Section XCV: June 1530
Baynard’s Castle, June 1530
“His Highness the Duke of Ross!”
Alexander strides down the Great Hall, determined to project a confidence he doesn’t necessarily feel. He’s to be a married man within the week. Nerves don’t become him.
He stops before the dais and bows crisply to King Henry and the Dowager Princess.
“Your Majesty. Your Highness.”
“My Lord Ross,” King Henry greets him gruffly, nodding in response to his bow, “May I present Princess Mary’s mother, my beloved sister, the Dowager Princess of Wales?”
“A pleasure, Your Grace,” Alexander bows again, kissing his aunt’s hand. Mama’s never been very fond of Katherine, blaming her not only for the fact that Uncle Henry didn’t support her in her quest to divorce his stepfather, but also for the coolness that sprang up between Mama and Uncle Arthur in the last few months of the latter’s life, but there’s no reason to rake over old hurts. Not this week, at least. He can be civil for Mary’s sake until the wedding’s over.
Aunt Katherine has clearly had the same thought, for she smiles and beckons him to a seat beside her, pouring him a cup of honeyed mead.
He can see her daughter in her, for all she’s more auburn in colouring and a full three decades older. It’s in her cheekbones, in the shape of her nose, in the tilt of her head as she turns to ask him a question about his journey.
He has just answered her and lifted his goblet to take a draught of mead when the trumpets blare again and the heralds announce, “Her Highness the Princess Mary!”
Alexander freezes, then slowly lifts his head. His betrothed processes down the hall at the head of a dozen young ladies-in-waiting, his sister Meg in the place of honour behind her right shoulder.
Resolved not to betray the fact that they have already met, he watches Mary approach with a carefully bland smile on his face.
“She’s changed.”
The thought comes to him gradually.
At first, he thinks its just the dress, for she’s wearing emerald green brocade rather than the pale blue satin he saw her in that morning, but, as she gets closer, the sense of her having changed grows more acute.
Her hair seems to have darkened. Only by a shade or two, but enough to be noticeable when one is paying attention. It’s not gleaming in the candlelight in quite the way he expects it to.
She’s carrying herself differently too. All right, it’s a formal occasion and therefore she can be expected to be putting her best foot forward as far as deportment is concerned, but this is more than that. There’s an unconscious grace to her movements that simply wasn’t there this morning.
She drops into a curtsy as she reaches the steps of the dais.
“Your Majesty. Your Highness. My Lord Ross. I am pleased to see you here, and honoured that you should come to England to wed me.”
It is her words that settle Alexander. The voice that speaks them is a little smoother, a little less lilting, than the girl he spoke to this morning. Something isn’t right here. Is Mary trying to trick him? He wouldn’t put it past her. After all, everyone knows her father loves masquerades and ‘hiding’ his identity. Why shouldn’t she enjoy the same?
Trying not to draw attention to himself, he scans the twelve girls behind her, amusement prickling his chest. The amusement soon dies away as he sees utter, terrified horror in the eyes of the tall, slender blonde standing next to Meg. A blonde who is practically the spitting image of the girl now curtsying before him.
Horror swells in Alexander’s own chest as he realises what might have happened, and it takes all his self-control to raise Mary from her curtsy without so much as blinking.
Inwardly, however, he is screaming.
“My God. There are two of them. There are two of them!”
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