At The King's Command (24 page)

“What possible difference can that make?”

Juliana now knew the answer to that. At first she had merely brushed Oliver’s hand with hers. Then, while he was giggling at Pavlo’s trick of balancing a crust of bread on his muzzle, she had squeezed his shoulder. Day by day, hour by hour, she moved closer to him until they were embracing, his cheek against her bosom and his little hands clinging around her waist.

“I think it would make a great deal of difference—to your son…and to you.” Juliana stroked the thin horse. The animal flattened its ears, and she spoke to it in Romany, the language that had been used to train gypsy horses since time out of mind. The horse dropped its head and snuffled into her shoulder. She turned and smiled at Stephen. “I think it would make a very big difference indeed.”

“Damn you,” he said through his teeth. “All my boy wants to do is
breathe
, and I can’t help him. I would give my entire fortune and my very life—the surety of my
soul—to heal him. If I thought owning the moon were a cure, I would devise some way to snare it. How dare you imply that I am withholding something from my son?”

“You are.” How fearsome he looked, his eyes as cold and shining as marble, his face flushed with fury and his fists clenched hard. And yet she did not fear him. He could hurt her, aye, and she had no doubt that he would—but not with his fists.

“My lord,” she said, leaning against the horse’s neck for support, “there is something you haven’t given him. Your unconditional love and the chance to live a normal life.”

He bent so that his face was very close to hers. “And since when, pray, has love been proven to have healing powers?”

His anger was so fierce, so tangible, that the horse snorted and sidled away, its hide twitching as if to dispel flies.

Juliana folded her arms and glared at Stephen. “Maybe loving Oliver will not cure his affliction. But it might give hope and meaning to his days.” She wanted to say more—wanted to say that when the lad started wheezing and she held him close, his breathing seemed to ease. His exhalations came with less desperate effort, and he seemed more in control. But she could not tell Stephen that, for he had forbidden her to see his son.

“Hope and meaning,” Stephen repeated cynically. “Had I the power to create such things, I would. You believe me a hard and hateful man. Fortunately for you, you will not have to endure me much longer.”

She blinked, taken by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“The bishop of Bath has received my request for an annulment. The king has sent an emissary to meet the niece of the duke of Cleves, and there might be a wedding in the offing. No doubt he’s lost interest in tormenting me.”

Suddenly, inexplicably, she felt the burn of tears in her throat. “What are you saying?”

A joyless smile curved his mouth. “Come, Juliana, your understanding of English has always been remarkable. I’m saying you’ll soon be free to go.”

The thought struck her silent. At one time, she had wanted nothing more than to be away from this bucolic manor with its brooding lord, but of late she had thought little of escape. Now she felt a sense of frustration, almost desperation. She had just begun to understand Oliver. And she needed…

Juliana swallowed and made herself look at Stephen. She needed
him
.

“I cannot go,” she whispered.

For a moment, heat flashed in his eyes. Hope? Surprise? Triumph? It was too fleeting to tell, and he quickly concealed his emotions. “Why not? I thought you were a Russian princess with a blood oath to fulfill.”

“I
am
,” she shouted, almost hating him for the mockery in his voice. Then with a will, she tempered her ire. “I still have work to do here. The weaving house—”

“William Stumpe has that all very well in hand.”

“Then I—”

He held up a hand to silence her. “Enough, Juliana. We both agreed this would be a marriage in name only. That it would be temporary.” He reached out and cupped her chin in his hand. His thumb skimmed over her lower lip, and the look in his eyes was almost regretful as he said, “The pretense is up, Juliana. This forced marriage will be over soon.”

T
hree weeks had slipped by since Stephen first gave Juliana the news about the annulment. Of late, time seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. With Juliana around, one day was never like the last. She upset his routine. He was likely to find her teaching mime to country folk on the village green, doing pony tricks for children in the stableyard or finding some means to coax game out of the royal forest in order to put food on a poor man’s table.

He should have been annoyed but instead found himself entranced, watching her, wondering what she would do next.

Alone, he tromped through the maze one afternoon, the autumn sun warm upon his neck, and the feeling in his heart as bleak as winter’s barren hopelessness.

He rarely visited Oliver during the day; their meetings were too strained and formal. Neither father nor son dared to breach the invisible distance between them. But the maze needed tending. The correct path was well worn, while the byways to dead ends had become overgrown from disuse. With heavy steps of his booted feet, he trod the paths and used a set of clippers to trim the dense, thorny hedges.

The clippers were a device of his own invention, long-handled to reach the topmost places, worked with a cord-and-pulley system. He clipped the hedges with a steady, dogged rhythm, comforting in its mindlessness.

Three weeks. A letter from Bath lay upon his desk. He had but to sign his name to paper. Then he would be free. Free of Juliana. Never to see her again. Never to watch her eyes light with amazement at one of his inventions. Never to hear the unexpected chime of her laughter. Never to return her challenging glare across the supper table. Never to comfort her in the night when she cried out in terror at the bloody visions in her dreams.

Never again to touch her.

He snapped the clippers with a savage jerk. God, if she knew.

If she knew, she would eat you alive
, he assured himself.

Jesu. When they had last spoken alone, amid the gypsy horses, it had taken all of his restraint to keep from sweeping her into his arms, burying his face in her hair and—God forgive him—holding out his heart to her in both hands.

He prowled through the maze, snipping viciously at a branch here, a twig there. A witch. That’s what she was. An evil enchantress. God knew what she was sprinkling on his food. What strange incantations she mumbled while he slept. But it was working, damn her. He wanted her. Badly. Badly enough to—

He cut the thought short, for he found himself standing at the edge of Oliver’s garden.

How long has it been, my lord, since you took that child in your arms and told him that you love him?

Juliana’s words tormented him still. It was ridiculous, he told himself. He had loved Dickon, and Dickon had
died. Dickon had taken his father’s heart; Meg had taken Stephen’s soul and battered it with guilt. There was nothing left for Oliver.

Neither did Oliver, in his strange and silent little world, seem to need anything from Stephen. The painful thought entered his mind as he stopped at the garden well to wash off the sweat and hedge clippings. Stephen’s meetings with Oliver were stiffly decorous, the boy reciting his Latin lesson or demonstrating his swiftness at figuring sums while Stephen gave his awkward approval. Oliver was a grave lad content in the tightly bounded place Stephen had created for him.

Or was he?

Every once in a while there was a rebellion, as if a small tempest swept into the snug house. Oliver would hurl something, shout in anger, break one of his toys. But the infrequent storms were quickly over and forgotten.

Shaking off water like a large dog, Stephen entered the house quietly and stopped in the kitchen. As he was drying himself off with a linen towel, he was surprised to see a most interesting array of foods. Carrots and parsnips. Sprigs of salad greens and fennel. A bowl of fresh apples. A fat roasted capon on a cutting board.

Dame Kristine must have quite an appetite these days. Stephen wrenched a leg off the capon and bit into it. Delicious. It was a pity Oliver couldn’t—

He forbade himself to finish the thought. Oliver’s diet had to be severely restricted. The regimen of gruel and foul medicines finally seemed to be helping. In the past few weeks the lad had put on a bit of weight, and the color in his cheeks seemed better.

As Stephen turned to go up the stairs, his foot encountered a well-gnawed bone. What could Dame Kristine be
thinking? He had never known her to be careless in her housekeeping. He would speak to her at once.

His tread was slow on the stairs. He had to gird himself for each visit like a warrior on the verge of pitched battle. Yet no matter how hard he tried to armor himself, one part of him always lay exposed.

His heart.

Coming in the daytime was even riskier than visiting at night. At midday Oliver was likely to be more wakeful, harder to resist. And lately, these past few weeks, need had shone more acutely in his eyes.

As if the lad had finally become aware of a great emptiness in his sheltered life.

At night, in those twilight moments between wakefulness and sleep, Stephen could hold him and inhale his little-boy scent and pretend, just for a moment, that Oliver was healthy and strong. That in the morning he would bound out of bed to go riding at the quintain with Kit, to play hoodman blind with the village children.

Stephen paused outside the chamber door to marshal his nerves. It was quiet within; perhaps the boy was napping. Lately Oliver fell asleep more readily, as if exhausted by his day.

The thought chilled Stephen. Perhaps the fatigue portended the worst. Perhaps, despite his increasing girth, Oliver was failing.

Stephen pressed his forehead against the door frame and squeezed his eyes shut. Last winter, while in the grip of a high fever, Oliver had fixed his bright eyes on Stephen and said, “I want to be an angel. I’d make a very good angel, don’t you think Papa?”

And the worst of it was, the boy spoke truly. Stephen had said nothing, only turned away to hide the agony in
his face. Then he had gone on a hunt for boar, savagely killing the luckless beast like a pagan performing a sacrifice, pleading to the gods for mercy.

Haunted by the grim memory, Stephen pressed the latch and stepped into the room.

He was unprepared for the flood of sunlight that greeted him. Dr. Strong had expressly forbidden direct sunlight; it unbalanced the humors grossly. Stephen looked at the bed, and his heart fell still.

Empty. Oliver’s bed was empty.

Stephen crossed the room swiftly, crushing unseen toys beneath his feet. The bedclothes were all in a mess—as if the boy had been snatched up in haste.

No, please God, no
…His heart jolted back into a painful rhythm as he threw back his head and screamed, “Dame Kristine!”

The woman was nowhere to be found. Doubtless she was off searching for him to deliver the news he had been dreading for years.

The house and garden and maze passed in a blur as he raced back toward Lynacre Hall. Fighting a bloodred haze of furious grief, he tried to be rational, tried to stay calm.

He had known from the moment of Oliver’s birth that this day would come. He had had years to prepare himself. He would not let himself be destroyed by this passing.

And yet as he ran, he could not shut out the memories. With each ragged breath he took, each hammerlike thud of his heart, he remembered. Holding Oliver’s warm newborn body in the crook of his arm while clutching Meg’s lifeless hand. Savoring the joy of his son’s first smile and plummeting into despair over his first blue-lipped attack of wheezing. Practicing blatant deception to shield Oliver from the world. Watching him toddle his
first steps, hearing him speak his first words, seeing him reach with chubby hands for his father.

What a fool I have been,
Stephen acknowledged as he rushed to the main gate of the manor. He slammed his back against the gatehouse wall. Breathing hard, he stared up at the crisp autumn blue sky.
I have loved him all along. His death is going to pound me into dust.

As he covered the distance to the hall to search for Dame Kristine, he felt a furnace of rage building inside him. Its destructive force threatened to erupt, yet he beat it back, certain that once unleashed the anger would devour his sanity. And in the midst of all the wild, whirling, red-hot fury, he found himself wanting Juliana, wanting to bury himself in her sweetness, wanting, with the foolishness of a callow youth, for her to comfort him.

Though he stormed through every room and office of Lynacre Hall, he could not find Kristine. Frustrated, he went to the kitchen in search of Nance Harbutt, only to learn from a cringing scullion that she had gone down to the gypsy camp to get a pot repaired.

This from a woman who swore gypsies were at the root of every plague and crop failure in the past hundred years.

Moving with the relentlessness of a siege engine, he stalked to the stables. While the grooms ducked for cover, Stephen leaped upon Capria’s bare back and jabbed in his heels. The large, powerful mare could be dangerous when ridden in such a fashion, but Stephen didn’t see how his own safety could matter now.

He galloped down to the river meadows and wished that numbness would overcome him. He wished he did not see and hear and feel so clearly, and yet he could not escape the riot of images that lay before him as he entered the camp. The skirl of pipes and the chime of bells, the
laughter on the autumn wind. The sight of Juliana clapping her hands in pure joy as a gaggle of gypsy children raced past in pursuit of a bouncing ball. The jubilant yelps of Pavlo and several mongrels cavorting in their midst.

It was a scene of unabashed revelry—smiling faces, bright music, strong-limbed gypsies. The dark force inside Stephen made him yearn to hurl himself straight at Juliana. To shake her and shout at her: My son is gone, damn you!

Instead he moved with the stiff-necked dignity of simmering wrath, dismounting to stride across the muddy track that ran lengthwise through the gypsy camp.

He could not trust his voice to greet her. He merely planted himself in front of her and said, “I came looking for Nance Harbutt.”

Juliana’s face blanched. Her gaze darted to the throng of racing children and dogs. Then she looked back at Stephen. Her smile had a forced quality. “She is somewhere about, my lord.” She grasped his sleeve and gave it a tug as if she were eager to pull him away from the area. “Come, I think she is with the tinker—”

At that moment a large ball made of an inflated bladder and beslimed with fresh mud struck him with a great splat on the side of his head.

Stunned silence fell over the camp. Juliana, her own face bearing a few droplets of mud, stared in horror at him. And the light in her eyes danced like new leaves in a breeze, bright with mirth she dared not indulge.

“My lord,” she said in a tight-throated whisper, “’twas an acc—”

“Who threw that ball?” Laszlo bellowed. “By God, I will tan him like a butchered ram!”

Juliana pressed her lips together. Laughing at him. She was laughing at him.

With a shaking hand he scraped the mud from the side of his face and wiped his fingers on his cloak. He felt it again—that same killing rage that had gripped him the night Juliana had discovered Oliver.

As from a great distance, Stephen heard Laszlo repeat his question.

“
I
threw it,” said a high, clear voice.

“Oh, no.” Ducking her head, Juliana whispered something foreign under her breath.

Shaken to his core, Stephen turned toward the familiar voice. He expected to encounter a ghost. Instead, he saw a pack of ragtag children, their eyes round and white in contrast to their mud-streaked faces.

Skinny bare legs and feet coated in mud. Impish grins shining with mirth.

And one of the urchins, the lad who had spoken, stepped to the fore as if he were their acknowledged leader.

Stephen thought he had gone mad. He blinked, certain he was seeing things. “
Oliver
?”

The lad nodded. “’Twas I who threw the ball.” He showed no shame, only a fierce and heartbreaking sense of pride.

Stephen sank to one knee. Oliver wore nothing more than a broad grin and a tunic of rough brown homespun. Before Stephen knew what he was doing, he grasped Oliver’s thin shoulders and pulled him against his chest, heedless of the mud and the crushed grass beneath his knees. Then he lifted Oliver and began striding toward his horse.

The boy squirmed, all bony elbows and knees. “Papa, I can walk—”

“Hush. I’ll take you home where you’ll be safe.”

“I don’t
want
to go home!” With surprising strength, Oliver jabbed his elbow into Stephen’s side. “I want to stay and play!”

“Nonsense, lad, you must hie yourself back to bed. You can’t play—” Even as the words came out, Stephen realized what he was saying. “Oliver—”

His son’s thin body snapped like a bow. The familiar deadly wheezing sound eked from his throat. His eyes flared unnaturally bright. His hands convulsed. His cheeks faded to the color of chalk clay.

Stephen had suffered through Oliver’s attacks countless times before. But never in broad daylight. Never before an audience of gypsies.