The Rose at Twilight (21 page)

“And I suppose that your sisters, poor creatures, would instantly obey you,” she said sharply, having not the least idea why such a statement from him should instantly fire her temper again, but knowing that it did so, that she did not want him to treat her like his sisters. She glared, daring him to respond.

He was silent, but there was something in his expression when he returned her look that exasperated her. It was as though he were merely being patient with her, waiting for her to collect herself, to be sensible, to see that she was being foolish to taunt him. Instead of calming her, it had the opposite effect.

“Well, have you got nothing to say, Sir Nicholas?”

“There is no need to respond to such a statement.”

“Such a
foolish
statement, I suppose you mean!”

He said nothing.

“Oh, you enrage me! You treat me like a child, warning me to hold my tongue, to keep my opinions hidden behind my teeth, as though Elizabeth did not already know what I think of her.”

“There is a difference,” he said severely, “between speaking your mind to one Elizabeth Plantagenet—”

“I did not merely speak my mind to her; I slapped her!”

“You
what?”

“You heard me!” She had not told Madeline about the slap, but now that she had told him, her tongue seemed to rattle on of its own accord. “She arrived at Sheriff Hutton prating smugly of how Richard had sent her there to quiet stupid rumors that he had murdered Anne and wanted to marry her! ’Twas utter nonsense. I—I lost my temper, and I slapped her—hard!” Her palm tingled again at the memory, and she rubbed it hard against her skirt.

Sir Nicholas’s lips pressed tightly together for a moment before he said, “There is a vast difference between that woman, bereft of her accustomed rank and forced to bend her knee to a usurper, and the king’s bride. There are dangers you cannot—”

“What dangers? What possible danger can there be to me, the king’s ward, here in the king’s own palace? You speak nonsense, sir.” Impatiently she moved again to pass him, to reach for the latch, since he showed no more inclination to open the door and let her out; but, as she brushed against him, he caught her arm, and before she knew his intent, he had pulled her hard against him with one hand and gripped her chin with the other, forcing it up so his lips could claim hers in a swift, bruising kiss.

She struggled in his grasp, but she was pinned against his powerful body, and her skirts entangled her legs when she tried to kick him. Her left hand was free but although she flailed at him, it had no more effect than a leaf battering a tree trunk.

She knew his intent was only to teach her the danger of thinking she was safe in a palace filled with men of every sort from rough yeomen guards to knights of the realm accustomed to having their most casual request obeyed instantly. But when his lips and hands touched her and she found her soft body clamped against his muscular one, a fire unlike any she had experienced before spread through her, flashing from lips to toes through every nerve and muscle of her anatomy. So hot was the flame that it took all the strength she had to keep from melting in its heat, melting against him, softening, yielding, surrendering.

Sir Nicholas did not prolong the moment but freed her within seconds, setting her back on her heels with a quickness that left her gasping. Recovering swiftly, her fury augmented—though she would rather have died than admit it—by the very speed with which he had released her, she raised her hand to strike him.

“Do not,” he snapped.

The gesture froze in mid-air, stopped as much by the hard look in his eyes as by the tone of his voice. Knowing well that she could never trust him not to retaliate in kind if she did hit him, she stood unmoving, glaring back, holding his gaze with hers until suddenly, the glint of steel vanished from his eyes. His expression softened then, and for a moment she saw a look she had never seen before in any man’s eyes, one she was not at all certain how to interpret. There was gentleness and something else, something that set the heat tingling within her veins again. But the look was quickly gone, followed by another she recognized only too well. He was amused.

With effort, she restrained her temper, letting her hand fall to her side again. In as offhand a manner as she could manage, she murmured, “Is that also the way you treat your sisters, Sir Nicholas?”

A muscle leapt high in his cheek, but whether she had annoyed him or only added to his amusement, she could not tell, for he turned away and yanked open the door, saying sardonically, “Go to your duty,
mi geneth.
If there be justice in this world, her highness will order you whipped for your tardiness.”

She hurried away from him then, nearly running down the corridor toward the ladies’ chamber, but at the turning, she stopped and looked back. When she saw him standing by the door to the anteroom, still watching her, satisfaction surged within her at the thought that, despite his callous final statement, he still concerned himself with her safety. Then, perversely, in the instant before the yeoman guard opened the doors to the princess’s antechamber, she remembered that despite that intriguing look Sir Nicholas had given her no indication that he objected in the slightest to her impending betrothal.

Her disordered senses were recalled instantly when the yeoman opened the doors. At the same time, on the other side of the antechamber, the door into the princess’s bedchamber opened, and Lady Emlyn appeared on the threshold, saying crisply, “There you are, Alys. Come in at once. Her highness will be here directly and all preparations must be completed before she arrives. You must go in and help the others make her bed.”

Alys stared at her. “Surely there are proper servants to attend to that chore, Lady Emlyn.”

Lady Emlyn’s thin eyebrows lifted. “My dear Alys, surely you must have realized by now that her royal highness does not associate in any way with lowly servants. It is the honor and pleasure of her ladies to serve her in all such capacities. Now, do you go at once, for the royal bedmaking has already begun.”

Alys hurried into the bedchamber and discovered that making Elizabeth’s bed was no small duty, for her ladies and gentlewomen observed a precise routine. The lavender bed curtains had been pulled wide and tucked out of the way. Next the covers were all removed and the mattress itself stripped from the bed and given a good shaking. And finally each cover, separate from the others, was replaced, great care being taken to ensure that no wrinkles remained anywhere. The pillows, a vast number of them, were plumped and replaced on the bed, and finally the counterpane, an elegant spread of lavender silk to match the bed curtains, was spread over the whole, and the curtains drawn again, but only enough to ensure that they hung properly and showed no creases.

“Mercy,” Alys murmured to Madeline later in the anteroom when the ritual was done and they had been sent to procure hot water for the royal washstand reservoir, and cold for the royal ewer, “if this is only a part of the ritual that accompanies the princess to bed under ordinary circumstances, what she will expect when she is in childbed?”

They had reached the door to the corridor. “Hush,” Madeline warned, but her eyes were twinkling. “Someone will hear you.”

They had only to have the vessels filled by the yeomen servants already waiting outside the door, and return to the bedchamber, but before they entered the latter again, Alys said, “My bed is made in the morning, Madeline. Is not yours?”

“Aye,” Madeline said, chuckling, “and so, too, is that of her royal highness, but feathers do not stay fluffed, you know, and it is not meet that the feathers surrounding a royal princess should be allowed to clump, Alys. Surely you must see that.”

Alys shook her head but said no more, for Madeline had opened the door. One of Alys’s daily tasks at Middleham had been to oversee the cleaning of several chambers, including, at times, the bedchamber of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. She had been there, after all, to learn about the proper running of a large household. But she could not recall that Anne or Anne’s Dickon had ever expected a half-dozen or more people to attend their bedmaking or, indeed, the preparations for their retiring. She wondered if those customs had changed much when the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester had become King and Queen of England and removed to London, and decided that most likely they had not. It was much more likely that Elizabeth’s notions of the ceremony due to her high estate had evolved from her mother’s example.

Alys and Madeline were dismissed from the bedchamber as soon as Elizabeth entered, accompanied by both her mother and Lady Margaret. As Alys backed from the room, she thought the princess looked harassed. She was not at all sorry to leave.

In the corridor, Madeline said, sotto voce, “I should not care to be caught between those two. I doubt even Elizabeth, gentle as she tries to be, can manage to please them both.”

Alys had no sympathy to waste on Elizabeth. “Madeline,” she said, “I must tell you my news. I am to be betrothed and then married, I think, as soon as the formal annulment of my betrothal to Sir Lionel Everingham arrives from Rome.”

Madeline stopped still in the corridor and stared at her. “You are just now telling me this! How long have you known?”

“Hush.” Alys looked hastily around, then added in a low voice, “When the king commanded my presence tonight, ’twas to tell me of his decision to wed me to Lord Briarly.”

“Who is Lord Briarly? I do not know him.”

“He is one of the Stanleys. Come, do not stand like a post. We will be remarked.” Alys feared that if they did not move, she would shriek. Just thinking of the possessive way Briarly had looked at her stirred waves of fresh desperation within her.

Madeline stood where she was. “You are to wed a Stanley!”

“Aye, but keep your voice down. You do not need to hear what I think about such a marriage, do you?”

“No, but my goodness, Alys, what will you do?”

“I do not know, but come,” she said vehemently. “We cannot talk here. We must go to my room.”

Madeline agreed, and they hurried along without talking, but when they turned into the corridor where Alys’s bedchamber was located, Ian MacDougal stepped out of the shadows to meet them.

“Ian,” Alys cried, “I have an important commission for you!”

“Aye, mistress, and so Sir Nicholas ha’ said when he told me tae await your return. I am tae find the Laird Wolveston, but what am I tae tell him? Master said it wouldna be richt for the mon tae set foot in your bedchamber, brother or no.”

“Just tell him I must speak with him privately,” Alys said, exerting herself to keep the impatience she felt from sounding in her voice. “Find him quickly, Ian, and then come back to me here and tell me where I am to meet him. Oh, and Ian,” she added when another thought occurred to her as he turned away, “in case I should need you later, where do I send to find you?”

He grinned. “Best I coom here, mistress. There’s a comely wee lassock dancin’ her shoon off wi’ the evening’s players, and her troop leaves wi’ the dawnin’ for Oxford and Derby, then goes all the way north t’ Doncaster and York till Easter. If the wee folk dinna interfere, I mean tae mak’ m’self weel known tae the lass this verra night. I dinna ken where we might be.”

Alys shook her head at him. “You are incorrigible, Ian, and you deserve to come to grief. Just see that you come back here if you cannot find Lord Wolveston, so that I do not spend the entire night wondering what to expect. And come to me first thing in the morning. I may have new orders for you—that is, unless Sir Nicholas has commanded you to attend to him.”

“Nay, mistress. I be yours tae command, now as ever.”

“But I cannot even pay you, Ian. I have no money.”

“You need not, mistress. Sir Nicholas pays me.”

“But that is not right,” Alys protested.

Ian shrugged. “’Tis wi’ me,” he said. “If that be all, mistress, I’ll gae the noo and find his lairdship.”

She let him go, not knowing what more to say and soothing her feelings by assuring herself that Roger would certainly pay for her servants once she pointed out the need to him. And later perhaps, arrangements could be made with Lord Briarly so that her own servants could attend her after the wedding. That last thought depressed her again, however, and she turned with a sigh to follow Madeline into the bedchamber. Molly was waiting to put Alys to bed, but she dismissed her, telling her to come back in an hour. Then, with the door shut, she turned to Madeline.

“I am only now beginning to take it all in,” she said with a sigh, “for besides being one of the enemy, Madeline, Briarly is an old man. Though I told Sir Nicholas that would not weigh with me, I do own that I should prefer a young husband to an old one.”

“Anyone would,” Madeline agreed fervently. “But how is this then? Does Sir Nicholas know the whole?”

“Aye, I told him. He was vexed with me for speaking as I did about Elizabeth—”

“I still do not see any sign of wickedness in her,” Madeline interjected. “She smiles and nods, and scarcely ever speaks, but when she does, ’tis always in a quiet, gentle manner.”

“She has learned well to conceal her true feelings,” Alys said, but Madeline’s opinion of Elizabeth no longer seemed quite so important, so her tone was calm. “To understand her, you must recall the world in which she lived. Everyone around her was conspiring at one time or another, always with an eye to his own benefit. In just such a way has Elizabeth learned to look after Elizabeth. But I do not wish to discuss her, Madeline.” She sat down upon the narrow bed and folded her hands around her knees, looking up bleakly. “My future appears to be set, does it not?”

Madeline agreed, but the two of them discussed it at length nonetheless. Since neither knew Briarly and could only speculate about his character, they were unable to agree on exactly what Alys’s future might hold. They were still discussing it forty minutes later when, hearing a light scratching at the door, Alys opened it to find Ian on the other side.

Silently, he handed her a sheet of paper that had been folded in half but not sealed.