The Fatal Fashione by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

the Commons about my marital status.”
    “It’s not just you he harangues, Your Grace, I assure you.”
    “But it’s I who mean to have it out with him,” she declared, and headed for the door.
    His arms still full of papers, Cecil leaped to open it for her. “Then should I accompany you?”
    “I need you to stay here and inform me if Meg Milligrew, Ned Topside, or Steven Jenks returns.” She stepped back into the room and closed the door. “There’s been a strange death at Hannah von Hoven’s starch house.’S blood, just wait until Cantwell gets wind of that. Oh,” she said, opening the door again despite his stunned expression, “and let me know at once if there is word of Thomas Gresham’s young daughter being found.”
    “What? All that when I’ve been gone but three hours?”
    “I’ll explain the moment I have dealt with Cantwell. I have never met with him privily, but it needs to be done,” she concluded, and left him sputtering.
    If Hosea Cantwell had been, as Cecil had said, angry, that was not the case now, Elizabeth noted as he bowed before her and they exchanged proprieties. Rather, he seemed sure of himself, almost smug, not the wet hen but the cock of the walk. The man was much too handsome to be a Puritan cleric, or lay preacher, as he was often called. His hair shone like polished ebony; dark lashes fringed large brown eyes in a well-chiseled face. He had a Roman nose, which balanced a strong mouth. His manly form bespoke more of riding and sweating than of reading and sermonizing. No wonder more people than Puritans filled his pews lately. Elizabeth thought all that made him more, not less, dangerous.
    “Let me cut directly to the topic at hand,” the queen said as Cantwell began to comment on the windy weather. “Do you not have better things—more important things—to speak of from your pulpit and in the halls of Parliament than styles and starch?”
    “Ah, and I thought I was summoned for my stance on your marital state, Your Majesty.”
    “It goes without saying that I resent your trying to coerce your queen to that. But starch, man? Would you have us return to the old-fashioned days of paste wives with laces steeped in egg white or made rigid with beeswax and wire supportasses, which go all limp and poke one in the neck or wrist to boot? Is it true you have ranted that starch is ‘the devil’s liquor’?”
    “I pray I have not ranted. Counseled, perhaps. Pleaded. I plead guilty to that, at least, Your Gracious Majesty.”
    Somehow this man kept defusing her fury. With his wit and puns, she might think she was verbally sparring with Ned Topside. Was this the same person who had glared at her when she defied Parliament? Though she’d pictured him up close as stiff-faced with a stiffer backbone, his lips curled into a smile and his eyes twinkled. His voice was smooth and modulated, not piercing, as someone had told her it was when he preached.
    “May I explain, Your Most Gracious Majesty?”
    “You may try.”
    “While courtiers and the Londoners who ape them and the English who then ape the Londoners spend small fortunes and large amounts of precious time on what is on their backs—around their wrists and necks in this instance—they are being ensnared by the world of the flesh and the devil. The ruffs, like other personal tomfooleries, grow larger and larger. Forgive me, Your Majesty, but any fashion you set, all will follow. Starch is but one foreshadowing, no doubt, of a curse on our nation—a curse that can spread. You already favor black and white, not so far a reach from plain Puritan garb, so why not simple collars and cuffs?”
    She’d like to cuff him, the queen thought. Yet, though she was ready to explode at his presumptions and his dire prophecy, he’d said that last with a little disparaging flourish of his hand toward his own garments. She felt entirely pent up about the Gresham girl and the death at the starch house. She had fully expected to berate