Читать книгу The Agincourt Bride онлайн | страница 53

The worst thing for me, living in the palace, was being constantly reminded of Catherine. I saw her face at the windows of the nursery tower, heard her laughter in the old rose garden and her footsteps on the flagstones of the chapel cloister. Only her imminent return looked set to stir me out of the deep, persistent melancholy I had been feeling without admitting it to myself.

The day after Jean-Michel dropped his bombshell, I went to the grand master’s chamber in the King’s House and, mercifully, my powers of persuasion did not desert me. Within minutes, the clerk charged with assembling staff for Catherine’s new household had agreed that I was ideally suited for work as her tiring woman and arranged for my transfer from the palace brewery. I would be on familiar ground, for she had been allocated the very rooms in which she had spent the first years of her life. We were both going back to the nursery tower. My feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground as I sped to my new post, gloating over the fact that soon, very soon, I would once more be as close as any mother to the child of my breast.

The first-floor chamber of the tower, once Madame la Bonne’s bedchamber, had been turned into a salon where Catherine and her companions would be able to read and embroider and entertain themselves and her visitors. The former governess’ crimson-curtained bed had been long ago removed and the chamber walls were hung with rainbow silks and jewel-coloured tapestries. It was furnished with cushioned stools, polished chests and tables and a carved stone chimneypiece framing a deep hearth, where a blazing fire would keep the air a good deal warmer than it had ever been in the old days. It was while I was lighting this fire a few days later, that the door opened without warning and a young lady entered and stood staring at me.

Catherine! I sank to my knees, glad to do so as my legs had turned to jelly. Dumbstruck, I gazed up at a vision of loveliness, dressed in a cornflower-blue gown, her beautiful Madonna face framed by neat little horns of netted blond hair and a filmy white veil.