The King's Damsel by Kate Emerson Page B

of her father? “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I simply meant that if there should be such a misfortune as to be no sons, in any family, then a daughter becomes the rightful heiress to all that remains.”
    “I am certain that, one day, my father will have a son to succeed him.” Her Grace sounded confident but looked unbearably sad when she added, “I had a brother once, before I was born, but he lived only a few days. I would like to have another. I pray to God for that blessing every day.”
    “You would no longer be Princess of Wales if you had a brother,” Mary Fitzherbert pointed out.
    “I would still be a princess. In truth, I think I should be happier, for I could live at my father’s court. And I could see my mother again.”
    Maria lifted a hand, as if to pat the princess’s arm, but remembered herself just in time and pulled back. “Your Grace’s father will find you a handsome prince to marry, Your Grace. No matter who he is, you will have children of your own and that will be your happy ending.”
    There were general nods and murmurs of agreement, for we had all been taught, since our earliest years, that children were what every woman most desired in life. Be fruitful and multiply? I wondered. I had never had much to do with babies, being the youngest myself. Then again, from what I had gathered since coming to the princess’s court, royal mothers spent little time with their children after they were born.
    “I know whom I would wed, if it were up to me,” Cecily murmured.
    “Who?” I thought it best to turn our conversation away from royal matrimony.
    “His name is Rhys Mansell. He is Welsh,” she added, unnecessarily.
    “Where did you meet him?” Princess Mary was suddenly a little girl again, as curious as the rest of us.
    “He is not a member of this household,” Mary Dannett said.
    “No, he is not,” Cecily agreed, “but he has ties to it. Lady Catherine’s husband is Sir Matthew Craddock and Sir Matthew was Rhys’s guardian when he was a boy.”
    “Why is she Lady Catherine and not Lady Craddock?” I asked. I had wondered about the princess’s chief gentlewoman for months and this seemed a perfect opportunity to discover something of her mysterious past. “Is she a duke’s daughter?”
    The daughters of dukes and earls were addressed by their Christian names, with the honorary title “Lady” as a prefix, no matter the rank of their husbands. If Lady Catherine had been of lesser birth than Sir Matthew, she’d have been addressed as Lady Craddock.
    “He was an earl,” Cecily said. “The Earl of Huntley.”
    “But that is not an English title,” Mary Dannett objected.
    “Lady Catherine is Scottish by birth.”
    None of us had known that and our demands for the whole story persuaded Cecily, once she had looked around to make sure none of the older ladies-in-waiting was within earshot, to tell us the tale.
    “She was born Lady Catherine Gordon,” Cecily began, “far away to the north in Scotland. She was the daughter of an earl whose first wife was a royal princess of that land. Because of her high station, the king of Scotland—I do not remember which one, but his name must have been James; they are all called James—married her to a young man who claimed he was the rightful heir to the English throne. He said he was Richard, son of King Edward the Fourth, and that he had miraculously escaped from the Tower of London.”
    We all nodded, knowing full well that this was not true. Everyone knew that Prince Richard and his older brother, who was briefly Edward V, had been murdered there by their wicked uncle, the evil usurper who had made himself king in little Edward’s place and called himself Richard III. King Richard, to the joy of all true Englishmen, had been defeated in a great battle by Henry Tudor, Princess Mary’s grandfather, after which Henry took the throne himself as King Henry VII.
    “The man who married Lady Catherine,” Cecily continued, “was