Maid of Deception (10 page)

I’d just come up to the first banquette when I saw them, and I almost shouted with triumph. Ah! So there it was, and I had been vindicated. A man and a woman had paused together, yes, loitering by the refreshment tables. But this was not an issue, given the woman in question. There was no way that Cavanaugh would—that he would choose such a . . . such a—

The scene shifted just a bit, and I stiffened beside a thick stone column, my entire body going cold.

Lord Cavanaugh now stood against the wall, shrouded in what I am sure he thought was total darkness. But the woman gazing up at him seemed lit from within, her beauty plain and without artifice, her eyes wide and clear, her expression luminous. She was a lovely woman, but that was not what made my heart catch in my throat. That was not what had
made me assume that this couldn’t be a true lovers’ interlude. Even until the very end, I had been blinded by my own class prejudices. And who would blame me?

The woman was a
serving maid.

And she was also, apparently, Lord Cavanaugh’s . . . mistress.

I had never seen her before, exactly, but I knew her station by the cant of the head, the cut of the dress. This was a commoner pressed into royal service, whether for the night or for the season, to fetch and carry for the Queen and her court. She likely had rough hands and chapped lips, straw hair beneath her cap and loose teeth, but at this moment, as she stared into Lord Cavanaugh’s—my betrothed’s—face, all I could see was the ardor of her passion.

And she was Lord Cavanaugh’s
mistress
!

Worse—so much worse, so much more impossibly worse—Lord Cavanaugh stared back at her, his face suffused with an adoration so intense, it almost hurt to see. He’d never looked at me like that—never! Even when he held me close, even when he stole kisses from me in a laughing, arrogant seduction, chuckling at my blushes and palming my body as if I were already his own. Never had he once stared at me with eyes full of wonder and a mouth gone slack with desire. Never once!

Fury and humiliation roiled in my gut. I knew it should not matter who it was that Cavanaugh had tumbled. But I had worked so
hard
and so
long
to merit the hand of a true nobleman. The idea that he would cast me aside for anyone burned badly enough. But to know that I was so worthless,
that I was so meaningless to him, that my rank and station and education and charm counted for nothing at all, that he would cast me aside for—for—

“My lady.” I felt the hand on my shoulder, turning me round even as I felt my vision blur. “It is dangerous for you to move unescorted through such a rough crowd. A pursuer might get quite the wrong idea indeed.”

Alasdair MacLeod was there. Of course he was there. Of course he would see this—see me in all my humiliation—and seek only to amuse himself. And I was too numb to deny him.

I could not tell you where we walked, or how, only that an instant later we were swallowed up again in the noise of the ball. Had he seen what I’d seen? Had he seen even worse? I could not speak; I certainly could not stop him. My heart was now hollow, my very face somehow heavy. I felt as if I had tears flowing down the inside of my body, though none would dare escape my eyes. A few steps farther, and I realized we were in the thickest part of the rabble, the laughter and chatter rising above the crash and ramble of music. This was also the darkest part of the room, and a dim part of my mind registered the danger of that. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to care.

I could not bring myself to think.

Everything was lost to me, everything was gone. Lord Cavanaugh was in love—and not with me. Never with me.

Everything was lost.

Alasdair tilted my chin up, and I could almost see him now, though my eyes were blanked as if by fog. He shifted closer toward me, and I caught the scent of vanilla and
lavender, mixed with the earthier fragrances of leather and open sky. He’d been out riding today, I suspected, no doubt trying to keep pace with the very wind. He shifted again, and I knew he wanted to kiss me. He always wanted to, though I never allowed it. He always looked at me with his dark and intense blue eyes flashing from within the hard, sun-bronzed planes of his face, his powerful hands gentle around me but insistent, so insistent, and his heat so strong, it seemed to light the very air on fire, causing it to flare up around us. He would stare at my eyes, my lips, and his own mouth would open, and it seemed that he could well and truly survive only if he could taste the barest hint of me. And his face would lean toward mine, and his eyes would hold my own gaze—just like now—and he would look at me as if I were his entire world. And I would feel a stirring unlike anything I’d ever felt before, a stirring that I could not control, could not plan for and could no more deny than my own next and ever-more haggard breath, and then—

I blinked.

Alasdair’s sigh was ragged. “When you look at me like that, my lady,” he breathed, his words low and husky, “you place yourself in greater danger still.”

Then suddenly it was all gone—all of it, and I was laid bare before him with only one question that seemed to matter, one question that burned inside me no matter how stupid, how dense, how impossibly pointless but that still I could not keep myself from asking, so desperate was I to know. “Do you—” I swallowed, then blurted my words in a rush, as if I were eight and not eighteen, a stammering girl instead of a
full-grown woman. “Do you find me at all a-attractive— Do you, could you— Oh, never
mind
!”

I turned to flee, at once mortified by the words that should have never ever crossed my lips, and certainly not to this oafish Scot who would just as easily laugh at me as speak. But no sooner had I angled away than Alasdair hauled me back again, hard, my back pressed up against his chest as he leaned forward and inhaled deeply, as if he were finding his life’s breath anew. His mouth was excruciatingly close to my ear, and when he spoke, his lips brushed against the tender skin, sending a jolt of sensation across the whole of my body.

“Lady Beatrice Elizabeth Catherine Knowles,” he murmured, “you’ve become my very breath, my beating heart. I canna sleep but that I dream of you, I canna wake but that I think of you. You are life and love and magic, in every step you take.”

In front of him, my breath hitched, my heart now pounding violently as he moved his left hand down the fitted waist of my gown, firm and powerful and sure.

And then, of course, he kept talking. “But you are as skinny as a chicken, I will give you that.”

“Oh!” I thrust myself away from him and propelled myself on sheer anger through the crowd, my cheeks burning as I heard him laugh in a long and knowing roll. So incensed was I that I almost missed Anna entirely, bustling through the crowd on a tear.

“Beatrice!” she squeaked. “There you are. You never will believe— Meg fell into conversation with the young Earl of Southwick, who, due to Meg’s magnificent clothing, bearing,
mimicry skills—and, no doubt, the darkness of the room—well and truly thought she was the Queen. She picked his pocket before he’d gotten out his tenth word, and passed this along to Jane.” She flared a letter in the murk, and I picked up her excitement. “We must read it and quickly, or the Queen’s reveal will be here and we’ll not have a chance to return it!”

“This way,” I said, and hastened to the side of the Presence Chamber, where another table stood with servants at the ready. We circled the table, then plunged into the open doorway, startling a servant whose candle was held high to light the way of the serving staff.

“Your candle, if you please, for just a moment?”

The young man gaped at me, puzzled, but we were beyond him and into the long hallway that led to the kitchens before he could gainsay me. We darted into another room, and I held the flame close as Anna fumbled out the letter, its seal already broken.

“Can’t be helped,” I said as she mewed her distress. “Look there—it is addressed to Elizabeth herself! What does it say?”

“Reading—reading now,” Anna muttered, her finger tracing the page as her eyes memorized everything the letter held. I managed not to scream my frustration as she gasped out her surprise not once but fully three times. Then she was up and assembling the letter again, and we turned at once to go.

“What ’o!” It was the young man from the corridor, come to claim his candle. “A right terrible thing it is, stealing from me when I—”

“Oh, leave off!” I thrust the candle back at the servant as
Anna scooted past, and I frowned as he blustered in confusion. “Do
you
think I’m as skinny as a chicken?”

“What! Well, miss, I surely—”

“Ugh!” I shook my head and hastened after Anna. If we found what we needed to for the Queen, the night would not be a total loss.

But only just.

We burst back out onto the floor, and Anna shoved the letter at me, to complete its return to its rightful owner. I was not as light-fingered as Meg, but I had not lived my life among courtiers for naught. I could slip a letter into a pocket with some credible skill. No sooner had I greeted the young earl with a formal kiss and courtly hug—and replaced the letter just so in the pocket Anna had directed me to—than the melody started to swell to indicate the next stage in the evening’s events: the lighting of the “moon” and the revelation of Gloriana.

From all corners of the room, Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting glided through the crowd with lit tapers, each adding their flame to the enormous candelabra that stood barricaded off in the center of the floor. They accomplished this with impressive speed, returning to gather at the entryway while they awaited the Queen, their tapers still lit. Then, with a surge of music, the chandelier was hoisted up by a half dozen black-clad men in an upper balcony, so that it soared up into the space above the hall.

I had to admit, it was impressive. The Queen might have been many things, but she certainly knew how to make an entrance.

No sooner had the candelabra been secured than another surge of music announced the Queen’s entry. The crowd gasped and held its breath, mesmerized the moment she stepped into the light. As if they wouldn’t have gasped anyway, even if Elizabeth had shown up as a milkmaid.

But this was no milkmaid.

Gloriana Elizabeth Regnant stood at the front of her Presence Chamber like a goddess in our midst. Her hair was sewn with dozens of diamonds and pearls, and there were more pearls at her neck and wrists. Her gown was a gleaming swath of diaphanous white silk, slashed to reveal panels of shimmering silver satin. Another rope of pearls spanned her waist, veeing down over her skirts as if she’d tethered the very stars of heaven for her gown.

The gathered assembly broke out into wild applause, the noise shocking in the hall but serving to please Elizabeth like no other reaction, especially as it was unforced. These were not commoners stupefied by Her Royal Magnitude. These people in many ways were nearly her equals, yet in this moment she had taken their breath away.

As her gaze swept the room, noting her admirers with shrewd calculation, I clapped mightily along with the rest of them. For despite our obvious adoration, all of us knew how quickly the Queen could decide to take our breath away for good.

CHAPTER NINE

It was midnight before we could meet with the Queen—and even then, not in our own bedchamber. Cecil had taken to posting guards at the door to keep track of us, and though Jane and Meg had tried ceaselessly to find hidden escape routes from the room, they had not been successful. Of course, those corridors had to be there; Windsor could not be so riddled with secret passageways that the
one
place that was purely inaccessible was a room traditionally occupied by unmarried women. It made no sense. And yet, we hadn’t found them, so there we were, back in our schoolroom.

A room surrounded by secret passageways that we could easily check.

Since our schoolroom had not been used much of late for its intended purpose, the long study table had been set off to the side, to allow us to gather the chairs around in a tight circle, that we might speak with even less chance of being heard.

In the center of that circle now sat Anna, her hands folded on her lap and her eyes alight with intensity. “I am
telling you, I am not mistaken,” she said. “The hand was disguised, but the Reverend John Knox wrote that letter, not ‘John Sinclair’ as the signature claims. I would swear it.”

Jane nodded. “If you say it is, then so it is. You’ll get no argument from me.” She glanced to the door, then stood and drifted away from us.

“But does he think Elizabeth is stupid?” I protested, mainly to legitimately place “stupid” so close to the Queen’s name. “Surely he knew he would be caught out. She hates John Knox—he knows that. Why would he send her a letter she would readily recognize as his own?”

“Well, for one, his hand was disguised. Heavily.” Anna’s tone was just the slightest bit peevish. “I am quite good at what I do, you know.” She waved off my apology and continued on. “And two, it’s entirely possible that he never intended the letter to actually reach her. If he is aware that Cecil is reading all of the Queen’s correspondence and that the letter would never get reviewed by her own eyes, or perhaps in only a cursory fashion, well . . . perhaps he grew more bold.”