Heart of Gold (27 page)

“I can’t see how I could—”

“Elizabeth—” Mary pulled back to look into her sister’s eyes—“I heard you and Erne whispering about my health last night.” At seeing her older sister’s protest, Mary hushed her gently. “Please understand, my love. For once, I am living my life the way I should have lived it all along. I am happy.” She paused. “I know I am dying, and I know that all of you can see it, as well. But it’s strange, Elizabeth, because I really don’t mind the thought of it.” She held her sister’s soft face in her hands. “And I want no sorrow or tears from anyone. I’ve had a full life, and I was given a chance to...well, to correct it by coming on this journey.”

Mary gathered Elizabeth in her arms once again. “But, God forbid, most of all I want no deathwatch around me. I want to live to the last day—to the last breath. And I’ll be here, I promise you. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Go on this trip, Elizabeth. It will be good for me. Please.”

Elizabeth lay her head against her sister’s shoulder.

“And perhaps,” Mary whispered smilingly in her sister’s ear—she knew she needed to press her advantage now—“It would be good for you and Ambrose to be away from the rest of us for a few days. You two deserve some time alone. Just the two of you.”

Elizabeth, color spreading like fire through her face, drew back momentarily from the sick woman’s embrace and stared at her. She hadn’t expected this.

“Do you think I don’t see the way you feel about him? Come, now, my love. It’s branded on your face anytime he comes anywhere near. Even anytime his name comes up. It is right there in your eyes.”

Elizabeth looked away. Truly, she hardly knew how to hide—or deny—her feelings for him. Feelings that were growing more and more obvious with each passing day. How could she stop the way her blood pounded in her veins when he’d look at her in a certain way? Or the way her skin burned when he chanced to brush against her? Indeed, she knew she could hardly ignore the way her throat knotted when she’d seen him crouching so attentively beside Jaime while the little child showed the baron how her kitten’s claws worked. It was difficult for Elizabeth to explain, even to herself, why tears had welled up in her eyes watching the Highlander unpin the broach on his tartan to show the little girl his family’s coat of arms—a cat with outstretched claws sitting atop a decorated shield.

Elizabeth’s heart and mind struggled as the desire to follow the path of love, if for only just this time, pulled hard against the sense of responsibility she felt for her sister.

“Such foolishness, Mary,” she scolded, hugging her sister to her once again. But even to herself, the words of denial sounded feeble, at best.

The two women pulled apart and turned as the door of the cabin open lightly on its hinges. D’Or, the yellow kitten Jaime had named for its golden fur, was the first thing they saw as it leaped into the middle of the room. Then, behind her, the shadow of the little girl followed the animal in.

“D'Or wanted to visit,” Jaime whispered shyly from the entryway.

Mary opened her arms as the young girl ran in and threw herself into the mother’s embrace. Elizabeth choked back her tears. She loved them so much. Both of them. So many years she had hoped, she had prayed for this to happen. At last. Thank you, Virgin Mother. At last.

Elizabeth stood up from the bunk and started for the door. They needed as much time as they could have together, to make up for those years.

“Elizabeth!”

She turned at the sound of her sister’s voice.

“Take that satchel with you.”

“What is it?”

“Something for you,” Mary whispered, her face aglow. “Something for your little trip. And Elizabeth...” She waited until her sister’s attention was fixed on her. “You are going. Today.”

“I don’t think leaving you—”

Mary interrupted her, nestling her chin in Jaime’s hair. Her eyes glowed with affection as she gazed into Elizabeth’s face. “Believe it or not, we can do without you for a couple of days.” The younger sister smiled happily and turned playfully to her daughter as she spoke. “Besides, Gavin has already told me he won’t be going with you. He’ll be staying with us. So you see, you don’t have anything to worry about. We’ll see you in Troyes. Gavin said we’ll dock there and enjoy the market fair while we wait for you. I’ve always wanted to see the market fair at Troyes.”

Elizabeth hesitated another moment, but her sister’s gaze was direct.

“I need this, my love,” Mary said quietly. “We both need to live every moment we have left. Give us both this time.”

Frenchmen are as blind as Florentines, Ambrose thought, still somewhat stunned and hardly amused as he and Elizabeth rode along. If the armies of these two powers meet on the battlefield, he surmised, they’d better do so on a very sunny day...or they’ll march right by one another.

The sojourn to the encampment of King Francis had involved an unexpected change in plans. Originally they were to travel to a hunting lodge in the forest to the east of the town, but that was not to be. Disembarking from the ferry on the east side of the river at Bar-sur-Seine, Ambrose and Elizabeth had been met by an emissary of the king, and they’d been escorted to the well-traveled highway that led eastward toward the Marne River and, eventually, to Geneva and Italy.

There, in a pavilion of cloth of gold that shimmered in the bright morning sun, the two travelers found King Francis trying on hats made by the craftsmen of Troyes, while twenty thousand armed men eagerly awaited his royal word to get on with their invasion of Italy.

And, to Ambrose’s utter amazement, no one even guessed that Elizabeth was anyone—anything—but Phillipe de Anjou.

The painters that the king had brought with him to record his anticipated triumphs over the Emperor Charles’s forces were uncommunicative, but grudgingly compliant when Elizabeth reluctantly agreed to the king’s request to do a portrait of him as he sat in armor at a camp table, the maps of conquest spread before him, chatting with Ambrose about his route. Working quickly—a skill the artist had honed through her extensive experience painting on rapidly drying plaster—Elizabeth created a treasure that won the praises of even the most reserved critic with its elegant structure, masterly brushwork, and astonishing display of color.

The entire visit was extraordinary, in Ambrose’s view, but dining with the king would have been an ordeal for both painter and baron. Ambrose knew that, once ensconced in the dinner conversation with the French king, he would have been expected to elaborate in great detail on the results of his visit with the Pope in Rome, and with Don Giovanni in Florence. And, Ambrose knew all too well, any involvement with Francis meant certain entanglement in more political intrigue. So the Highlander had been delighted when Elizabeth, professing sudden illness, had requested to be excused of His Majesty’s gracious presence. Receiving a small bag of gold as a reward for his “wonderful work, and the honor he was bringing on France,” Phillipe de Anjou had bowed his way out of the pavilion of the king, and the Highlander had joined in the escape.

They had not needed an escort back. Ambrose had assured all parties of that. So they rode in the golden light of the late afternoon sun, winding their way along the edge of the great forest east of Troyes.

Elizabeth grabbed her hat and yanked it off her head. She shook her hair loose in the light, early summer breeze. Her horse cantered easily behind the massive charger and its silent rider.

Before they had left the camp of the king, the Highlander had changed back into his Scottish gear, and Elizabeth gazed on him admiringly. His broadsword hung across his back, and his tartan’s colors shone brightly in the evening light.

Ambrose Macpherson would cut a dashing figure in any company, she thought proudly. And every word he spoke, often so charged with his own wit, had been heeded very carefully by King Francis and his advisers.

Elizabeth wondered whether anyone had caught her gazing at him during their visit at the camp.

The painter tore her eyes away from him and looked around at the serene countryside. So beautiful, she thought. She glanced back at the baron and then out again at the rolling fields of flax. All the years she had lived in France, all those years growing up, she had never seen nor traveled in this land east of the Seine.

“You know these parts well,” she called out, watching his back. He had hardly said a word since leaving the French king’s camp. “Thank you for taking me back a different way. I don’t know when I would have had an opportunity to see these parts again.”

Elizabeth waited for him to turn around, to slow his horse, to acknowledge her words—but he never did.

She kicked her heels into the side of her horse, urging him on. Reining in at the side of the nobleman, she looked carefully at his grave expression. “What have I done now?”

Ambrose paused, then turned and returned her gaze. “Guilty conscience?”

“Nay,” she said matter-of-factly, rising to the challenge in his tone. “This is just my advance movement prior to an attack on your cranky disposition.”

Ambrose realized once again that her ability to pass as a man wasn’t just due to the way she dressed. Elizabeth even had the aggressiveness. “I am not cranky.”

“That’s the truth. You are foul-tempered, disagreeable, and irritating. Does that cover it?”

“Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Elizabeth shook her head as he once again fell into a brooding silence. She honestly had no idea what was wrong. Everything had gone beautifully at the king’s camp—to her great surprise. It had been a short visit, but all the same, she couldn’t remember doing anything that would have annoyed the baron, nor recall anything happening that might be the cause of his present sullenness.

Once again Elizabeth nudged her horse ahead, this time cutting in front of the baron and leaning over in an attempt to catch his steed’s bridle.

“What are you up to?” He drew in the reins of his horse, bringing the animal to a halt. Elizabeth’s horse followed suit. “Are you trying to break your neck?”

“Nay,” she responded, reaching in again and making a grab at his reins. Ambrose yanked the charger’s head around, but she persisted. “I’m trying to make you talk.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Don’t patronize me with such nonsense! You’re a chattering magpie. A flap jawed diplomat. Nothing to say!” she scoffed.

Ambrose scowled at her. “If you were a man, I would consider breaking your neck for saying what you just said.”

“Well, I am not a man. So I suppose you’ll simply have to live with it.”

“If I had ever had the misfortune of becoming involved with you, I would have locked you away a long time ago. For good, I mean.”

“Well, that never happened, either, by the grace of the Holy Mother. So you be damned. I am free to say what I want.”

Ambrose glared at her smug face. “Let me give you some advice, lass. It is very dangerous business, trifling with an angry man. And I am an angry man. Or are you too blind to see that?”

“Blind? Ha! Why in God’s name do you think I am taking all this abuse, you thick-skulled Scot? Of course I can see you are angry! I just need to know why. Did I cause it? Did I do anything that was improper? Speak to me, why don’t you?”

“Just let it be, Elizabeth.”

“I won’t!”

“I’m in no mood for this.”

“Well, I am!”

Ambrose glared at her. She glared back.

“You are not going to give this up, are you?”

Elizabeth shook her head defiantly.

Ambrose took a deep breath and looked away, gazing into the deepening shadows of the nearby forest. She was the most stubborn woman he’d ever known. No, that wasn’t it. This woman cared for him enough to demand an answer. Well, she did deserve that much. “You aren’t the one that’s the problem, Elizabeth!”

“Not acceptable, Ambrose Macpherson. I am not accepting such an evasion for an answer.”

“It’s me, damn it!”

Elizabeth continued to glare at him. “If it’s your own doing, then why must I take the brunt of your vile conduct?”

“If you would let me be, then you wouldn’t need to even witness my ‘vile’ conduct.”

She tried to speak more calmly. “My good baron, I think I’ve been around you enough in the course of this journey to know when I am the cause of your distress. And that certainly seems to be the case—”

“I lied,” Ambrose broke in. As well, she should know it he decided.

“What?”

“I lied.”

“To whom?”

“To Francis. To the King of France. Our host. I lied.”

“Politicians always lie.” She glanced away under the withering heat of his glare. “Never mind. Tell me, what did you say that was such a crime?”

“I lied to Francis about you. About you being a man. And some other grave political matter. And they believed everything I said.” Ambrose had indeed lied to Francis about Duke Giovanni’s power. He’d decided to buy his friend some time. Florence did not have a chance against the troops of Francis. This was the best help Ambrose could give Giovanni right now. “I made fools of all of them.”

“You didn’t make them fools, Ambrose. They are fools.” She struggled to suppress a smile. To think that this man’s worries were all over such a simple matter. “But m’lord, if this is the way you feel here in France, how will you feel once we reach Scotland? Are you going to take me to the closest tree and hang me once we get there
,
so you won’t have to lie to your queen?”

“That’s not a bad idea.” He paused and considered. “I wouldn’t need to put up with this kind of quarreling, and my conscience would definitely rest easier.”

“Wonderful!” she responded, throwing her hands up dramatically. “But let’s not stop there. After all, we still have a long journey ahead of us. Perhaps it is too great a distance to carry such a heavily weighted soul as yours must be. Aye, far too long a time to wrestle with such troubles. But what can we do? Alas, no priest in sight to lighten your burden. Are you certain there is nothing I could do right now to ease your suffering soul? To put your conscience to rest? Ah! I have it. Perhaps a sacrifice is in order, an offering to cleanse the soul...”