Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (17 page)

Giles handed Meriel inside the carriage, but not before she saw the name on the bow of the ketch. Or rather
No Name,
for that was writ there plain. It was lettered over another name, still faint in outline:
Felice.
Meriel's belly tightened. Giles detested his wife so much that he had scraped her name from his beloved ship. She no longer felt at all sure that she could survive the plank Giles prepared for her this night.

But she scarce had time to worry or to watch the lovely Norfolk countryside unfold outside the carriage window. Giles was ignoring her as best he could with his knees near touching hers, once meeting sharply over a rut in the road.

"Pardon, my lady."

"None needed, your lordship."

Good manners briefly observed, they traveled on. Meriel was occupied with a worry about how she would be greeted by Harringdon Hall servants. Even Chiffinch couldn't force a hundred servants to agree their lady had recently spent a week there. Although magic was akin to witchery, she kept her fingers crossed to hex a forward maid or manservant from speaking of her long absence in front of Giles. Her only excuse for lying to him was to admit another lover's assignation. And she was loath to hurt him anew.

"You will want to change your clothes after astounding the porter and housekeeper," Giles said, noting her sailor's garb.

Meriel answered as Felice. "I am not overconcerned with the thoughts of servants."

"They are part of our family, and their fathers before. You will have a care for their good opinion."

"As you command, husband."

"Yes, as I command. Do not mistake me for one of your court fools, Felice. You have not earned my trust by this docile turn. I'll post guards everywhere."

She nodded, lifting one shoulder to show her uncaring. Yet she was rapidly losing her taste for pretending to be a woman the equal of the Borgias or the Medicis, if not all of Louis the French king's scheming courtesans combined.

They said nothing further to each other as the carriage turned through a gate and into a wide road, several furlongs in length, that led to Harringdon Hall, its towers barely visible through a forest of ancient oaks, light slanting through mossy branches, a few lone seagulls swooping inland across the barely undulating landscape. The coach came around the trees and out into a long green deer park with sheep-cropped meadows, still sporting uneaten white daisies and yellow chamomile.

Though her heart swelled at the beauty of the place, Meriel kept her mouth firmly under lock. She had studied an ink drawing and memorized a plan of rooms, yet she had been unprepared for the stone majesty of the old house.

Like Giles himself, it was tall, strongly built and handsome in the extreme. Many gabled buildings, old and new, with mullioned windows from the old queen's time and of later Palladian design, gray slate roofs, tall chimneys, a church spire, all connected as if planned from the ancient beginning of the three-story central hall. It was a rare thing when adding to perfection did not undo original beauty.

The majordomo stood waiting in the wide carriage turnaround near the front entrance. Meriel took a deep breath as he opened the door and lowered the step, bowing as Giles leapt to the ground.

"Welcome home, Lord Giles, Lady Felice."

Meriel relaxed. She had hoped, indeed expected, that it wasn't a servant's province to comment upon his mistress's comings and goings. Still, she was relieved. For the moment.

Giles held out a hand, remembering that his household was watching; "My lady, welcome to our home," he said.

Meriel clasped the strong hand and stepped down upon the earth. Here she would be mistress until she was discovered or escaped to her spy's duty. Meriel instantly loved the old estate as if she had known it always as a yearning in her heart.

Though she had felt guilt early and often for the cruel deception of an honorable man, all the intrigue was almost worth the price she'd paid for the first moment she stepped into the Earl of Warborough's vast central hall, its brightly lit sconces flaring into the far corners. No drawing or plan had done it justice. She was unaware that she had stopped in the center of the soaring hall and turned around to take in all the rich carvings, crisscrossing rafters, wide-planked floors and paneled walls.

Giles was puzzled, stopping very suddenly close behind her. "Nothing is changed, Felice. You look as if you have forgotten Harringdon Hall."

Meriel stiffened. Was he suspicious? Had she given herself away in some word or act? Or was he merely trying to elicit some delight from a jaded wife, who had starved him for companionship? Not for the first time, she almost wished herself back in the orphanage where all had been simple: steal enough food to stay alive and not be caught at it. She pressed a palm against her forehead.

"Does your head ache?" Giles asked, showing a husbandly concern. "I will have the cook send up a decoction of feverfew, or would you prefer it be chamomile?"

"I would prefer it be a hot bath, since I have been pum-meled on land and at sea now these many hours." She walked away lest she respond to his kindness in a way that would compromise all. She knew her rooms were at the head of the gallery stairs.

"You shall have both," Giles said, mastering his anger at her rebuff. "Then we will sup together this evening as is expected of the Earl of Warbourough and his lady. You will do as I command, Felice."

Meriel climbed the elaborately carved stairs to her rooms, without turning back to Giles to say ... what?

In her room, she found two maids removing gowns from a chest full of lavender in silk sachets. She enveloped herself in Lady Felice's manner. "Take those gowns and air them," she commanded, huffing about the room. "I no longer use lavender. And bring my bath. Stoke the fire before I take a chill. Mind you, hot water in plenty. With no dried rose petals for scent, or you'll feel my wrath."

Meriel laughed aloud at herself as the maids fled in two directions to do her bidding. Being a demanding mistress was not a matter of birth after all. It was a matter of opportunity.

Yet she urgently needed to be alone, to avoid pretense for a quiet minute, not to be Felice, not to be Meriel. To be nothing.

Exhausted, she threw herself upon the huge bed, her eyes heavy with—oh, she didn't know what—perhaps preparing for her husband's promised bedding. Yes, indeed, unable to think of any other thing. "Am I truly undone?" she whispered into the coverlet, letting her yearning woman's body speak through the whisper that escaped and lived on unanswered in the room all during the long, steaming bath.

They supped in the intimate library, hung with tapestries, off the great hall. Giles had chosen this room and dismissed the servants after the food was laid out so that Felice would sit closer to him than at the great table. He wanted to observe her, to satisfy himself that what was different was superficial, indeed artificial.

Perhaps some new and redder cochineal to make her lips fuller and more sensuous. A softer powder, perhaps of finely ground pearls, to add a luminous quality to her skin. A henna dye that inserted lights in her dark and tumbling curls. Some trickery of art learned from her theater friends that caused golden flecks in those enormous dark-lashed gray eyes, which were surely larger than ever.

While busying himself with poker and fire, adjusting his chair and everything he could think of, he managed to observe her, and although he could not choose one thing over many changes, he could see that there was no artifice to his wife's enhanced beauty. There was nothing to conclude but that his own eyes deceived or he had simply forgotten how beautiful she was.

As was fitting and custom for a wife of any station, Felice took the most tender slices of meats and placed them on Giles's plate with several seeded knot biscuits from a mounded basket.

Nodding his thanks, he heated a rich mutton broth in the fireplace for her. It had arrived too cool from the kitchens, but he was loath to recall the servers, since he had dismissed them for the night. He wanted no interruptions to his desire, no matter when it arose.

He leaned against the high leather back of his chair and, though pretending to drink his broth, he observed her every move. He had never known Felice to have such appetite. Although he could tell that she was trying very hard to observe courtly etiquette, she was obviously ravenous. He poured a sack posset into her bowl, which she downed immediately.

Meriel saw Giles smiling and realized she was not nibbling daintily as Felice would have done, nor in any semblance of her lessons at the Tower. "The sea air," she explained, knowing that she had eaten like an orphan afraid of losing her portion to a stronger child, and feeling the rich warmth of the posset's eggs, wine and sweetened cream slowly seeping into her limbs, already too much weakened from the bath.

Giles laughed and his good humor reached into his dark eyes. "Would you like a pear tart? Or two?"

Meriel would have liked nothing more, although she knew she must observe her easily abandoned court manners. She sighed and declined the sweet with a wave of her hand. "I must watch my flesh."

"I see nothing wrong with it," Giles said, trying not to grin anew. "Neither too much, nor not enough ... except—" He was staring at her breasts.

"Although what? I'm not wearing a corset, thus—"

"Don't twist my meaning. I merely noticed that your bosom is greater than I—"

Meriel knew that this was one feature in which she differed significantly from Felice. She thought fast. "I've been taking the Turkish sweats." Since he seemed unbelieving, she added, "And Wyndham's Infallible Miracle Salve, which the good doctor does claim to add flesh where it is lacking—"

Giles laughed aloud. "And take away where overmuch. Felice, you were ever ready for magic and quackery."

She managed to look uncaring at his raillery. She was sated and sleepy, drugged with food and wine posset and the warmth of the crackling oak fire. And the man before her, his fine, long, tightly hosed legs stretched to the fire, a help to her imagination, though it needed little help with such manly reality in front of her.

Giles saw her in quite another way than he had seen his wife of late. Her rising color told him she was like a woman ready for lovemaking, eager as a bride, virginal as the tender young girl he thought he'd married. And lost. Maybe that was the difference. Felice's face and body had hardened to his eyes, losing all soft curves of emerging womanhood. Now they were back. Everywhere! Could she have come to regret her actions in denying him a son? Could he forgive her numerous betrayals? He doubted he ever could, but he would know after tonight.

Giles felt his reckless cod ripen. Damn! And damn again! Too soon. He stood quickly to walk it out, circling the library, taking a book from the shelf and returning it unopened. Then another, which he did open. "Ah, my favorite," he said. "Remember, Felice?"

Meriel bit her tongue, not wanting to hurt him, but having to in Felice's brittle, yet languid tone. "My memory is so poor for books, Giles. Surely, you know that."

"Cervantes," Giles said, not allowing disappointment to show. "Miguel de Cervantes."

He began to walk about the room, reading aloud to her as he once had on their wedding night: "
"Its said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies, runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice and sets a fourth in aflame
—"

Meriel was alert now, turning to watch him as he passed behind her, lest she be taken by surprise and he pounce on her. At last he moved beyond firelight into candlelight.

"—
Love wounds one, another it kills; like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment; it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it."

As the sound of his voice throbbed through her, tears rose in Meriel's eyes, and for a moment, she thought that if she failed to fool the Dutch, one night with this man would be worth a hanging.

Giles was like one of the Tower lions, pacing softly in his cage, muscles rippling under tawny skin, ready to leap out and devour her if she let down her guard. She stood, unnerved by his prowling. "My lord, shall we walk about for our stomachs' sake?" Yes, she was delaying the promised bedding. Would she know what he wanted or would he just take it? She prayed for the latter and wondered if the God of blessed name answered such bold prayers from a woman forced to sin, if not against heaven, against this wonderful and worthy man.

Giles lit a lantern, which he held before them. "As you say, let us walk about. The servants will want to greet you."

They strolled through many connected rooms, each one splendid with turkey carpets, polished paneling, and soaring fireplaces a man could stand in upright. Meriel nodded to servants she couldn't call by name. To her relief, the ones who passed merely bowed and moved on with all speed. She doubted that they had much love for Lady Felice. For a moment she allowed herself a dreamy vision: Meriel, mistress of Harringdon Hall, a kind lady beloved by all the servants, who wondered aloud that she was so much changed. She bowed her head, ashamed of her earlier behavior with her maids. She had played her role too well when there was no need, and she would not repeat such a performance.

They entered into a long gallery with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, hung with many portraits, moonlight wavering upon the tiled floor from a bank of diamond-paned windows. Giles stopped in front of a painting of a very young man, a beardless, boyish version of himself, with a fleet of ships over his shoulder and a spyglass in one hand propped on his knee.

Meriel knew it must be the younger brother Giles had lost in the Battle of the Four Days. "He was so young and so full of promise," she whispered, needing to let him know she understood such loss, but not wishing to disturb what might be a prayer. Her own heart near broke from the pain so obvious on Giles's handsome features.

"Six thousand lost their lives in that battle. It was all bloody confusion."

"Do you blame the king?"

"Blame my anointed sovereign? I would not so break my oath of loyalty." Giles turned away and walked on, holding the lantern before him. He stopped and held it up before the portrait of a woman in the court clothes of Charles I's time. A young girl-child, no more than two, in the same elaborate dress stood beside the woman's knee, holding a bright-plumed bird.