Page 2 of The Favourite

“’Tis in the west wing,” Ayleth answered sourly. “There’s a whole staff taken on for it, nursemaid, laundry maid, and wet nurse, fit for a King’s son. Much good it will do anyone! ’Tis naught but a mewling girl, for all my lady’s toil and careful planning!”

“Jane?” The husky whisper made both women start and turn their heads with one accord. Helen Cecil’s dimmed blue gaze was trained on her sister. “You have come,” she said with a sharp intake of breath.

“Of course, I came,” Jane responded. “I came at once.”

Helen gestured that she would sit up and Ayleth made haste to prop her with pillows. By the time it had been arranged to her satisfaction, Helen’s face was flushed by the exertion and her breathing shallow. She held out an imperious hand, and Jane leaned forward in her seat to take it.

“I had hoped that the next time you saw me, I would be the triumphant mother of a son,” Helen admitted shakily. “Then you would kneel once more at my feet instead of the Queen’s.”

Jane winced. “Your ambition was always monumental, Sister.”

Helen laughed with a painful catch in her breathing. “I vow you speak naught but the truth, and this time I hoped to o’erleap nothing less than a queen.”

Jane stirred. “Did you really think—?” She broke off her words, sending a quick look first at Ayleth, who stood beside them like a grim statue, and then across the room at Mistress Beth who was surely craning her ears to listen to their exchange.

“To supplant a queen?” Helen whispered with a flash of her old spirit. “Why not? If anyone could, it was me.”

“A dangerous game to play,” Jane murmured with a frown. She did not speak the word aloud that hovered on her lips. Treasonous.

Helen sighed. “Always so reticent, Jane. Wymer is our rightful king. Armenal is just his consort. Nothing more.”

Her words immediately cut Jane to the quick, for they outraged her loyal service to the Queen. “On the contrary,” she replied, “Queen Armenal is sister to one king and wife to another. She is a princess of the blood. You sister, are the one he merely consorts with.” Her lip curled; she could not help it. “Has the King even deigned to visit with you since your lying-in?”

As she knew full well the King had not left court this past month, her words were unkind, but the smile that curved Helen’s pale lips was appreciative of her barbed words.

“Now that is a good deal more like it,” Helen said approvingly. “There is the flash of Cecil spirit that Uncle always thought you lacked. But I know better. It was always there, buried under all your layers of respectability.”

“Uncle can go hang,” Jane responded angrily before she could stop herself and Helen gave another of her husky attractive laughs, though she broke off mid-way to wince in pain.

“Yes, he can,” she agreed after a moment. “He can go hang on a gibbet for all I care until the sun bleaches his every bone. May the gods rot him.”

Jane’s eyes widened at her sister’s macabre words. “Relations have soured between the two of you it seems,” she said slowly, “for you have always been his protégée.”

Helen shook her head. “He saw me as a tool to secure a brighter future for himself, that is all. I should never have listened to him.” She sounded bitter. “You never did.”

Jane pulled a face. “I was never pretty or ingratiating enough to please Uncle Phillip.”

“More fool me. See where being pretty and ingratiating gets you.” Helen gestured to her body swathed in bedsheets. “These sheets will be my death shroud, Jane,” she pronounced hollowly, “and I have neither title nor name to bestow upon my daughter for protection. I do not even have the time to warn her against the words of men...” Her words trailed off and she stared toward the foot of the bed, as though she could see someone hovering there.

Jane was unnerved enough to turn her head, though she knew there was no one. “At the end of the day,” her sister started again jerkily, “I have nothing! Even this estate…” She gazed about at the room with dim, glazed eyes. “Who is to say the King will not snatch it back and bestow it on some new favorite as soon as I am cold in my grave? I would not put it past him.”

A shudder wracked her body and Jane panicked, quickly turning her head “Ayleth—” she started to appeal, but Helen squeezed her hand tight. “No!” she whispered hoarsely. “There is nothing she can do for me now. Nothing anyone can do, except you.” Jane glanced at Ayleth whose lips were pressed tightly closed. “Let us keep this between the two of us,” Helen appealed, “like in the old days.”

Jane hesitated but nodded. “What is it you would have me do, Sister?”

“Ease my passing,” Helen croaked. “For the sake of the love we bore each other, as girls.”

“Right gladly, but how?”

“Give me your word, that on my death, you will take my child as your own.”

Jane’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. “M-my own?” she muttered in shock. She saw a flaw in the plan at once. “But I am not married, Sister, and am in no position to start a nursery!” Her mind worked quickly. The babe would naturally come under their uncle’s protection as he was the official head of the Cecil family.

If Jane was to play any role in her upbringing, she would have to live in Sir Phillip’s home once again and such a thing was unthinkable. “You surely do not expect me to live under my uncle’s roof?” she asked hoarsely and began to shake her head. That was something she could not do. Give up her position at court and be subject to Uncle Phillip’s strictures again? Not while there was breath in her body!

“No, I would never ask that of you.” Helen’s voice was low and urgent. “Besides, that way both you and Celestia would be at Uncle’s mercy.” She paused and seemed to brace herself for the next words. “There is another way that you can assume guardianship, instead of him.”

Jane’s head span. Try as she might, she could see no way clear to such an outcome. “How?”