𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗘𝗡'𝗦 𝗣𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗡 || 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝗲𝗻

16

"Perhaps fate favours me more than you!" Grace replied, concealing half her face behind her cards again. "And I shall win again!" At this, George seemed to reevaluate his tactic.

"You must tell me what you've been up to the past two years!" he said, a feeble attempt to distract her, which Grace saw right through. There was a level of genuineness to it though. While Grace had been away from court for a year before Edward's secret marriage, she and George hadn't seen each other for twice as long. Before she'd left, he had been the one living in the country, coincidentally returning only a month after she had left. "It's been awfully boring without you or Buckingham here."

"Where did you leave poor Ned? I swear, where one of you is, the other is not far behind!" George shrugged, flitting through the cards in his hand. "Or has he finally grown tired of your arrogance?" Grace asked, lightly kicking George's shin under the table.

"Ned adores me, I'll have you know!" George scoffed in his usual offended manner. "He's in Staffordshire 'looking after his estates', or something." He frowned down at the table as if Ned's absence was a personal slight against him. Grace almost thought he'd start pouting like a child.

Richard breathed a short laugh. "Or something, you know there is plenty he has to deal with!" Grace frowned but stopped herself from questioning. She was aware that Ned's grandfather, the late Duke of Buckingham, had a talent for overspending, and that he also had a great deal of money owed to him. Some debts were said to be twenty years old! She wondered if that was where the issue lay and Ned had finally decided to do something about it. "Besides, he'll be in London soon for the queen's coronation."

With a huff and a roll of his eyes, George tossed another card into the centre of the table, his turn coming around again. "Yes, yes, enough about me, I want to know about you." He motioned to Grace, curiously tilting his head. "Were you also managing your estates this entire time?"

"Hm," she agreed, "though I stayed away for so long for Henry's sake! He's just a child and I don't think his presence at court is necessary. I didn't want to leave him alone either, since he has no one else but me to take care of him." And Katherine, Grace supposed, though her mother went wherever Grace went. Margaret Beaufort, Grace's cousin and Henry's mother, was kept away from the boy in a move that could only be described as cruel. Grace wrote to her often to tell her of Henry's life, but that was all she could offer her. Maybe now that Edward was married and was sure to have heirs soon, she'd be able to convince him to allow Margaret to visit her son.

"And if you're at your estates, your mother can't pester you about considering marriage with every nobleman that walks past you," Cecily added, staring out the window in somewhat of a trance. Grace swore she saw George's entire body tense at the mention of marriage, even as Grace laughed Cecily's comment off.

"She thinks that if I get married of my own accord, Edward won't be able to force me into a match I won't want. She hates the idea of marriage as much as I do, but I think she hates the thought of me being stuck in a miserable, loveless marriage even more," she explained to the two dukes, though they probably could've already guessed. With a shrug, she sighed and added, "Bur Edward has sworn to never force me into marriage, and so I am free."

"Thank God for that!" Cecily turned back to the group, bored of whatever she'd been watching outside the window. "I'm glad my father hasn't mentioned such a prospect yet, though I don't doubt it'll come soon. Marriage doesn't seem so terrible, but I would rather not have to be tied down to a man sooner than needed."