At the Queen's Summons (10 page)

He cupped his hands around her shoulders. “Pippa—”

“It was sheer, blind luck that Mab happened upon me, so I can only think I was not meant to live.” She stared down at the tumbling clowns on the stage but did not seem to see them. “Imagine that. I had lived only a short time, and then someone decided it should be over for me.”

“You cannot know that,” he said, covering his pity with gruffness.

She blinked, and a winsome smile erased her melancholy. “I stayed with Mab for twelve years. One year for each pearl she traded.”

“You said she always sold one at Michaelmas.” He relaxed his grip on her shoulders and turned to feign interest in the stage.

“And then I came to London. I've been here eleven years.”

“That narrows it some. You're between twenty-five and twenty-seven years of age.”

She bit her lip. “Old enough to be a spinster.”

He brushed a bright lock of hair off her brow. “You don't look like any spinster I've ever seen.”

With a soft cry of joy, she clung to his arm and pressed her cheek against him. “Ah, you are kind, my lord. Mort used to say all Irish were savages, but you belie that.” She gazed up at him with shining eyes. “No one has ever troubled himself to speak kindly to me.”

Aidan felt Donal Og's glare like a brand, and he looked over her head at his cousin. Donal Og had managed to find the second most beautiful woman in the place, and the two of them were sharing spiced wine.

“I worry about you, coz. I really do,” Donal Og said in Gaelic. “If you were to simply toss up her skirts and play hide the sausage, I'd understand. That's certainly what
I
intend to do with my lovely friend here.”

The “lovely friend” affected a pout. “What secrets do you tell in your savage tongue?”

“That thing he does with lamp oil,” Pippa said helpfully, “and a wine bot—”

Aidan placed his fingers over her mouth.

“Pay no mind to this mistress of the gutter,” Donal Og said to his lady friend. “She has a twisted sense of the absurd.”

Aidan was burningly aware of Pippa's hand slipping down his arm slowly, caressingly. “Please yourself and I'll do the same,” he said in Irish to Donal Og.

The crowd roared with laughter at the antics of the acting troupe.

“Faith, Aidan, you're the O Donoghue Mór. Think what you're doing,” Donal Og said with a note of warning in his voice. “Whether you like it or not, your destiny was sealed long ago by forces beyond the control of any one man. Even the Earl of Desmond has taken to the hills like a common reiver. You're charged with keeping the peace for an entire district. Not acting nursemaid to Sassenach street rabble.”

“Don't you think I know that?” Aidan said. Her hand slid lower, fingers stroking his wrist, lingering over his pulse. He thought he had found his answer with Felicity Browne, a perfect English rose of a woman, part of the settlement to keep the peace, and the biggest mistake he had ever made.

“It'll do you no good to fall in love with such as that.” Donal Og indicated Pippa with a jerk of his head.

“And why would you be thinking I'm falling in love?” Aidan demanded, hot with irritation. “Sure, and that's the stupidest thing a man ever heard.”

Even as he spoke, her hand slid into his and stayed there shyly, like a small wild bird huddling from a storm.

No affinity with this woman was possible, even if he
did
want her. Yet she fascinated him. She gave his natural sense of mastery an unexpected jolt, challenging and contradicting him, making him laugh and breaking his heart all at once. Every moment with her gleamed like a jewel, but the moments were just as fleeting as the flash of the sun on moving water: brilliant, intense and instantly gone.

Each minute with this woman, he thought with a tightening of his chest, was a glimpse of what could never be.

He forced himself to laugh at the antics on the sloping stage to cover the anguish that twisted his heart. If he were truly his father's son, he would simply bed the wench. God knew, his body kept urging him to do just that. Never, ever, had he so yearned to taste a woman's mouth, to take her in his arms and bury himself in the warmth of her.

The unquestioning trust she placed in him was disconcerting, especially considering his thoughts. Didn't she know the position of an Irish chieftain was tenuous, his life likely to end in blood and fire?

Aidan made his decision. As the acting troupe came out to claim their huzzahs and tossed coppers, he thought of one way to make certain Pippa remained safe, long after he was gone.

 

“Absolutely not,” she said the next day, trying to look outraged, when inside, her heart was breaking. “I'll never do as you suggest, my lord of the stupid ideas.”

She paced the garden walk, sharply aware of the beauty of the day, the foxglove and columbine making a riot of springtime color and scent, the glinting sunlight touching the tops of the yew and elm trees.

“It is a fine idea.” Aidan leaned against the edge of the well and crossed his booted feet at the ankles. He looked so indolently handsome that she wanted to slap him. “I think you should consider it.”

“Court!” she burst out, almost choking on the word. “I cannot believe you think I could go to court. As a jester, perhaps. But as a lady? Never.”

“At least hear me out.” He wore his tunic open at the throat, and try as she might, she could not stop from imagining what his chest looked like, broad and muscled, dark, silky hair in the center….

She was instantly impatient with herself. Reaching up, she plucked three small green pears from a tree and juggled them idly, round and round. “I'm listening. I'll try not to snort in disgust too loudly.”

He shoved away from the well and clasped his hands behind his back, looking for all the world like a battle commander planning a strategy.

Ah, but he is planning a strategy,
said an ugly little voice inside her. A campaign to drive her out of his life.

But I've only just found you,
she wanted to say.

“I've not yet met your queen,” he said, “but I'm told she values lively company.” His gaze followed the whirling pears she juggled effortlessly.

“And I've heard she took away a man's knighthood for farting in her presence,” Pippa retorted.

“She would like you.”

“How, pray, did you make the leap from farting knights to me? And how do you know if the queen would like me or not?”

“Everyone likes you. Even Donal Og.”

“He has such a charming way of showing it. What was it he called me this morning?”

“A nightmare in taffeta.” He could not keep the mirth from his voice.

“See?” She kept the pears in motion and pretended nonchalance. “And you, Aidan O Donoghue? Do you like me?”

“I am responsible for you. I want to do what is best for you.”

“Is that peculiar to the Irish?” she asked.

“What?”

“Pretending to answer a question when you've given me no answer at all.” She caught the pears, then tossed him one without warning. He caught it deftly. She took a bite of hers, making a face at the unripe tartness. “And how have I managed to survive twenty-five to twenty-seven years without you?” she demanded acidly.

“You've
survived,
Pippa. But can you honestly say you have lived? You say you want to find your family. You have reason to believe they were of gentle birth. What better place to begin looking than at court? You can find people there who keep bloodlines, census rolls, registers stolen from churches. You can inquire about families that lost a child—presumably to drowning.”

She braced herself against a tug of yearning. “I think we both know what my chances are,” she said quietly. “I don't know my family name, so how can I find myself in record books?”

He touched her hand. Did the man always have to be so damned tender?

“Don't say no,” he said. “At least not yet. There is a masque at Durham House tonight. I am expected to attend. Say you'll come with me. Give yourself a chance
to be with men who might be able to help you. Meet Robert Dudley—properly—and Christopher Hatton and Evan Carew—”

The names jumbled up in her mind, strange and alluring. “No,” she said, “I don't belong there. I could never—”

“Tell me my ears deceive me.” He cocked his head. “I never thought I would see you shrink in fear from a challenge.”

She turned her back on him. Damn him, damn him, damn him. How was it that he could see into her heart, even when she took pains to hide it?

“What do you fear?” he asked, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him. “That you'll never find out who you are—or that you will?”

“What if I turn out to be the by-blow of some gouty old duke?” she asked.

“Then we'll call you Lady Pippa.” Idly he tossed the pear up and down. “Perhaps this will mean you'll have to stop thinking of your mother as a princess in a glass tower. You might learn that she is all too human, as imperfect as you or I.”

She stood staring up at him for a long moment. How fine he looked, with the glory of springtime blooming all around him. He was taking away her long-held dream, aye, but he was offering another dream in its place—one that had a chance of coming true.

“All right,” she said, “I'll go.”

 

“Iago said you sent away the maids,” Aidan called in annoyance through her chamber door.

“So I did, Your Splendidness,” she called back in a cheerful voice. It was her best, brightest, fool-the-crowd voice, and she had worked for years to perfect it. No one
would guess that inside she smarted with wounds that cut to the quick of her pride. “It is beneath me to consort with such a mean class of people.”

“They were sent specially by Lady Lumley,” Aidan said. “Did you let them stay long enough to dress you?”

She leaned her forehead on a lozenge-shaped pane of a mullioned window and drew a deep breath past the lump in her throat.
I only let them stay long enough to call me the O Donoghue's whore. The laced mutton. The primped poppet.

“I've decided not to go after all,” she called. Ah, damnation. Her voice cracked with emotion. It was too much to hope he would not notice.

He noticed. He pushed open the door and strode into the chamber. He looked magnificent in a dark wool tunic and leather leggings. Iago had added polished silver beads to the long, braided strand of his hair. He looked wild and brooding, faintly dangerous as he stopped stock-still when he caught sight of her.

She wanted to shrivel and die, for she was clad only in an undershift and chemise, stockings pooled around her ankles and the rest of the elaborate costume laid out in confusion across the bed.

But he was not looking at her state of dishabille. He was looking at her face. Into her eyes.

“You've been crying,” he said.

“The scent ball makes me sneeze,” she insisted, plucking up the pomander by its string and holding it at arm's length.

He took the ball from her and set it on a table. “Is that why you sent the maids away? I went to some trouble to bring them here, with the dressmaker and that frock.” He gestured at the garment, a silken fantasy of ice blue and silver. When she had laid eyes on it she had gone weak
in the knees, for she had never seen such a beautiful garment. But that was before the maids had started taunting her.

“They say it was originally made for a lady-in-waiting,” Aidan said, “but she—” He broke off and lifted one of the sleeves, inspecting it.

“She what?” Pippa demanded.

“She was banished from court.”

“Why?”

He dropped the open-worked sleeve and faced her with an honestly baffled expression. “According to Iago, the lady in question petitioned the queen for permission to marry, and the queen refused. A few months later, the lady was discovered to be with child, having secretly wed her lover. He was imprisoned in the Tower, and she was sent from court.”

For a moment, Pippa forgot her own troubles. “Why?”

“I asked the same question. One person dared to answer, but only in a whisper. The queen cannot find anyone to marry, and she is past the age to bear children.”

“Marrying and having children are not all they're reputed to be,” she said.

For a moment, a cold shadow seemed to pass over him. Then, just as fleetingly, amusement danced in his eyes. “And you are an authority on such matters.”

“Dove once told me that celibate priests advise people on marriage.”

“Ah. Now. About the dress—”

“Surely a frock to bring me good luck,” Pippa said sourly.

“It's not to your taste?”