“The ladies here at court. They like me very much, you know. Ever since I started supplying them with lurid sonnets.”
He laughed. “The gentlemen like you, too. A bit too much for my comfort.”
“No need to worry on that account. I don’t even see them anymore.” She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “For me, you’re the only gentleman in this room.”
He laughed again and kissed her again, and fervently thanked God again that he’d won her. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this happy.
“Even the queen looks happy tonight,” Rose said, as though she were reading his mind. She smiled in Catharine’s direction. Dressed in a magnificent cloth-of-gold gown, the queen danced with Charles, gazing up at him with calm satisfaction. On the thirty-ninth anniversary of her birth, she seemed at peace with both the blessings and heartaches of her complicated life.
But William of Orange and his new princess didn’t look so happy. Kit watched them move desultorily around the dance floor. William was shorter than Mary and seemed to have a consumptive cough. Although he was only twenty-seven, deep lines marred his face.
“Poor Mary has been crying again,” Rose said with a melancholy sigh.
“Again?”
“I saw her on her wedding day in London. She looked terribly unhappy.”
Kit drew her closer. “Their marriage was arranged for diplomatic purposes. Neither of them really had a choice. That’s the fate of the important.”
Her mood seemed to lighten. “I’m so glad you’re not important.”
Once that might have hurt, but rank now seemed insignificant next to the joy of wedding Rose.
When they came off the dance floor, Christopher Wren was waiting and handed them both glasses of champagne. “To our queen,” he said. “And your successes. The chapel turned out beautifully, just as I’d envisioned it.”
Kit toasted him back. “You gave me excellent plans to work from.”
“But Windsor’s dining room was your own. An extraordinary achievement.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry about the appointment.”
“That’s water under the bridge,” Kit said, meaning it. He had a new life, new plans.
The Earl of Rosslyn sidled up, a champagne glass in one hand and his ever-present walking stick in the other. “Martyn,” he slurred.
Kit wrapped an arm around Rose’s shoulders. “Rosslyn. I take it life is treating you well?”
“I find myself overburdened with too much work.” He drained the glass and snagged another from a passing maid. “So sad that I won the post in your place.”
Kit shrugged and began to turn away. His old classmate had won the post fair and square, but that didn’t mean he had to listen to his backhanded boasts.
“A shame you miscalculated the length of that span at Hampton Court,” he heard Rosslyn say behind him.
Swiveling back, Kit exchanged a startled glance with Wren. The older man knew Kit had done all his measurements and calculations in private—that besides the two of them, only the perpetrator would know exactly what had been wrong with the building. And Wren had promised to keep that knowledge to himself.
Aghast, Kit turned on Rosslyn. “What sort of man would sabotage a friend’s reputation to further his own ends?”
The fellow was drunk and slow, but Kit saw the horror dawn in his eyes as he realized he’d given himself away.
“You set the fire, didn’t you?” Kit pressed. “And altered the plans at Hampton Court. I expect you counted yourself lucky that Harold Washburn’s greed took care of Windsor for you. By purchasing inferior materials, he lined his pockets and delayed a project without you lifting so much as a finger.”
“No, that was me, too,” Rosslyn said smugly. “I paid Washburn off.”
Kit’s jaw tensed. No wonder the old cur of a foreman had been able to throw around so much money.
“Guards!” Wren called.
Leaning heavily on his ribbon-topped walking stick, Rosslyn glared at Kit. A wild sheen in his eyes said he wasn’t all there. “Your loss, my gain,” he growled. “At last I’ve proven myself better than you.” When a red-coated guard stepped up to restrain him, he twisted from the man’s grip. “All those years in school, no matter how well I did, that upstart Kit Martyn always did better—”
He was cut off when a second guard grabbed him and the two began dragging him away. Rosslyn kicked, drawing every gaze in the room with his shouted curses, his useless walking stick banging along the planked wood floor.
Long after everyone else had returned to their revelry, Kit stared after him. “I always thought we were friends,” he murmured, stunned.
Rose squeezed his hand. “He never seemed very friendly.”
He blinked and looked at her. “Acquaintances, then. Superficial ones, perhaps. But there was never any animosity.”
“On your part.”
Wren took Kit’s empty glass from his hand and shoved a full one into it. “Drink up. I’ll be back.”
Numbly, Kit followed his advice, taking it a step further by making his way over to a delicate gilt chair and lowering himself gingerly onto it. Realizing petty childhood competition could lead to treachery all these years later was a shock he was finding hard to absorb.
Rose followed and stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder. “He’s talking to King Charles.”
“Rosslyn?”
“No, Wren. The two of them are making their way outside. Out the same way Rosslyn was taken.”
Kit rose to see, but the men had already exited the building. Feeling fatigued, he turned to his wife. “Let’s leave. I’ve had enough. We can get a good night’s sleep before we start our journey tomorrow.”
“Wren said he’d be back.” She peered over Kit’s shoulder. “Look, he’s coming now. With the king.”
Kit drained his glass and set it down as the men approached. Rose took his arm, a silent show of support. The king wasted no time with greetings. “Martyn. I’ve just learned that in the face of betrayal, you put Barbara’s life, and those of our children, before your own interests. I’m very grateful.”
Kit’s gaze flicked to Wren. “I told him,” the older man admitted.
“I gathered that.” Kit looked back to King Charles. “The building was flawed.
