Relief sweeps across Her Majesty’s usually inscrutable features. “God be praised,” she says, coming to lay a hand on my forehead. Then, as if embarrassed by her unguarded behavior: “I ought to have known it would be so—whatever the doctors said—for I did not see you in your grave.”
Mother gestures for her chair and Charlotte draws it up. Sitting down, Her Majesty momentarily rests her hand upon mine. “You gave us many hours of worry. His Majesty and Anjou asked after you until I could no longer bear to answer their inquiries. They would both have been at your bedside had prudence not made me forbid it. I am sure you will see them in the morning. Think of what a balm that will be.”
*
Anjou lies at the foot of my bed, gazing at me as if I were the sun in the sky. Seeing me reach for a book on the table beside me, he says, “Will reading not tire you? Shall I read aloud to you?” Without waiting for a reply, he leaps up, snatches the book from me, and resumes his position.
Mother, who sits nearby embroidering, gives him a doting smile. Her Majesty is delighted with Anjou’s devotion to me as I make my slow recovery. My brother begins to declaim dramatically. I try to ignore the faces he makes at me when Mother’s head is bent over her work, and try to lose myself in his words. I am not entirely successful. Beneath my covers my hands clench. After perhaps a quarter of an hour Mother says, “The light is fading: it is time for me to dress to sup with the King. Will you come with me, my son?”
“I will follow. I can still see well enough to entertain my sister a little longer.”
Mother places a hand on Anjou’s shoulder and stoops to kiss the top of his head. “Do not strain your eyes. Good night, daughter.”
The ruse continues only briefly once the tent flap has closed. Tossing the book onto the bed, Anjou says, “Finish it yourself if you are inclined. Or do you have more interesting reading? Come, Margot, do you hide Guise’s letters under your mattress?” He slides a hand beneath the ticking, heedless of how he jostles me.
I do not bother to deny such correspondence. “Do you not have a city to siege?” I ask bitingly.
“Oh, things go well enough. I can spare some time for you.”
“I do not desire your company.”
“True. But I desire to make certain you do not tell poisonous falsehoods to our mother.”
His attendance is not what keeps me from speaking out against him. Saying unfavorable things about Anjou can only rebound to my detriment. I learned that when I called him a liar and received a slap for it. I have been reminded of it throughout my recovery as I see Mother praise him for his false attentions to me. But I will not be the one to enlighten Anjou, even if by showing him the truth I might be rid of him. His fear of being degraded in Mother’s eyes is the only weapon I have in the war begun between us.
“I will bide my time,” I say. “One day the city will fall and battle will take you elsewhere. In your absence Mother will see by my virtuous conduct that her fears of me are misplaced. She is too clever to be fooled by your lies for long.”
“Not lies!” Anjou looms over me. “I only wish they were lies,” he says bitterly. He draws a deep breath and something in his eyes changes. “Prove to me they are. Tell me that you love me and I will rebuild what I have destroyed.”
“Tell you that I love you! When you have defamed me? When you torture me with your teasing and insinuations even as I struggle to regain my health? I thought God spared me because my illness had made you repent of your cruel treatment. I see now that he spared me because he would not give you the satisfaction of my death.”
“I wept when they said you were dying.”
“Mother must have been impressed.”
He raises a hand as if he will strike me, then lets it drop. To my surprise he falls to his knees and tries to take my hand. I quickly snatch it out of his reach.
“I did not want you dead. I only wanted you to be mine and mine alone. Is that a thing so wrong?”
“I was yours—your ally.”
“That was not enough.”
I remember the kiss: his lips on mine, the heat between us on that chilly, rainy night.
“Why?” I ask, trying to push the image from my mind. “Is it my fault?” I whisper the question.
“Your fault or God’s. You are the perfect match for me, and he made you that way. Only your beauty is equal to my own. Only your wit can divert me. I told you when you chose la belle Rouhet for me that I would make my own choice next, and she would put all others to shame. You are that choice. You draw me to you by every action and every breath.”
I swallow hard. It is as I feared. However unwanted, the ardent attention I have received is somehow of my own creation. “Brother, I do not mean to tempt you to wish for more than we can, as siblings, have. I swear it.”
“You protest that you do not knowingly entice me. That may be so. But having been made aware of my attraction, you do most deliberately spurn me.” His voice, though soft, brims with fury. “I have my pride, Margot. As you are superior to every other lady of the Court, I am superior to every other gentleman, yet you prefer another.”