Suzanne Robinson (15 page)

“What masque?”

“I knew it. Come here at once.”

Grumbling under her breath, Oriel went upstairs and stood in front of her aunt. Massive of build, Livia was one of those women whom God had given more than a touch of masculinity. She had a man’s heavy jaw and an even heavier tread, and the soulless glare of a mercenary.

“I told you yesterday your Aunt Faith has arranged for a masque. I know we’re in mourning and it’s Lent, but a private and small entertainment may be excused this once if we’re to keep the Sieur de Racine at Richmond Hall. You’re to play an ugly witch.”

“Why should I play the ugly witch?”

“You always play the witch, and you never balked before. It’s too late to change now, after your Aunt Faith has taken so much trouble.”

“She only wants to give Joan an opportunity to prance and parade in front of the Sieur de Racine.”

“Stuff! You don’t appear to want him. Why do you object to giving him to your cousin?”

“He’s not mine to give, and he doesn’t like Joan.”

Livia smiled at her. “You’re jealous.”

This was the second time she’d been accused of jealousy. She scowled at her aunt, who laughed at her and proceeded down the gallery with her heavy tread. Oriel was left with no opportunity to deny the ridiculous charge, which enraged her almost as much as one of Blade’s taunts.

Lifting her head high, she turned her back on the retreating Livia and walked to the door of the library. She had to talk to Blade, for she wanted him to speak to George and tell him what he had reasoned regarding Uncle Thomas’s death. As she opened the door, she
heard a crash and a man cried out. She shoved the door aside and beheld a tangle of arms and legs.

At the foot of a line of shelves to her right lay a toppled stool, and beside it lay Blade. On top of him lay Joan, who was in the act of kissing him. He groaned, and his arms flailed. His hands found Joan’s shoulders, and he shoved her back.

“God’s blood, my head”

Joan wriggled down his chest, and he yelped. She climbed off him as he snaked his body away from her. Rubbing his wounded shoulder, he cried out again.

“Sacré Dien
, don’t dig your elbows into a man’s groin, you foolish—Oriel.”

“So,” she said. “You finally took note of me.”

“Oriel,” Joan said as she got to her feet. “He fell off the stool.”

Blade glared at her. “You jumped on me.”

“He fell and hit his head,” Joan said “After we kissed.”

Oriel lifted her brows and looked at Blade. He was restoring order to his clothing and muttering to himself.

“We didn’t kiss. She kissed. I fell on my arse.”

“No doubt.”

He glanced at her, then at Joan, then at Oriel again, and smirked at her. She whirled about and marched out of the library. He dashed to her side before she could close the door.

“Don’t run away again,
chère.
I am most pleased that you’re jealous. Remember the rules of courtly love, which say that jealousy and love are one, and that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.”

So furious she couldn’t think of a reply, Oriel peered into his smiling face and stomped on his foot. He yelped, clutched his injured foot, and hopped on the other. The sight was most gratifying. Oriel clasped her hands in front of her and watched him.

“You forget another, more appropriate rule, my lord, which is that boys do not love until they arrive at
the age of maturity. And you, my lord, have not gotten there yet.”

With Blade still hopping and clutching his foot, she left the battleground the victor. It was only when she reached her chamber that she realized she’d forgotten to ask him to speak to George.

The cursed inconstant trifler. No, she was being unfair. Now that she thought of it, Joan had been the one at fault. Still, he could have run from her.

“Fie on it, and fie on him. He deserved to be kicked in the arse, not on the foot.”

It was then that she began to worry about how Blade would seek revenge for his injury.

Having escaped Joan by pleading an ache in his head from his fall, Blade had retreated to his privy chamber. Now he stood clutching one of the tall posters of his bed, pressed his forehead to the wood, and groaned aloud.

“Beshrew all women.”

René was brushing one of his velvet cloaks.
“Monseigneur?”

“I confided in her, may God protect me. How do I know she won’t babble to one of her cousins? I can’t believe I decided to confide in her.”

“Mistress Oriel?” René held the cloak and blew dust from its folds. “But you said she was the most honest creature you’d ever seen, and the cleverest.”

“Yes, but is she discreet?”

“She must be, my lord, for she has yet to succumb to you.”

Blade lifted his head and frowned at the man. “Now I’m providing amusement to my servant.” He lowered his forehead to the poster again. “I should have waited, but time grows short, and the murderer runs free. Thomas was killed because of what he knew, or what he wouldn’t tell. I’m sure of it. If he left any record of it, Oriel is the only one he would have told, and since she now owns his library and the contents of his chambers, I must have her help. Are you sure there was nothing in his chamber?”

“Oui
, my lord. Did you ask her for her help?”

“I can’t ask her yet. Marry, I’ve only just convinced her of the murder. Besides, what would you have me do? Caper into her chamber and announce that I’m one of the queen’s intelligencers and would she please let me dig in her uncle’s possessions for that is what spies do? And if I tell her who I really am, I will be risking her life. Almighty God, I have already.”

René had stopped brushing the cloak and was looking at him like a priest waiting for a full confession of sins.

“My lord, I’ve never seen you so worried. Yet the risks are no greater than any we encountered in France.”

“I didn’t have to worry about Oriel in France.”

“Ah.” René began to smile.

Blade pounded the bedpost. “Don’t leer at me.

“Oui, mon seigneur.”

“I told you to stop grinning at me. What’s possessed you?”

“Naught, my lord. I but marvel that you spent so many years among the graces of the French court without losing yourself to a woman. You’ve had your choice of the fairest and most refined noblewomen, yet your heart remained untouched and right well defended.”

Blade swore and started out of the chamber. “God
rot your entrails. My heart is still untouched, pristine, damn you. I but lure the girl for my secret purposes.”

“As you say, my lord.”

“I’m hungry. I’m going to the kitchens, where I can keep company with good, honest folk who are more sensible than you.”

He headed below stairs to the kitchen and servants’ hall. René trespassed upon their relationship. That’s what came of having a servant who had bounced him on his knee as a child—a lack of respect. The man was addled. He hadn’t lost himself, especially not to an innocent such as Oriel Richmond. God, he hadn’t succumbed to wild curls and dragonfly wits, had he?

Don’t. You mustn’t. Think of having her near all the time. She might find out. You might destroy her, and certainly she would destroy you
.

“Stop!” He heard a bang.

He shook his head, and came out of his reverie to find that he’d stopped at the gallery windows. He’d banged his fist on the window frame, and it ached. Lowering his arm to his side, he resumed his flight to the kitchen. He’d visited there several times already, to the astonishment of the servants. Befriending the ushers, cooks, carvers, baker, and brewer had been no trouble. He sang them a song about upstart gentlemen and told of licentious Frenchwomen.

He arrived out of breath and stalked into the kitchen, a frown still besmirching his face. He was in a room almost as large as the great chamber. Boasting two fireplaces large enough for him to stand in, the kitchen was hung with every possible pot, pan, utensil, basin, and pitcher. He found a great crowd already gathered there, though preparations for tonight’s feast hadn’t begun. Laundresses, scullery maids, and ushers hovered about the scarred and shining central worktable. From their midst he heard the unmistakable cant of a peddler.

“Snow-white lawn, perfumed gloves, fine wrought shirts, and lace for skirts. What do ye lack? Ivory
combs, shining glasses, fit to show pretty faces of lasses.”

Several maids cooed as the peddler displayed looking glasses and embroidered gloves. Blade wandered over to the group. The peddler was bundled against the freezing weather in layers of patched wool and torn leather.

So numerous were his garments that he resembled a plump bear. Yet his wrists and neck, which poked out of the bundle of clothing, were slender, even though they were caked with a good bit of dirt. He wore a wool cap so old that the nap had worn away and the fabric shone with age. Beneath it coiled masses of hair damp from the mist outside, and in spite of being layered with dust, it shone a dusky silver, like dried, tawny grass.

What gave Blade pause was a pair of eyes of the deep blue of the gentian flower—eyes that marked the peddler, that set him apart when he looked at everyone as if they were players in a farce. Blade turned away to ferret in a cupboard for dried meat and bread while the peddler regaled his audience with banter.

“Yes, lasses, I’ve made my way north from London Town where the whole city made merry for Christmas. Why at court, the queen has her own House of Revels with a great wardrobe full of fantastical costumes and disguisings.” He bent and dug an elbow into the side of an usher. “And they use thousands of candles, what with all the plays and masques held. Never will you see such gay apparel, such spangles and ribbons and cloth of gold. Why, I saw Her Majesty’s Lord of Misrule himself.”

Blade had been attending more to his bread and meat than the peddler’s chatter. When he heard the word
misrule
, he nearly choked on the hunk of beef in his mouth. He swallowed hard, took a gulp of ale, and stared at the peddler.

Upon closer scrutiny it appeared that the man was far younger than he seemed. There were no lines about
his eyes, and they glittered with merriment as he teased a serving girl. He held out a silk lace to her, and Blade noted a long, thin scar that went down the back of his arm. It started at the wrist and disappeared beneath a torn sleeve. That scar couldn’t be anything else but the mark of a sword tip.

The peddler hadn’t looked at him once, and he soon completed his business and began stuffing goods into his pack. Blade wandered out of the kitchen and up to his chamber again, where he retrieved a cloak and changed into boots. Soon he was in the stables, petting his stallion, while a groom cinched a saddle tight. He rode out the back gate and down the path to the neighboring village. As the road plunged into the oak and hazel forest that covered most of the valley, he could see the peddler trudging through mud and snow.

He kicked his horse into a trot and caught up with the man. The peddler stopped as he approached, and swept him an elaborate bow.

“My lord.”

“Stay you a moment, peddler. I’ve an interest in masking and plays—and misrule.”

The peddler smiled at him and pulled off his mittens. His hand waved, and from nothing produced one of the many trinkets he hawked from manor to village. He tossed it in the air, and Blade caught it.

This was no common bauble to catch the eye of a dairy maid. In his palm lay a flat, hollow ring of gold fashioned to resemble a wreath. Within the wreath lay a dragon rampant done in silver and crimson enamel, the heraldic device of Christian de Rivers. Blade closed his hand over the device and looked at the peddler.

“Are you going to sit there gaping at me like a befuddled cowherd?” the peddler asked. He stuck out his arm.

Blade took his hand and drew him up behind him on the stallion. Turning the horse, he rode into the forest until they were out of sight of the road. Once they
stopped, the peddler jumped to the ground, and Blade dismounted after him.