Hampton Court Palace, England

January 16, 1549

On a quiet, foggy night in the dead of winter, no guards stood watch at the entrance to the king’s apartments.

A circumstance which seventeen-year-old Lady Alice Hawthorne found wonderfully convenient.

Not that guards would have deterred her. A clever distraction or bit of flirtation would have done the trick—or, come to it, a discreet bribe. Alice never went about without a full purse tucked into her skirts, though she’d rather save her money for a lovely new brooch than fritter it away on indiscriminate bribing. To her mind, a bribe was an inelegant solution, an admission of failure. A courtier could end up penniless relying on such methods.

Well, perhaps not a courtier as wealthy as Alice. But an ordinary one certainly could.

In any case, there need be no bribing tonight. Just a filched set of keys and the mist off the river bank to conceal her approach. She was wrapped in her favorite cloak, one of rich, plush velvet so deep a green it was nearly black: both gorgeous and practical for midnight outings. With a fur-lined hood covering her fair hair, she was naught but an exceptionally well-dressed shadow.

The first key on the ring would have unlocked the gate to the Privy Garden—but it was already unlocked. Alice shook her head as she closed the gate behind her. The guards must have been in their cups at supper.

As she made her way through the garden, anticipation put a little bounce in her step. It had been many weeks since she’d last trod this path. Her feet wanted to gallop toward their destination, but she forced herself to take measured steps and keep her accustomed route along the garden wall, where the taller hedges gave extra cover. Though she’d done this a dozen times without getting caught, court life had taught her that a good plan only worked if one stuck to it. Carelessness invited surprises.

Alice hated surprises.

When she reached the handsome brick building, another key from her borrowed ring opened an undistinguished door. Inside, it was pitch black but for a few faint embers glowing on the hearth. Lighting a candle from the banked fire, she stole up a spiral staircase.

Now it was all right to relax—a bit. She was in King Edward’s Privy Chambers. Despite their misleading name, the Privy Chambers were public rooms used for state business, and hence unoccupied at night. The king’s actual private chambers were called the Secret Lodgings and lay on a different floor, while his bedchamber was located in a whole other wing.

Alice’s fingers itched as she opened the door to the King’s Gallery. It was a long, narrow chamber with walls richly paneled, painted, and hung with tapestries. A few furnishings and other beautiful objects were scattered about the space.

But Alice had eyes for just one of those beautiful objects. The one object in all the world that could make her forget, if only for a few minutes, the nightmare she was living in.

“Well met, old friend,” she whispered, running gentle fingers along the satin-smooth edge of the instrument. The king’s virginal was fashioned of exquisitely carved and inlaid maple. She set her candle on its surface and dragged a small stool over to sit. Although the stool’s feet scraped against the painted plaster floor, the sound caused Alice no alarm whatsoever. Edward’s attendants would be in the east wing hovering about his sickbed or sleeping in his antechamber, with many vast, deserted audience halls separating their domain from hers. Which meant Alice could make all the noise she wished.

And she wished to make quite a lot.

For beneath her calm exterior, she was furious. The indignity she’d suffered today was indefensible. It was outrageous. It was an affront to all that was good and decent on this earth.

It was a betrothal.

“You cannot make me say ‘I will,’” she’d fumed hours ago in the chambers of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector of the Realm and—until eleven-year-old King Edward came of age—the most powerful man in England.

Somerset had smoothed his wispy red beard. “As your guardian, I am entitled to settle your marriage right.”

“Not without my consent.”

“You will give your consent.”

Alice had found that funny—then. “Are your ears full of stuffing? I would rather eat my own hand than marry that despicable swine. I will not consent.”

“Yes, you will,” he said in a bored tone. “Because if you don’t, I shall imprison you in the Tower.”

Alice felt a cold trickle of fear. “You would arrest me without cause?” Now he had surprised her. Somerset could be a blunt and boorish man, but he was not a cruel one.

“Oh, I’m certain cause could be found.” He waved a hand. “Bribery, subterfuge, speaking against the king—”

“I’ve never spoken against the king in my life!” she said, sidestepping the other accusations. “He is a dear friend.”

This was not altogether true. Alice and Edward had played together in childhood, but as the prince grew older he had become increasingly pompous, conceited, and disagreeable. Now their “friendship” was a polite fiction she maintained for the sake of her standing at court.

“Do you think I jest, child?” Somerset was already turning away, opening a ledger, beckoning his secretary. “I will have this marriage by whatever means necessary.”

Alice fought down mounting alarm. “But why him? Why Cainewood?”

The Marquess of Cainewood—or Swinewood, as Alice preferred to think of him—was a ruthless courtier who had begun amassing power and wealth in recent years. Some men collected coins, others collected horseflesh; Swinewood collected offices. Keeper of the Privy Purse, Master of the Tower Mint, Clerk of the Signet, and so on, and so on. Each office came with a generous stipend and an increase in influence: a new way to grant favors to, and extract them from, other prominent men. Risen from obscurity, Swinewood now had his fingers in so many corners of the government that some whispered he, and not the Duke of Somerset, was the true regent.

Somerset didn’t turn around. “Why not Cainewood? You ought to be thanking me. I could have betrothed you to a grandfather had I wished.”

Cainewood was of a suitable age—around thirty—and good-looking enough, if not to Alice’s taste. “But he is your rival. What can you hope to gain through this alliance?”

“My reasons are my own.”

“Your reasons are idiocy!” Alice was running out of self-possession. “If you seek to buy his loyalty with my fortune—”

“You know nothing, girl.”

“I know your hold over the Council is tenuous. Everyone knows it. I know unrest spreads in the countryside even as it spreads among the lords. The king himself begins to mistrust you. You grow desperate—”

“Oh, to have the confidence of youth.” Somerset gave a scornful laugh. “You think you see all while I blindly stumble round in the dark, is it?”

Alice shrugged. “I think I am a pragmatist while you are a man of principle.”

She did not exactly mean it as a compliment. The duke believed in equality and raising the fortunes of the lower orders, but his policies were unpopular with the courtiers, who believed themselves entitled to rank and riches by their superior birth. For her part, Alice admired Somerset’s integrity…but not his political acumen.

“Very well,” he retorted, “I think you are a conniving, insolent thorn in my side.”

Alice was stung. Though she and her guardian had always locked horns, he was the closest thing to a father she had in her life. Never had he spoken to her with such disdain before.

“I see,” she said coolly. She was not about to let on that he’d hurt her.

Again, he returned to his ledger. “I haven’t time for this foolishness, Lady Alice. You have heard my wishes. Reconcile yourself to them.”

He snapped his fingers and a secretary hurried forward to admit the next petitioner.

The duke’s words had been repeating over and over in Alice’s mind all evening. Conniving. Insolent. Thorn in my side. With each repetition, the volume seemed to increase and her restless fingers drummed against her thigh.

She and Somerset were not close. They’d never been at ease together. In fact, they rather could not stand each other’s presence. But she’d always thought there was…if not fondness, at least a mutual respect beneath their sparring. Was this truly what her guardian thought of her?

Was it how she deserved to be thought of?

Needing to drown out the relentless words, she opened her partbook to a song that fit her mood, lay it near the candle, and lifted the cover of the virginal.

Of all the instruments Alice had mastered—and she’d mastered them all—she loved the virginal best. Its music was a presence, a companion. To her it sounded like the comfortable chatter between friends. Only when Alice was here, her hands skating over smooth ivory keys and her ears filled with music, could her always-churning mind go blissfully blank.

Over the melody, she sang the first verse:

 

Fortune my foe, why doest thou frown on me

And will thy favour never better be?

Wilt thou, I say, for ever bred my pain

And wilt thou not restore my joys again

 

Despite the plaintive words, the corners of her mouth lifted as she sang. There was nothing in the world like music. Every other pleasure in her life was wrapped up in the calculations and contradictions of status and favor seeking. The fine food she ate, the sumptuous clothes she wore—she enjoyed the trappings of her birth, but they weren’t truly for her. They were a display to remind others of what she was due. Music was the only thing she did just for herself.

The barking went on for some time before she took notice.

Her hands stilled as she strained to hear. It was Erasmus, the king’s favorite spaniel, to be certain—she’d played with him often enough to recognize his bark. But she’d never heard him nearly so wild. Erasmus was impeccably behaved.

Her own hackles raised, she blew out the candle and returned it to its stand. If there was some sort of disturbance, others might awaken, and were they to find her in the King’s Gallery… Well, though young Edward loved her dearly, he could not help being who he was.

And who he was, was the most spoiled, puffed up, sanctimonious eleven-year-old in the whole of England. He hated people touching his things nearly as much as he hated Papists.

Listening at a door, she heard no footsteps crunching the light blanket of snow outside. Make a run for it now, or stay put until the trouble passed? She made up her mind and wrapped her cloak around herself tightly before easing the door open, peering round the edge. Frigid winter air stung her face. The fog enshrouded the moon, but she could just make out the shapes of hedges and statues. There was nobody about.

She had one foot out the door when the first gunshot sounded.

CRACK, came a second shot as she whirled and slipped and landed hard on the icy doorstep. The breath snatched from her lungs, she lay stunned for but a few seconds, which was already too long. When her eyes refocused, she made out a small knot of figures spilling into the garden from the doorway to the grand Privy Staircase. She counted five men in all.

Good heavens, was the palace overrun? Were they being invaded?

But when one of them spoke, she heard the voice of an Englishman. “You blathted idiot!” he said with a pronounced lisp. “What in the name of—”

“I shut the beast up, didn’t I?” ground out a second voice. This one she recognized with a shock. Lord Sudeley? Why, it was Somerset’s brother! “Come, it is not over yet—”

“It is over,” said a third voice, cold and gravelly. She couldn’t quite place it. “See you in hell, Sudeley.” Without another word, its owner turned on a heel and rushed past Alice, very nearly stepping on her. She gasped and scrambled to hug the wall, but he spared her not a glance in his hurry to abandon his friends.

“Who’s there?” Sudeley hissed, peering toward Alice’s position. She went perfectly still—except for her heart doing its best to thump its way out of her chest.

Sudeley crunched over the snow, reloading his pistol as he approached. She couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she could smell gunpowder and blood. Poor Erasmus, she thought.

A sliver of moon reappeared as he raised his arm, and Alice found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. It was the most terrifying sight she’d ever beheld—until she saw the mad gleam in its wielder’s eye. “Lady Alice Hawthorne,” he murmured in recognition, his breath visible in the cold. “I asked for your hand once, did you know? My brother refused.” Sudeley cocked the pistol. “It’s a shame you saw us. Now I shall have to kill you.”

Alice squeezed her eyes shut—and was surprised by what she saw there, behind her eyelids, in her final moments on earth. It was the lovely face of her dear friend Catherine. Alice hadn’t thought of her in years…

“No—”

“Aaaargh!”

“Give it here!”

“Get off—”

“You’ll draw the guards straight to uth, you great ath!”

CRACK!

Alice’s eyes flew open to see Sudeley in a tussle with his lisping accomplice—and herself unharmed. The bullet had struck the brick wall behind her.

She was on her feet in an instant, careening through the garden as fast as she could in her heavy gown and high-heeled shoes. Curse my vanity, she thought, tripping over her heels in the slippery snow, drawing in ragged breaths so cold they burned her lungs. She darted straight up the center aisle of the Privy Garden with shouts and footfalls sounding behind her, then barreled through an arcade leading down to the Watergate at the river’s edge. Every gulp of air felt like fire, the wind whistled in her frozen ears, and she had no idea where she meant to go or what she would do if she managed to elude her pursuers. She dared not look back.

She just kept running.

---

“I should have left you on the boat,” muttered Adam Chase, the Earl of Blackgrave, marching his sister out of the palace.

Diana hid her face inside the hood of her cloak. “The blame is not all mine,” came her muffled protest.

“I know.” Adam cast a severe look at two more shivering sisters who trailed behind. “I meant all four of you.” The fourth and youngest, six-year-old Emma, was slung over his shoulder, fast asleep. The others were Diana, nine years of age, Cecily, aged twelve, and Bridget, thirteen. “Have you any idea whom you’ve just offended? That was the Duke of Somerset, the most powerful man in England!”

Adam rubbed his forehead. Hampton Court was no place for children, as their father had made clear many a time. But recent misfortune had left Adam no choice but to bring his sisters along on this urgent visit.

Misfortune had been spoiling a great many of his plans lately.

“Isn’t the king the most powerful man in England?” Diana asked. Even in disgrace, she never stopped asking questions.

“He will be,” Bridget explained in her patient way, “when he’s grown up. Until then, his uncle the Duke of Somerset holds the title of Lord Protector, which means he rules in his nephew’s stead.”

At least Adam’s petition to the duke had been successful. That was a great relief: he had obtained the means to save his family. Now he just needed to get them out of here before they caused any more trouble.

“Why are you cross with me?” Cecily caught up to Adam. “I didn’t trespass in his grace’s library.”

“You put Diana up to it,” Bridget said.

“Well, her whining was driving me mad,” Cecily whined. “Why didn’t you stop her? You’re the oldest. You were supposed to be in charge.”

“I was…a bit distracted,” Bridget mumbled. “I did not see her leave the antechamber.”

“I’ll wager you didn’t,” Cecily said with relish, “since you were too busy making eyes at the page boy.”

“I was not!” Bridget blushed furiously.

“Were too!”

“Girls!” Adam rarely spoke to his sisters sharply—but then, he rarely had to manage them on his own. They’d been in the charge of nursemaids and their chambermaid until financial difficulties had forced Adam to dismiss the nursemaids, and the chambermaid had run off with a skirt-chasing groom. Hence why Adam was forced to take his sisters to court; no suitable person remained to look after them at home.

But he would remedy that soon enough. Just as soon as he was married.

Peering up at the clock tower, Adam swore under his breath and quickened his pace. “Hush, now. We’ve no time for squabbles.” The Thames’s tide had turned more than an hour ago, and they could afford no further delay.

His sisters fell silent and let Adam hurry them across yet another courtyard blanketed in fresh, crunchy snow. Hampton Court Palace was an enormous and sprawling brick edifice; it had to be, for it was one of the king’s greater palaces, a residence which could accommodate the entire royal household of eight hundred or so people. Attendants, counsellors, secretaries, cooks—everybody lived here, all the way down to the lowliest laundress. Until six months ago, Adam’s father had been one of those eight hundred—a high-ranking attendant and privy counsellor to his late friend King Henry VIII, and then to the boy-king Edward. But now Adam’s father was dead, and Adam would soon be expected to take his place at court.

A prospect he was coming to dread.

He had grown up dreaming of the royal court, envisioning a splendid place full of great men and grand pursuits, a whirlwind of tournaments, feasts, and pageants. It had to be captivating, he’d thought, for his father scarcely deigned to leave it more than a handful of times in the past decade, even to visit his own children.

But today, Adam’s first short taste of court life—less than a full day—had left him with a very different impression. There was an unsettling feeling here, a tension that seemed to hang over the palace. Though the Duke of Somerset was doubtless a great man, Adam had found him too stiff and arrogant to be likable. In fact, he hadn’t encountered a single friendly face at Hampton Court. Only measuring expressions from the courtiers and downturned eyes from the servants.

All day, he’d grown ever more uneasy as he waited for the duke to grant him an audience. Then, when he was finally called in, he’d been so tongue-tied it was a wonder Somerset hadn’t dismissed him outright.

After long years of waiting and hoping, and practicing for all the tournaments he’d planned to win if only his father would take him to court, he was suddenly uncertain he wanted this life.

Cecily tugged on his hand. “Did you hear that?”

“No,” Adam said. “Just keep moving.” He drew Cecily through an archway into the Pond Garden, but his other sisters dithered and fell behind. It was like herding cats.

Cecily tried again. “Just stop for a moment and listen—”

“Don’t stop,” Adam countered. “We’re nearly there—”

CRACK!

They all stopped.

“Wh-what was that?” Bridget asked.

Adam knew. “Get to the barge now.”

With squeals of alarm, his sisters rushed to obey. Adam and his two manservants brought up the rear, their gazes raking the hedges and shadows surrounding their path to the river.

A shout from one of his men made Adam whirl round, and his heart jumped into his throat. A figure was coming up the path behind them, at a run. Adam quickly passed the groggy child in his arms to Bridget, and with his men formed a half circle around the girls.

He put a hand to his sword hilt—not that it would do him much good against pistol fire.

“Who goes there?” he called out with as much menace as he could muster. Waiting for a response that never came, he drew his sword. “I said, who goes there? Name yourself, or I will—”

“Give way!” the stranger barked, bearing down on the huddled group. They yelped and scattered as the man forced his way through. With a snarl and a flash of pale blue eyes, he was gone as swiftly as he’d appeared.

Needing no further encouragement, the girls raced to the riverbank as fast as their short legs and slippery shoes could carry them. At last the party reached the Watergate, where their barge was moored.

Adam hoisted his sisters on deck one by one, then climbed on after them. Squinting into the darkness, he thought he saw the shadow of another boat exiting the Watergate. He questioned his wherryman, who confirmed that a small punt-boat had arrived an hour ago and departed just ahead of them. Adam suspected the stranger with the pale blue eyes was aboard.

He joined his sisters in the barge’s little cabin, blindly picking his way through a jumble of ribbons, stockings, and other girlish things that covered the floor. He found a seat just before the current swept them upriver, making the boat rock and lurch mightily.

“Argh!” came a high-pitched cry through the dark. A small shadow tumbled sideways and landed with a thwump—thankfully cushioned in a pile of discarded clothing.

“Emma, was that you?” he called into the darkness. “Are you all right?”

But instead of the reassurances he’d expected, he heard an ear-piercing scream.

---

In the near-pitch-black cabin, Alice clutched her smarting ankle. She must have turned it while she ran, though she’d been too frantic to notice the pain—until someone stepped on it.

“There’s a stranger in here,” that someone’s high-pitched voice said fearfully. “I felt him move.”

“The boat is moving, Emma,” another young voice chided, though the first speaker had got it right. Alice had moved, fighting her way out from beneath the small body sprawled atop her, then scramble-crawling away from the other voices to tuck herself into a corner.

The girl called Emma whimpered. “I know what I felt! There’s somebody in here.”

“Somebody,” a third girl’s voice put in, “or something…”

“Oh, Cecily,” came a dry rejoinder, “stop making trouble.”

But Emma had drawn in a sharp little breath. “Do you mean—a ghost?”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Alice couldn’t be sure whether she’d heard this voice before, for it was also high-pitched and childish. How many little girls were on this boat, anyhow?

“Never mind her, Emma.” This time it was a male voice, and Alice shrank from it, thinking of Sudeley and his pistol. But the part of her brain that always remained calm and well-ordered noted this voice was less raspy than Sudeley’s, and its tone more impatient than sinister.

When Emma proved herself unable to calm down, the man gave a long-suffering sigh and announced his intention to find a lantern and demonstrate the absence of intruders—ghostly or otherwise. Realizing she had mere moments until they discovered her, Alice’s mind began to work furiously.

She had climbed aboard the barge some time ago—she had no idea how long; it could have been three minutes or thirty—tiptoed past a dozing wherryman into the cabin, and cowered inside, trying to quiet her frenzied breaths and listen for her pursuers. She’d heard at least one body approach, and her heart had jumped into her throat. But whoever he was, he passed the barge by, and she’d almost let herself believe she’d escaped—until another party had drawn near, and not passed harmlessly by.

What would happen when she was revealed? Would they send her back to the palace, where Sudeley and mayhap others wanted her dead? Should she throw herself on these strangers’ mercy? Come out with some ingenious lie? Burrow beneath the mounds of clothing on the floor? Attempt to climb out a window and swim for her life across the icy river? She began feeling along the wood-paneled wall for some kind of catch or opening.

When the man returned with the promised lantern, it cast only a small, weak circle of light. He was forced to move slowly round the cabin, scarcely able to see his feet. He began where Emma had fallen. “See? No one here.”

“Adam! I told you,” Emma said heatedly, “they moved. That way.”

Luckily for Alice, it was too dark to see which direction the girl was pointing.

The lantern made its plodding, half-blind way about the cabin, shining into corners and behind luggage, chasing away ghosts. As the girls began to settle, Alice counted down to her fate, still bereft of a solution. Silently and achingly slow, she tried to creep away from the approaching light, keeping one ear on the conversation.

“…shan’t come with me to London,” the man called Adam was saying, which elicited a round of groans.

“But your wedding—”

“Will not be disrupted by the likes of you four,” Adam said firmly. Alice wondered what he looked like, this Adam who was evidently about to be married. “It shall be a quick business, over and done. Trust me, you’ll not be sad to miss it.”

“You’re really to marry her?”

“We’ll have no more discussion. I’ve written to Aunt Kat and will take you to her directly. You shall stay in her charge while I go on to London.” Alice decided the girls must be his sisters. He sounded too young to be their father. “I do so hate to impose on her, but—argh!”

The boat had jerked of a sudden, and Adam must have dropped the lantern, for a scent of smoke rose up from the floor. A moment later, a garment ignited, setting the girls to screaming. Without thinking, Alice snatched up the first piece of cloth in her reach and leapt to smother the fire.

The flame went out quickly. But not quickly enough.

“I saw it! The ghost!”

“I saw it, too!”

“It was pure white!”

“No, it wore a blood-red crown!”

“Nonsense—”

The cabin door burst open. “Is everybody all right?” a new male voice called out.

“No harm done!” Adam yelled over his babbling sisters. “What happened?”

“We struck a patch of ice. The wherryman fears the river may become impassable before we reach Fulham.”

“Very well. Let’s go as far as we safely can.”

“Have you need of another lantern, milord?”

“Yes, thank you, Richard.”

As Richard left, a tall silhouette moved to stand over Alice where she lay. The ringing sound of steel told her it had drawn a dagger. “Don’t move, ghost,” Adam said.