The Emerald Swan (20 page)

Miranda grinned sleepily. “And did you?”

Maude shook her head with something approaching a smile. “No, you’re just the same as last night. And I can’t get used to it.” She stretched out a hand and lightly touched Miranda’s face. “Your skin feels just like mine.”

Chip bounced onto the coverlet with his own morning greeting and Maude obligingly scratched his head. “What happens today?”

“No one’s told me.” Miranda kicked off the covers and jumped out of bed. She stretched and yawned.

“Your body’s not like mine,” Maude observed almost critically. “We’re both thin, but you have more shape.”

“Muscle,” Miranda responded. “It comes from acrobatics.” She bent to pick up the finery she had so carelessly discarded the previous evening, saying guiltily, “I suppose I’d better wear this again. I should have hung it up, it’s all creased now.”

“Leave it,” Maude said casually. “The maids will pick it up and press it. Wait here and I’ll fetch you a robe.” She disappeared with a speed that was most unusual, reappearing within minutes with a fur-trimmed velvet chamber robe.

“Put it on and we’ll go back to my chamber where there’s a fire and Berthe is heating spiced ale. I have to be bled today, so I have the spiced ale first to keep up my strength.”

“Why must you be bled? Are you ailing?” Miranda thrust her arms into the robe. The silk lining caressed her skin and she ran her hands in a luxurious stroke over the soft velvet folds that floated around her bare feet. There were certainly compensations for life in a cocoon, she thought as she followed Maude from the room, Chip perched on her shoulder.

“I have to be bled to prevent falling sick,” Maude explained with a grimace. “Every week the leech takes at least a cup from my foot so my blood doesn’t get overheated and give me fever.”

Miranda stared at her. “How can you bear it? Bleeding is worse even than purging.”

“It’s not very pleasant,” Maude agreed, opening the
door to her own chamber. “But it’s necessary if I’m not to fall ill.”

“I should think it’s more likely to make you ill,” Miranda observed.

Maude didn’t respond to this ignorance. She moved to the settle drawn up against the blazing fire and sat down, thrusting her feet in their thin slippers as close to the flames as possible, saying with a careless gesture, “This is Miranda, Berthe. I told you about her last night. Lord Harcourt is employing her to take my place, but we’re not sure quite why or what good it will do me in the end.”

The elderly woman stirring the fragrant contents of a copper kettle on a trivet over the fire looked up. Her pale eyes widened and she dropped the wooden spoon. “Holy Mother! May the saints preserve us!” She struggled to her feet and bobbed across to Miranda. Only then did she see Chip. “Oh, my Lord. It’s a wild animal!” She recoiled in horror.

“Chip isn’t in the least wild,” Maude assured. “He won’t hurt you.”

Berthe looked far from convinced, but her reaction to Miranda far surpassed her fear of the monkey. She reached up to clasp Miranda’s face between both hands. “Mary, Mother of God! It’s hard to believe one’s eyes. It’s my babe to the life.”

Miranda was growing accustomed to this reaction and made no response.

“It’s either the work of the devil or the work of God,” Berthe muttered, stepping back to get a better look. “It isn’t natural, that’s for sure.”

“Well, there’s no need to fret about it, Berthe,” Maude said with a touch of impatience. “Is the ale ready? I am in sore need of warming.”

“Oh, yes, my pet. Yes, you mustn’t get chilled, running around at this hour of the morning.” Tutting, Berthe returned to her kettle, but she kept glancing up at Miranda, who had drawn up a stool a little away from the blazing heat of the fire. “Sainted Mary! Maybe it’s heaven-sent,” the old woman continued to mutter. “If you’ve come to save my pet from the evil they would do her, then it’s assuredly heaven-sent.”

Miranda took the mug of ale handed her by Berthe with a word of thanks, and gratefully buried her nose in the fragrant steam.

“Berthe, I would like coddled eggs for my breakfast,” Maude announced. “Since I no longer have to live on bread and water, thanks to Miranda.”

“Thanks to milord Harcourt, I would have said,” Miranda amended. “He was the one who wouldn’t have you coerced.”

“I’ll fetch them directly, my pet.” Berthe hauled herself upright with alacrity. Then she frowned. “But the leech is coming to bleed you and the eggs may overheat you. It’s best to eat light before bleeding.”

Maude’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I’m feeling quite strong today, Berthe. I’m certain the leech will only need to take a very little blood.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t come at all,” Miranda suggested, looking up from her ale.

Berthe ignored this interjection. She bent over Maude, laying a hand on her forehead, peering into her eyes. “Well, I don’t know, my pet. You know how suddenly you begin to fail.”

“I don’t feel in the least like failing, and I want coddled eggs,” Maude declared crossly. “And if I don’t get them I shall quite likely fall into a fit.”

Miranda stared in surprise and more than a degree
of disapproval at this display of petulance. However, it seemed to have the desired effect, because Berthe with a cluck of distress hastened to the door.

Maude smiled as the door closed behind her nursemaid. “That’s good. Sometimes she can be very obstinate and I have to bully her a little.”

Miranda made no comment, merely returned her attention to the spiced ale, which was really very good.

“Why are you frowning?” Maude asked.

Miranda shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose because it was suddenly very uncomfortable to watch someone who looks just like me behave in such an unpleasant fashion.”

“What can you know of my life?” Maude demanded. “Of how confined and constricted it is? Of how no one except for Berthe cares a groat what happens to me? Only now, when Lady Imogen can see a use for me, they start to take notice of me. But it’s not me they’re interested in. It’s what I can do for them.” Maude’s eyes burned, her cheeks were flushed, her whole body upright and pulsing with all the energy of anger.

Miranda was startled, not by Maude’s words but by the heartfelt passion that she recognized as if she herself had been speaking. Suddenly she saw Maude’s life as clearly as if she herself had lived it. Immured in this vast mansion, sickly, because what else was there to be, without friends or companions of her own age, without any real sense of the vibrant world beyond the walls. Her life held in abeyance all because someone someday expected to have a use for her.

Wouldn’t she too learn to rely on petulance, defiance, opposition? Miranda thought. Maude knew that she was merely tolerated by the people who had
responsibility for her and her reaction had been to defy and oppose. It must have given her some sense of satisfaction, some sense of purpose. At least life in a convent was something she could fight for as a viable alternative to the life her family had designated for her.

Before she could respond, however, Berthe returned with a footman, bearing a laden tray, whose contents he set upon the table, casting a curious glance at Miranda, who didn’t look up from her unseeing stare into the fire.

“Come and eat, my pet. See the eggs I’ve made especially for you.” Berthe fussed over Maude, shaking out a napkin, ladling eggs onto a platter. “But don’t eat too hearty now.”

“There’s enough for you, too, Miranda.” Maude gestured with her spoon to the stool next to her. “If you like coddled eggs.”

“I like everything,” Miranda said with perfect truth, taking the stool. “You don’t develop finicky tastes when you don’t know where the next meal’s coming from.”

Maude looked up from her plate, her eyes sharply comprehending. “I wonder whose life has been worse.”

“Yours,” Miranda said without hesitation. She broke bread, buttered it thickly. “Freedom is more important than anything, even if it’s hard. I couldn’t live like this.” She gestured with her knife around the room. “It’s all rich and luxurious and soft, but how do you bear never going out without permission, never being able to walk around without someone knowing where you are all the time?”

“I suppose you get used to it if you’ve never known anything else,” Maude observed, pushing aside her empty platter and taking up her spiced ale again.

The door burst open as if under pressure of a whirlwind
and Lady Imogen entered. Her gown of black damask filled the doorway like some great black cloud. Miranda swallowed her mouthful and rose with Maude to curtsy.

Imogen gave them both a cursory glance before going to the linen press. “You will have little use for your wardrobe, cousin, since you’ll be remaining in seclusion, so your gowns can be put to good use, made over to suit Miranda. There’s no point wasting money.” With compressed lips, she began to riffle through the contents of the press.

“Your coloring is so similar, almost everything will be suitable,” she declared. “Berthe, remove Lady Maude’s gowns and have them taken to the green bedchamber. I’ll make my selection there.”

“Am I to be left with nothing to wear, madam?” Maude inquired, her voice once more faint and reedlike.

“You will have need of little but chamber robes,” Imogen told her, stepping back from the linen press, yielding her place to Berthe, whose indignation at her orders was visible in every movement. Imogen watched as the maid pulled out gowns, draping them over her arm.

“Isn’t today the day you are to be bled, Maude?” Imogen stood aside as Berthe, with her arms full of silks, velvets, damasks, marched from the chamber.

“Yes, madam.”

“Then I suggest you take to your bed … Ouch!” She put a hand to her head, her eyes wide with surprise. “What was that? Ouch!” Her hand flew to the back of her neck. “I’m being stung.”

Miranda knew better. Ambushing the unsuspecting was one of Chip’s less popular tricks. Her eyes flew guiltily to the armoire, just as another missile struck
the lady. Chip was sitting there with a handful of nuts from the breakfast table, lobbing them gleefully at Lady Imogen.

The lady’s eyes followed Miranda’s and she hissed with fury, retreating all the while to the open door. “By the Holy Rood, I’ll have the beast’s neck wrung!” she declared, her voice throbbing with fury.

Chip, hearing the tone, let loose a torrent of hazelnuts, aimed with devastating accuracy at his helpless victim. Imogen shrieked, covered her face with her hands, and backed out of the room.

Miles, just emerging from his own bedchamber across the hall, received the full impact as his wife reeled against him, her eyes still covered.

“God’s bones, madam! What is it? What’s happened?” He steadied the lady as best he could. She was a good three inches taller than he and her bulk was considerably augmented by her immense farthingale and cartwheel ruff.

“Attacked!” Imogen gasped. “That wild beast is attacking me!” She pointed a trembling finger back into Maude’s chamber.

Miles peered around his lady wife and a nut struck his forehead as he emerged from the protection of his wife’s body.

“Ouch!” He jumped back, rubbing his forehead, ducking behind the armor of black damask.

“Oh, Chip, stop!” Miranda cried, jumping on tiptoe to reach the monkey on top of the armoire. “Come down!”

But Chip was impervious to her pleas. He was enjoying his game far too much; it didn’t ordinarily have such satisfying results.

The earl of Harcourt chose this moment to enter the
scene. He looked over his sister’s head, ducked a nut himself, and said somewhat wearily, “Can’t you call him off, Miranda?”

“I’m trying,” she said, half laughing, half weeping with frustration, under no illusions that if she couldn’t control Chip’s less friendly antics, he could quite justifiably be banished from the household, or at least confined in some way that would make him miserable.

“He’ll run out of ammunition in a minute,” Maude observed, her eyes brimming with suppressed laughter, cheeks bright pink.

Fortunately, she was right. Chip, hands finally empty, began to dance and jabber from the safety of the armoire. It was very clear to anyone halfway observant that he was hurling simian insults.

“Look at him!” Imogen cried in outrage. “What’s he saying?” Then she realized the absurdity of the question and took a deep breath, calming herself with visible effort. “Gareth, I insist that that creature be got rid of immediately.”

Miranda finally had Chip secured in her arms. She looked pleadingly at Lord Harcourt. “It’s a game he plays sometimes. I’m truly sorry, but I think he knows Lady Imogen doesn’t care for him, and he’s taken offense.”

Gareth moved a foot and crunched on a hazelnut. He looked around at the littered floor, then he looked at Chip, who, from the safety of Miranda’s arms, put his head on one side and winked one bright eye. Miranda was a study in contrast. She was swathed from neck to toe in the elegant and luxurious velvet robe, but her narrow feet peeping from the hem were bare and curiously vulnerable. The long, slender neck rising from the fur-trimmed collar was surmounted by the
small head with its urchin crop. Part lady, part vagabond. And extraordinarily appealing.

For a moment he forgot what had produced the scene, forgot the fulminating presence of his sister, the laughing Maude, the hapless Miles, all standing around him, all waiting for his next move. He was lost in the contemplation of this small figure, this wonderfully paradoxical creature. And he felt the strangest sense of opening inside him, as if some part of him that had been kept closed and dark was reaching for the light.

“Do try to keep him under control, Miranda,” he heard himself saying.

“Oh, I will,” she said, her face breaking into a radiant smile of relief and pleasure. “Of course I will.”

Lady Imogen made a disgusted sound, then turned and sailed away down the corridor. Miles hesitated, then he too scurried away, his long-toed slippers slapping on the wooden floor.

“My lord, is it right that I should have taken all Lady Maude’s gowns to the green bedchamber?” Berthe, her voice throbbing with indignation, returned from her errand.

“What’s that you say?” Gareth glanced across at Maude’s maid, who stood in the doorway, hands folding against her skirts, her mouth pursed, her gray eyes glittering.