Maid of Deception (2 page)

Anger flashed through me even as my father turned my hand into the crook of his arm. “Lord Cavanaugh is a good man, Father, and will do far more for our fortunes than—” I hastily swallowed my ill-advised words.
Control!
“Than we have any right to ask.”

Father snorted, seeming not at all convinced, for someone who had heartily approved of this match. “Lord Cavanaugh will have a care around you, anyway, you can be sure of that,” he said, patting my hand as we moved back through the doorway.

His fingers grazed the ring I’d decided to wear next to my betrothal ring, and he glanced down at it now. I felt his fingers tighten as he recognized the bauble I’d recently received from Rafe and Meg. Oh, he recognized the ring all right, more the shame to him.

When Rafe had first arrived on our shores these several weeks past, the Spanish spy had carried with him a ring that his mother had retained as a “souvenir” of her own visit to the English court during the reign of old King Henry. Of course, the King hadn’t been old then, and neither had Rafe’s mother . . . nor my father. The nature of the “friendship” between Rafe’s mother and my father was not something I
wanted to dwell upon, but thank heavens both Rafe and I had already been born by then. I could barely tolerate the arrogant young man as Meg’s suitor; I could not have stomached him as a half brother. Still, now I had another family heirloom back, a precious treasure reclaimed. And from the guilt-ridden look on his face, Father clearly knew I had discerned yet one more of his secrets.

Vindication swept through me like a cleansing fire.
Look hard and long, you skirt-chasing ballywag.
I was the one taking care of the family.

Father blinked and stared, like a bear stumbling out of his winter slumber. “But where . . . How . . .” He bristled at me. “Where in the bloody hell did you get—”

“The music is beginning!” Anna’s quick cry mobilized us, and she rushed into position behind Sophia, even as Jane and Meg hurried into place as well, both of them favoring me with knowing glances. What was going on with them? What had they seen?

There was no time, however, and we moved forward into the multicolored radiance of Saint George’s Chapel, the entire hall lit up with light pouring through the stained-glass windows, as if God himself were adding his illumination to my day.

I stepped into the long aisle and held my head high. It was total perfection, and all according to a plan I’d labored to bring to light for the past ten years. Finally I would be married. Finally I would be respected. Finally I would be . . .

Safe.

We moved forward with the elegance due our rank and
station in the Queen’s court, and I craned my neck this way and that, taking in the congregation that had filled Saint George’s to bursting. My gaze moved along one thick knot of admirers and over to another—many of them relatives of mine or my lord’s, but some who were nobles, even courtiers from other lands. There were Cecil and Walsingham, stiff in their proper garments. There was Rafe de Martine and the grinning band of Spaniards. There was even Lord Brighton, Sophia’s intended, who stood a bit nervously next to a serenely lovely woman.

And all of them were looking at me.

I nodded graciously in the midst of their open stares and bright eyes. I felt beautiful, suddenly, with my pink-gold dress, my blond hair piled up in an impossibly ornate coiffure pinned with pink roses and bits of white lace, my eyes and mouth touched delicately with careful paints. Within my chest my heart swelled until it seemed almost twice its proper size, the smile on my face now completely unabashed.
I was getting married!

The whole of the court seemed to beam back at me, sharing in my joy. I glanced past a particularly gorgeous nobleman I didn’t recognize, in a blue silk doublet and a short cape. Despite myself I hesitated, favoring him with a nod even as my heart fluttered a bit in my breast at the roguish glint in his eye.

That glint seemed vaguely familiar, but surely I would have remembered
this
young man. He was tall and fierce, with the kind of arrogance that would make him a liability in any court, particularly ours. Had the Queen invited him?
Elizabeth was always looking for ways to surround herself with new men. I shook myself, realizing I was staring, but I couldn’t quite tear my eyes away. Nerves, I decided.

Then the young man grinned back at me, his gaze dropping quite obviously to fix on the moderately deep V of my wedding gown as it plunged between my breasts. I knew that look. I knew that leer.

And I almost stumbled in my stride.

I wrenched my gaze away, grateful now for the near murderous grip my father had on my arm as I strode ahead, poleaxed.

This
was what Meg and Jane had been grinning about, and why they’d been so eager to escort my mother into the chapel.
This
was what Anna and Sophia had known but had dared not tell me.
This!

Alasdair MacLeod was at my wedding!

The boorish Scot had trampled into the refined English court not four weeks past, part of a grand onslaught of foreigners who’d come to pay court to the Queen. He’d seemed instantly out of place to me, for all his apparent high standing within the Scottish delegation, a bull among chickens—all brawny shoulders and roguish leers and rough manners and knowing grins. The Queen, with her usual perverse pettiness, had assigned
me
to fawn over Alasdair, of course, to see what secrets I might find out about his true intentions toward the English. As a result I’d been forced to dance with the hulking brute on far too many occasions, and he’d taken every opportunity to embarrass me, press me, hold me too close. The worst had been during a late summer wedding
I’d been forced to attend with the oaf, wherein the Clod MacLeod had put both hands around my waist and drawn in a breath so deep it seemed as if he’d sought to distill my own essence within himself. Thank God he’d never tried to kiss me.

Still,
had
he tried, it would have been entertaining for me to disable him. I had my choice of methods too, one of a half dozen favorites I’d honed during my schooling as a spy. Each more painful than the previous.

There were some benefits to being a Maid of Honor, after all.

Still, whyever is he here?
Weddings of commoners were open to all, true enough. But I was
not
a commoner.

And he had
not
been invited.

I stared ahead stonily, feeling the cur’s eyes scorch through my gown as I walked sedately toward my future husband, Lord Cavanaugh. My future respected, respectable, and very
respectful
husband.

The young Scotsman may have been heir to some hulking rock of a castle in the middle of the northern sea, but he was nothing next to Lord Cavanaugh. And he had
no business
being here. Especially . . . especially looking the way he did now.

This Alasdair had been bathed and shaven smooth, his thick beard now gone; his wild, unruly mane now trimmed and luxuriously thick, its dark blond curls draped carelessly over his sun-warmed face and fierce blue eyes. This Alasdair must have stolen his clothes, so fine were they, the blue and gold doublet undone just enough to show a snowy white
tunic beneath, and the slightest glimpse of his broad, firm, powerful chest—

“Beatrice, you’re wounding me.”

I blinked up at my father’s words, and saw him now looking at me with genuine concern, all the anger that had lit his aristocratic features gone. We were at the front of the chapel. The minister was there and Lord Cavanaugh was there, looking handsome and perfect and holding my entire future in his hands. He was everything I wanted and needed, and as if in recognition of that fact, the chapel was finally quieting to allow the solemnity of our service to take place.

I smiled, my heart no longer bursting with joy as much as whirling in utter confusion, but I forced my expression into one of absolute bliss that I hoped would carry the day. My father seemed satisfied, and patted my hand before turning me forward.

To my right, Lord Cavanaugh eyed me with approval.

In front of me the minister lifted
The Book of Common Prayer
.

And behind me, somewhere in the knot of courtiers and noblemen, aunts and cousins, and neighbors and enemies and friends—stood Alasdair MacLeod.

I straightened my back and drew a deep breath, gratified at Lord Cavanaugh’s soft exhalation. He was staring at me now, taking in every detail of my gown. Good.

Alasdair MacLeod could go hang himself.

The minister began to speak, and I heard his words as if from far away. “. . . for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and,
when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture . . .” I frowned, instantly recalling Sophia’s concerns. Would Lord Cavanaugh and I not have children? There must be a male heir, eventually. There had to be. I had only to look back at Queen Elizabeth’s own long and troubled history to explain why. How many lives had been changed irreparably, in houses grand and small, all for the want of a son?

A bit of murmuring struck up in the back of the chapel, but my eyes were trained on the minister, and on the play of light shining down from the stained-glass windows, rendering him into soft reds and greens and blues. He looked like something out of a dream landscape, holy and inviolate, and I finally began to relax.

“Into this holy union Lady Beatrice Elizabeth Catherine Knowles and Lord Percival Andrew William Cavanaugh now come to be joined. . . .”

Behind me the whispering grew louder, and even the minister looked up, his face flickering with shock. I stared at him as he kept speaking, my stomach slewing sideways as Lord Cavanaugh turned with a gasp that had nothing to do with my neckline and everything to do with what he saw coming up behind us, as relentless as a winter storm.

And still the minister pressed on, as if he could no more stop the sacred words than he could stop his own breath. “If any of you can show just cause why they may not lawfully be married,” he cried out, his voice sounding almost desperate to my ears, “speak now; or else for ever hold your peace!”

A moment of deafening silence passed, and then another, and the clutch of terror in my throat was only just coming
undone when the sudden sharp, imperious crash of a staff striking the floor nearly turned my knees to water.

“This wedding shall not go forward!” came the voice, as loud, proud, and mighty as the wrath of God, and every bit as damning.

It was the Queen.

CHAPTER TWO

I kept my eyes forward for just a bare moment more. I focused on the minister, whose mouth was still moving, though no words issued forth. The sweat on his balding head was gleaming in the candlelight, and he looked stricken, his anguished eyes going first to the Queen and then to me.

And that was why I needed the moment desperately. I could never show weakness in court, especially not to the Queen. Especially not when she had just stretched out her long, bejeweled fingers and crushed with a sharp, triumphant squeeze the only thing I’d ever wanted in this life. I felt the tears rise up within me, an implacable tide, and I steeled myself against them.

It was my fault for holding on to this hope so tightly, I knew. For thinking I could keep it precious and safe from the one woman who would delight in ruining even the joy that she had so pompously delivered into my hand.

I would not show weakness.

I turned then, finally, my blue eyes still serene, my blond hair still perfect, my skin still porcelain fair, the soft folds of
my petal-pink gown showing all the world that I was a true flower of England. I lifted my gaze to meet the Queen’s down the long church aisle, not missing the high color that slashed our monarch’s cheekbones or the fevered glint in her eye. The expression I’d plastered on my face was cool and beneficent, but Elizabeth was not so cunning. She could not hide the smug twist to her lips.

She was majestic and regal, and she would be obeyed. Even in—especially in—God’s own house.

In one small corner of my mind, the only place not suffused with bitterness, I had to grant the woman this: It truly was a grand play she had devised. What faster way to get the whole of the court wagging its tongues on the one subject she favored most—herself? Even now fans and hands were raised in apparent shock to many mouths. The better for the courtiers to speak in low tones among themselves, of course.

I sank into a deep curtsy, remaining just a heartbeat longer than propriety dictated. Whether those who watched raptly read service or defiance into that heartbeat, I did not care. It turned the tide of attention ever so slightly back to me. I might not have ruled the land, but I would rule this mob . . . and unlike with the Queen, it would not be because they
owed
me their fealty.

I rose and spoke over the whispers that slithered through the gathered crowd. “How may I serve you, Your Grace?” I asked, pitching my voice loud enough to be heard at the back of the hall.