At The King's Command (25 page)

Juliana rushed forward, fumbling for something within the folds of her skirt. She held out a damp white cloth.

“Try this, my lord. ’Tis ephedra, and sometimes it helps.”

A witch’s cure. Stephen slapped it away. The cloth landed in the dirt. He glared at Juliana. “You’re responsible for this. What in God’s name did you hope to prove by exposing Oliver to danger?”

She started to speak, but the lad’s mouth began to work as he wheezed. His eyes had taken on a wide-flown, helpless look. When an attack came, Dr. Strong had instructed, the lad must be shut up in his room, the braziers stoked with herbs, and the shutters drawn against noxious sunlight and garden air.

But here, in the dazzling clear autumn day in the midst of a broad riverside meadow, Stephen had no notion of what to do.

“Lay your cloak on the grass, my lord.” Juliana spoke from behind him.

“J…J…Jul…” Oliver stretched his arms toward her.

Stephen nearly came undone. The lad was using the
last of his strength to reach for the woman who had dragged him out of his secure little world and thrust him amid unwashed strangers.

For want of a better plan, Stephen did as she suggested, placing his small son upon the cloak she spread on the soft meadow grass. He stepped back to watch…and to pray for his son’s life.

Juliana sent him an odd look, then dropped to the ground. She gathered Oliver close, stroking his muddied cheek, pressing her lips to his pale hair, holding the herb-soaked cloth to his nose.

At first Stephen was too stunned to move. To breathe. The picture they made turned his world upside down. She was a madonna, her face suffused with terror and soul-deep love. Oliver’s hands clutched desperately at her. His chest convulsed in a sharp, irregular rhythm. And his gaze stayed focused on her face.

She began to croon lightly, a foreign lay that held the echoes of an ancient melody. Her hands caressed him—his back, his arms, his struggling chest.

“Jesu, what are you doing?” Stephen demanded, finding his voice at last. “You’ll smother the lad.” He knelt beside her. “Goddamn you,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “Leave my son alone. The physicians told me he needs space. Move back and give him room to expel the bad humors.”

Still she ignored Stephen, her loving gaze fixed on Oliver’s red, contorted face, her gentle hands stroking and stroking, echoing the slow and subtle rhythm of the gypsy song.

Stephen had no notion what to do. He could not very well grab the boy away from her—but neither could he sit by and watch her suffocate his son with her good intentions.

“Please,” he whispered. “Juliana—” The words stopped in his throat, for something was happening with Oliver. An abatement of the strained wheezing. A calmness in the silver-blue eyes. A gentling in his chest.

After only moments of suffering, the lad was breathing easier. Normally he took hours to recover. It was a miracle. A bloody miracle.

“Son?” Stephen whispered. He reached out, caught himself, and dropped his hand. “Oliver? Are you better?”

Oliver expelled a grateful breath of air. “Better now, Papa.” He lay relaxed, looking curiously wise and adult.

“Juliana.” Stephen spoke past a thickness in his throat. “That attack ended so quickly.” The whirling fury of his emotions nearly overwhelmed him. In the span of an hour, he had gone from painful grief to cautious, shining joy.

“Holding him close seems to calm him. The gypsy herb works far better than leeching and cupping. I know it is contrary to the doctor’s orders, but Dame Kristine has noticed it, too.”

Oliver stood. He wobbled slightly. Stephen reached out to grab him, but Juliana held his hand back.

“Look what I can do, Papa!” The lad went to the middle of the camp where the children had already resumed their game. Appalled, Stephen started after him.

“No, wait,” Juliana said. “He knows he must not play too hard after an attack. Trust him, Stephen.”

“You’ve done this before.” His anger was alive and writhing, choking him.
How dare she?
“How long have you been playing me for a fool, Juliana?”

“Do you mean, how long have I been taking care of my stepson?” she shot back. “From the very day I discovered that you keep the poor child hidden like a dirty
little secret. I have banished all those nasty quack-salver remedies and all that terrible food. I have held your son close, laughed with him and wept with him.”

“And come close to killing him,” Stephen said.

She flinched as if he had jabbed her with a pin. “Have I?” she demanded. “Look at him, Stephen. Look at him for a moment and tell me he is close to death.”

Oliver had joined in the game in a modified fashion. Rather than running for the ball, he flung out an arm and shouted something. Pavlo streaked amid the running children.

“What’s that he said?” Stephen asked.

“Go fetch. I am teaching him Russian.”

Jesu. She was teaching his son bloody Russian.

Pavlo dove into the herd of running children. Canine yelps and merry laughter erupted from the brood. Then the dog broke free, returning with the ball to Oliver.

Oliver laughed with a clear, sweet voice. Lustily. Joyously. As if he had not just survived a life-threatening attack.

She had done it, Stephen thought in wonder. When doctors and astrologers and alchemists had failed, she had found a way to bring the episode to a fast end. He was not so foolish as to believe Oliver was cured, but she had shown him that a loving touch alone could be more healing than any medicine.

As Stephen turned to Juliana, he knew his face was naked, knew his heart was in his eyes, knew his smile was ablaze with gratitude and amazement. And before he could stop himself, the words burst forth from the depths of his soul.

“I love you, Juliana,” he said.

“I hate you, Papa!” Oliver said in his most churlish tone. “You always put everything your way. I want my bed
here
.” He planted his skinny leg on a sun-flooded spot beside the oriel window of his new bedchamber.

Stephen gritted his teeth. Bringing Oliver to live at Lynacre Hall was something he had never dared to contemplate. Yet here he stood in the room Juliana had chosen. It was an airy little chamber situated in the upper level of the hall, off the center of the open walkway. His long muzzle between his paws, Pavlo lazed on the floor in a bar of sunlight.

Juliana had convinced Stephen that this move would help Oliver feel less like an invalid.

Oliver was doing his best to behave like an infuriating, ungovernable little boy.

“Now, son,” Stephen said, his voice rusty with repressed impatience, “that’s too close to the window. You’ll catch a chill on cold nights.”

Oliver thrust out his lower lip. “I like being by the window. I
want
to be by the window. I
hate
y—”

“What an impossible little snot you are being.” Juliana breezed into the room like a breath of spring after a dark winter. She looked particularly ravishing this morning in a gown of blue-flowered damask and a pretty winged coif. At moments like this, Stephen believed she could actually be the princess she claimed, and he realized he did not care one way or the other.

I love you
. Had he really spoken those words to her only the day before?

Aye, and the jewel-bright feeling came rushing back. Had Oliver not been present, Stephen would have spoken them yet again. He would have swept her up into his
arms, twirled her around, and shouted his declaration a hundred times.

She kissed the top of Oliver’s white-blond head even as she scolded, “Of course you may not have the bed right next to the window, brat.”

Oliver licked the palm of his hand and smashed down his cowlick. “Why not?”

She dropped her voice to an ominous note and said something in Romany or Russian; Stephen could not tell which.

Oliver’s mouth dropped open. “Truly?”

“Truly. Now, take Pavlo and help Dame Kristine at the garden gate. I just saw her arrive with a barrowload of your toys.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Oliver patted his thigh and spoke in Russian. Pavlo lurched to his feet. The boy and the dog raced from the room and clumped down the stairs.

Stephen scratched his head. “What did you tell him to make him so agreeable?”

She laughed. “Something my grandmother Luba told me when I was very small. If a child sleeps too close to a window, a demon will come and snatch his soul out through his nostrils.”

“Oh, that’s helpful.”

“It was a bald lie. I knew it when I was small, and Oliver knows it.”

“Then why did he give in to you?”

“Because I did not dictate to him nor try to force my will on him. I gave him a reason to agree without losing his pride.”

Stephen went to the window and pressed the latch. Oliver and Pavlo cavorted near the garden wall while Dame Kristine ordered retainers about.

“I’ve much to learn about my son,” he said.

“I do not know all the answers, Stephen.”

“He says he hates me.”

“He adores you. Trust me.”

“We’re awkward together.” He turned from the window. “We don’t…fit.”

“That takes time. And patience and understanding.” She leaned her cheek against the carved bedpost and looked at him with the world in her eyes.

I love you
. The words sang out from his heart and seemed to hang, still unspoken, between them. It was as if they both saw them written in the air.

“Juliana, what I said yesterday…”

“Yes?”

“It was the wrong time.” Aye, the right words, spoken at the wrong time. “I had no call…I should not have said it.”

“Why not?” She regarded him placidly, as if she did not care what his answer was.

He flexed his hands, feeling clumsy with his unwieldy emotions. “I promised you an annulment. Is that what you still want?”

She bit her lip. “Is it what
you
want?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “We never got a chance to speak in all the excitement over bringing Oliver to live at the hall.”

Her mouth curved in a smile that did not reach her eyes. “It took you half the night to explain to the servants and convince them that I am not a witch who simply conjured Oliver out of thin air.” She pushed away from the bedpost and took a step toward him. “Stephen, what will happen now that everyone knows you have a living son?”

“You ask that now.” Bitterness flavored his words. “You should have wondered that before announcing Oliver’s presence to the world.”

“You can still protect him. If he is summoned to court, you can simply refuse.”

A bark of ill humor escaped him. “Nothing is simple where King Henry and Thomas Cromwell are concerned.”

“Never mind the king and Cromwell. You and Oliver must learn to get on together.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Everything is simple to you.”

Shouts came from below. They heard footfalls on the stair and the clicking of Pavlo’s nails.

Juliana seemed relieved by the interruption. “We will find time to speak of this later. For now, think of your son. The two of you are strangers.” She regarded him thoughtfully. “The gypsies could help, I think.”

“For the love of God, Juliana, then tell—”

“Look at this!” Oliver stopped in the doorway. He formed a hoop of his arms and yelled a command. Pavlo leaped through the hoop, knocking the boy to the floor. Stepping over the giggling boy, servants arrived with more of Oliver’s belongings.

“Later,” Juliana said, and laughter danced in her eyes.

Stephen could not believe he had agreed to Juliana’s mad plan. Mounting his horse in the stableyard, he felt his stomach churn at the thought of the solemn Romany rite he was about to perform. The gut-deep feeling reminded him of his pagan marriage. Though all his moral instincts and Christian principles clamored a denial, he felt himself being drawn into the mystique of the ceremony.

As he rode Capria out through the postern gate, he could not escape an onslaught of memories. It was as if each part of the estate now held a memory of her. Of Juliana.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She was his temporary bride. He was supposed to recover from his feelings for her and then be immune forever. He should not be thinking of her at all.

Yet as he rode along the ridge of a hill, he recalled her first glimpse of Lynacre Hall. He had expected the slack-jawed awe of a beggar for her betters. Instead he had gotten a cool, faintly disdainful acceptance. As if Lynacre were less grand than manors she was accustomed to.

To the northwest he could just make out the spires of Malmesbury. Only a few short months ago it had been an abandoned abbey crumbling to ruin. Thanks to Juliana’s inspiration, the abbey was now a prosperous weaving factory.

He passed the copyhold of the widow Shane. The fields were neatly cut and gleaned, awaiting the autumn sowing, thanks to the gypsy laborers. Stephen had no idea how Juliana had wrung the toil from them. Normally they fled from farm labor like demons from red garlic.