Kissed by Shadows

by Jane Feather

  “Alas, I cannot wait, so she need have no fears for your reputation,” Robin said. “I came really to tell you that I have to go away for a week, maybe a little longer, so do not look for me at our usual times.”

  Luisa continued with her flower arranging. “Where are you going?” The question sounded simply curious.

  “Into Surrey,” he said. “To visit some friends.”

  “Oh, I see.” Luisa licked a spot of blood from her finger where a thorn had caught it. “What road do you take out of London to go into Surrey?”

  “Out of Aldgate,” he told her. “'Tis one of the main gates out of the city.”

  “It must be very busy there,” she observed, setting the vase on the table where the morning sun set fire to the orange and yellow of the marigolds.

  “Aye, busy enough,” he agreed. “There are several taverns serving wayfarers. Now, I must go. I have to meet my page at noon.”

  “At this gate?” She turned from her admiration of the flowers.

  “Aye,” he agreed again, his mind now moving ahead. “I'll bring my sister to visit you on my return.”

  “As chaperone?” Luisa inquired with a demure smile. “Or as excuse?”

  “Either or both,” Robin returned.

  “She said she would be happy to play the part of chaperone.”

  “Oh, did she?” he said with a dry smile. He could well imagine Pippa making such an offer. She had already dropped some heavy hints about his interest in Luisa.

  And she'd also said that Luisa was too young for him.

  Was she? Too young for what?

  The fact that he could ask himself the question startled him. He wasn't courting this Spanish maid, he was merely enjoying an amusing and slightly flirtatious friendship and giving the girl a taste of freedom and experience at the same time. All perfectly harmless. She would return to Spain and he wouldn't give her a second thought.

  “I must take my leave at once,” he said abruptly. “I have much to do this morning. Pray give my respects to Dona Bernardina and ask her to forgive my haste. I will call upon her again on my return.”

  Luisa's smile was slightly distracted as she curtsied her farewell, but Robin didn't notice anything amiss. He bowed and left the house, hurrying to the stables for his horse.

  Luisa went to her own chamber. She sat on the chest at the end of the bed and considered the fantastic idea that had jumped into her head. It was fantastic, impossible, lunatic. But it wasn't impossible. Not really impossible. If she had the courage, she could do it.

  But what would happen afterwards? Her reputation would be destroyed. It would kill her mother, not to mention Dona Bernardina. Or . . .

  Or, she could find herself a husband. A husband of her own choosing. Or . . .

  Or she could just see if she could put such a lunatic idea into practice and then if she succeeded she could back away and return home with no one any the wiser.

  Yes, that was what she would do. Luisa hopped off the chest. She should take a few things with her just in case. . . .

  No, there was no just in case. She was going to have a tiny little adventure that would hurt no one. She would not take anything with her, and that way there would be no temptation to push her little adventure into a big one with hideous consequences for a lot more people than herself. This was just a test of her ingenuity.

  Don Ashton would hear of it, of course, because Malcolm would have to tell him. And he would probably send her straight home on the next ship to Spain.

  But maybe he wouldn't. He was not unreasonable, just unaware. As long as Bernardina didn't find out, there would be no need for Don Ashton to do anything.

  Too young for what? The question would not leave his mind. It became an internal chant, taunting Robin as he rode back to Whitehall. He had never given Luisa's age a second thought. He had never given the girl herself a serious thought. This was just an interlude that amused them both.

  But he was a man of thirty summers and she was a woman of eighteen. No great discrepancy there. A lot smaller than in many marriages. Women married men old enough to be their grandfathers in some cases. Of course, the women's wishes were not in general consulted in such cases. Luisa had refused just such a marriage arranged for her.

  But why in the name of Lucifer was he thinking about marriage? Whenever he thought, which wasn't often, about the kind of woman who would suit him, he could think only of Pen, Pippa, and Guinevere, his stepmother. They all had certain qualities that he could not imagine doing without in a wife. They were equal partners in their marriages, heretical though that was. They managed their own affairs, equally heretical, and they were entertaining and clever and no man's fool.

  Robin realized rather glumly as he stabled his horse that he hadn't met any women like the women of his own family, which presumably accounted for his lack of interest in marriage. He had never considered it. But now it seemed as if he was.

  Luisa.

  No, it could never work. He would never get her family's permission even if he asked for it. Presumably Lionel Ashton was in loco parentis so he would have to be asked. And that was a snake pit if ever he'd come across one.

  Who and what was Lionel Ashton? If he was on the right side, a true sympathizer, then maybe he would not be averse to such a proposal. But if he was the devil's own Spanish spy, then he would see Robin hang, or lying in a gutter with his throat cut, before he'd countenance such a proposal. And if indeed that was what Ashton was, then Robin could have nothing to do with anyone or anything that came under his influence, however drawn he was to Luisa.

  “Everythin' all right, my lord?”

  Robin became aware that he was standing in the middle of the busy yard, swinging his whip against his booted calf, and staring at nothing. The groom who had taken his horse was regarding him curiously.

  “Yes . . . yes . . .” Robin said irritably. “I'll need my horse again in half an hour.” He strode out of the yard, beneath the arched gateway that led into one of the inner courts of the palace.

  He pushed aside all thoughts of Luisa and the extraordinary path down which those thoughts had propelled him, and concentrated on what he would say to Pippa.

  He decided that he needed to be honest with her, tell her of Lionel's approach. She would then tell him whatever she knew or suspected or guessed. If he avoided any hints about her strange and to him dangerous intimacy with Ashton, then they could keep the discussion on a matter-of-fact footing.

  If she was in some way involved with Ashton, then hearing that he probably was a Spanish spy and not just a plain member of Philip's retinue would be hard for her, but Pippa knew the world they lived in too well not to be able to handle such knowledge. She had said herself that everyone had to dissemble, that honesty was too dangerous to be practiced. She had no illusions. She would be able to reconcile herself to such a blow. To the knowledge that Lionel was using her.

  Robin hoped fervently that his sister had done no more than flirt with the man. He prayed that she had really had her eyes open, that she understood and accepted that the man was the enemy even if she was attracted to him. Surely she had protected herself from too much intimacy?

  He hurried up the staircase, tapestries whispering in the breeze of his passing. He ignored the crowds of people now thronging the corridors. At Pippa's door he knocked sharply and tried the latch. It was locked from the inside.

  “Pippa, 'tis me.”

  There was silence from beyond the door. He rattled the latch again. “Pippa, are you still asleep? I have to talk to you now. I'm going on a journey in a couple of hours.” He couldn't say more than that while shouting at a closed door in a public corridor.

  He knocked again.

  The door opened. He stepped in, speaking as he did so. “I'm sorry if I woke you but 'tis urgent that I . . .” His voice died as he looked at her. “Good God!” he whispered. “What has happened? What's the matter, Pippa?”

  She was so white he could see the blue veins along her forehead, ben
eath her jaw, standing out in her neck. There was a wildness in her eyes, and she seemed to be holding herself together, as if afraid that if she relaxed her posture her body would fly apart.

  “Is it the baby?” he demanded when she didn't respond. “Are you sick? For God's sake, Pippa, answer me!” He took her upper arms and shook her, desperate to get a response from her. Then he put his arms around her and held her as tightly as he could because he could think of nothing else to do.

  Pippa let him hold her, let his warmth and his familiar smell and the feel of his body cut through the dreadful black trance that had enveloped her since she'd returned to the palace. She knew what she had to do, had known from the first moment of that ghastly revelation, but a paralysis had crept over her once she had locked herself into her chamber and she had not been able to think, let alone plan.

  “Are you sick?” Robin repeated after a minute, still holding her tightly. “Is it the baby?”

  Pippa pushed herself away from his comforting arms. “No, I am not sick, Robin. But I have to leave here now . . . right now. And you must help me.”

  Her voice was strangely flat, colorless, as pallid, Robin thought, as her complexion. He was aware of an anxiety so powerful that it bordered on fear. He dreaded what she was going to tell him but he knew he had to hear it.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She told him, standing still in the center of the chamber, holding her elbows across her body, her voice as flat as a millpond, the only expression in her eyes, where green fires burned in the hazel depths. Only by keeping all emotion from her voice could she put words to the horror. She was degraded by what had been done to her; she felt filthy. It was agony to tell the facts of her degradation, but she kept to herself the hideous sense of her own worthlessness. A feeling that made her want to scream and tear at her hair, to rip at her skin with her nails.

  But she showed none of this.

  Robin listened in appalled horror. There was much evil in his world, he had come to grips with that knowledge many times over in his thirty years, but the cold-blooded viciousness of this violation was beyond his comprehension. And yet he knew it to be true. It was beyond comprehension but it entirely fitted with Philip's reputation for vice, his fanatical Catholicism, and his hunger for power.

  It put all questions about Lionel Ashton to rest. The man was as evil as his master. And he would pay. Robin would see to it.

  But Stuart . . . Stuart had sold his wife to save his own skin. “Stuart,” he said at last in a voice where hurt and bewilderment mingled. “How . . . ?”

  “They threatened his lover,” Pippa said as flatly as before. Stuart's betrayal no longer meant anything to her. Not beside Lionel's. “I do not think he was so worried about his own life.”

  She moved finally from her statuelike pose in the middle of the chamber and sat down on the end of the bed, one hand absently cradling her stomach.

  “I have to get away from here, Robin. I cannot let them do what they want with me and this child. And I must go now, today. I cannot endure to stay another hour under the same roof as any of those men. So you must help me.” It was a clear statement of a fact that would admit no negotiation.

  It did not occur to Robin to offer any. It was simply a matter of how she was to leave and where she was to go.

  “I am supposed to leave on a mission to Woodstock for the ambassador,” he said. He debated for only a second whether to tell her that the sudden mission was necessary because of Lionel Ashton. He couldn't bring himself to speak the man's name to her. And yet why had Ashton told her this truth? What possible goal would it serve? Surely they needed Pippa unaware and compliant.

  “Why did he tell you?” he blurted without volition. “What did he hope to gain by that?”

  It was a question Pippa didn't want to examine. She had demanded the truth from Lionel and he had given it to her in all its brutality. In some tiny recess of her brain where shock and horror had not penetrated, she knew that he had not told her simply to cause her unimaginable distress. But she could not think about that, about reasons for Lionel's actions . . . any of them.

  She shook her head. “I don't know. We had just made love and—” She waved a dismissive hand at Robin's exclamation. “Spare me the prudery, Robin. My husband prefers men to women. My preferences are my own.” And I live with their consequences. The recognition hovered, unspoken.

  Robin nodded and kept a grim silence.

  “I don't imagine he would have told me if I hadn't known that something bad had happened to me and that he had a part in it.”

  With an involuntary movement she crossed her arms over her body again in a defensive hug. “How does one know these things, Robin? Did some unconscious memory, like a nightmare that haunts you even if you can't describe it, lodge itself in my mind?”

  “I don't know,” he said, his heart aching for her. He knelt beside the bed and took her cold body in his arms and rubbed her back.

  She stayed in his embrace for a few minutes, more to ease Robin's distress than for any real comfort it brought her, then she straightened her shoulders and stood up. “It matters not, Robin. I have to deal with what is and what will be. I will go with you to Woodstock.”

  Robin jumped to his feet, sure here at least of his ground. “Pippa, you cannot go to Elizabeth. There's no safety for you there. If you join her openly you will be accused of treason. And there's no way you can take refuge with her without Bedingfield's finding out.”

  “Then I will not go to Elizabeth,” she said with an icy calm. “But I will go with you out of this place. I cannot stay here. If you won't help me, then I must go alone.”

  Robin put his hands on her shoulders. He almost shook her in a desperate need to break her icy detachment. He could barely recognize her. The bright, laughing, devil-may-care Pippa on whom the sun always shone was now this cold shadow.

  “Don't be ridiculous, Pippa. Of course you won't go alone. We'll go to Woodstock and then I'll take you into Derbyshire.”

  Pippa was surprised that she had already made her plans. She shook her head. “No, I won't be safe in England. You will have to help me get to France, to Pen and Owen.”

  “Yes . . . yes . . . that would be best,” Robin agreed, his mind once more working freely. “But then what?” What future would she have running with an infant from the long arm of Spain?

  “I can't think of the future,” she stated. “I can only deal with the present. I have to get myself and this child to safety.”

  Her voice was steady, her tone firm as if she was stating the obvious, and Robin could only accept her need to focus on the immediate issues. He pushed his bleak question to the back of his mind. It was fruitless to dwell upon the answer now.

  He spoke his thoughts as they came to him. “How can we keep your escape a secret for a day or two . . . you had best be ill and keep to your chamber. Your maid . . . what's her name? . . . Martha . . . can she be trusted?”

  “I doubt it,” Pippa said with a wry twist to her mouth. “She has already betrayed my confidence once to Stuart.”

  “Then you'll have to be rid of her,” he said matter-of-factly. “Send her away. Pretend that she has offended you in some way and—”

  “No, I cannot be so unjust,” Pippa interrupted him. “But I will send her to Holborn. I will say that my mother has requested that she assist the housekeeper there for a few days and that I will use a palace servant until she returns at the end of the week.”

  “That will serve.” Robin paced the chamber. “I will attend on de Noailles now and return here for you within the hour. Make your preparations and see to the maid.”

  He stopped in midstride. It was a relief to be making plans, to be dealing with the situation not crying over it, but he could not imagine how Pippa was managing to maintain her calm focus when the ever-present reminder of the hideous thing that had been done to her was growing inside her. He wanted to talk to her about it, but he could find no words.

  He had to be conten
t with the recognition that beneath the happy-go-lucky, flirtatious facade, she was and had always been a woman of the same ilk as her mother and sister. She would manage to do what had to be done. And yet his silence made him feel like a coward.

  He reached for her, wanting to take her in his arms again, but instead she merely reached up and kissed his cheek. “'Tis all right, Robin. I will get through. Just help me to get out of this vile place.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I'll return within the hour.”

  “I'll be ready.”

  The door closed behind him and Pippa locked it. Then she locked the connecting door to Stuart's chamber. She sat down at the table, mixed ink powder with water in the inkwell, and dipped her quill.

  She thought for a minute. Thought of how Stuart, her husband, had used her, had betrayed her. And she felt nothing. Stuart had deemed her unworthy of his love and loyalty and she deemed him unworthy of any emotion of her own. Why should she waste words and energy on accusations and recriminations?

  She began to write. She told him simply that she knew what had been done to her and why he had lent his support. And she told him she was leaving him. Their marriage was not valid in her eyes or those of the church. She would not expose him, but in return he must keep her disappearance a secret for two days and make no attempt to find her, or to claim her as his wife.

  She signed the parchment, sanded it, folded it, and sealed it. She wrote his name on the front.

  She tapped the folded sheet against the palm of her hand. It was the end of her marriage. The end of her life as she had known it. The end of all expectations of what her life would be.

  A curious thought. Strangely detached from her self, from the physical presence of her self in this so familiar chamber.

  Pippa unlocked the door to Stuart's chamber and entered. It was empty as she had known it would be. She didn't think her husband had slept in his own bed for close on a week.