Ashworth, the laziest earl in England, felt the first true chill of the coming storm.