At the Queen's Summons (5 page)

Her rounded chin came up. “I never asked to stay forever. I can go back to Dove and Mortlock. We have plans to gain the patronage of…of the Holy Roman Emperor.”

He remembered her disreputable companions from St. Paul's—the portly and greasy Dove and the cadaverous Mortlock. “They must be mad with worry over you.”

“Those two?” She snorted and idly picked up the iron poker, stabbing at the log in the hearth. Sparks flew upward on a sweep of air, then disappeared. “They only worry about losing me because they need me to cry up a crowd. Their specialty is cutting purses.”

“I won't let you go back to them,” Aidan heard himself say. “I'll find you a—” he thought for a moment “—a situation with a gentlewoman—”

That made her snort again, this time with bitter laughter. “Oh, for that I should be well and truly suited.” She slammed the poker back into its stand. “It has long been my aim in life to empty some lady's slops and pour wine for her.” The hem of her skirts twitched in agitation as she pantomimed the menial work.

“It's a damned sight better than wandering the streets.” Irritated, he walked to the table and sloshed wine into a cup. The lightning flashed again, stark and cold in the April night.

“Oh, do tell, my lord.” She stalked across the room, slapped her palms on the table, leaned over and glared into his face. “Listen. I am an entertainer. I am good at it.”

So he had noticed. She could mimic any accent, highborn or low, copy any movement with fluid grace, change character from one moment to the next like an actor trying on different masks.

“I didn't ask you to drag me out of St. Paul's and into your life,” she stated.

“I don't remember any objections from you when I saved you from having your ears nailed to the stocks.” He tasted the wine, a sweet sack favored by the English nobility. He missed his nightly draft of poteen. Pippa was enough to make him crave
two
drafts of the powerful liquor.

“I was hungry. But that doesn't mean I've surrendered my life to you. I can get another position in a nobleman's household just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

She was so close, he could see the dimple that winked in her left cheek. She smelled of soap and sun-dried laundry, and now that her hair was fixed, it shone like spun gold in the glow from the hearth.

He took another sip of wine. Then, very gently, he set down the cup and reached across to touch a wispy curl that drifted across her cheek. “How can it be enough to simply survive?” he asked softly. “Do you never dream of doing more than that?”

“Damn
you,”
she said, echoing his words to her. She shoved away from the table and turned her back on him. There was a heartbreaking pride in the stiff way she held herself, the set of her shoulders and the haughty tilt of her head. “Goodbye, Your Worship. Thank you for our brief association. We shan't be seeing each other again.”

“Pippa, wait—”

In a sweep of skirts and injured dignity, she strode out of the hall, disappearing into the gloom of the cloister that bordered the herbiary. Aidan could not explain it, but the sight of her walking away from him caused a painful squeeze of guilt and regret in his chest.

He swore under his breath and finished his wine, then paced the room. He had more pressing matters to ponder than the fate of a saucy street performer. Clan wars and English aggression were tearing his district apart. The
settlement he had negotiated last year was shaky at best. A sad matter, that, since he had paid such a dear price for the settlement. He had bought peace at the cost of his heart.

The thought caused his mind to jolt back to Pippa. The ungrateful little female. Let her storm off to her chamber and sulk until she came to her senses.

It occurred to him then that she was the sort not to sulk, but to act. She had survived—and thrived—by doing just that.

A jagged spear of lightning split the sky just as a terrible thought occurred to him. Hurling the pewter wine cup to the floor, he dashed out of the house and into the cloister of Crutched Friars, running down the arcade to her door, jerking it open.

Empty. He passed through the refectory and emerged onto the street. He had been right. He saw Pippa in the distance, hurrying down the broad, tree-lined road leading to Woodroffe Lane and the eerie, lawless area around Tower Hill. A gathering wind stirred the bobbing heads of chestnut trees. Clouds rolled and tumbled, blackening the sky, and when he breathed in, he caught the heavy taste and scent of rain and the faint, sizzling tang of close lightning.

She walked faster still, half running.

Turn back,
he called to her silently, trying to will her to do his bidding.
Turn back and look at me.

Instead, she lifted her skirts and began to run. As she passed the communal well of Hart Street, lightning struck.

From where Aidan stood, it looked as if the very hand of God had cleaved the heavens and sent a bolt of fire down to bury itself in the breast of London. A crash of thunder seemed to shake the ground. The clouds burst open like a ripe fruit, and it began to rain.

For an Irishman, Aidan was not very superstitious, but thunder and lightning were a clear sign from a powerful source. He should not have let her go.

Without a second thought, he plunged into the howling storm, racing between the rows of wildly bending chestnut trees. The rain pelted him in huge, cold drops, and lightning speared down through the clouds once more.

He dragged a hand across his rain-stung eyes and squinted through the sodden twilight. Already the ditch down the middle of the street ran like a small, flooding river, carrying off the effluvia of London households.

People scurried for cover here and there, but the darkness had swallowed Pippa. He shouted her name. The storm drowned his voice. With a curse, he began a methodical search of each side alley and path he encountered, working south toward the river, turning westward toward St. Paul's each time he saw a way through.

The storm gathered force, belting him in the face, tearing at his clothes. Mud spattered him to the thighs, but he ignored it.

He went farther west, turning into each alley, calling her name. The rain blinded him, the wind buffeted him, the mud sucked at his feet.

At a particularly grim-looking street, the wind tore down a painted sign of a blue devil and hurled it to the ground. It struck a slanting cellar door, then fell sideways onto a pile of wood chippings.

He heard a faint, muffled cry. With a surge of hope, he flung away the sign and the sawdust.

There she sat, knees drawn up to her chest, face tucked into the hollow between her hugging arms. Thunder crashed again, and she flinched as if struck by a whip.

“Pippa!” He touched her quaking shoulder.

She screamed and looked up at him.

Aidan's heart lurched. Her face, battered by rain and tears, shone stark white in the storm-dulled twilight. The panic in her eyes blinded her; she showed no recognition of him. That look of mindless terror was one he had seen only once before—in the face of his father just before Ronan had died.

“Faith, Pippa, are you hurt?”

She did not respond to her name, but blurted out something he could not comprehend. A nonsense word or a phrase in a foreign tongue?

Shaken, he bent and scooped her up, holding her against his chest and bending his head to shield her from the rain as best he could. She did not resist, but clung to him as if he were a raft in a raging sea. He felt a surge of fierce protectiveness. Never had he felt so painfully alive, so determined to safeguard the small stranger in his arms.

Still she showed no sign of recognition, and did not do so while he dashed back to Lumley House. A host of demons haunted the girl who called herself Pippa Trueheart.

And Aidan O Donoghue was seized by the need to slay each and every one of them.

 

“Batten the hatches! Secure the helm! There's naught to do now but run before the wind!”

The man in the striped jacket had a funny, rusty voice. He sounded cross, or maybe afraid, like Papa had been when his forehead got hot and he had to go to bed and not have any visitors.

She clung to her dog's furry neck and looked across the smelly, dark enclosure at Nurse. But Nurse had her hands all twisted up in a string of rosy beads—the ones she hid from Mama, who was Reformed—and all Nurse could say was Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary.

Something scooped the ship up and up and up. She could feel the lifting in her belly. And then, much faster, a stronger force slapped them down.

Nurse screamed Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary…

The hound whined. His fur smelled of dog and ocean.

A cracking noise hurt her ears. She heard the whine of ropes running through pulleys and a shriek from the man in the funny coat, and suddenly she had to get out of there, out of that close, wet place where the water was filling up the floor, where her chest wouldn't let her breathe.

She pushed the door open. The dog scrambled out first. She followed him up a slanting wooden stair. Loose barrels skittered all through the passageways and decks. She heard a great roar of water. She looked back to find Nurse, but all she saw was a hand waving, the rosy beads braided through the pale fingers. Water covered Nurse all the way to the top of her head
….

“No!”
Pippa sat straight up in the bed. For a moment, the room was all a pulsating blur. Slowly, it came into focus. Low-burning hearth fire. Candle flickering on the table. High, thick testers holding up the draperies.

The O Donoghue Mór sitting at the end of the bed.

She pressed her hand to her chest, hating the twitchy, air-starved feeling that sometimes seized her lungs when she took fright or breathed noxious or frozen air. Her heart was racing. Sweat bathed her face and neck.

“Bad dream?” he asked.

She shut her eyes. Like a mist driven by the wind, the images flew away, unremembered, but her sense of terror lingered. “It happens. Where am I?”

“I've given you a private chamber in Lumley House.”

Her eyes widened in amazement, then narrowed in suspicion. “Why?”

“I am your patron. You'll lodge where I put you.”

She thrust up her chin. “And what do you require of me in exchange for living in the lap of luxury?”

“Why must I expect anything at all from you?”

She regarded him for a long, measuring moment. No, the O Donoghue Mór was certainly not the sort of man who had to keep unwilling females at his beck and call. Any woman in her right mind would want him. Except, of course, Pippa herself. But that did not stop her from enjoying his strikingly splendid face and form, nor did it keep her from craving—against all good sense—his warmth and closeness.

“I take it you don't like storms,” he said.

“No, I…” It all seemed so silly now. London offered far greater perils than storms, and she had survived London for years. “Thank you, my lord. Thank you for coming after me. I should not have left in such haste.”

“True,” he said gently.

“It is not every day a man makes me question my very reason for existing.”

“Pippa, I didn't mean it that way. I should not have questioned the choices you've made.”

She nodded. “People love to
manage
other people.” Frowning, she looked around the room, noting the wonderful bed, the crackling fire in the grate, the clear, rain-washed night air wafting through a small, open window. “I don't remember much about the storm. Was it very bad?”

He smiled. It was a soft, unguarded smile, as if he truly meant it. “You were in a bit of a state when I found you.”

She blushed and dropped her gaze, then blushed even deeper when she discovered she wore only a shift. She clutched the bedclothes to her chest.

“I hung your things to dry by the fire,” Aidan said. “I got the shift from Lady Lumley's clothes press.”

Pippa touched the sheer fabric of the sleeve. “I'll hang for certain.”

“Nay. Lord and Lady Lumley are at their country estate in Wycherly. I'm to have full use of the house and all its contents.”

She sighed dreamily. “How wonderful to be treated like such an important guest.”

“Often I find it a burden, not a wonder.”

She began to remember snatches of the storm, the lightning and thunder chasing her through the streets, the rain lashing her face. And then Aidan's strong arms and broad chest, and the sensation of speed as he rushed her back to the house. His hands had tenderly divested her of clothes and placed her in the only real bed she had ever slept in.

She had tucked her face into his strong shoulder and sobbed. Hard. He had stroked her hair, kissed it, and finally she had slept.