Read Murder at Hatfield House for Free Online Page B

secrets.
    Would they let Princess Elizabeth bear the blame for it?
    Kate smiled and bowed at their bland greetings, wishing with all her might that she could see past all the careful masks, all the heavy mist that seemed to hang over everything, and realize what was really going on.
    She followed Master Smythson into his shop and gave him the list of spices they needed at Hatfield. While he filled the order, she examined a display of fabric near the bow window. Her father’s winter robes were wearing out, like all their garments, and he needed sturdier clothes to keep the chill away or she feared his joints would pain him even more. Even though her sewing skills were mediocre at best, she could make new robes—if they could only afford the finely woven wool.
    “Kate! Is it really you?”
    Kate spun around at the sound of the familiar voice, her heart suddenly lighter. “Anthony! I’m most glad to see you today. I was going to walk very slowly past Master Hardy’s rooms and see if I could wave to you through the windows.”
    “No need. I have a day’s holiday while Master Hardy attends to business elsewhere.” Anthony’s handsome face was even more attractive when he was smiling, as he was now. It was a teasing grin, and he took her hand and bowed over it in an elaborate courtly gesture.
    Kate laughed. Despite the worries that plagued her mind, the dark clouds that hovered over Hatfield, she felt her heart lighten even more. She had become friends with Anthony Elias, a lawyer’s apprentice the same age as herself, as soon as she met him at a musical party at Hatfield.
    She’d never seen anyone quite as handsome as he—with his black hair and jewel-bright green eyes, his tall, lean figure—even at court, where there were dozens of handsome, peacock-clad men. When he’d come to sit next to her and asked her about the lute she played, for long moments she’d been frozen, tongue-tied. Men seldom paid attention to her like that; she was too young, too thin, too wrapped up in her music. Too insignificant in the complex web of the Tudor court.
    She’d read sonnets, listened to other girls giggle about their suitors, but until she saw Anthony, she was mystified by what it all meant. When he smiled at her, she knew.
    But she’d soon found there was much more to him than his green eyes and fine legs. He could make her laugh when she felt too solemn. He talked to her not as a mere girl, a child, but as an equal who could argue and discuss and understand any concept or idea. He told her about the law, about philosophy, and she talked to him of music and poetry.
    But they met very seldom. Kate’s place was with her father and the princess, and for now that meant living quietly at Hatfield. Anthony’s time as apprentice in the law office of Master Hardy would soon be over, and he would have to go to one of the Inns of Court in London to finish his studies. His father, another lawyer, had died many years before, and Anthony had to work hard to take care of himself and his mother.
    When they did have occasion to meet, Kate tried to make the most of it, to talk and listen and laugh and not waste a moment. She had so few friends; she wouldn’t take one for granted.
    “How have you been keeping, Anthony?” she asked as they strolled together through the shelf-lined aisles of the shop. “It has been too long since we’ve seen you.”
    “Since Princess Elizabeth’s last-of-summer banquet, I think,” Anthony said. The last party held at Hatfield, more than two months ago. “Master Hardy still speaks often of her generosity and kind spirit. But we have been kept busy with all the new heresy laws that are being passed in London.”
    Kate shivered at the very mention of that word, “heresy.” She’d heard it too much that day in the furious voice of Lord Braceton. “There are no pending heresy cases here, I trust?”
    Anthony hesitated, and Kate thought she saw a strange shadow flicker through his green eyes. “Not as