“My wife can hardly absent herself from her youngest sister’s nuptials,” he continues, making it clear that he speaks of the upcoming marriage of Marie de Clèves.
“I too will be traipsing out to Blandy to witness that heretical marriage rite,” Henriette replies. “Poor Marie, only days away from becoming the Princesse de Condé. But perhaps I ought not to pity her: marrying Protestants is the fashion this season.”
“It is a fashion I do not care for.” Henri’s voice is thick with disgust.
“Yet another matter, Duc, on which we disagree.” The familiar and unwelcome voice startles me. My cousin stands in my doorway. How I wish, despite the stifling heat, it had not been left open!
Snatching my fingers from the Duc’s hair, I feel acutely embarrassed. Apparently Henri does not, for he leaves his head in my lap, merely turning it so he can see my cousin better.
“Do we agree on anything?” he asks quietly.
“I believe we agree that my soon-to-be wife is the loveliest of women.” The King of Navarre smiles; then meeting my eyes, he says as if nothing were amiss, “I am going to play tennis and wondered if you wished to watch, but it is clear you are occupied.”
My face burns. I find I do not know where to put the hand that played in the Duc’s curls. “I can come if you like.” Why did I say that?
“No, no,” my cousin replies, with a magnanimous wave of his hand. “You will have ample occasions to watch me beat my gentlemen at sport while your present form of entertainment is coming to an end.” Then he is gone.
I sit stunned, but Henriette throws back her head and laughs. “My goodness, that was exciting. I would not have thought the King of Navarre capable of such self-possession, such detachment! Whatever else we think of him, we must applaud that.”
Henri sits up, looking at Henriette with disbelief. “He is a coward. He ought to have challenged me.”
“Yes, that would have been politic.” Henriette looks nearly as disbelieving as Henri.
“Defense of one’s honor is not a matter for prudence.”
“That is a definite and unequivocal philosophy, but not one likely to lead to a long life or increased offices.”
“What about you?” Henri turns to me. “Do you find something to admire in the King of Navarre’s display?”
“Indeed not. I have yet to find anything admirable in the gentleman.” I say this because I would not side with Henriette against my Duc, but it is not entirely true. If I were honest, I would have to admit to being impressed by my cousin’s ability to make us all look foolish in a situation where he might have been expected to do so. He showed an admirable control of his temper. Unless the sight of the Duc and myself in such an intimate position simply did not raise his ire … The thought both unsettles and nettles me. I want to banish it. Want things to return to the easy way they were before my cousin entered. But the mood is spoiled. This, I realize, is my fate. The King of Navarre will be every day more and more present in my life, in my apartments, in my thoughts. He, or the specter of him, will intrude unexpectedly, making conversations awkward and matters between Henri and me uneasy.
“What shall we do now?” Charlotte asks, trying to break the tension.
“Pray the papal dispensation fails to arrive,” Henri says grimly. “Because if it comes, I will be pledged to kill two heretics instead of one.”
*
Charles and Mother return reconciled, helped in their rapprochement by the fact His Majesty’s council met at Montceaux without the admiral. The king’s commanders—Montpensier, Nevers, Cossé, and Anjou—spoke with one voice for peace, reinforcing Mother’s position, and Charles, unaccustomed to standing up to so many, declared he has no intention of going to war with Spain. So, for the moment, mother beams at him and leans upon his arm as she ordinarily leans upon Anjou’s.
But while the two appear at peace, all the world else becomes increasingly less so. The heat is partly to blame. Who can be civil in the oven Paris has become? But it is more—it is as Henriette said: there is something about the sight of so many Protestants strolling about both the halls of the Louvre and the avenues of the city as if they were in every manner equal to the Catholics that roils those of the true faith. Priests speak from their pulpits against the “invaders” even though doing so brings the wrath of Her Majesty down upon them.