Terror silenced her as the creak and grind of her chamber door being slowly unlocked echoed through the tiny space. No! It wasn’t time. She had until morning. Unless Brand had faltered under further torture and they now possessed enough information to declare her guilty? Was she, like her father, to be denied a full trial, denied even a formal execution and killed in secret?
“Wh-who goes th-there?” she croaked.
The door opened, and a well-dressed man stepped into the room.
“Mistress Linwood. I apologize for the hour, but I must speak with you in all haste.”
Shock dropped her jaw, but somehow she managed to form words and force them past a desert-dry tongue. “My Lord Arundel. Come in. Do you wish to sit?”
“Yes. No. Damnation, this is a sorry business,” the earl snapped, adjusting several glittering gems on his fingers and rubbing his chin in quick succession. “Don’t know what your father was thinking, creating such a tall tale as Her Majesty not truly expecting a child. The horror of it. The disgrace! Do you know what that would do to the queen if that news spread? What it would do to England? When you know the assertion is false?”
“I do,” said Catherine softly. “It would be dangerous and devastating for the realm, and for every faithful Catholic. But never shall I know why my father said such a terrible thing, when he was cut down in cold blood, far from home and far from me.”
Arundel looked away. “Well. You think you are the only one to lose a loved one suddenly? These two years past I watched the burial of my son and daughter. Younger than you! Now I have but one child, a daughter, remaining.”
She stared at the man for the longest time. Never had she been so close to the exalted earl before, and now she was, a truth was suddenly so very clear.
“Oh really?” she whispered fiercely, fury at how this man had treated her beloved making her bolder than she’d ever been. “Just the one daughter?”
He cursed viciously. “If you understand that, then perhaps you understand why I come here. Brandon is foolish and headstrong, just like his mother. He seeks to battle those on the council, battle the queen, because he had you and wrong-headedly thinks it might be something more than simple lust. Should my son be racked for that sin? Should he die for it?”
Misery weighed on her shoulders like a load of rocks. “No. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Do you care for him?”
“I love him,” Catherine said starkly.
“Then I beg you, let him go.”
“Let him go? You are right, he is headstrong, and perhaps foolish to care for an orphaned nobody like me. But thanks to his mother and grandfather and uncle he is a man worthy of great respect. Brave and strong, willing to fight for justice and protect those weaker than him. I love his warmth. His kindness. The way he curses. The way he kisses. The way he grumbles at Lucas even as he teaches him how to be the best of men. Yes, my lord, I love your son Brand, and you ask me to turn my back as if he were nothing? As you did his whole life?”
Arundel spluttered. “You go too far, girl. I gained him what he has, a house, knighthood, fortune, position at court.”
“All pale compared to a father’s open pride and affection. You deny your son at every turn, call him cousin when he is not.”
“I cannot claim him now. Not when I have my young grandson’s future to consider. The scandal…”
Puzzled, she frowned. “Old King Henry acknowledged his natural son. Men do all the time. Tis the talk of a week then forgotten.”
“Indeed, but Henry Fitzroy did not murder his wife.”
Catherine choked on a breath, like she’d been pummeled in the stomach.
“Wh-what?”
An expression flashed across the earl’s face, too swift for her to decipher.
“I didn’t want to have to say this. The shame is a great burden to bear. But you know Brandon was married?”
“Yes, to Therese Fairfax.”
“I blame myself. Therese was too young, but Brandon so…so…desperately in love with her, he begged me to help him win her hand. What could I do? It was the first time he’d come to me for assistance, apart from securing your father’s services for Susanna, of course. So they were wed, and all was well for a while.”
“And th-then?” she asked shakily.
“Brandon is very possessive. He…accused Therese of seeing other men, even that the babe she carried wasn’t his, and they had many terrible fights. Until one night, he drank far too much then dragged her out to the lake behind their country home and drowned her.”
“I cannot believe that,” she said dizzily, her head whirling as she remembered snatches of court conversations, the heaviness surrounding Therese Fairfax’s sudden death. “Brand would never…there would have been a trial…he wishes to wed me…”
“No! I mean…all the witnesses disappeared, but the whispers, they will swirl forever. My dear, again, I beg you. Not just for his sake, or mine, but your own. Deny him. Tell him you don’t love or want to marry him, that it was a passing fancy, nothing more.”
Numb anguish settled like a suffocating cloak. Brand himself had warned her he was darkness and danger, although she’d never imagined his past could include such a grave sin. And yet…even guilty, even if a dead woman forever held his heart, life without him still stretched ahead of her chasm, gray and equally empty.
“What do you wish me to do?” she said dully.
“If you are gone, he will enjoy court as he should. Marry a suitable lady, become a father, be welcomed at every hearth and free from the taint of treason. And you shall live.”
“How?”
“There is a ship departing for France in a few hours. I will give you passage, enough money to begin a new life far from here as a boon to my son. Also because I
