Without waiting for assistance, Allegra slipped from the saddle. While she smoothed her skirts, keeping her back to the don, her thoughts seethed.
For three years, Maximo had hounded her—driving her, threatening her, tormenting her with his casual cruelty. From the first, he’d held the whip hand. How not, when she stood chained to a wall for her husband’s murder? He’d controlled her through her kin, denied her the solace of seeing them, commanded the thin thread of correspondence that assured her they still lived.
Despite all her efforts, she’d never been able to discern where he held them, though they could not be far. When Maximo consented to post her letters, Alessandro Borgia’s replies arrived within a week.
Knowing their correspondence was closely scrutinized, she’d never dared ask her father where he was, even in the most oblique terms. When she’d hired a man to follow the courier, her man was found floating heels-up in the river, with his throat slit.
Try to follow again, Don Maximo had warned with a silken smile, and her father would be next.
Dear God, this Hell will never end. The don will drive me until he destroys me. What had she thought, that he would simply tire someday of using her—his pet assassin—and let her go?
He will never stop, unless I manage to escape him.
Drawing a careful breath, she turned to face her nemesis. He perched in the saddle, holding his Andalusian immobile. The beast dared not even twitch its tail beneath the threat of his whip.
Allegra schooled her tone to idleness. “Will you be sending a courier with dispatches anytime soon?”
“Oh, I suppose so.” Don Maximo shrugged, tapping the stallion’s withers when the glossy hide trembled. “Why? Do you wish to send a missive to your doting father?”
“Christmas gifts.” She barely breathed. “For my father and sisters.”
Unhurried, he scanned the courtyard. “Far be it from me, of course, to impede the flow of Yuletide cheer in a loving family…even one as unfortunate as yours.”
Through the open gates, the clamor of the returning court floated on the crisp air. Any moment now, they would flood the courtyard, and her moment would be lost.
“Very well.” The don’s silver eyes sliced over her as he pivoted the stallion. “Entrust your gifts to Frey Fausto before the king’s tourney tomorrow.”
Then he was cantering away, erect and graceful, his sable cloak billowing in his wake. Although he could no longer see her, Allegra nodded calmly and turned away, as if their exchange held no significance.
The surface of her thoughts was cold and clear, like ice riming a winter pond. She had not lied; she’d prepared Yuletide gifts for her family, as she did each year. Indeed, there could be no reason for her skin to sheet over with gooseflesh, no reason to shudder with violent chill. The don terrified her, he always had—this was nothing new.
Yet, beneath her tranquil façade, where she guarded her deepest secrets, she knew what she would do.
“Ah, there you are.” Lord Rochford found Joscelin in the bustling stable, where he was preparing for the king’s tourney.
“Mon père.” Joscelin suffered a stab of discomfort to be found laboring like a peasant in a sweaty tunic, his hose worn at the knee. In truth, he felt more at ease in this pragmatic attire than he ever would in his courtier’s frippery. But he could never divulge that to his father.
“I confess, Joscelin, I hardly credited George when he reported your whereabouts. What on earth are you doing? Henry has grooms to see to that.”
“It’s a ritual of ours—settles the horse before battle.” Breathing the familiar odors of horse and saddle leather, Joscelin brushed the chestnut coat. No use pointing out that a poor man like himself possessed no servants and no coin to compel the king’s grooms.
Elegant in silver and jet brocade, his father edged around a steaming pile of manure and stationed himself out of harm’s way. A knight in full tournament armor clattered past, trailed by a harried squire.
“A clever tactic, this,” Rochford said. “Henry admires a good jouster, so long as the fellow does not unseat him. You did well in choosing this route to raise yourself to the king’s notice.”
“I hope to do well on the field.” Joscelin quashed a surge of impatience for this endless pandering. In truth, he itched for honest exercise after days spent mincing around this foreign court.
“Which lady’s favor will you carry?” his father asked.
Joscelin ducked to curry the charger’s powerful chest and maneuvered among the shifting hooves. “You come to the stables to ask me that? Zut! I haven’t given it a thought.”
A vision rose unbidden in his mind: a raven-haired beauty with smoky lavender eyes and a voice smooth as claret.
Another man’s mistress. Get hold of yourself.
Besides, she would laugh in his face before she granted him her favor. He’d all but called her a whore—not his finest moment—at the river yesterday.
No surprise that she’d ignored him in the hall, serene as a Madonna in midnight velvet, that lush ebony mane demurely covered. She’d been faultlessly attendant on the aging queen, though that royal lady treated her with frigid disdain.
While he had stared with his mouth watering, like a besotted lad of twelve. Yet never once had the Devil’s Mistress met his gaze.
His father waited patiently while a groom trotted past. “What do you think of Mistress Catherine Carew?”
Hoisting his heavy tourney saddle, Joscelin rolled his eyes.
“The chit who played Virtue in the tableau last night? Mary introduced her—a pretty bit of fluff without two wits to rub together. Seemed to think France was located somewhere near the Dublin Pale. Mon Dieu.”
“So you found her pretty, with those golden curls?” His father studied him thoughtfully. “The girl is well-connected. Sir Nicholas Carew is her brother—grew to manhood with Henry, and he’s still the king’s close companion. While Mistress Catherine has a sweet disposition and a generous dowry—fertile lands and a horse-breeding farm. She’d suit you admirably.”
Joscelin swallowed a snort at the lady’s expense. Reminding himself of his filial duty, he tossed the saddle over Ajax.
Blast, he’d resigned himself to the unappealing notion of matrimony, though he was certainly in no rush. If his father would deign to arrange an advantageous match, it was his duty—God help him—to at least consider the giggling misses thrust under his nose.
“I’ll spend some time with her, I suppose. Assuming she has no aversion to being wooed by your bastard.”
“You’re my acknowledged son,” his father said coolly. “She’ll do as she’s told, like any well-bred girl.”
Without enthusiasm, Joscelin contemplated the prospect of marrying some milquetoast miss who consented to the match for duty’s sake. There was no help for it—not if he wished to please his father.
“Until now, Sir Nicholas Carew has not favored the king’s divorce.” Lord Rochford ran an approving hand over the horse. “This is an opportunity to gain an important ally and deprive the queen of hers.”
Joscelin grimaced and ducked to tighten the swinging girth. Merde, why the Devil was he dragging his feet? This was the shining opportunity he’d worked for all his life. The chance to prove his worth, to become a real Boleyn, with lands and an English wife. If only he could avoid this bloody politicking.
Again the searing image of Allegra Grimaldi filled his mind—the ring of her voice as she flung pride in his face, the quick spark of her wit, the scent of night-blooming jasmine that tightened his loins.
Nom de Dieu, what was he thinking?
“I’ll consider Mistress Catherine,” he said. “Merci for all your efforts.”
He expected Lord Rochford to depart, his business discharged. Instead, his father lingered, holding the stallion while Joscelin coaxed the bit between Ajax’s teeth. When his son was beyond the danger of losing his fingers, Rochford spoke again.
“I discern a certain lack of enthusiasm for po
or Catherine Carew. Is there perhaps some other lady whose prospects you prefer?”
“No.” He could well imagine his father’s reaction if he named Allegra Grimaldi. “One woman is the same as another when the candle’s blown out.”
“If I thought you actually believed that, Joscelin, my mind would be at ease on this matter. As it stands, I can’t help regretting your particular blend of chivalry and skittishness toward the fairer sex.”
“I hope I do claim a knight’s chivalry,” Joscelin said warily. “I’ll summon the necessary enthusiasm when I woo the lady, oui?”
“You’ll hardly disparage any lady I raise.” Lord Rochford cast him an ironic glance. “Yet I suspect if a woman ever managed to breach those formidable defenses, you’d refuse to consider her—either as a mistress or a wife.”
Joscelin grunted, uncomfortable with the topic. Yet his father persisted.
“That shortsighted fiancée of yours was the only mistake you’ll allow yourself, wasn’t she?”
“That’s ancient history.” Joscelin flung the reins over Ajax’s head. “Entirely irrelevant.”
“Call me a sentimental fool if you will, but I’d prefer to see you contented in your marriage, at least for financial and diplomatic reasons. Of course I can make no commitments without the necessary information. But if there is some lady with appropriate prospects whom you favor, either in France or England, you might as well let me know it.”
“There isn’t,” Joscelin said brusquely. He refused to consider Allegra Grimaldi, whose prospects were the farthest thing from appropriate, damn it.
Chapter Six
Reluctantly Allegra slipped into her seat in the viewing stand. Although the tourney was one of Henry Tudor’s favored pastimes, hotly anticipated and wagered upon by the entire court, she could hardly bear the prospect of sitting through this one. Surely one glimpse of her petrified face, one word dropped in the wrong ear, would betray all her desperate plans.
She glanced down the crowded stand toward the royal box. For reasons only she knew, Queen Katherine had braved her husband’s censure and emerged from isolation to claim her seat. Perhaps the royal lady was heartened by the presence of a cardinal sympathetic to Spanish interests.
Beaming in his red robes, Lorenzo Campeggio lurked behind the throne, his round face shiny with perspiration despite the crisp cold. Allegra struggled against a surge of unease to see him there, already so well placed to drop poison in the royal ear.
But the greater threat was Don Maximo, seated beside the queen, talking her through a sheaf of documents bedecked with seals and ribbons. Only ten days remained until Twelfth Night. The thought nearly made her bolt as raw panic surged through her.
Santa Maria, I must have more time! But I must keep my head, and ensure he suspects nothing.
Her heart tripped and tumbled like a drunken jester as she turned away from her nemesis. Even now, his courier was galloping away with a coded message to her father, buried in the don’s dispatches to Charles of Spain.
Of course Maximo had examined her Yuletide gifts: a bottle of blue Venetian glass filled with fragrance for Alessandro Borgia, and a pretty lute painted with flowers for Savaria and Rosaria, who were learning to play. Had the don noticed the lute’s crimson blossoms were poppies? Did he know the strong catgut strings could be fashioned into a garrote—an assassin’s weapon of choice for strangulation, stealthy and swift?
Had the don uncorked the bottle to sniff the ambergris—a fragrance Allegra loathed above all others, the scent Casimiro Grimaldi as well as Maximo himself had favored? A fragrance to camouflage the sweet poppy syrup that, mixed with wine, plunged unwitting users into a hallucinogenic stupor.
And, worst of all, the evidence she could never explain away. Had the don split the cork to find the twisted scrap of parchment, where she’d written in Italian, with her heart in her throat, the single incriminating query?
Dové?
Where are you, my father?
If she would set them free, she must know where Don Maximo had hidden them.
The scream of trumpets tore the heavens. She glanced up as a phalanx of mounted knights exploded onto the field and galloped past the stand. Bright pennants and standards streamed in their wake, lashing the air, proclaiming the houses for whose honor they fought.
Before the Boleyns, a knight in crimson-and-gold blazed like the sun in splendor, imploring the trifle of a handkerchief from a coolly reluctant Anne. So the king frolicked behind another obvious disguise—since no English knight would knowingly fight his sovereign. But the heart in flames was a standard Henry had used before, emblazoned with his lovelorn motto Declare I Dare Not.
Not far from her straying husband, Queen Katherine accepted a goblet of hippocras with a gracious smile and conversed with Don Maximo. Despite her own gnawing worries, Allegra felt a surge of admiration for the dumpy, aging matriarch—daughter of the legendary Isabella of Aragon, exiled to this cold and inhospitable land. Even Henry Tudor at his worst could not rumple his Spanish Queen’s composure.
Sweeping past the amorous king, another knight thundered across the field. Allegra’s eyes passed over the green-and-silver bunting streaming behind him like emerald flames, but her gaze lingered on his dented plate armor. No fantastical design adorned this serviceable mail—no lions couchant or rampant griffons or dragons roaring flames. Scarred by real battle, the knight stood grimly apart, armored in candor and menace.
Sunlight flashed on the green knight’s slitted visor, the hammered pauldrons that bridged his shoulders, the worn cuisses large as dinner plates strapped over his thighs, the knee poleyns that curved up like wicked horns. Beneath the knight’s crushing weight, his charger surged across the field, muscles bulging against a flaming hide shattered by a white blaze and stockings.
The rider slowed before Sir Nicholas Carew and his sister…then spurred past, sharp with purpose. He thundered past all the great houses and their splendid ladies, heading straight for the servants’ pavilion where Allegra, with her dubious status, was relegated.
What was it about him that stirred her with that tickle of recognition? Was it the knight’s easy sway in his tourney saddle, the quiet competence that shouted from his seat? The fixed intensity behind the visor as he bore down on her like a man on a holy quest?
He reined in before her. With a gauntleted fist, he shoved his visor up.
Sir Joscelin Boleyn’s jaw was clenched beneath his red-gold beard, brow furrowed as though he expected a rebuke. But his moss-green eyes met her gaze steadily, like a reassuring hand linked with hers in the darkness.
After their last disastrous exchange, she had not expected him to seek her out. She’d thought him finished with her, and all the better for him. As she stared, astonished, he bowed from the saddle.
“Contessa Grimaldi, bonjour.” The husky French voice softened his consonants. “I cannot fight until I beg your pardon.”
Alarm knifed through her. Had the man gone mad, to single her out before the entire fascinated court? Before Don Maximo, of all men, when she must do nothing to rouse his suspicions?
Yet beneath her unease danced a flicker of pleasure for a handsome man’s attention—a foolish sentiment she dared not indulge.
“Corpus Christi,” she said coolly, playing to the crowd of minor functionaries squeezed against her on the benches. “You mistake me for another lady.”
“That I could never do.” Though the high-strung stallion danced beneath him, Sir Joscelin’s eyes never wavered. Resolve rang from his tone like a challenge. “I can’t fight without begging your pardon. When we spoke yesterday, I did you a grave disservice—”
“I recall no such discussion.” She made her face cold as a convent virgin’s. “Signor, you are quite simply mistaken.”
“I was mistaken—when I disparaged you. Those were not the words of a knight to a lady.” His armor clanked as he shifted, gripping his worn broadsword. “Certainement, I had no right to judge you. How shall I win your pardon?
”
“I cannot imagine,” she said.
God save her, could he possibly be sincere? Contrition was stamped all over his forthright features, and determination shouted from his shoulders under their ridged steel. Within its cold fortress, her heart stirred to painful life.
But every word of this risky exchange would fly to Don Maximo on wings. It was death for Joscelin to be seen in her company now, given the certain outcome. She must put an end to his stubborn attentions, for his sake.
“I require no man’s gallantry, Sir Joscelin. Moreover, I assure you, no man craves absolution from the Devil’s Mistress.”
“S’il vous plaît. Please.” He reined in hard against the viewing stand, his gauntlet gripping the wood only inches away. “I’ll not hear you dishonored.”
“In that case, you must wish yourself deaf or leave this court,” she said dryly. “If your code of knightly chivalry demands the words—well then, it costs me nothing to say them. I hold no grudge against you for our trifling exchange. Indeed, I’ve all but forgotten it.” Uttering a laugh, she raised a languid hand in dismissal, for their observers’ benefit. “Now be gone about your business, signor, and trouble me no further.”
Stubborn, Sir Joscelin stayed put, eyes riveted on hers as though he read every thought she worked to conceal. Unexpectedly, his hand, sheathed in steel and leather, closed over hers. He could have crushed her fingers, yet he held her with exceptional gentleness.
Allegra was so astonished she did nothing to protest it. Mutely she stared down at their linked hands, caught by the contrast between his thick armored fingers and her slim white hand, glittering with her poisoned ring.
In a heartbeat she relived Casimiro’s violent embraces, his brother’s sly caresses, the inventive cruelties of the cardinal’s questioners, Don Maximo’s possessive intimacies. Compared to those, the deferential courtesy of this penniless knight was a revelation little short of miraculous. No doubt this explained why she did not withdraw with a careless laugh, but stared down in wonder at her hand in his.
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