There was a rustling as from a satin gown. She looked down the left alley. At the far end a figure stood in shadow, her dark red satin cloak the color of claret, like the roses. Justine went to meet her, thinking how odd it was that the hood of the lady’s cloak was pulled up, putting her face in even darker shadow. The night was warm; no need for a hood.
“You came,” the lady whispered when Justine reached her. The two words carried surprise and relief. And a touch of fear, Justine thought.
“Madam? May I know your name?”
The lady threw back her hood and lifted her head so that the moonlight made her features clear. Justine gasped. Could it be? “Alice?”
A smile. “Justine.”
It had been eight years! Justine had been ten when they’d parted, Alice twelve. But she would know Alice Boyer anywhere, the dearest friend of her childhood. “Good heavens!” she cried.
“Shh!”
Justine grabbed Alice’s hands in delight, but was immediately shocked at the feel of her skin, as rough as a field worker’s. From the time Alice was seven she had been a seamstress in the household of Justine’s father. By twelve she was an expert needlewoman, the kind that ladies vied for. But recently, it seemed, her hands had been at work far harder than plying a needle.
Alice flinched at the reaction and pulled her hands free. Justine took in her friend’s whole appearance. Under the fine satin cloak she wore a dress as brown as a burr and of a wool almost as coarse. It was frayed at the neckline and smelled faintly of bacon fat. She wore no jewelry. Nor needed any, Justine thought. Though a servant, Alice had a beauty that would put any great lady to shame. Lustrous auburn hair, skin like cream, full lips, and a statuesque figure that gave her the bearing of a duchess.
“I lifted this from the Marchioness,” Alice said, fingering the fine cloak. “To get me in here.” A sly smile. “What odds she never noticed? She has five others.”
Justine was a little shocked but had to laugh. Alice, always the bold one. She remembered how, as a child in her father’s great house, Yeavering Hall, she had followed Alice to the top of the bell tower. They had climbed through the window, hopped down to the roof of the great hall, then crawled out along the leads. On their stomachs, heads over the edge of the roof, they had gazed out on the moors that stretched over Northumberland, the cold wind in their faces. Justine had never felt so excited. And she would never have had the courage for such an adventure without Alice leading the way.
“Where have you sprung from?” she asked. “How did you find me? And why have—”
“Shh,” Alice said again, imploring.
“Oh yes, of course,” Justine whispered, realizing her mistake. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. It would be dangerous for Alice if anyone saw her here, a common interloper and, regarding the satin cloak, a thief. The shadowy alley was vacant, no one around. Justine was relieved, and not just for Alice’s sake. She had her own secrets to guard. If she were seen with Alice, questions could lead to trouble, for she was not who everyone here thought she was—not a distant Thornleigh relation but the daughter of a traitor. Her father, Sir Christopher Grenville, had helped plan an aborted uprising against Queen Elizabeth. Justine shivered at the thought of him. Eight years ago she had cut her former life adrift, gladly letting it sink under the sea of the Thornleighs’ love and care as they gave her their name and brought her up like a daughter. Now, with Alice, that abandoned life had resurfaced.
Alice must have seen the shiver. “Forgive me,” she said. “I would not have come if I . . . if I didn’t need . . .”
“Need what? Alice, what’s wrong?”
“You may as well ask what’s right. That tale is shorter.”
“Does the Marchioness mistreat you? In your last letter you made her sound a shrew.” They had written to each other a few times a year. Justine had been careful to keep the correspondence secret, but she would not have lost the connection with Alice for the world. Though no scholar, Alice sent jesting letters that made Justine laugh. “Is she so hard a mistress?”
“She sacked me.”
“Good heavens. When?”
“Christmas. Quite the gift.”
“But why?”
“Her son. She didn’t like the time he spent below stairs.”
With Alice. That was the unspoken, damning detail.
“But how have you got on since then?” Alice’s needlework had supported not just her but her sickly parents, too.
“Haven’t, not really. Da’s leg has festered. Mam prays a lot.”
“And you, Alice?”
“Been taking in washing.”
Of course, Justine thought in dismay. The chapped, rough hands. “You’re far from home. How came you so far south?”
“A man. A silky-talking, honey-voiced bastard of a man. Brought me to London. To marry me, he said. Then left me in a tavern by Holborn Hill. If I never see him again, it’ll be too soon.” She gave a laugh, but it was all bravado, Justine saw, and it ended in a shudder that Alice could not hide. “Oh, Justine.” Tears glinted in her eyes. Justine reached for her hand and squeezed it.
“All I need is a few shillings. Just to get me home. I hate to bother you, and I swear I’ll never . . .” She swayed, unsteady on her feet. Justine grabbed her by the shoulders, afraid she might faint.
“Come. Over here.” She guided Alice to a stone bench. “Sit down. You look exhausted.” No, worse than exhausted, Justine thought in alarm. She looked weak. From hunger? “Where are you staying?”
“Staying?”
“Have you a bed for the night?”
“The stable at the village inn. Straw’s bed enough for me.”
This appalled Justine. “I’ll send a boy to you with some money. In the morning.” She would have to wait until breakfast to ask Lord Thornleigh’s master clerk; he was in charge of the money she had access to for charities and gifts. Still, she could not ask for more than a few sovereigns. Everything she ever needed or wanted, from books to new clothes to jewelry, was handled by Lady Thornleigh. “I wish I could give you a hundred pounds, Alice. And more. But I’m afraid I have only—” She stopped. “No, wait.” She lowered her head and unfastened the clasp of her necklace, a silver chain with a sapphire pendant. “Take this.” She took Alice’s hand and dropped the necklace in her palm. She pulled off her ring of lapis lazuli, too. “And this.”
Alice gaped. “No . . . it’s far too much. You can’t—”
“Sell them.” She folded Alice’s fingers around the jewels. “Take the money to your family.”
“Justine, I—”
“And you need a position. Let me think.” She glanced back toward the festive lights. “I know! I shall speak to Lady Isabel. She’s here with her children for the Queen’s visit. I dare say she’ll be glad to get an expert seamstress.” It was a happy thought—until a darker one struck. “Unless . . . do you mind working again at Yeavering Hall?” When her father’s treason had shattered Justine’s young world, his property had been forfeited. The Queen had given Yeavering Hall and all its lands to the Thornleighs’ daughter Isabel and her husband. They lived there now.
“Mind? No,” Alice said, still overwhelmed by the jewels. “I’ll be right glad to have work anywhere. Ghosts don’t bother me.”
“Good, then Lady Isabel shall employ you. I promise you, Alice. Leave it to me.”
Alice gazed at her, gratitude shining in her eyes. “Your mother would be proud to see you now. So pretty. So kind.” Justine waved away the compliment, though it pleased her. She remembered her French mother’s quiet, calm ways. Justine had been named after her. She’d died when Justine was seven. Alice asked, “Do you still jabber in French like you did with her?”
“Little need for it,” she answered with a shrug. “Only when there’s a French diplomat to curtsy to.”
Laughter sounded nearby. They both tensed and looked down the alley toward the brick entrance arch. A couple sauntered past, the lady giggling.
<
br /> “I must go,” Alice whispered.
“Yes.”
“God bless you, Justine.”
They clung to each other for a long moment. Then Alice was gone.
Justine made her way back across the crowded terrace and back to the children, shaken by Alice’s plight. She would speak to Isabel first thing in the morning. Employment would go a long way to reducing her friend’s woes.
When she reached the three children she was surprised to find Katherine and Robert’s mother with them. Frances Thornleigh had kept to her room for the festivities. She was in a kind of mourning. Not officially; no fatal word had come about her husband, Sir Adam, Lord Thornleigh’s son, but it had been over a year since he had sailed away in command of his ship, one of a small fleet making a trading voyage to the West Indies. Everyone was anxious about him, but everyone hoped for his return. Frances, however, dragged around as if she were already a widow. Justine felt sorry for her.
Yet she always felt uneasy around her, too. Frances, born a Grenville, was her aunt. She had married Adam Thornleigh long before Justine’s father had tried to depose the Queen, and after that calamity Frances had been eager to avoid the taint of her brother’s treason and so became a willing accomplice to the Thornleighs bringing up Justine as one of them. She lived in London and did not go out much in public. Justine wasn’t sorry for that. Her aunt was a dark reminder of her true blood, and her father’s crimes.
“I’m glad you decided to join us, madam,” she said, trying to mean it, for she really did pity Frances. Sad and sallow, she looked almost too old to have children as young as Katherine and Robert. At the moment they and their little cousin Nell were poking sticks at the goldfish.
“I was hoping,” Frances said, “to ask Sir William Cecil for news of Adam.”
“Oh?” Justine’s desire to see Will surged back. Cecil was his patron. “Did you find him?”
“No, he is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Back to London. Something about the Austrian Archduke’s suit for Her Majesty’s hand, so I was told.”
“At this hour?”
“Affairs of state,” Frances said with a disinterested shrug.
Justine felt her hope plunge. If Cecil had gone, so had Will. She had missed her chance. It might be months before they would be in the same place again. His duties kept him in London, at Whitehall or Hampton Court or wherever Cecil went. Her place was with Lord and Lady Thornleigh, and it could be weeks before they left Hertfordshire to return to their London house. She suddenly wished the Queen loathed fireworks and was calling for her carriage at this very moment to take her back to London. The longer the Queen stayed, the longer Justine would be away from Will.
“Justine’s back!” cried six-year-old Robert. “Now can we go see the fun, Mama? Justine promised. One more hour.”
The three small eager faces turned to Justine and she clamped down her disappointment about Will. “I did, didn’t I.” She turned to Frances, “All right?”
“Of course. Enjoy yourselves.” Frances, an affectionate mother, kissed her two children on the tops of their heads, then turned and drifted away toward the house.
Justine looked at her charges. “Well, you lot, what shall we do?”
“To the acrobats!” Robert cried, pointing to the island in the lake where jugglers and tumblers, ringed by torches, performed their antics to an admiring crowd.
“No, storytellers!” his five-year-old cousin Nell insisted.
“Acrobats!” Robert tugged Justine’s arm to pull her along the path to the lake.
“Storytellers!” Nell tugged her other arm to go the other way. Though the youngest, she was pulling the hardest.
Justine winced. “Ow!”
“Let her be,” Katherine chastised the little ones, always ready to exert her power as the eldest. “I vote for storytellers. Grandmamma hired them specially for us.” On the terrace near the Queen’s pavilion, a storyteller held forth under a tent, where several children sat on rugs, listening, like Persian princelings.
Robert broke away and started running down to the shore. “Robert!” Justine called. “Where are you going? Stop!”
“To the boat,” he called over his shoulder.
She had to admire his initiative. He was voting with his feet. “Come on,” she said, beckoning the girls. “To the island.” She picked up Nell and made for the path to the lake. Katherine accepted Justine’s fiat and followed at her heels.
The path to the jetty was spread with pure white cockleshells for the Queen’s visit. Justine and the girls passed the people strolling with goblets of wine. One lady led a pet monkey on a leash. Holding Nell, Isabel’s youngest, Justine planned how she would approach Isabel in the morning about a position for Alice. She would praise Alice’s mastery of the needle, and it would be no lie.
“Hurry,” Robert cried as they reached the jetty.
“The last boat,” Katherine pointed out.
Justine saw that she was right. Earlier, a half dozen boats had lined the jetty and servants had waited to row guests to the island’s entertainments. Now only one boat remained; the rest were at the island. And there was no servant. Robert was untying the boat, about to climb in.
“Wait for us,” Justine told him as Nell squirmed in her arms. Nell wriggled free and slipped to the ground and grabbed Justine’s leg to hold her back, crying, “No! Storyteller!”
Robert fumbled the line and it slipped into the water. The boat began to drift.
“Catch it!” Justine called.
Robert flopped onto his stomach to try to grab the boat, but his arm was not long enough. Justine pried the little girl away from her leg and dashed to the jetty edge. She dropped to her knees and reached out over the water, stretching to reach the boat, and finally she snatched the bow. She handed the dripping line to Katherine, saying, “Hold this,” then pried her skirt loose to get up off her knees. But before she could straighten up, Robert jumped onto her back with a laugh. “Horsey! Horsey!”
Nell plopped down on Justine’s foot and hugged her shin. “You tell us a story!”
Weighted down with Robert, unable to budge her foot with Nell clamped on it, Justine struggled to keep her balance on the jetty edge, afraid she would tumble over the side, taking the children with her.
Suddenly, the burden lifted from her back. Then a hand pulled Nell off her foot. Free, Justine turned and looked up into the face of Will Croft.
“You are Atlas,” he said with a wry smile. “The weight of the world on your back.”
She could not think of a single word to say.
Will set Robert down, then said, “Katherine, make fast the boat. And you two,” he told the little ones, “stop pestering Mistress Justine or there’ll be no candied apricots before bed.”
She found her voice. “Thank you, sir. In a moment I fear we would all have been swimming.”
He smiled. The breeze toyed with the shirt lacings at his throat above his doublet of moss-green wool. Justine felt pulled into the warmth of his eyes. “You did not go to London,” she said, wanting to stay like this, him smiling at her, forever.
He looked perplexed. “London?”
“With Sir William.”
“Tonight?”
“About the Austrian Archduke?”
He shook his head, still perplexed. “No. We bide here with my uncle.”
Thank goodness! “Only a rumor, then.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, they spring up around Sir William like mushrooms in the night.”
Again, he smiled, and again words fled Justine. To think that she had intended to tell him her heart. She could not collect enough wit to speak even of the weather.
The children were restless. Robert had climbed into the boat and was struggling with an oar. Katherine had got little Nell to sit still on the jetty edge, but Nell was fidgeting to climb aboard, too. More fireworks burst overhead. Some flew off at angles, skimmed the surface of the lake and sank below, then shot up again with garis
h flashes and bangs like gunshots.
“We’re missing the acrobats,” Robert complained.
Will looked at the island. “Is that your destination?” He looked back at Justine, clearly disappointed. “Now? I wanted . . . that is, I’d hoped . . . to speak to you.”
Her heart leapt. “Oh?” She wished the children would evaporate. She yearned to hear what he had sought her out to say.
“Look, a fire-eater!” Robert cried, eyes on the island.
“Story,” Nell pouted.
“Two competing claims on you, it seems,” Will said. His tone turned serious, his voice low. “And I would make it three.” He reached out and took her hand.
At his touch, her breath stopped. She felt as if her very heart might stop.
He said, “Mistress Thornleigh, we have not known each other long, but—”
“Long enough.”
He looked startled. Happily so. “Long enough, indeed.” He squeezed her hand.
“Jugglers! Look!”
Will did not take his eyes from Justine, nor she from him. “I know this is hardly the time nor place—”
“It’s perfect,” she said, a thrill coursing through her.
“Is it?” He looked eager, hopeful, but not quite trusting his luck. “I would wish perfection of time and place, indeed, if I were to ask you to be my wife. For I would be asking you to take a man who’s far from perfect.”
All she heard was wife. She blurted, “Yes!”
He seemed crestfallen. “Ah . . . I dare say you know my flaws.”
She laughed. “No, I mean, yes I accept.”
He understood then, and his eyes went wide. The air felt charged between them. Fireworks sizzled overhead. On the shore, three fire wheels as tall as trees spun showers of flame in green, gold, and purple. Justine felt sparks shoot through her as Will slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “I love you, Justine,” he whispered. She lifted her face to his, yearning for his kiss. He hungered for it, too, she knew. But people were everywhere. He withdrew his arm, clearly conscious that he should not compromise her.
Barbara Kyle - [Thornleigh 05] Page 2