The Emerald Swan (28 page)

His rugged mouth thinned, and his hawk nose was suddenly pinched. He had not forgiven and these people would learn that, when he had the crown of France upon his head and an infant son in the cradle.

He replaced the miniature in his doublet pocket and moved away from the bow as sailors raced to lower the foresails and the vessel dropped anchor against the
harbor wall. His servants hurried up from below with trunks and portmanteaux. A man couldn’t visit Elizabeth’s court without a suitable wardrobe, although to look at the supposed duke of Roissy at this moment one wouldn’t know it. Henry could still have been in the besieging camp outside the walls of Paris. He wore his buff leather jerkin over knee-length britches and thigh boots. His head was bare. His sword was unadorned, as was his poignard. They were a soldier’s weapons and the steel was pitted with use but the edges could saw through metal.

Henry was less interested in his personal luggage than he was in the horses that were being led up from the canvas shelters in the stern. His own charger was in the personal care of the royal head groom.

“Has he borne the voyage well?”

“Aye, my li … my good lord,” the man said, touching his forelock.

Henry stroked Valoir’s nose and the horse whickered into his palm. “He has always traveled well.”

“Will you disembark, Your Grace?” The English captain of the sloop came across the deck to his passenger. He was a lean and leathery sailor who ordinarily had little time for the French and even less for their noblemen, but in this case he had found his passenger congenial, unaffected, surprisingly knowledgeable about seafaring, and a most excellent drinking companion. He would be sorry to part company.

“The skiffs are ready to row you ashore, sir. And the rafts will soon be in position to take the horses.”

“My thanks, Captain Hall.” Henry extended his hand in farewell. “A most enjoyable voyage.”

“Helped by a good wind and clement weather,” the captain said jovially, taking the hand. “It’s been a pleasure,
my lord. When you return to France, I hope I’ll be able to serve you again.”

“If you’re in harbor in about two weeks, then I should be delighted to make the return voyage with you.” Henry drew on thick leather gauntlets that reached his elbows.

The captain bowed and moved to the rail to see his ducal passenger down the swaying rope ladder and into the skiff. The duke and his noblemen made the descent with the agility of hardened soldiers and the oarsmen pulled away from the sloop toward the narrow entrance to the inner basin.

“We’d best send the messenger to the castle at once, Magret,” Henry said, stepping ashore. “We will await his return in the Black Anchor.” He gestured to an inn on the pier.

In the gloomy taproom, the king of France waved expansively to the landlord at the ale keg. “Fill the tankards, mine host. I’ve landed safe after a voyage and I’ve a mind to give thanks in company.”

There was a roar of approval from the company gathered in the tavern, and within a few minutes Henry was surrounded by men of Dover, laughing and jesting.

Magret regarded his sovereign with resignation. Henry drank with his own soldiers and his own countrymen in the same careless fashion. He was suspicious to the point of obsession, and yet one would never guess it, looking at him now, merry as a grig in the company of strangers, his face growing ruddy with good-fellowship. But Henry trusted the common man, it was only his peers he suspected of treachery, and God knew, he had reason enough.

The constable of Dover Castle rode down himself to welcome the duke of Roissy and his entourage. He
seemed momentarily stunned to find his noble visitor consorting in the public taproom with the fishermen and laborers of Dover, but there was something about his guest, something in his presence, that kept any comments stillborn.

He escorted his guests to the castle and immediately sent a courier to London with the duke’s reverence to Her Majesty and his request to attend her at court, and a second letter to the earl of Harcourt, announcing the duke’s arrival and containing the implicit claim of hospitality under the Harcourt roof.

Chapter Fifteen

M
IRANDA SAW
R
OBBIE
the next morning. She was walking in the long gallery, alone with her thoughts, which were as confused as they had ever been. Confused and yet infused with excitement, with a sense of physical wonder that filled every cell and pore of her body. She longed to see Gareth, and yet deliberately kept herself out of his way. She didn’t know whether that was because she was afraid, or because she wanted to treasure this glorious feeling alone for as long as possible. It was a feeling centered not just on the wonders of their love-making but on the deep certainty of her love. She knew what it was to love her family, but this feeling was very different. There was no obligation, no rationality, it was a fact, a huge golden ball of conviction that both filled her and encompassed her. And she knew her life would never be the same again.

So now she walked alone, while Chip watched her from the mantelpiece, his entire demeanor expressing his unease and disapproval. Miranda hadn’t even visited Maude that morning. She cherished this newborn emotion, sensing that once it was exposed to the outside world, it would be altered in some way, and for as long as she could keep it pristine and secret she would.

It was warm and muggy in the gallery. The day was still overcast but close and thundery. Miranda dabbed at a bead of sweat gathering in the cleft of her bosom
and went to open one of the long windows overlooking the front courtyard.

And then she saw the small figure standing across the narrow roadway that ran past the Harcourt gates. Her heart jumped with shock. How could it be Robbie? The troupe would be safe in France by now. Then with a wave of delighted surprise, she knew that it was. Even at this distance, the small figure was unmistakable. Her family were not in France, they were here, in London.

She ran from the gallery, lifting her skirts clear of her feet, Chip bounding at her heels.

Imogen emerged from the parlor as Miranda hurried across the hall to the front door. “Where are you going, girl? You can’t go out without an attendant.”

Miranda barely heard and paid her no attention. She wrestled for a minute with the great double doors, then flung one of them wide and leaped down the steps to the courtyard. She flew across to the gates, demanding of the porter even as she ran, “Open the wicket for me.”

The porter stared at Lady Maude. It was Lady Maude, despite the strangely short hair and the oddity of the monkey at her feet. Her voice was imperious and impatient, her eyes snapping. He hastened to open the wicket gate and she slid through before he’d opened it wide. He stared in astonishment as she ran across the roadway, dodging a carter’s wagon, narrowly avoiding a porter with a laden basket on his head, then she was lost to view behind a knot of traffic and he didn’t see the reunion.

Robbie gazed upward at the magnificent figure that was and was not Miranda. She swept him into her arms, heedless of his grubby hands grabbing the crisp lace partlet at her bosom, or his filthy bare feet curling
into the folds of her richly embroidered tangerine damask skirts.

“Robbie … Robbie.” She laughed as she kissed him. “Where did you spring from?”

“We come lookin’ fer ye,” the child said, when he could manage to speak. “They said in Dover that you was taken by a lord to Lunnon and we come lookin’ fer ye.”

“Everyone’s here?”

“Aye, we got lodgin’s above a cobbler’s in Ludgate. Oh, there’s Chip.” He struggled to get down and when Miranda set him on his feet he embraced the dancing monkey. Chip chattered excitedly, clearly delighted, as he wrapped his scrawny arms around the boy’s neck.

“Oh, I must go and see them. There’s so much I have to tell you all.” Miranda examined Robbie as he whispered to Chip, and some of her elation faded as she absorbed his pinched white face, sunken eyes, the lines of pain and fatigue around his little mouth. “Has no one been looking after you, Robbie?”

“Luke ’as.”

Miranda nodded in comprehension. Luke would do his best but it wasn’t enough in this instance. “Come,” she said, hitching him onto her hip. “We’ll go into the house and get you some breakfast.”

“In there?” Robbie squeaked, his eyes opening wide. “In that lord’s ’ouse? We can’t go in there, M’randa.”

“I’ve just come out of it,” Miranda said with a laugh. “So I see no reason why we can’t go back in it.”

“But ’e’ll ’ave me taken up and ’anged,” Robbie whimpered.

“Who will?”

“Lord ’Arcourt. Jebediah says so.”

“Oh, pah!” Miranda dismissed Jebediah with an indignant gesture. “What does he know about anything?”
She plunged back into the roadway, expertly dodging and weaving until she gained the safety of the Harcourt gates just behind Chip.

The porter’s jaw dropped, but he opened the wicket again and Miranda hurried across the courtyard to the house. Robbie clung tightly to her. “Is it an ’orehouse, M’randa?”

“What?” She tilted her head to get a good look at his face. “Don’t be absurd, Robbie.”

“Mama Gertrude said it don’t look like one,” the child said. “But Jebediah—”

“Oh, fiend take Jebediah!” Miranda marched into the hall and ran straight into Imogen, who was still standing in the parlor door, trying to decide what to do about Miranda’s sudden disappearance.

“God in His heaven! What have you got there?” She flung up her hands in horror. Robbie began to cry and buried his head in Miranda’s neck.

But before Miranda could reply, Gareth came down the stairs. “What in the world—”

“Oh, milord, see who I found. It’s Robbie.” Miranda hurried across the vast hall to the foot of the stairs. “My family are here. They didn’t go to France and leave me behind after all. They came looking for me and they’re here, in London.” Her eyes shone as she looked up at him, and he could see that she was thinking of nothing but this new development. And then consciousness flooded her gaze, and she smiled at him, a smile of such devastating candor and joy that it rocked him to his core.

“Gareth, what is going on here?” Imogen demanded. “What’s that filthy vagrant doing here? He’s ruining the girl’s gown.”

Miranda ignored this. “I’m going to take him up to
see Maude. Is it all right if I have breakfast sent up for him, milord? I haven’t been there to look after him and I don’t suppose he’s had enough to eat.”

“Of course.” What else was there to say? Miranda raced up the stairs, her speed unchecked by her burden, leaving Gareth struggling with this new complication.

His carefully constructed scheme was already tottering on the verge of collapse; it didn’t need another attack on its foundations. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t even attempted to go to bed, remaining instead in the garden until day was full broken, wrestling with the consequences of what had surely been no more than a fit of madness. He’d fallen into some trap sprung by his overstretched mind, and he had to find a way to mitigate the consequences. It was as simple as that, wasn’t it? But his thoughts had circled without cease, nothing clear coming out of his desperate searching for a way out of the ghastly tangle.

His eyes felt full of sand, his limbs aching, his head too thick and muzzy to wrestle further … and now this. Miranda’s family had returned to her life just when it was vital that she see herself as a d’Albard, that she become a d’Albard, that she forget as far as possible her previous life and immerse herself in the one that was to be her future. But Gareth knew Miranda well enough to know that she wouldn’t forsake her friends now that she’d found them again.

“Gareth!” Imogen’s voice took on an edge of desperation. She couldn’t read her brother’s expression but it filled her with unease. “Gareth, what is going on? Who was that boy she was carrying?”

Gareth shook his head as if to clear it. “Someone from Miranda’s past. Leave it to me, Imogen, I’ll sort it out.” He swung away from his sister and made for the
peace of his own privy chamber at the rear of the house. Flinging himself in a chair at the document-strewn table, he rested his aching head in his hands.

He had taken the virginity of the woman destined to become the wife of Henry of France. That need not be a disaster in itself. Henry was too lusty and pragmatic himself to mind overmuch if he discovered the bride in his bed was no virgin. And it would be obvious to her husband that Miranda was still far from experienced. If nothing was said, Henry would say nothing.

As long as there was no child.
Gareth thrust that hideous possibility from him. It was not a useful anticipation.

The cold, calculating part of his brain told Gareth that if the simple loss of virginity was the only issue, then the situation was retrievable. But he knew that he had taken more than Miranda’s virginity in that wondrous, magical encounter in the garden. He’d taken her soul. He had seen it in the way she’d looked at him before she’d left him last night, and again this morning, just before she’d taken Robbie upstairs. She didn’t know how to conceal her emotions, even if she wanted to. And his trespass on her honesty and her innocence was unforgivable.