The Greatest Lover in All England (3 page)

He rolled the sound across his tongue, and she imitated him. “R,” she repeated. “R.” She stared again, committing the squiggle to memory.

“Sir Danny, look at him.” Uncle Will gestured, and she shrank from the two men who gazed at her so
intently. “He stands there and stares at the pages and wants more than the life you've given him. A bright lad like him should be able to read.”

“Why does he need to read?” Sir Danny asked. “He has a memory the equal of mine. I can memorize anything the first time I hear it.”

“Aye, aye, and you can recite the whole Bible—backwards. But don't, because I've heard you do it before, and once proved a veritable bounty of holy script.”

Sir Danny combed his shoulder-length hair with a comb he pulled from the purse at his side. Whatever happened, his vanity survived.

“But Rosencrantz is not an actor. Not like you are.” Uncle Will shook his head sadly. “I know you don't want to face it. I know you don't want your protégé to be less than magnificent, but he has never progressed beyond playing women's roles.”

“Rosencrantz has his magnificent moments,” Sir Danny argued.

“Followed by some terrible half hours. But if he could read, he could become a clerk. He'll never learn if he continues to travel with that provincial touring company.”

“That's
my
provincial touring company,” Sir Danny reminded him.

Uncle Will wrinkled his nose with scorn. “With wagons to move you from town to town and a scaffold for a stage. Perhaps you long for nothing more, but Rosencrantz has been with you for fifteen years—”

“Sixteen.” Sir Danny removed his short cloak and slapped the drying mud off the threadbare velvet.

“And he must be nigh onto eighteen years old.”

“I'm twenty-one years,” Rosie insisted.

“A delicate-looking twenty-one.” Uncle Will sounded as if he didn't believe it.

Rosie lifted her hairless chin. “Sir Danny said I was four or five when he found me, so I am twenty-one.”

“Hm.” Uncle Will looked her up and down. “Obviously, traveling doesn't agree with you, or you wouldn't be such a scrawny boy.” Displaying a fine-tuned intuition, he coaxed, “Rosencrantz, I'd teach you to read myself if you'd just remain in London.”

“We can't.” Sir Danny took Rosie's hand and squeezed it. “I lost my temper and we've got to go.”

Impatient with him, Uncle Will demanded, “Why didn't you think of the lad for a change, rather than your egotistic emotions?”

Sir Danny took on the role of noble defender, his depiction made compelling by his sincerity. “I
was
thinking of the lad. Do you know what would happen if the government was overturned? Queen Elizabeth has guided this nation for forty years and two, and brought us peace and prosperity. What life would there be for my Rosencrantz if our Good Queen Bess were stripped of authority?”

“Aye, what life?” Grudgingly, Uncle Will concurred with Sir Danny's assessment.

“Someone must take action,” Sir Danny said, “and that someone must be you. You must warn the queen. I would do so, but I dare not show my face on the streets.”

“Aye, I must warn the queen, and when I do, I'll have lost my patron.” Nervously, Uncle Will dislodged the few strands of hair that covered his scalp, providing a clear view of the shining pate he so carefully concealed. “Pray God, Sir Danny, she listens without prejudice to an actor and playwright, and ignores the notorious reputation our fellows have begotten.”

With a wry twist of his mouth, Sir Danny said, “Speaking of Ludovic, do you think he's arrived yet?” He jerked open the door and stumbled backward.
Rosie gasped. Ludovic stood there, tall, broad, and as motionless as an adder basking in the sun.

Of sturdy stock, Ludovic had been born in some foreign country and smashed on the shores of England by an unruly fate. He'd proved himself to be indispensable to the acting troupe—and he'd proved himself incapable of making friends. No one liked Ludovic. No one bested Ludovic. Although he'd never resorted to violence, everyone feared him. Something in the slant of his cruel mouth and the scars that marked his back and chest dissuaded a challenge.

“Ludovic!” Sir Danny caught Rosie's hand and squeezed it.

“Sir Danny.” Ludovic's low, deep voice contained a slight accent, and it seemed thicker now. Had he been listening at the door?

Recovering from his shock, Sir Danny decided to brazen it out. “I sent a boy for you. Did he find you?”

“I'm here, am I not?”

“Good.” Sir Danny walked forward, Rosie's hand still clasped in his own, and Ludovic yielded. Sir Danny and Rosie strolled back out into the afternoon sunshine that warmed the standing room area. “I am anxious to travel with my”—Sir Danny sounded sardonic—“
provincial
touring company. Ludovic, have you brought the wagons?”

“The wagons? Nay.” Ludovic followed. “But I will get them.”

He bowed and backed away, staring at Rosie with his slightly bulging eyes, and Sir Danny shouted, “Begone!”

Ludovic glared, then limped toward the exit.

“Sir Danny,” Rosie remonstrated, “why did you yell at him? You've offended him and you know we need him.”

Sir Danny contemplated the place where Ludovic had disappeared. “He's been with us a long time. Perhaps too long.” He glanced at her, then shouted, “You can come out, Will. He's gone.” Uncle Will stuck his head out and looked both ways, then slipped out. Eager to be rid of them now, he said, “I'll assist you within the limits of my poor abilities, but I haven't any money so—”

Sir Danny pounced. “So you'll let us hear your new play?”

“Nay!”

“But we'll be in the country,” Sir Danny coaxed. “Far from your London audiences. None will know when we perform it first.”

“Nay.” But Uncle Will was clearly weakening.

“Dear old friend.” Sir Danny threw his arm around Will's neck. “Such a small favor for those whose lives were almost forfeited for Her Majesty and God's own England. What do you call it?”

“I call
it Hamlet
.” William Shakespeare kicked the dirt in disgust, then capitulated. “And I call
myself
a fool. You may listen, but once.” He held up one long finger. “Once only. Then you must go before Southampton inquires of you here. And where will you go?”

As coolly as a brigand, Sir Danny answered, “We're going to an estate not far from London.”

Shocked, Rosie jerked her hand from Sir Danny's grasp. “Nay, we are not.”

Sir Danny ignored her. “We have an invitation to perform for Sir Anthony Rycliffe and his guests at a house party.”

“We're not going there.”

Puzzled, Uncle Will asked, “Why don't you want to go there, Rosencrantz?”

She shoved Sir Danny with a violent motion. “Because Danny has taken leave of his senses.”

“We're going to make our fortune there.” Sir Danny smiled.

“I can almost see the feathers protruding from between your lips,” Uncle Will marveled. “What do you plan to do?”

Sir Danny gave a cultivated flutter of his fingers. “We'll escape the confines of London, travel to Lord Anthony Rycliff's estate, breathe the fresh country air, eat well, drink deep—”

Rosie interrupted. “And blackmail Sir Anthony out of a goodly sum.”

Sir Anthony Rycliffe
staggered, knocked from his passionate exploration of Lady Blanche's full, pouting mouth by the tip of a cane jabbed into his side. Lifting his head from the kiss, he glared—right into the eyes of the girl's indignant father.

“I'm going to pretend I didn't see this.” Lord Bothey obviously wanted to rip Tony to pieces with his bare hands for kissing the lovely Blanche, but two things stopped him—his girth and his reluctance to offend the master of the Queen's Guard.

So he lifted his gaze to the treetops and signaled to his daughter to come with him, out of the gardens and back to the other aristocrats who danced in the long gallery of Odyssey Manor.

Blanche ignored her father. She smiled up at Tony
and drew her tongue slowly over her lips, still wet from his kiss.

It was an invitation few men could have resisted, but Tony took the girl's wandering hands off his shoulders and tried to straighten his ruff. “Go with your father, sweetheart. I'll see you…later.”

Her eyes glistened ever brighter from the tears that filled them, and she blinked, using her eyelashes the way a señorita used a fan. “But, Tony—”

As if she were a pet, he tapped her nose with his finger. “Later.”

“But you promised—”

He had promised her nothing, nor would he until he'd made his choice. Every one of the girls at his house party longed to be the woman in his arms, and quite a few had been. He'd been experimenting—a kiss here, a clasp of passion there—trying to decide which of the noblewomen would be his bride.

It wasn't the act of an honorable gentleman, but Tony prided himself on being neither honorable nor a gentleman. He still smiled as he handed Blanche over to her father. “I would love to continue our discussion, sweetling, but the audience grows.” He waved a broad hand at the two older ladies who stood tapping their feet in the manicured grass. “My sisters await me.”

Lord Bothey snatched Blanche by the arm before she could protest further, and marched her away.

“Tony, have you run mad?”

He shushed Jean and waited until the lagging Blanche turned to look at him. He blew her a kiss, wiped her from his mind, and said, “If I marry Blanche, she'll learn to keep her kisses for me. She's too free with them.”

“You won't marry her,” Jean said.

“Probably not. Her father's only a baron, and with his uncouth ways he's likely to offend the queen. I can't have that in a father-in-law.” Graciously, he agreed. “You're right, Jean, I won't marry her.”

“That's good,” said Ann, his other sister. She beamed at him from beneath heavy brows. “I'm glad you're showing some sense.”

“Is he?” Jean knew her brother well, and so never believed the best of him. “Is he indeed?”

Tony smiled his winsome smile.

“Don't give me that disarming look,” Jean said. “You're going to be scolded.”

“Scolded?” He wrapped each of his diminutive sisters in a bear hug. “Why would you ladies want to scold me?”

“Because you have run mad. You've been kissing every maiden here.” Jean struggled out from his clutches to shake her finger at him. “Their fathers are threatening to leave.”

“You're causing a scandal.” Ann unwrapped his arm from around her neck and skipped in front of him down the path. “No one knew why you'd invited half of the nobles in England here for a party, but they're wiser now. Every family you invited has a marriageable daughter.”

“True.” He lifted an amused brow and allowed Jean to tug him to a halt.

“And like a codpiece, you're trying on every one for size.”

“A crude analogy.” He tried to sound severe.

“You're a crude man,” Ann answered. “The parents of these maidens are frightened.”

“But the maidens aren't.”

“Oh, no.” Jean snorted with disgust. “They're twittering like a flock of starlings every time you pass.”

He dredged his soul for modesty, but he had never
learned the art of self-deception. He had a way with women, he knew, especially when he chose to exert himself. “I'm twenty-eight. 'Tis time I took a wife.”

“We have no argument with that.” Jean pushed him down onto a marble bench. “'Tis the suggestion we've been making since you came back from the Continent. If you had done so when you returned, bathed in Her Majesty's praise and loaded with her rewards, you could have had any woman in the kingdom. But Tony, that was five years ago.”

He contrived to look hurt. “Is memory so short?”

“Don't play the innocent with us.” Jean's eyes narrowed. “You're master of the Queen's Guard. Her Majesty granted you the Sadler estate, no small plum, and the income from that extinct family's lands. If you would but reach out your hand, you could have any widow in the country.”

“Widow.”

He repeated the abhorrent word, but Jean paid no attention. “Instead you are offending every nobleman with a maiden daughter.”

He arched his back and flexed his arms, then locked his hands behind his head. “They could leave.”

Sensitive Ann watched him and read the menace in his gesture. “They're afraid of you.”

He moved over and patted the bench beside him. “Sit, sweet sister, and tell me why they should be afraid. If they left, what could I do? I'm not likely to take a sword to all of them.”

With a sweet, sarcastic edge to her voice, Jean said, “Nay?”

Ann sidled over and perched on the edge, her skirt a rigid circle around her. “You have the queen's favor.”

“I am currently out of favor.”

“Currently!” Jean snapped. “Temporarily is a better
term. No one doubts you can sweet-talk your way back into her good graces.”

“You flatter me.”

“You've proved yourself a dangerous man with a sword when a lord is quick with an insult.”

“You exaggerate.”

Jean lost her temper with him. “Don't patronize me, Tony Rycliffe. I disciplined you from the time you were a babe and I'll discipline you now if it'll knock some sense into you.”

Tony didn't laugh. If Jean chose to take a stick to him, he'd take the beating and not complain. He owed her so much. He owed them both so much.

Leaning back against a tree, he studied his sisters. He'd seen Jean angry often enough, and she was angry now. Her swarthy complexion flushed and glowed from the tip of her nose down to her chest. She tugged at her neck ruff as if it choked her. She'd always been his disciplinarian.

Ann. Now, Ann wasn't angry. She was distressed. As dark as her sister, she had brown eyes that filled easily with tears, and they were filled now. She didn't like to see her siblings at odds, and she wrung her hands and murmured soft noises.

Tony could resist neither Ann's distress nor Jean's anger. Perhaps he owed them an explanation, an outline of his grand scheme. “I want to start a noble dynasty.”

Ann laid her gloved hand on his arm. “You're part of a noble dynasty.”

Picking up her hand, he stripped the glove away and examined her fingers. Not a callus, not a mark to show she had ever done a day's work. And she hadn't, of course. She didn't understand, and for her he bridled his impatience. “That's not
my
dynasty. It bears the name of my father and my brother.”

“But you're my brother, too,” Ann wailed.

“For that I thank you. And you.” He nodded at Jean, who understood him so much better than the gentle Ann. “But found the Rycliffe dynasty I will, and for that I must take a maiden to wife.”

“But a maiden has a father who will decide her fate, and no father…” Ann groped for words.

“Will have me?” Tony concluded.

Embarrassed, Ann looked down at their entwined hands, but Jean rallied. “You've gained a reputation for fighting good noblemen and seducing good noble wives—”

“And I'm a bastard son.”

“—and if it weren't for Elizabeth's favor, you'd have been assassinated years ago.”

“And I'm a bastard son,” he insisted.

“That is perhaps the reason.” Jean surveyed him, as stiff and pale as if the chill marble had penetrated his bones. “But feeling as you do about your legitimacy, you must understand the fathers' objections.”

“Oh, I do.” He stood and grinned, showing all his white teeth. “I just don't care.”

He didn't care about the objections, because no one dared make them to his face. Jean was right. In the last five years, he had taken a sword to every nobleman who had dared to mention the circumstances of his birth.

Abandoning her attempt to make him show compassion, she went to work on his male pride. “Why do you need a maiden? Are you afraid your bedroom technique might not bear comparison?”

The bright orange-and-yellow leaves quivered beneath the blast of his laughter. “Nay, for if you'll remember, Father always said I had a natural seat.”

Ann tittered. “He was talking about your horsemanship.”

“One skill is much the same as another, and I'll keep my wife besotted with me until the day she dies.”

“While you find your pleasure where you will?” Jean snapped.

His amusement died a painful death. “Nay to that, also. I'll make no bastards for my wife to care for.”

“Mama didn't mind,” Ann assured him.

“Your mother was a lovely woman,” he said. “And she gave me no less love than she gave her own children. I thought she was my real mother. She
should
have been my real mother.”

The memory of their mother, crippled and weak as death crept upon her, brought tears to Ann's face and sent Jean searching for her handkerchief.

He gave them a moment, then explained. “I'll have a noble maiden who's young enough—not more than seventeen—to bear me many babes. I must have a fecund woman for breeding purposes, and it's well known that young mares throw more colts.”

For the first time in her life, Jean appeared to be speechless, but Ann was not. She struggled to stand, wrestling with her heavy farthingale, and when he would have helped her, she knocked his hand aside. On her feet, she said, “A young mare would perfectly suit you, Tony, for you are nothing but a horse's ass.”

Jean and Tony stared after her as she stalked toward the house, then Tony turned to Jean in confusion. “What did I say?”

Jean opened her mouth, and shut it. After a turn about the clearing, she came and stood in front of Tony. “I had forgotten that Ann could see the truth of a situation so clearly, and speak her mind so succinctly.”

Astonished, Tony asked, “You agree with her?”

“You're due for a fall, Anthony Rycliffe.” Her already-deep voice deepened with relish. “And I hope
you don't break your leg when it happens. I'd hate to see you put down. But that's not why I need to speak with you. I promised Lady Honora Howard I would act the part of her father and propose a match between you and her.”

He burst into laughter, expecting her to join him.

She did not, and his laughter faded.

He examined his sister, but she appeared to be serious, waiting for his amusement to die. “You jest.”

“I do not.”

“Lady Honora wants to marry…” His voice failed him as the absurdity of it struck again, but without the humor this time. “Lady Honora must be forty if she's a day.”

“We are of an age,” Jean admitted.

“And if she were to take off her corset, I fear for the vegetation at her feet.”

“She has a large bosom, but her figure's very fine. She was a beauty in her youth, and her face is still sculpted—”

“Out of ice!”

“She is not free with her emotions, but that should make her all the more attractive to you.”

He thought of the restrained gentlewoman who gazed upon the world from her lofty status and judged her peers with such superior precision. “Why would that frigid woman be attractive to me?”

“Because she chose you using the same cool logic you've used to winnow the grain of your marital candidates.”

Detecting a hint of triumph in Jean's demeanor, he narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. “Why me?”

“She wants a child, and believes you to be the most vigorous stallion in England.”

Amazement gripped him, buffeting him from emotion. “But I've taken care not to father any bastards.”

“She has faith in your ability, when you apply yourself, and she's a woman who fulfills almost all your requirements.”

Then fury broke, and he reacted like a man who knows his worth, yet finds himself valued as nothing more than a breeding animal. How could anyone seek a mate for no other reason than fertility?

The specters of his matrimonial prospects rose in his mind, and he flushed. But their breeding ability was not important now. What was important was to escape this trap.

Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Jean dangled an irresistible lure. “She's wealthy.”

He tugged at his suddenly tight ruff. Indeed she was, very wealthy, and he prayed for the strength to resist the temptation of her money.

“She's the queen's dearest friend, and she's still, er, fecund as a mare.”

Impatient with inaction, he stood and walked away, skirting the hedges and leaving the garden. Jean followed, matching his long steps, and when he reached the expanse of lawn that sloped away from the front of the house, he swung on her. “Lady Honora's buried three husbands and has no children living. You call that fecund?”

Jean glanced toward the marble edifice, but no guests were in sight. “The first two husbands were chosen by her father for their connections, influence, and wealth, and he scarce regarded their inbred weakness. They gave her no children, and lasted no longer than her teens. The third she married in a fit of passion, and he was all any woman desired in a man. He gave her a child, and should have given her more, but he spread his seed among the female population and mocked her when she tried to rein him in.”