At the Queen's Summons (14 page)

“Next time you decide to pinch a lady's arse,” she called, “be sure your victim is either too helpless to resist or too stupid to mind.”

“You are a common trollop.”

“Thank you, my lord
Noisome,”
she shot back with a false obeisance.

“Charming,” he said, spitting on the ground.

“You
have the charm of a closestool,” she retorted.

Newsome glared at Aidan. “Where did you find this—this piecemeal maid?”

“Did the first dunking fail to clean up your mouth, Newsome?” Aidan asked, advancing on him.

He said nothing, but squished along a garden path toward the house.

Aidan bent forward and peeled off his tunic and shirt. He straightened, shaking back his wet hair, to find everyone staring at him. Again.

Female whispers swept the goggling throng. Pippa wore an expression that raised his vanity to new heights. Her eyes were misty, her mouth slightly open; her tongue slipped out to moisten her lips. He held the tunic lower to conceal his body's reaction.

“What are those scars?” she asked with quiet awe.

“That,” he said, feeling a flush creep up his neck, “is a long story. We had best get ourselves dry.”

“And so you had,” said a laughing, friendly voice. Richard de Lacey clambered up to the river landing. “Come with me to Wimberleigh House. It's just there, at the top of the garden.” He pointed at a beautiful, turreted mansion bristling with finials, with great bays of oriel windows facing the river. “It would be an honor to play host to such singular company.”

 

Two hours later, Pippa stood at the top of the grand staircase of Wimberleigh House and frowned down the length of steps. The residence was not as big and rambling as Lumley House and Crutched Friars, nor was it as opulent as Durham House.

Yet she felt immediately comfortable here. They had given her clean clothes, and a bashful maid had helped her dress. She inhaled the aroma of beeswax and verbena polish, alien scents to her, so why did they seem so familiar and evocative? She studied the paneled walls and painted cloth hangings. She could imagine Richard de Lacey growing up in this place, a lovely golden child racing through the galleries and halls or cavorting in the garden.

As she leaned on the top newel post, the wooden orb bent to one side. Pippa gasped and jumped back.

“Don't mind that,” said a cheery voice.

She spun around to see a smiling maid bustling toward her, holding a lit candle in her hand. “I be Tess Harbutt, come to light the chandelier.” She bobbed her coiffed head at the newel post. “There used to be a series of pulleys here to help my own dear grandmum up and down the stairs when she were getting on in years.”

Tess clumped down the stairs and slid back a wooden panel to reveal a system of ropes and hooks. While Pippa watched with keen interest, the maid paid out the rope, which caused the chandelier to lower slowly.

“The old Lord Wimberleigh—he be the Earl of Lynley now, Master Richard's grandsire—was quite the inventor,” Tess explained. “Always dreaming up this or that convenience.”

Pippa hurried down the stairs to get a closer look. The chandelier hung at eye level now, a great, heavy wheel of candles, each with a chimney of cut glass.

“May I?” She took Tess's candle and touched its burning head to each candle in the fixture. They were thick and white, not all smelly with tallow like the ones she was used to.

“That's him there.” Tess pointed to a portrait on the wall along the stairway. “His name is Stephen de Lacey.”

She looked up. Ah, there was where Richard got his golden good looks, she noted.

“That next one is Stephen de Lacey's second wife, the Lady Juliana.” The matronly dark-haired lady held a fan to her bosom and was surrounded by children. An unusual, long-haired dog lay curled at their feet.

“Juliana,” Pippa said. “Pretty name.” She was almost to the last candle.

“Some as say she is Russian royalty,” Tess explained, warming to her tale. Dropping her voice to a gossipy whisper, she added, “Others as say she was a Gypsy.”

Pippa jerked her hand in startlement, oversetting the last candle. The glass chimney fell, but she caught it before it shattered. “What did you say?” She put the glass back.

Tess's face flushed. “Idle gossip, is all. I misspoke, ma'am.”

Yet as she lit the last candle and Tess used a crank to raise the chandelier, Pippa frowned up at the portrait.

Juliana. A Gypsy. Some elusive thought hovered at the edge of her awareness, then flitted away. It must be her own encounter with the old Gypsy that jogged her memory, she decided. She pointed to two rectangular shadows on the paneling. “What portraits were removed?”

“Those would be Master Richard's parents, Lord and Lady Wimberleigh. They was taken down for packing. Master Richard's got himself a military commission, he
does. He has some miniature limnings of his brothers and sister—Masters Lucas, Leighton and Michael, and of course Mistress Caroline, the family favorite.”

Pippa stared a moment longer at the portraits. A family. How alien the notion was to her. Discomfited by both longing and a sense of awkwardness, she plucked at her skirts. She was ever the misfit, ever the odd man out. “Do I look all right?”

“Oh, aye, ma'am. That's one of Mistress Caroline's old ones. Perfect for you.” The maid eyed Pippa's cropped hair, started to say something, then looked away politely. “You'd best be off to the dining hall. I think they're waiting for you.”

Pippa crossed the antechamber, flanked by grand archways, and went through the doors on her right.

“Sorry, ma'am. I didn't realize you'd been here before,” said Tess.

“I haven't.”

“Then how do you know the way to the dining hall?”

Pippa stood still in her tracks. Again she felt that prickle, that chill. Thoughts teased at her and disappeared, unformed. She looked helplessly at the friendly maid. “A lucky guess, I suppose.”

I
am a Christian as well as a Celt, which makes for some awkward moments in the confessional. I am not supposed to feel the dark prescience of disaster deep in my bones, for that smacks of paganism and is an affront to He who made us all.

Still, there are times when I am forced to admit that the ancients do whisper secrets in my unsuspecting ear, and of late the secrets disturb me.

There is mischief afoot in Killarney town and at Ross Castle. I have no reason to know this except that the chill in my brittle old bones tells me so. That, and the shifty way the bride of the O Donoghue refused to look at me when I went up to the keep to lead the rogation processional. Our “pagan” ceremonies do offend her Puritan sensibilities, but she displayed more than her usual hatred and distrust.

The bishop has promised, at last, to help. It was a marriage that never should have been. In point of fact, it is no marriage at all. I shall send good news to Aidan regarding the annulment.

Meanwhile, the rebellion of which I wrote so urgently to the O Donoghue Mór has been suppressed by Lord Constable Browne; I shudder to think how ruthlessly. A few stray rebels managed to take hostages, including that fat warthog Valentine Browne, nephew of the Constable. It is an unfortunate situation that reeks of deception. I think it is a little too convenient that the rebels seized only men unfit to fight or even govern. The rebels themselves are not Kerry men, but outsiders, masterless men who serve no cause save their own profit.

A dark, dastardly and entirely awful suspicion overtakes me when I think about who was truly behind the hostage-taking, and whom the English will blame when they hear of it.

If the she-king in London finds out about the mischief, she will lock up the O Donoghue Mór and throw away the key.

—Revelin of Innisfallen

T
hey dined in a lofty hall with a hammer beam roof. A small army of servitors conveyed sumptuous dishes to a table that was so long, Pippa could hardly see Donal Og and Iago. Those two were engaged in an animated, if halting, conversation with Richard's foreign companions.

She discovered two things immediately. She hated eels in mustard, and she adored being waited on. More gradually, she discovered the delights of blancmange and dried figs, the feel of a real silver wine chalice against her bottom lip. Having dining companions who spoke to her politely, in complete sentences, was an unforeseen boon.

“I am expecting my parents from Hertfordshire,” Richard explained, “and my aunts and uncles and cousins. I've a large family and they're all quite endearingly mad. We've had wild times together, always have.”

Aidan watched him with a charming smile. Pippa suspected she was the only one who knew the meaning of the flinty look in his eyes. He said, “And will you and your family have wild times in Ireland, my good friend? You'd not be the first English family to do so.”

“I assure you, my lord, if any of my family were to come to Ireland, it would not be to lay waste to the land,” Richard said soberly.

A wave of wistful longing came over Pippa. The very idea of a family filled her with a bittersweet yearning for that warm, unknowable sense of belonging. “Hold fast to them,” she murmured. “A family is a blessing some fail to appreciate until they lack one.” She blushed and ducked her head. “I reveal too much of myself,” she said.

A servant placed a platter of salad greens before her. She stared at them blankly, uncertain how to eat them.

“Use a fork,” said Richard.

“Don't speak to a lady like that,” Aidan snapped.

“Fork, I said. Use your fork.” Richard held up a three-pronged device that resembled a tiny pikestaff.

“Oh.” Aidan relaxed against the back of his carved chair. “Sure and I thought you were being impertinent.”

Richard threw back his head and laughed, and then he demonstrated the use of a fork.

“Stirrups and forks,” said Aidan with his customary rich chuckle. “I have found two useful things among the Sassenachs.”

Pippa experimented with her fork and found it much to her liking. In spite of the tension between Aidan and Richard, she found the company much to her liking, too. At the far end of the table, Donal Og and Iago continued to regale their uncomprehending listeners with tales recounted in English, Spanish and Gaelic. There was an undeniable appeal in watching a group of men in high spirits. The sight of all that lavish handsomeness struck her silent with wonder. She felt as if she had dropped into the very lap of heaven, where God in Her infinite wisdom made every man perfect to behold.

One among them was
too
flawless. Here she sat in the house of the most beautiful man in England, yet she felt no breathless attraction to him. Instead, her gaze kept wandering to Aidan, with his long hair, his craggy features, his piercing eyes and the mouth that made her shiver when she remembered touching it with her own. She pictured him just out of the river, his hair streaming like black ribbons over his shoulders, his shirt peeled off to reveal his magnificent chest. She pictured the mat of inky hair arrowing down over a ridged stomach. The scars, fanning outward, must have been inflicted long ago and caused him untold agony.

Was it a Catholic matter? she wondered. She would ask him about them soon.

“I think she is smitten with you,” Richard remarked laughingly to Aidan.

She sniffed, hoping she would not blush. “Are you unhappy that I'm not smitten with you?”

“No.” Richard grinned. “Just surprised.”

Her jaw and her fork dropped. “I gather self-love is another of your myriad virtues.”

He roared with laughter. “You are a breath of fresh air, is she not, my lord of Castleross?”

Aidan regarded her with such warmth and tenderness that she wanted to weep. “It is,” he said, “a privilege to know her. And sadly, I doubt any of us fully appreciate the gift of her.”

She tried to counter with some bawdy comment, but for the life of her, she could not. Saucy words had never before failed her, but they did now. It was as if her tongue would not allow her to pour acid on the sweetness of his comment, to destroy the moment with a flippant remark, to render meaningless his gentle regard.

Just those few words, spoken in Aidan's deep, melodi
ous voice, fired her skin with a blush that blotched her cheeks, her neck, even her bosom. She wished she had worn the ruff the maid had brought with her borrowed gown.

She felt a prickling in her throat, a hot dewiness in her eyes, and at last she realized what had come over her. Somehow these two men, Richard with his humor and godlike good looks, and Aidan with his majestic and mystical Celtic spirit, gave her a sense of belonging.

As soon as the thought struck her, she recoiled from it as if she had been singed. She knew well the price of affection, and it was a price she was not willing to pay. Drawing a deep breath, she became again Pippa the wandering juggler, a clown hiding the tears in her eyes.

“A privilege indeed,” she blurted out, jumping to her feet, snatching up three forks and tossing them in the air. “It is not every table that boasts a resident juggler.”

Richard leaned forward with his elbows on the table and his ruff mingling with his salad.

“Are you all right?” Aidan asked.

Richard stared at Pippa until she caught the forks and sat down, certain he had examined her to the last eyelash.

Then he blinked. “My apologies. I am not usually so gauche.” He flashed his world-brightening smile. “Just for a moment there, you reminded me of someone. But I cannot think whom it could be. Now, never let it be said that at Wimberleigh House we make the guests provide the entertainment.” He clapped his hands, and three musicians appeared, one with a gittern, one with a reed pipe, and a singer. “Perhaps this will be more to your taste than the noise at Durham House,” he said.

The singer, an effete young man who wore a look of artistic intensity, pinched out most of the candles on the table, plunging the room into moody half-light. A subtle
chord rippled from the gittern, and the singer closed his eyes and swayed slightly, then began to sing in a perfect tenor. The reed pipe played a haunting countermelody, and the two blended with a plaintive splendor that was piercing in its beauty. The mingling of tones made Pippa feel raw and vulnerable, as if some part of her had been bared against her will.

She sneaked a glance at Aidan. He was watching her, not the musicians, and not with the mild, polite interest with which one listened to a performance. Despite the dimness she could see him clearly, for the single candle left burning in the middle of the table threw a gleam of antique gold across his face. He sat forward, his face expressionless and his mouth set, yet the frank passion in his regard was unmistakable. Despite his unmoving pose, there was a turbulence deep in his eyes that enraptured her. She was his spellbound victim, open to him and helpless to resist, every inch of her flesh burning with the need to touch him. While she looked across the table, she remembered every moment they had shared, from the day she had knelt at his feet and stolen his knife to this afternoon when his strong arms had yanked her from the river. Her thoughts lingered on the night he had kissed her, a night of candleglow and drumming rain when she could hold none of her secret dreams inside her. It was as if they had lived a lifetime together rather than mere weeks.

Only when the song ended did Aidan relinquish her from his stare, leaving her as weak and shaken as if he had actually caressed her.

“God's light,” Richard drawled in heavy amusement, “I have heard talk of making love with one's eyes, but until now I have not actually seen it done.”

Pippa forced a light laugh. “Your musicians have uncommon talent. You ought to bottle it like wine.”

The delighted performers bowed with a flourish and struck up another tune.

Richard drained his wine goblet, waved away a servant who came to refill it and stood. “Do forgive me. I have many preparations to make before my family comes to see me off. I do hope you'll have a chance to meet them.”

She had, just for a second, tasted the sweetness of belonging, but now it was gone. Richard de Lacey and Aidan O Donoghue were virtual strangers. She almost hated them for giving her a glimpse of another world beyond her dreams.

The entire company left the dining hall. Richard's retainers followed and stood in a formal row before the grand staircase. He turned to his guests. “I'll bid you good-night, then.” He and Aidan exchanged manly nods; then he took Pippa's hand and pressed it to his lips. The candlelight from the lofty chandelier flickered in his golden hair.

“Good night, my lord.” She turned to Aidan, unable to suppress a smile. “Good night.”

He took her hand, too, but his manner was completely different from Richard's. Very lightly, perhaps by accident only, his finger skimmed along her palm. His eyes held hers as he slowly brought her hand to his mouth. First she felt the warm flutter of his breath, and that was enough to raise goose bumps along her arms. Then he pressed his lips to her skin. Secretly, his tongue flicked out and touched her.

She gasped.

Richard laughed. “Aidan, I could take lessons from you.”

She snatched back her hand. “Please don't. The man is obnoxious.”
And I am completely mad about him,
her errant heart added.

He laughed. “Perhaps it is my Irish blood. There is more than one way to make war on the Sassenach.”

Aidan and Richard stepped aside and let her precede them to the stairs. Just before she set foot on the bottom step, she heard a slight, curious sound.

One of Richard's footmen called a guttural warning.

Without thinking, she ducked out of the way. In the same instant, a glass chimney toppled from the chandelier and landed with a clatter on the spot where she had been standing.

“Are you all right?” Richard asked the question, but it was Aidan's arms that went around her.

“Of course.” She swished back the hem of her skirt to make certain no shards of glass hid in the folds, then smiled at the footman. “Thank you for warning me.”

Richard scratched his head and frowned.

“Is something amiss?” She leaned back against Aidan, liking the solid feel of him behind her.

“Not really, but…This is an odd question. Do you speak Russian?”

She laughed. “I barely speak English, my lord. Why do you ask?”

“Because Yuri—” he indicated the footman with a nod “—speaks only Russian. How could you possibly have understood his warning?”

A chill slid through her. There was something strange about this house, something strange about the portraits of the beautiful de Lacey family, something strange about the things she felt when she looked at Richard.

She glanced back at Aidan. He watched her with as much curiosity as Richard.

She shrugged. “I suppose his urgent tone caught me. I have always lived by my wits, Richard.”

The broken glass was cleared away, and the entire party climbed the stairs to the upper chambers. In the dimly lit hall, Pippa bade a final good-night to Richard and Aidan.

There was no more hand kissing, but what Aidan did was worse, in a way. His searing gaze caressed her like a lover's hands, and he whispered, “Sweet dreams,
a gradh,”
in her ear, flooding her with forbidden sensation.

Just as she nearly dropped to her knees in weak wanting, Aidan left to seek his own bed.

 

Hours later, surrounded by fussy, majestic luxury, Pippa still could not fall asleep. She wore her borrowed shift and a loose robe over that as she paced in the watery moonlight glimmering across the floor of her chamber. She should be reveling in every moment spent here. She should explore every stick of furniture, every pane of glass, every tapestry that graced the walls. This was luxury such as she used to dream of. Now that she was in its lush lap, she could not seem to enjoy it.

Instead, she tormented herself with thoughts of Aidan. Why did she let herself be drawn to him when she knew it could lead only to heartbreak? Why couldn't she keep him at a distance as she did all others?

A shadow flickered in the moonwashed garden below. Drawn by the movement, she went to the window and looked down through the leaded-glass panes.

What she saw gave her a dark surge of satisfaction. Aidan O Donoghue could not sleep, either.

Like a great, hulking ghost, he paced up and down a garden path, pausing now and then to brood at the slick ribbon of river visible at the end of the lawn.

A fever built in the pit of her belly and spread over her
skin. She clenched her fists and pressed her burning brow to the glass.

What
was
it about the man?

His aura of masculinity overwhelmed her; of that she had no doubt. He was not as flawlessly handsome as Richard, nor as witty as Sir Christopher Hatton, nor as merry as Iago, yet he drew her. She wanted to be with him, touch him, talk to him, feel his mouth on hers as she had the night of the storm.