"I thank you, Madam."
Catherine of Braganza pulled at her curling feather fan and laughed.
"We are both in a strange position, are we not?"
"The positions God put us in," said Mary coldly. She wondered why the other woman paused to talk.
The Queen Dowager continued to smile over her fan.
"I think to go back to Portugal."
"That must be as Your Majesty pleaseth."
"England is no longer the same to me."
Mary's hand tightened on the rich back of the settle. She read perfectly well the scorn of the Stewart's wife for the usurper and the Protestant.
"I find Whitehall a little dull," continued Catherine, with a malicious twist of her lip. "Geneva bands and black coats are a strange sight in these halls——"