The Boleyn Reckoning by Laura Andersen

Courtenay feels it his sole duty to be honest.”
    “And you thought coming to me first would make me lenient?”
    “I haven’t actually committed a single crime against the throneor yourself personally. And I have now handed you the women who conspired to kill Mistress Wyatt.”
    If there was one thing William could do instinctively, it was make quick decisions. There was hardly a pause before he said, “I want you away from court tonight. Don’t leave London. You may retire to Charterhouse and wait to hear from me.”
    That could mean almost anything, but Rochford did not press for details. He bowed in apparently genuine submission. “As you say, Your Majesty.”
    “One thing more,” William added as his uncle straightened warily. “How do you know what Dominic and Elizabeth mean to tell me tomorrow morning? I hardly think it likely they would confide in the man they mean to accuse. Are your spies that embedded in my own court?”
    Rochford’s expression grew thoughtful. “No, Your Majesty. Though I knew they had each been to see Robert Dudley, I did not know how far things had gone until someone warned me.”
    “Who?”
    The name was the very last one William would ever have predicted. “Mistress Wyatt. She is the one who counseled me to confess before accusations could be laid.”
    When his uncle had left, William sat up long into the night, drinking and pondering upon Minuette’s audacity. What did she think she was doing, meddling with a man like Rochford? Did she not know the dangers of court politics? She was not Anne Boleyn—and William was glad of it. He did not want a queen who made enemies and then broke them.
    He would have to make sure Minuette understood her position in his kingdom.
    Minuette waited until long after midnight, aware that Rochford had only this one night to preemptively confess and certain thatWilliam would send for her when it was finished. Surely he would be rocked by his uncle’s lies. Surely he would want her for comfort or, less likely these days, advice.
    But when the palace had grown nearly silent and no summons came, she at last allowed Carrie to undress her.
    “Is everything all right?” her maid asked. Carrie’s brown eyes were as soft as always, and in the last few months she had gained a little weight, enough so that she no longer looked on the verge of illness, and regained some of the cheer Minuette remembered from her childhood.
    “I hope so,” Minuette answered. “I will be up early. I am sorry to keep you so late.”
    Carrie let her hand linger on Minuette’s shoulder before she gathered up her gown. “When you worry, I worry. And when you play games, I especially worry.”
    “It’s not a game, Carrie.”
    “Lord Exeter would not like it.”
    “Do you make all your choices based on what Harrington would like?”
    They had never spoken openly of the growing affection between Carrie and Dominic’s right-hand man, Edward Harrington. Carrie had every right to be offended at Minuette’s retort, but she merely shook her head. “My choices aren’t so likely to get me into trouble as yours are.”
    Minuette turned those words over in her head for a long time after Carrie left her. The trouble with her choices lately was that whichever way she chose, danger hovered. Was it better to incur Dominic’s anger for going behind his back and putting Rochford on his guard, or to allow William to be blindsided by the charges against his uncle? To continue the delicate dance of strengthening William until he could bear the blow of her secret marriage, or tosimply run away with Dominic and leave others to pick up the pieces? Where was the safe choice there?
    But she knew that, in the end, she had made her choice the moment she married Dominic—and that choice had been entirely about her own desires.
    She was up and dressed by eight o’clock the next morning, wearing a gown in a sober shade of blue to emphasize either submissiveness or piety. Perhaps both. Then she