At The King's Command (19 page)

She propped herself on her elbows and stared straight into his eyes, searching so deeply that he felt certain she could see down to his core, to the shivering soul that hid there behind the bluff facade.

“Do I?” she asked, never blinking, never taking her eyes off him.

“Aye,” he lied, dry-mouthed. “There was that tension between us.” He touched her cheek, pretending it was a casual, almost dismissive gesture, knowing it was not. “You pleased me, Juliana, with your idea for turning the abbey into a weaving house. There was a wildness in us both but—”

“Yes?”

He could see her holding her breath, waiting for him to declare his true feelings, silently begging him not to hurt her. “But no more,” he said, looking away. “The moment has passed.”

“No,” she said, striking him lightly on the chest and forcing his gaze back to hers. “Stephen, you know my
body better than I do. You knew just how to touch me, just when. Something happened here. I do not begin to understand it, for Laszlo has been very protective of me. I’ve not been privy to the intimacies between a man and a woman. But I refuse to believe you would use this as a way of—of rewarding me or pleasing me.”

“For God’s sake.” She was getting too close, seeing too much. He thrust her aside and jumped up. “You make much of this when in truth it is so trivial.”

“Trivial?” She sat up and drew her knees to her chest.

“So small,” he said, pacing, trying not to wince at the mocking ache in his loins. “Unimportant.”

She tilted her head to glare up at him. “After tonight I will never look at you—at myself—in quite the same way. That is small? Unimportant?”

“To me it is,” he snapped. Then he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled for his horse. In truth he wanted her so much that his blood was aflame. He was so hard that it created a burning pain in every nerve, every cell. He wanted her so much that his very teeth ached with it.

He snared Capria’s trailing reins. “Look. Men and women do this all the time. How could you think I would possibly be moved by a few moments of idle lust?”

She jumped to her feet. “Damn you, Stephen de Lacey!”

“No,” he said. “Damn
you
, Baroness. Damn
you
for seeking meaning where none was intended.” He would not look at her as he boosted her onto his horse and mounted behind, trying not to wince at the fiery discomfort. He did not want to see her face, for he knew she would read the lies in his own.

It was a day of dappled sunshine and clouds melting into the green horizon, yet Juliana’s heart felt as cold as
winter, as barren as a blighted field. Lost in bewilderment, she watched her husband at work by the river. The large, squarish hands that had brought her such unspeakable pleasure last night now labored over his latest invention.

“Right ingenious is his lordship,” Jillie said. “Why, with that contraption, we’ll be able to bring the wool to the weavers twice as fast.”

“Do you think so?” Juliana asked absently. She leaned her elbows on the fence rail and propped her chin in her hands.

Some yards away, Stephen and William Stumpe, Laszlo and Rodion worked the seines for bundling wool. The seines would be put in the river and drawn downstream from the sheepfolds to the abbey. In that fashion, the raw wool would get a preliminary washing, and the oils could be collected for making soaps and salves.

“The best ideas are always simple,” said Jillie.

“Really?” Juliana asked, only half attending. She kept her attention fixed on her husband, and while her body responded with a warm spasm of remembered pleasure, her mind brooded on his harsh dismissal.

He had lied to her about his feelings. Surely he had. No man could bring a woman so close to heaven and feel nothing himself.

She held the thought to her heart and caressed him with her gaze. He wore rough workman’s garb—a tunic and jerkin and knee-high boots. Watching him work, she felt a sense of contentment. The feeling took her by surprise, for she had always thought that happiness could never be hers until she avenged her family.

Jillie was still speaking, but Juliana stopped even pretending to listen. Stephen de Lacey held a never-ending
fascination for her. No matter how long she looked at him, she never ceased to see something fresh, some bright new facet.

Though the group of workmen made bluff and merry company, she sensed a melancholy about her husband. Subtle as the undercurrents beneath a placid stream, his discontent lay hidden, visible only to those who looked for it.

As she watched, he put aside his bundled seines and stopped to watch a group of children at play. With tattered tunics, skinny brown legs, and dirty faces, they careened along the riverbank. Their laughter rose like swifts to the sun-dappled treetops, and they chased a pig-bladder ball with the determined abandon of a horde of barbarians.

With no notion he was being watched, he had let down his guard. What she glimpsed was the ache of loss, or perhaps the sadness of a promise betrayed, tinged with the winter hues of hopelessness. It was that almost hidden mournfulness that held him apart from others even when he stood in their midst. He had built his anguish into a wall no one could breach.

And perhaps in the end, Juliana thought, stepping through the fence gate and moving slowly toward her husband, this was what made her care for him, what made her forgive the harsh lashing of his words. Not just the heat of his kisses, the gentleness of his caresses, the explosive ecstasy he had shown her. Those made her hunger for him. But the other qualities awakened her tenderness—the challenge of his melancholy, the mystique of his isolation.

The lure of his secrets.

“Stephen.” She spoke his name quietly.

Startled, he looked away from the children. For a second,
pleasure flickered in his eyes; then he fixed a polite expression on his face and gave a courteous nod. “My lady.”

My lady
. How formal he was. How distant. As if he had never chased her across a moonlit field and kissed her. As if he had never lain with her upon the dew-wet grass and brought her to a state of insane completion.

Her cheeks heated. “I wanted to applaud your work here, my lord.”

“I work not to win admiration,” he said, glancing at the laborers, “but for those who had their lands taken when the king enclosed the forest.”

“Of course.” She searched his face for a sign of the man who had held her the night before. The man who had looked at her with his heart in his eyes.

Instead she saw a cold stranger. “My lord, yestereve—”

“’Tis best forgotten,” he snapped.

She drew him away from the workmen. His arm felt hard and slick with sweat, and the tenseness of the muscles beneath her fingers brought a fresh wave of remembrance. Beneath the low, spreading branches of an ancient oak tree, she planted herself in front of him, standing on tiptoe to bring herself nose to nose with him. “Tell me you have forgotten.”

“I have forgotten.”

“You lie.”

A lock of his hair fell over his brow, making him look more devilishly handsome than she could bear. His mouth curved in a mirthless smile. “I assure you, tupping a wench in an open field was nothing out of the ordinary for me. I’m flattered that it was for you.”

“Do not think,” she whispered furiously, “that you can ever put me off so easily, Stephen de Lacey. I may be inexperienced in bed sport, but I am not stupid.”

“Then why do you wish to discuss last night?”

“It was new to me. I tend to dwell on new experiences. Like the first time I ate sturgeon eggs or drove a troika—”

“A what?”

“Troika. Sleds pulled by stout ponies. And do not roll your eyes like that, my lord, for I will not argue any more about my past. I merely wish to explain that I am not hesitant to try out new adventures.”

“Aye, you made that lack of hesitation clear enough.”

“And what is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Only that you are a creature of the senses. I mean nothing ill by it.” He lifted his hand as if to touch her, then seemed to think better of it. “I made a mistake. There is no reason in the world for us to be intimate. Good God, what if we were to make a child?”

“That’s no sin between man and wife.”

“We are playacting,” he said with an infuriating excess of patience. “We have every reason to keep our urges in check. Soon the king will forget his jest, and we shall get this marriage annulled. We both agree on that, do we not?”

“Something made us forget.” She tried to steady the catch in her voice.

“Then we should take care not to complicate the problem. You’re a winsome female. It would be so easy to—” He clamped his mouth shut and looked away, at the women at the water’s edge gathering the lanolin foaming up from the submerged wool.

“Easy to what?”

A shutter seemed to drop over his eyes. “Easy to tumble you like a ha’ penny whore,” he said. “You do not lack for wanton willingness.”

Even before he finished speaking, she had her hand
drawn back to slap him. But she made herself resist, made herself lower her arm. He wanted her to hate him.

“You’re afraid,” she said, her voice soft with wonder.

“Don’t be foolish.”

“You are afraid,” she said, speaking now with firm conviction. “You’re beginning to care about me.”

“I’ve not time for a woman’s fanciful notions.” He stepped back and turned sharply, stalking away to lose himself in work.

Juliana folded her arms across her bosom. Her husband’s facade was growing thin. If she probed a little deeper into his life, into his heart, she might begin to understand.

For today, she would not ask herself why it mattered. She merely told herself that she was tired of being married to a stranger.

She leaned against the rough trunk of the tree and watched as a tiny girl ran up to Stephen and tugged on his hand. He turned swiftly, as if in anger, and grasped her beneath the arms. While the child shrieked with joy, Stephen swung her high in the air, up and up until her laughing face was framed against the blue summer sky.

Ah, tonight, Juliana resolved with her heart in her throat, she would learn the secret of Stephen de Lacey.

S
tephen blew out his breath, long and loud, as he waited for Nance to fill a scrip in the pantry that evening. With an idle eye, he watched the self-turning spit he had fashioned after the cook’s favorite spit runner, an ill-mannered terrier, had singed its fur and refused to go near the contraption again. The new design was rotated with a turbine propelled by the force of the heat rising up the chimney.

“You barely touched your supper, my lord,” Nance called through the open half door of the pantry, adding a twist of marchpane to the sack. “Ate no more than a Lenten eve groom. Was the fare not to your liking?”

He picked up a bottle of cider and inspected it for impurities. Finding it clear, he handed it to Nance. “Supper was fine,” he murmured distractedly.

“Fine, was it? Then why didn’t you eat?”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“Aye, you were.” Nance gave him a broad wink. “But for a woman’s breasts and thighs, not a capon’s.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “Not you, too.”

“You mean someone else noticed?”

He rotated his shoulders, feeling the weariness there. It had been a long day of work, and a longer night lay ahead. “Juliana. There’s something about her, Nance.”

“Something.” Her doughy face creased into a merry smile. “A caring heart, I’d call it. I was the first to have my doubts when you brought her here all lousy with vermin and needing a bath, but I’ve been wrong before.” Her chubby elbow jabbed him in the ribs. “Remember you, my lord, that scutch-brained apothecary what sold me the love philter—”

“Nance, it’s getting late.”

“—all in a flurry I dropped it on the ground and that fat gander ate it—”

“
Nance
.”

“Never did shed myself of that gander but with the kitchen ax.” Shaking her head, she drew up the string of the parcel and jabbed a finger at him. “Now, don’t you be getting any ideas about that ax. Is that so very awful, my lord? To find a lady who cares about you, about your—”

“Yes,” he hurled at her. “For Christ’s sake, you of all people should know that.”

“Sometimes I wonder, my lord. Would it be such a high catastrophe if you was to tell her—” She broke off at his murderous look and crossed herself.

“That’s enough, Nance. Juliana must never, ever know.” He felt the burn of distrust in his throat. “I’d kill her. I’d die myself.”

It was on nights like this, Juliana thought with a certain grim satisfaction, that Pavlo was at his best. Since coming to Lynacre, the dog had led a life of ease, but tracking was what the windhound was born to do.

At twilight she had pleaded fatigue, retired early from
the hall, and pretended to tumble into bed in an exhausted heap.

Now she stood wide awake at the farthest end of the main garden, having dressed in a plain gown and slipped away, barefoot, with only the
borzoya
dog for company. Wind-torn clouds raced across the night sky, and shadows loomed in the gatehouse and walls encircling the garden.

It felt vaguely and uncomfortably criminal, sneaking out, straying far from the hall in search of her husband. No, she told herself, watching Pavlo streaking down the length of the seemingly endless wall, nose to the ground and tail waving high. It was Stephen’s fault. Stephen’s secrets. Stephen’s lies.

His presence was everywhere; each corner of the manor bore the stamp of his inventive mind. The park was fenced with paling and buttressed walls designed by Stephen. The turf seats built around a wych-elm tree had enchanted beds of chamomile and pennyroyal growing at their base. The trellis work was intricate, twined with climbing roses, and in the center of a long bed of herbs was an escutcheon bearing Stephen’s banner—a Lacey knot and border of the entwined initials
M
and
S
.

For Margaret, he had fashioned a crest of flowers. For Juliana, he had made a vow to banish her from his life.

She gave a tight smile as Pavlo paused and lifted his leg on the base of the escutcheon. Then she murmured a Russian command. The hour was late, her business pressing. Her newfound pride forbade that she allow her husband to stray even one more night.

The dog ranged farther and farther from the manor, past knot gardens and along pebbled paths, down to where the grass grew thick and tall and the scent of lavender spiced the air.

Impatient, Juliana began to wonder if the hound understood her goal, even though she had prompted him with one of Stephen’s neckcloths pilfered from the laundry.

Pavlo trotted along beside a tall hedgerow of quick-thorn, snuffling at broom plant and herbs. They had nearly reached the end of the vast park when the dog stopped and whined softly. Half expecting to find the burrow of a hedgehog, Juliana went to see what he had unearthed.

She hesitated, suddenly afraid of what she might find. Then she forced herself to part the plumes of a broom plant and saw that there was a break in the hedge. The thorny branches had been pruned to reveal a low gate, all but invisible to the casual eye. She caught her breath, then gave the gate a push. The low door swung open smoothly and quietly, as if someone kept the hinges oiled.

Pavlo slipped through and Juliana followed, then paused to get her bearings. She had thought this section of the estate to be a thick, wild woodland. Now she realized the tangled growth concealed a strange network of passageways.

“Sweet Saint Peter,” she whispered, slipping into Russian and pressing back against the gate. “What is this place?”

The moon had not yet risen, so she had to rely on starlight and the keen vision of Pavlo. She was at the entrance to a maze.

A very large maze, the hedges no less than eight feet high and pruned so thick that they were as impenetrable as brick walls. Branches formed almost solid arches overhead.

A secret maze, she thought with a shudder. Why would Stephen keep such a thing hidden?

Because he had something dreadful to hide? A corpse, perhaps, or a den of thieves?

Steeling her nerves, she uttered a quiet command to
Pavlo. The dog lowered his head, found the scent again, and trotted along a twisting path. Juliana took a deep breath and followed.

A half hour later, she began to imagine herself dying here. She had followed the dog through at least three miles of twisting, curving paths, and the search had yielded nothing save more winding endless byways. She pictured her bones lying undiscovered along one of the sinister lanes, her flesh picked clean by ravens and rooks.

She shivered and kept her gaze trained on Pavlo’s waving tail. How would she be remembered? The folk of Wiltshire would dub her that crazy gypsy who had been forced to choose between hanging and marriage to an English lord. She had never proven her identity to the satisfaction of anyone who mattered. No one save Laszlo believed she was a Romanov.

A pity, she thought. Then she realized that, to a corpse, rank and bloodlines mattered not. Hardly a comforting thought.

The hem of her skirt snagged on a hedge, and she yanked at it. A bit of fabric stuck fast to a thorn. “The
vurma,”
she whispered into the darkness. She should have been leaving a trail all along. Too much luxury was making her forget sensible Romany ways.

Squaring her shoulders, she started off again, her footsteps quickened by anger. She began to mark her way with strands of hair and bits of thread from the weave of her torn skirt. Pavlo never faltered, never hesitated when the paths diverged.

Her bare feet ached from hurrying over the packed earth. Just as she was about to give up and find her way back, Pavlo whined. She reached the juncture of two paths. Here, the foliage over the maze was thinner; the
light shone brighter. The hedges no longer arched together, and the moon appeared fat and butter-white.

A few steps farther, and she emerged from the maze…into an enchanted garden.

Damn her to hell.

From the second story, Stephen glared at the round, rising moon. Though he was not far from Lynacre Hall, he felt as if he had traveled many leagues.

He wondered why he wanted Juliana, why her smile seemed to light up a room when she entered it, why his arms ached to hold her—and her alone. Not even for Meg had he felt this constant yearning, this unquiet emptiness in his soul that only seemed to fill when his wife was close.

He had spent the past seven years teaching himself not to feel, and now in just a few short months Juliana had brought it all back to him—the fierce joy, the sweet anguish, the passion, and the heat.

She made him want it again—all of it, the pain and the ecstasy, the caring and the hushed, fragile knowledge of heart-deep love.

Stephen stared at the single flame of the candle on the windowsill and told himself he could have none of it.

He could not have Juliana, for his life was ruled by dread. A seeping, conniving dread that had a life of its own; in seconds it could render him helpless, invading his body like quick poison.

He lived in hell. Loving Juliana would only condemn her to the same fate.

He returned to his vigil in the darkened room.

Gooseflesh rose on Juliana’s arms. Wide-eyed in the darkness, she took in the shadowy profusion of herbs and
flowers tumbling along winding paths. Here and there stood a bench or resting stool, all but smothered in rampant gilliflowers or snapdragons.

Rising out of the wild splendor of the garden was a grassy mound surrounded by a menagerie of fantastical beasts: a unicorn, a griffin, and a dragon. They were covered in small-leafed ivy, and the breeze made them stir as if half-alive.

Pavlo stood as stiff as a palace guard, the hairs at the scruff of his neck standing on end, a growl of suspicion rumbling in his throat. He took a few steps forward, then feinted nimbly back.

At the top of the mound was a fountain embellished with four roses that spouted streams of water. The streams in turn sprayed into the open mouths of laughing frogs. Water from the basin of the fountain spilled down a conduit, and the rivulets powered a water wheel that turned slowly and soundlessly—and seemingly without purpose.

Moving like one in a dream, Juliana climbed the mound to the fountain. She put a tentative finger into the scallop-shaped basin, then touched it to her lips. Yet even the taste of the cool, sweet water did not dispel the magic.

Aye, it was a magical place, one she had thought to exist only in nursery tales or deep in the dreams of sleeping children. The riot of flowers, the cavorting beasts, the burbling fountain, were all too wondrous to be real.

But they were, and she knew just where they had come from.

“Stephen,” she whispered. She had long been aware of his genius for creating things, but his inventions at Lynacre had always been of a practical nature. In this garden lay the fruits of a whimsical imagination she hadn’t known he possessed. It was like looking through a win
dow into his soul—and seeing the enchanted prince trapped inside his gruff exterior.

What was this place?

Pavlo gave the topiary beasts a wide berth and trotted through an arbor that led to a small, snug building. Hurrying after the dog, Juliana saw that it had chimneys, a bank of small windows on both the first and second stories. A kitchen garden grew on the south side, the rows of greens and herbs as neat as a regiment of soldiers.

And high in one window on the second story, a single candle burned.

She stood spellbound by the solitary flame. Suddenly she wished she had not come. She did not want to be here, did not want to know who shared the elegant little cottage with her husband.

And then, as Juliana stood watching, the candle flickered as if disturbed by someone brushing past. For some reason, the slight change in the light awakened her Romanov soul—the place where passion dwelt deep, where rage and pride overcame fear and uncertainty.

Damn Stephen de Lacey. And damn the woman who was fool enough to think she could dally with the husband of Juliana Romanovna.

She touched her brooch and the small dagger slipped free, the jewel-encrusted hilt solid in her hand. She did not pause to consider why she had armed herself. Simple instinct told her not to go defenseless to her husband and his mistress.

“His mistress.” She hissed the words into the gloom. Then, motioning for Pavlo to stay, she crept toward the house. Its hidden location made locks unnecessary, and Juliana gained entry simply by lifting the latch of the main door in the front.

She stepped blindly into a dark room. Moon shadow created a pattern of diamonds on the floor. She paused to let her eyes adjust. A strange odor of porridge and herbs hung in the air. It was not a pleasant smell. Stephen’s mistress must be a woman of no taste at all.

Except in her choice of lovers.

Aye, Juliana could finally admit it to herself. Stephen was that rarity among men: one who could be both tender and masterful, shamelessly romantic and coldly logical. A man of common sense and airy whimsy. A man whose touch had the power to lift her into rapture.

The remembrance of his kisses and her response to them seared her with anger. Her hand tightened around the hilt of the dagger. Her eyes picked out the way to the stairwell.