Maid of Deception (17 page)

Then came the dancing.

Robert Dudley, for his part, claimed the first dance with the Queen, but she rebuffed him in a brilliant rebuke that
merely had him grinning back at her even as he bowed and stepped aside. He was delighting in egging her on, and the Queen demanded that fresh ale be served all around.

“A dance, my lady?”

I jolted to hear Alasdair’s voice at my side, but I turned to him with a practiced smile. “Of course, good sir,” I said, and he raised a brow as he escorted me into the line of dancers. It was a Volta, and the Queen had chosen one of the most well-built earls for her dance partner over Dudley. This was a wise move—first it showed her off to good effect during what was undoubtedly her favorite dance, and second, it gave Dudley the opportunity to see another man squiring Elizabeth.

However, that wasn’t much help to me. Alasdair and I joined the group of dancers who ringed the main attraction, the Queen and her partner—Henry, the Earl of Rutland, a favorite of hers said to be on track to become lord president of the north. The Volta was an only barely civilized dance, and the Queen, now well in her cups, preferred it played violently fast, with the pipe and tabor, cittern and shawm, clanging together in an almost frenzied urgency.

Alasdair noted the change in tempo immediately. “It appears your Queen has a mind for exercise,” he noted, grinning as we circled each other, drawing close together, then stepping apart in sharp, rapid steps. He bowed to me flamboyantly, and I sank into a curtsy, nervously eyeing the neckline of my gown to make sure his now hungry eyes did not see too much. I was unaccountably panicked in the circle of his attention, and I sought an easy retreat.

“If you cannot keep the pace, good sir, you’ve but to say
the word.” My words came out more flirtatiously than they should have, but there was danger here. Alasdair had lost the softer edges of the young man who’d attended my wedding all shaven and smooth. His beard was coming in more fully now, and even his clothing seemed less kempt, rougher and earthier. His hands on my face and against my arms were firm and strong, and would not be denied.

“Beatrice, you ever know what words might fire my blood the most,” Alasdair said, his jaw as tight as his tone. “And never cease but to speak them.”

He stared at me as the music picked up another pulse of energy. By dictates of the dance I was then required to leap up into his arms, and I did so with my face set in its haughtiest lines, feeling a jolt of awareness as his hands clamped over the thick folds of my dress at my hips and he lifted me high. He lowered me back to my feet with a bit less speed than necessary, his eyes smoldering as a wicked smile curved his lips. “I think this is my favorite English dance,” he said, then swung me out again.

I bristled, but there was nothing for it. The next steps of the dance pressed his chest up against my back, and I arched my arms gracefully in the air, swallowing as he drew his hands firmly past my elbows to the outer curve of my arms and shoulders, then farther down the line of my torso, his fingers just barely grazing the fullness of my breasts. It was perfectly chaste, and exactly in line with what the dance required, but I was still startled when he then swept me up in his arms, turning me round and round in time to the ever-quickening music.

“But surely you did not come all the way to England just for the chance to dance?” I managed, not needing to force the breathlessness into my voice.

He pulled me closer to him still. “I came to England to secure the treasure of my homeland,” he said, turning me ever faster. “But, aye, I just may stay to complete the dance.”

Alasdair set me back to my feet but grudgingly then, eyeing me possessively while I flitted away from him and gave a flourish. His grin turned even more wolfish as I followed the next prescribed steps of the dance, running back to him and jumping into his arms. I gasped as he clasped his arms around me, staring at me as we twirled around the floor to the climactic crashing music. He set me down and lifted my hand high—so high I had to arch up against him on the tips of my slippers, until he allowed me to sink into the final curtsy of the dance.

Alasdair brought me up again as everyone wildly applauded the Queen, the two of us lost on the edges of her triumph with her ginger-haired courtier, as Robert Dudley, finally chastened, seethed and looked on.

But I could not tear my gaze away from Alasdair’s. He still held me, tight and close, the heat from his fingers searing mine, his heart pounding loudly enough for me to hear through his crimson doublet. In his gaze I felt something I had never experienced before, a suitor who stared at me not as if I were his servant or his toy, or even the altar on which he would sacrifice all. I felt—real. Empowered. Safe.

“My lady,” Alasdair rumbled in a voice thick with emotion and something else, something I could not quite identify
but desperately wanted in that moment to understand. Then he seemed to catch himself, his next words almost strangled. “I canna stay with you at this revel tonight,” he said. “Promise me you’ll stay safe?”

I arched a brow. “Since when have I had sway over your schedule, my lord?” Though in truth, Alasdair had barely left me alone for a moment since we’d arrived at Marion Hall. What had changed? What was happening? With a deceptively casual toss of my head, I rushed to learn more, taking the easiest gambit first. “Pray, tell me no one else has caught your eye?”

Heat seared me as his gaze raked over my face. “No, my lady. You of anyone canna think that—”

“Lady Beatrice!” squeaked someone at my side, and the moment was lost almost before it had begun. “Lady Beatrice, the ale has all been tapped!”

“What?” I whirled away from Alasdair, and then I saw it. The Queen at the close of the Volta had ordered every last keg opened, demanding that her court not leave the room until the last of the ale flowed. The rich scent of barley and hops almost fouled the air with its thickness, and the Queen herself stumbled to the side, only to be caught up again by Dudley, laughing and cheering, urging her on.

And that was when I noticed something else.

I wasn’t the only one who made this realization either. Across the room four other young women caught the sudden sense of wrongness in the air, looking up from their cups and conversations to take note of the one thing that was clearly lacking in this room.

Not the Queen and her rabble of courtiers. That was a constant. Not my father and my servants. They were desperately scrabbling to keep up the flow of food and drink to the ever-rowdier crowd. Not even one Alasdair MacLeod, who’d caught my sudden shift of mood but did not remark upon it, hovering only at my side should I need protection. None of those worthy souls were missing.

But Sir William Cecil and Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s staunchest and most trusted advisors, who were normally no more than three steps away from Elizabeth wherever she should be?

Tonight they had vanished.

I turned back to Alasdair, and stopped, startled by the suddenly empty space.

Now he had vanished too.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Unfortunately, I had no time to search for the Queen’s advisors—or Alasdair, for that matter. Just as I realized that all of these worthies were missing, the Queen declared another dance and demanded that all her maids attend her. We were caught in the roiling snake of lords and ladies for another two long hours.

I sent most of the servants to bed for a bit after Her Drunkenness finally took her leave, and the five of us maids then got to work trying to keep Marion Hall from being set on fire by ale-soaked courtiers. Not even my father remained in the end, spiriting away to some corner or another for whatever respite he could find. I couldn’t blame him, this one time. The situation was challenging enough for me to face in the grim light of dawn.

The morning after the revel dawned bright and clear, and anyone looking at Marion Hall from the outside would have thought it to be the most idyllic of medieval castles, pristine and newly awakened in the fresh morning light.

Inside it was a ruin.

Now I stood gape-mouthed at the destruction of the Great Hall, shoulder to shoulder with my fellow maids, clearly the only people not related to me by blood or fealty who’d stayed sober the night before. But the servants were up again and bending to their task, so I set to work as well, beginning by salvaging any unbroken flagon or trencher. I first dispatched the servants to remove the tapped casks and fling wide any window we had access to in the manor house. All of the lovely sweet rushes that had been carried into Marion Hall naught but a few days before were now being hauled out by servants struggling not to gag on the reek of them.

Elizabeth had already sent down word that she would be dining in her rooms for at least part of the day, along with her ladies. I sent up some of my mother’s laudanum-soaked sherry to her, with strict instructions that she should not overdo it. With any luck the accursed woman would ignore me as usual and sleep the day away.

A buzz of excited voices broke out on the far side of the room, and I straightened, my apron full of reclaimed utensils, to see Alasdair arrive on the scene. He strode in like he hadn’t abandoned me the night before, and was now commandeering the children to assist the servants with the easier tasks of clearing away the rubble. I frowned at him across the space, and he winked at me broadly. Irritation spiked my already exhausted nerves. I didn’t know what I thought of him, precisely, but the thoughts I did have were decidedly not charitable.

“He’s an interesting young man, isn’t he?” It was Anna who spoke beside me, and I turned to her, glad of any distraction to pull my attention away from Alasdair’s hearty
laughter. She was stacking scraped plates according to their size and type and sorting recovered spoons, and I tumbled my own collection beside her. “Come all this way from the Isle of Skye with a brace of his men, without any real purpose? Seems a bit odd.”

“What do you mean?” I frowned down at her, then lifted a plate to set it on her growing pile. “He wants the Queen’s money, and her promise of arms. Just like all the Scots do.”

“Mmm,” Anna said, signaling for a servant to come and take the tallest of the stacks away. “But the timing of his arrival is of interest, is it not?”

“The timing?” I tried to recall when Alasdair and the Scots had made their presence known to the Queen. “It was late summer, yes? They were part of the grand presentation of delegations. We had foreigners falling out of windows that week.”

“It was directly after the Queen had returned from London, a trip that certainly swayed our participation in the Scottish rebellion, since it marked our delivery of the Earl of Arran safely back into his father’s arms. Then, poof, a swale of Scots arrives at our door, Alasdair at their head and at your heels. And here we are, just weeks later, that much closer to Scotland ourselves, and Alasdair here with us once again. We seem to be awash in all things Scottish.”

I groaned, rubbing my back as I bent over to retrieve a slightly bent silver fork from among a scatter of overturned benches. “Anna, if you’re trying to suggest that there’s more to Alasdair than it seems, you’d best come out and say it. I’m too tired for subtlety today.”

Anna laughed grimly. “I’m trying to suggest that there’s
more to Alasdair than it seems,” she said. “Meg and Jane think that there was a secret meeting last night in the middle of all of this.” She waved vaguely around. “And you said he vanished last eve just as Elizabeth made her final run at your ale stores. Do you know where he was off to?”

“I don’t,” I said ruefully. I wanted to ask Alasdair about it straight out, but direct communication wasn’t my stock in trade. And I wasn’t certain I had it in me to dissemble this morning.

“Nor do any of us. But consider this: No sooner did the Lords of the Congregation arrive at Windsor than we upped and headed north. Curious timing, don’t you think?”

“But not all the way to Scotland,” I protested. “That is another several days’ hard ride. And the Lords of the Congregation didn’t travel with us.”

“Didn’t they?” Anna returned. “How closely did any of us watch who came and who stayed behind? And why leave the good Lords in Windsor, while the Queen makes an example of you by bankrupting your estate? Smarter by far to bring the Lords along with the Queen’s retinue and finalize their negotiations under your roof.”

Anna’s voice was uncharacteristically firm, and I frowned at her self-assurance. “Don’t you, too, get smart with me, Anna Burgher,” I groused. “I’ve enough on my hands with Sophia coming into her own.”

Anna shook her head. “Still, I think we should have an accounting of your complete guest list. It would not be all that difficult to see if certain of the Lords are here, whether they’re hiding or no.”

“They aren’t,” I said firmly. I would know by now, even if I hadn’t at first. “They may have left Windsor with the Queen’s progress, but they could have easily departed our company along the way. And you know yourself that we ranged ahead.”

“Ah, I suppose that is true enough.” Anna blew out a breath, considering, then turned to our second topic at hand. “It is interesting to watch Sophia, isn’t it? I swear we needed only to get her out from under Windsor’s shadow for her to really blossom. Her headaches are concerning, but I rather think it must be like using a muscle that’s not been tested before. It’s rather fascinating, all in. I have been researching every book I can spirit out of John Dee’s library at Mortlake, but there’s nothing in any of them quite like what we’re seeing with her. Surely Dee knows what he has in Sophia, don’t you think? Given that he quite clearly came by the girl by less than savory methods?”