At the Queen's Summons (11 page)

“My lord, the gown is fine. The dressmaker and her assistants were not to my taste.”

“Did they offend you?”

“I didn't take offense on my own behalf. I've been called far worse than whore, laced mutton, primped pigeon—or was it poppet…?” She sent him her most insouciant grin, then her most outraged scowl. “It's what they said about you, my lord, that enraged me.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Oh? And what might that be?”

“Well, I'm not certain. I've never heard such talk before. What does bedswerver mean?”

His face flushed scarlet, and he ducked his head. “I do not understand the Sassenach, letting their women talk like tavern doxies.”

“And what do you ‘let' your women in Ireland do?” she asked.

Icy fury replaced the sheepish humor in his face. Then he blinked, and the dark look passed. “We don't let them do anything. They do as they please.” He stepped toward her. “I'm sorry you had to endure those harpies. Let me help you dress. I swear I'll not call you names, except, perhaps…” He cleared his throat, endearingly discomfited.

“Except what?”

“A storin.
Or perhaps
a gradh.”
His eyes smiled into her soul, raising a shiver on her skin.

She could not have resisted if she wanted to. “I submit!” she cried out in a theatrical swoon, bringing her wrist to her brow and swaying perilously. “I am yours to do what you will with me!”

Chuckling, he surveyed the elements of the costume on the bed. “I'm not certain I know how all this goes together. Truly, I do not know how you have managed to make the O Donoghue Mór play the handmaid not once, but twice.”

“You secretly love it. You know you do.”

He picked up an evil, steel-spined object. “A corset?”

“No, thank you. I have never understood why people wish to rearrange the way the Lord made them.”

“Let us do this underskirt, then. It is pretty enough.”

It was nothing less than splendid, the fine blue fabric shot through with silver threads, the hem worked in the same scalloped design as the sleeves. He pulled it over her head and positioned it around her waist. With his hands around behind her, he began tying the laces.

She experienced an overwhelming urge to lay her cheek upon his chest, to close her eyes and revel in their closeness. What would he say? she wondered, if he knew he had given her the only tenderness she had ever known?

Before she found the courage to confess her thoughts, he added the overskirt of heavier fabric, parted in the front to reveal the dainty underskirt.

Then came the bodice. “This is all backward, my lord,” Pippa declared when he stepped behind her to lace it. “What possible use is a garment that laces up the
back?”

“'Tis of social value. It proves you're rich enough to have maids to dress you.”

“Oh. And how rich need I be that I have an Irish chieftain to dress me?”

“For that,” he said, his warm breath caressing the back of her neck, “you need only be Pippa.” His knuckles grazed her as he worked, and she began to tingle all over.

He gave her a feeling of coming to a roaring fire from out of the bitter cold. If it were possible to actually float, she would have done so. He had a perfect sense of what to say, when to tease and when to be serious. He was magical, his charm so abundant that she paid no heed to the occasional shadow that fell over him.

She laughed at the extra sleeves he laced over her
blousy white chemise. Apparently the more sleeves one possessed, the better. She balked, at last, when he picked up the stiff ruff collar.

“You can send that back to the torture chamber it came from,” she declared. “I've done time in stocks that are more comfortable than that. Why on earth would someone take forty spans of lace, then crumple it up and make it all stiff with—with—”

“Starch, they call it,” he said. “Because someone terribly clever invented starch, I suppose. This is meant to be sewn on after you're dressed.”

“Is
that
how the collar stays on? How perfectly ridiculous. No wonder the nobles look like stuffed puppets who spend four hours dressing each day.”

He winked at her and set down the ruff. “If you don't wish to wear it, I have a better idea.”

“What is that?”

From a pouch on his hip he took a glittering necklace. The stones were rounded and polished, aglow with violet fire. Strange and sinuous knotwork twisted through the silver setting.

“Holy mother of God,” she whispered. “It is too precious for me to wear.”

“Believe me, you have more worth than a bauble. I had meant this as a gift for another lady, but she's being recalcitrant.”

A chill touched her heart. She should hardly be surprised by his preference for another, but that did not dull the hurt. “Surely, Your Serenity, you should save it for that lady.”

He paused with the necklace dangling elegantly from his fingers. “Glory be,” he said softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I believe you are jealous.”

“Ha!” she burst out, her face flaming. “That is but a
fond dream of yours, my lord Peacock. Flatter yourself not at my expense.”

He laughed softly. “Your protests flatter me.”

“Conceit,” she said, “thy name is O Donoghue.”

When he stopped laughing, he said, “This was not a gift of the heart, but one of diplomacy. It was meant for the queen.”

It was the last answer she had expected. “You want me to wear a necklace you brought for the queen?”

“For Gloriana herself.” His tone mocked the name. “You would improve on the beauty of the jewel. It's amethyst,” he said, “mined from the hills of the Burren.” He stepped behind her and fastened the clasp. “The design is Celtic. Very ancient.”

And lovely, its facets flashing as she moved this way and that. She whirled around to face him. “Are you magic?” she demanded.

He frowned, his black brows knitting in bemusement. “Magic?”

“You know. Under an enchantment. Mab once told me a story about a fairy prince who comes to life and grants a woman's every wish.”

“I'm a chieftain, not a prince,” he said, “and I'm certainly no fairy.”

She almost laughed at his wry indignation. Then he bent and brushed his lips over her brow. The fluttering wingbeat of his caressing mouth echoed deep inside her.

“But I do confess,” he whispered, “the idea of granting your every wish does have a certain appeal.”

T
here is a masque tonight at Durham House, but we have declined the invitation. Richard will go, for Richard is too young to be burdened with my pain. Ah, how hard we labor to protect our children. Richard has never known of our loss; since it occurred before he was born, we saw no point in telling him.

Only my dear husband understands the private ritual I perform each year on this day, the anniversary of the tragedy. At sunset, I shall take a bit of wood and a candle down the watersteps, just there, at the spot where I kissed my tiny daughter goodbye so long ago. I shall remember looking into her wide, trusting eyes and pressing an extra kiss “for later” into the palm of her chubby hand.

Then I'll set the little boat adrift with the candle burning, and I'll stand on the bank and watch it while the tears come, and I shall pray for the strength to bear the unbearable.

—Lark de Lacey,
Countess of Wimberleigh

“I
'll not be carried in a box like a corpse,” Pippa declared.

Annoyed by her mutiny, Aidan took a deep breath. Donal Og and Iago exchanged looks of pure exasperation. Summoning an excess of patience, Aidan said, “Coaches seem strange to me as well. But Lord Lumley assured me that people of fashion ride in them.”

Like a wispy blue fairy with a sour disposition, she peered suspiciously into the dark interior of the boxy wooden Mecklenburg coach. “
Dead
people of fashion,” she groused. “This is a hearse.”

“It is like a pageant-wagon,” Iago said.

Aidan scowled at him. “What's a pageant-wagon?”

“They park them on street corners and act out plays on them.” Iago folded his arms across his chest. “Right,
pequeña?”

“This is nothing like a pageant-wagon. It's all enclosed and dark within,” she said. “It must be for people who have something to hide.”

Which makes me the perfect passenger, thought Aidan.

“Or people who do not care where they are going.” She glared up at the driver, who perched on a narrow railed bench in front of the box. He glared back.

“I'll look after you,” Aidan promised. With both large hands fitted snugly around her waist, he lifted her up and in. Then he took a seat on the lumpy horsehair bench opposite her. The interior of the coach was dim and close, smelling of leather and horse. The intimacy seized him, and his breath caught with an excruciating feeling of warmth for the recalcitrant woman scowling at him.

“You
still
haven't bedded the wench,” Donal Og remarked in Irish as he and Iago clambered into the coach. “That much I can tell from your pained expression.”

“Donal Og,” Aidan said with surprising calm, “you are my blood kin, the closest thing I have to a brother. But if you make one more remark like that, I will cheerfully change your religion.”

The driver cracked his whip and whistled. The coach surged forward. Pippa swore, nearly lurching out of her seat.

Donal Og slapped his hands on his knees. “What, the ice-eyed O Donoghue Mór is falling in love with a common doxy?”

“I won't hear her insulted, even in Gaelic.”

“It is love,” said Iago, nodding and rubbing his chin.

Setting his jaw, Aidan stole a surreptitious glance at Pippa. The glow of the sunset gilded her as she sat across from him, her cheek against the side of the unglazed window and her daintily gloved hands clenched in her lap. Moist-lipped, wide-eyed, her curls a halo, she had never looked more enchanting.

“I can't love her,” Aidan muttered, stung by a feeling of futility.

“What makes you think you have a choice?” asked Donal Og.

“Speak English,” Pippa said, “else I'll think you're talking about me. But of course you are.” She shook an accusing finger. “Aren't you?”

“Yes,” Iago admitted before Aidan could stop him. “We are explaining to the O Donoghue Mór that he has fallen in love with you.”

“I am blessed by the most loyal of friends,” said Aidan, his ears burning.

And after all, it was Pippa who rescued him, laughing. “Don't be ridiculous, Iago. Are such romantic illusions peculiar to the Irish, or to men in general? Now, cease your gossip and pay attention. I shall tell you about this part of London.”

“As you wish.” Iago put out a strong arm to steady her as the coach swayed around a corner and started down Ivy Bridge Lane.

As she chattered on about famous houses and shops, Aidan wished he could feel for Pippa a simple, healthy, red-blooded lust. Instead, he looked at her and was seized by an emotion so piercing he felt actual pain.

She touched people. Affected them. Iago was her devoted slave. Even Donal Og, as hard and rugged as the Cliffs of Moher, admired her. And when he thought no one noticed, he was patient and kind. She brought out a man's urge to protect, perhaps because she insisted on not being protected at all.

As if she felt him looking at her, she met his gaze. A fleeting, almost shy smile curved her lips. “This is not so bad after all, Your Abundance,” she said. “I rather like riding in a coach.”

He answered her with a smile, taking pleasure in her enjoyment.
Who are you?
he wondered. The sad truth was, she had probably been born to a trull who could not afford to keep her, didn't want her. The words she had
spoken came back to haunt him:
Was I meant to be found, or to lie there and die?

He wanted to hold her close, to stroke her hair and reassure her, to promise her she had not been abandoned but was simply lost. What sort of creature would leave a child like Pippa? He could almost believe she had no mother at all, but was made by the
sidhe.

After passing under the gatehouse archway and into an inner courtyard, the coach lumbered and creaked to a halt. Liveried footmen swarmed forth to help the passengers out. Durham House was lofty and stately, with marble pillars and two great turrets. The grace-and-favor residence embodied the very essence of English wealth and privilege. Yet rather than holding it in awe, Aidan felt contempt. The Sassenach labored hard to set himself above his people. Not so Aidan, and his blood was the blood of kings. He held his banquets and councils in broad, open fields, welcoming all rather than walling himself off from the common folk.

He glanced at Pippa and saw that she was impressed indeed, pausing at the main door to finger a silk tassel hanging from a bellpull. But when she began to untie the prize, he realized her intent and chuckled. “I think it would be bad form to be caught nicking the furnishings.”

In the anteroom of the gallery, servants gaped in open admiration at Pippa, and Aidan felt a swell of pride. Not so long ago, these awestruck retainers would not have found her good enough to spit upon; now they bowed and stooped, convinced she was a highborn lady.

Bug-eyed stares greeted Iago; there was the usual amount of surreptitious brushing against him to see if his coloring was real or just painted on. He bore it all with his usual charm and aplomb.

At the arched entranceway to the gallery, they could
see a whirling sea of merrymakers. Pippa hesitated, her color fading to a chalky pallor. To Aidan's surprise, she looked terrified. But then, before he could reassure her, she threw back her shoulders, lifted her chin and swept forward proudly, trailed by Iago and a dozen slack-jawed stares.

Donal Og nudged Aidan hard in the ribs. “We have not even been announced yet. What will happen when the guests see them?”

 

People were staring. Pippa noticed that right away as she walked between Iago and Donal Og, all three of them preceding Aidan, the ranking lord. The first person they encountered was a man in a red silk doublet. His splendid mustache flew outward as he greeted them. Pippa pointed her toe, about to launch into a curtsy.

Donal Og put his hand discreetly on her arm. “That's the majordomo, lass. He'll announce us.”

The very idea of being announced was as heady as a cup of fine wine.

The majordomo shouted out their names to the other guests in the crowded room. A mass of people, easily as many as she had seen gathered at St. Paul's, turned inquisitive looks on the Irish party.

Iago, of course, was the most striking, with his dark skin and bright cloak, his ready smile. Like a seasoned performer, he played to the curiosity seekers, flaring his nostrils and pressing his palms together as if performing some exotic, foreign greeting.

Pippa earned her living by making a spectacle of herself, so she found the attention gratifying. Introduced as the mistress of revels of the O Donoghue Mór, she beamed at the watching throng, singling out a few for a special nod or wave—a fat man encased like sausage in
an overstuffed doublet and scarlet hose, a lady holding a spangled half mask to her face, a pageboy who nearly choked on a grape when she winked at him.

“So this is our Irish chieftain,” a man exclaimed, smiling with ill-concealed fury at Aidan. “You look quite as savage as your father.” The smile hardened. “He murdered my own father, you know. I am Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton.”

Pippa stared in astonishment as hatred crackled between the two—the slim, elegant Englishman and the magnificent, black-haired Irish chieftain.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Aidan said, his voice toneless, almost bland. “It is a pity your father attempted to drive off a herd of my father's cattle without paying for them.” He walked away.

Pippa started after him, but Iago held her back. “Give him time to simmer down. He is not fond of defending his father.”

Donal Og joined his cousin, bent his fair head to Aidan's dark one and whispered something in Gaelic. Aidan gave him a curt reply, then turned and took Pippa's hand, leading her down three steps into the crowd.

A blur of London's elite followed on a whirlwind of introductions: the Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor, a Swedish princess, three knights from Saxony, an admiral and a bishop, and dozens of grande dames and ladies of rank. Lady Helmsley dropped her feathered mask, raised a pair of spectacles to her eyes and peered at Pippa.

Pippa, who had never seen spectacles before, leaned forward and peered back.

“Is it customary for an Irish lord to go about with his mummer?” the lady asked. “And a bodyguard of one hundred savages?”

Pippa sent her a dazzling smile. “Madam, do you have
a point to make or are you simply trying to convince me you are a horse's backside?”

“Well!” The lady fanned herself in agitation. “In sooth you must be his lightskirt.”

“Only in my dreams, Your Ladyship. Only in my dreams.”

Iago led her off before she did damage to the woman. The next people she encountered were far more pleasant—a merry poet named Sharpe, a pair of identical twins called Lucy and Letty, a fat woman with a goiter, and the queen's dwarf, Ann. The tiny, stocky lady fascinated Pippa, and they chatted happily for a few moments.

“Get yourself to court,” Ann advised her. “It's the only place for the likes of us.”

“You are likely correct,” Pippa admitted.

High in a railed gallery above the throng, musicians played a dance tune. After an hour of smiling and nodding, Pippa wanted desperately to dance. But Aidan's grim expression and stormy eyes warned her that now was not the time to ask him. Instead, she looked for a way to extract him from the press of admirers and curiosity seekers.

She gripped his arm. “Here comes that foul Lady Helmsley again. Shall I tell her she has a spider crawling up her back?”

The haughty grande dame glared at them and swept past. Pippa looked down into her hand at the diamond bracelet she held.

“Where did you get that?” Aidan asked in an undertone. “Ah, faith, mind your manners.” He snatched the pilfered bracelet from her and dropped it on the floor. “My lady,” he called after her, “you dropped this.” With an exaggerated courtly flourish, he restored it to her.

If Pippa had not known better, she would have
believed the sincerity of his glittering smile and gallant pose. In the blink of an eye, Lady Helmsley's disdain thawed. She thanked him with a disgusting simper before moving off.

“I genuflect to your Irish charm,” Pippa whispered.

“No more thievery,” Aidan muttered. “I mean it.”

She lifted her hand to her heart. “Word of honor.”

He glanced down at her, and his expression softened. “Are you hungry?”

“Always.”

And then he laughed. It was the most beautiful sound she knew. He led her through the crowd, and she could not help but notice how different he was from the English nobles.

The men in the room wore silken hose and kid slippers. The blousy canion trousers bulged obscenely, as if the wearer had done something disgraceful in them. The formfitting peascod doublets, all crusted with baubles, added a haughty puffiness to chests too skinny to impress on their own. Just as Iago had said, the English gentlemen had lovelocks bobbing beneath their velvet toques.

In contrast, Aidan wore leather leggings and boots cuffed at the knee, a tunic cinched at the waist by a wide belt decked with polished stones, and the dramatic blue mantle that swirled around him like a king's raiments.

“Colleen.” His soft voice near her ear startled her.

“What!”

“You're staring at me rather than feasting your eyes on the cream of English nobility.” Bemused, he placed a silver cup in her hand and coaxed her to drink.

She tasted the musky sweet wine and smiled. “In sooth, my lord, you are much more agreeable to look upon than the others.”

He muttered something Celtic and dark.

“What?” she demanded.

“Sometimes you are too frank for your own good.” He held her by the shoulders and turned her around to face the crowd.

“Now, pay attention,” he said sternly. “Look at those I point out. There are those who hold sway over the queen's favor, and their friendship would not come amiss.”