Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters by Ella March Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

oak trees with trunks so thick, five men linked together could not circle them with their arms. Where it will touch its finger to thatched roofs and set the straw on fire. I feel it ready to strike when the crooked place in my back aches. I know when lightning is building up inside my lady mother too.
    The storm crowding the sky over Bradgate should have been over three weeks ago, but the duchess struck out with fists and sharp words at anyone unlucky enough to cross her path. Even Bess of Hardwick, my mother’s favorite person in the world, shook her head in confusion, saying she did not know what could be amiss.
    Upon our return from London, things here in Leicestershire should have gone back to the merry, pleasure-rich life my parents love. Hunting all day, lounging at the table until no one could eat another bite, the whole Suffolk household gambling late into the night.
    So why did the air grow thicker as the days dragged by? Why did my mother grow more on edge? And why did mud-spattered, exhausted messengers from London still come and go at all hours of the night and day? My parents’ eyes grew hard and greedy when they hid themselves away with whatever missives those messengers brought. They looked as if the letters were gold coins they were about to sweep into their purses.
    Mistrusting the patch of blue sky beyond the window of my chamber, I tucked myself into my corner and cuddled my poppet close, but Jennet’s black bead eyes could give me no answers to the questions that troubled me. No one noticed. Since the wedding it was as if I had disappeared, like Jane, like Kat. I was a ghost.
    “I am beginning to fear one of the servants packed Lady Mary’s tongue along with her sisters’ bridal clothes.” Hettie’s voice poked into the shadows of my favorite corner in my chamber. She turned toward me, hands on hips. “Not a smidgen of gossip have you told me for weeks. Lonely, I wager. Best get used to it. From now on you will not have your sisters to cling to like a cocklebur. They are wives now. They have husbands and soon, God willing, children to occupy them. They will have no time for the likes of you.”
    “Hettie!” Bess chided. “There is no reason to be so hard.”
    “I am just telling the child the truth.” Hettie tossed her head. “The world is hard, and it will be even harder for Lady Mary than most unless she learns to make herself more agreeable to those around her.” She did not sound as if she held much hope of my doing so.
    Bess reached out to touch me. I stared hard at her motherly hand, wondering what her fingers would feel like on my cheek. But my gaze built a fence around me. She let her arm fall back to her side. I tried not to mind. Kind as she was, Bess never warmed to me as she had my sisters, especially Jane. Still, her voice was gentler than most when she addressed me. “Mary, never mind what Hettie has told you about the bond between sisters. It can never be broken, no matter how far away fate sends them. I am sure Lady Jane and Lady Katherine are missing you as well.”
    Hettie made a dismissive sound. “Lady Katherine’s head was awhirl with her lusty young husband even before she left London, while if all accounts are true the Lady Jane—”
    Bess looked at her in a way Kat would have called formidable, hints of a steely will that made my pretty sister bow to Bess’s every command. Hettie retreated from the field of battle with a “harrumph” of protest, and Bess swept out of the chamber, off, no doubt, to serve my lady mother. Hours passed while I played with Jennet and wondered if Hettie was right. What good would I be once my sisters had pretty babies? Sweet-faced babes with straight spines for Kat and Jane to love?
    I jumped a little, startled, as a serving girl rushed through the paneled door, her palm pressed to her cheek. A handprint reddened the maid’s skin.
    “You would think Her Grace would be puffed like a peacock now, proud of those exorbitant