by Susan Wiggs
With a soft cry of joy, she clung to his arm and pressed her cheek against him. “Ah, you are kind, my lord. Mort used to say all Irish were savages, but you belie that.” She gazed up at him with shining eyes. “No one has ever troubled himself to speak kindly to me.”
Aidan felt Donal Og’s glare like a brand, and he looked over her head at his cousin. Donal Og had managed to find the second most beautiful woman in the place, and the two of them were sharing spiced wine.
“I worry about you, coz. I really do,” Donal Og said in Gaelic. “If you were to simply toss up her skirts and play hide the sausage, I’d understand. That’s certainly what I intend to do with my lovely friend here.”
The “lovely friend” affected a pout. “What secrets do you tell in your savage tongue?”
“That thing he does with lamp oil,” Pippa said helpfully, “and a wine bot—”
Aidan placed his fingers over her mouth.
“Pay no mind to this mistress of the gutter,” Donal Og said to his lady friend. “She has a twisted sense of the absurd.”
Aidan was burningly aware of Pippa’s hand slipping down his arm slowly, caressingly. “Please yourself and I’ll do the same,” he said in Irish to Donal Og.
The crowd roared with laughter at the antics of the acting troupe.
“Faith, Aidan, you’re the O Donoghue Mór. Think what you’re doing,” Donal Og said with a note of warning in his voice. “Whether you like it or not, your destiny was sealed long ago by forces beyond the control of any one man. Even the Earl of Desmond has taken to the hills like a common reiver. You’re charged with keeping the peace for an entire district. Not acting nursemaid to Sassenach street rabble.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Aidan said. Her hand slid lower, fingers stroking his wrist, lingering over his pulse. He thought he had found his answer with Felicity Browne, a perfect English rose of a woman, part of the settlement to keep the peace, and the biggest mistake he had ever made.
“It’ll do you no good to fall in love with such as that.” Donal Og indicated Pippa with a jerk of his head.
“And why would you be thinking I’m falling in love?” Aidan demanded, hot with irritation. “Sure, and that’s the stupidest thing a man ever heard.”
Even as he spoke, her hand slid into his and stayed there shyly, like a small wild bird huddling from a storm.
No affinity with this woman was possible, even if he did want her. Yet she fascinated him. She gave his natural sense of mastery an unexpected jolt, challenging and contradicting him, making him laugh and breaking his heart all at once. Every moment with her gleamed like a jewel, but the moments were just as fleeting as the flash of the sun on moving water: brilliant, intense and instantly gone.
Each minute with this woman, he thought with a tightening of his chest, was a glimpse of what could never be.
He forced himself to laugh at the antics on the sloping stage to cover the anguish that twisted his heart. If he were truly his father’s son, he would simply bed the wench. God knew, his body kept urging him to do just that. Never, ever, had he so yearned to taste a woman’s mouth, to take her in his arms and bury himself in the warmth of her.
The unquestioning trust she placed in him was disconcerting, especially considering his thoughts. Didn’t she know the position of an Irish chieftain was tenuous, his life likely to end in blood and fire?
Aidan made his decision. As the acting troupe came out to claim their huzzahs and tossed coppers, he thought of one way to make certain Pippa remained safe, long after he was gone.
“Absolutely not,” she said the next day, trying to look outraged, when inside, her heart was breaking. “I’ll never do as you suggest, my lord of the stupid ideas.”
She paced the garden walk, sharply aware of the beauty of the day, the foxglove and columbine making a riot of springtime color and scent, the glinting sunlight touching the tops of the yew and elm trees.
“It is a fine idea.” Aidan leaned against the edge of the well and crossed his booted feet at the ankles. He looked so indolently handsome that she wanted to slap him. “I think you should consider it.”
“Court!” she burst out, almost choking on the word. “I cannot believe you think I could go to court. As a jester, perhaps. But as a lady? Never.”
“At least hear me out.” He wore his tunic open at the throat, and try as she might, she could not stop from imagining what his chest looked like, broad and muscled, dark, silky hair in the center….
She was instantly impatient with herself. Reaching up, she plucked three small green pears from a tree and juggled them idly, round and round. “I’m listening. I’ll try not to snort in disgust too loudly.”
He shoved away from the well and clasped his hands behind his back, looking for all the world like a battle commander planning a strategy.
Ah, but he is planning a strategy, said an ugly little voice inside her. A campaign to drive her out of his life.
But I’ve only just found you, she wanted to say.
“I’ve not yet met your queen,” he said, “but I’m told she values lively company.” His gaze followed the whirling pears she juggled effortlessly.
“And I’ve heard she took away a man’s knighthood for farting in her presence,” Pippa retorted.
“She would like you.”
“How, pray, did you make the leap from farting knights to me? And how do you know if the queen would like me or not?”
“Everyone likes you. Even Donal Og.”
“He has such a charming way of showing it. What was it he called me this morning?”
“A nightmare in taffeta.” He could not keep the mirth from his voice.
“See?” She kept the pears in motion and pretended nonchalance. “And you, Aidan O Donoghue? Do you like me?”
“I am responsible for you. I want to do what is best for you.”
“Is that peculiar to the Irish?” she asked.
“What?”
“Pretending to answer a question when you’ve given me no answer at all.” She caught the pears, then tossed him one without warning. He caught it deftly. She took a bite of hers, making a face at the unripe tartness. “And how have I managed to survive twenty-five to twenty-seven years without you?” she demanded acidly.
“You’ve survived, Pippa. But can you honestly say you have lived? You say you want to find your family. You have reason to believe they were of gentle birth. What better place to begin looking than at court? You can find people there who keep bloodlines, census rolls, registers stolen from churches. You can inquire about families that lost a child—presumably to drowning.”
She braced herself against a tug of yearning. “I think we both know what my chances are,” she said quietly. “I don’t know my family name, so how can I find myself in record books?”
He touched her hand. Did the man always have to be so damned tender?
“Don’t say no,” he said. “At least not yet. There is a masque at Durham House tonight. I am expected to attend. Say you’ll come with me. Give yourself a chance to be with men who might be able to help you. Meet Robert Dudley—properly—and Christopher Hatton and Evan Carew—”
The names jumbled up in her mind, strange and alluring. “No,” she said, “I don’t belong there. I could never—”
“Tell me my ears deceive me.” He cocked his head. “I never thought I would see you shrink in fear from a challenge.”
She turned her back on him. Damn him, damn him, damn him. How was it that he could see into her heart, even when she took pains to hide it?
“What do you fear?” he asked, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him. “That you’ll never find out who you are—or that you will?”
“What if I turn out to be the by-blow of some gouty old duke?” she asked.
“Then we’ll call you Lady Pippa.” Idly he tossed the pear up and down. “Perhaps this will mean you’ll have to stop thinking of your mother as a princess in a glass tower. You might learn tha
t she is all too human, as imperfect as you or I.”
She stood staring up at him for a long moment. How fine he looked, with the glory of springtime blooming all around him. He was taking away her long-held dream, aye, but he was offering another dream in its place—one that had a chance of coming true.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll go.”
“Iago said you sent away the maids,” Aidan called in annoyance through her chamber door.
“So I did, Your Splendidness,” she called back in a cheerful voice. It was her best, brightest, fool-the-crowd voice, and she had worked for years to perfect it. No one would guess that inside she smarted with wounds that cut to the quick of her pride. “It is beneath me to consort with such a mean class of people.”
“They were sent specially by Lady Lumley,” Aidan said. “Did you let them stay long enough to dress you?”
She leaned her forehead on a lozenge-shaped pane of a mullioned window and drew a deep breath past the lump in her throat. I only let them stay long enough to call me the O Donoghue’s whore. The laced mutton. The primped poppet.
“I’ve decided not to go after all,” she called. Ah, damnation. Her voice cracked with emotion. It was too much to hope he would not notice.
He noticed. He pushed open the door and strode into the chamber. He looked magnificent in a dark wool tunic and leather leggings. Iago had added polished silver beads to the long, braided strand of his hair. He looked wild and brooding, faintly dangerous as he stopped stock-still when he caught sight of her.
She wanted to shrivel and die, for she was clad only in an undershift and chemise, stockings pooled around her ankles and the rest of the elaborate costume laid out in confusion across the bed.
But he was not looking at her state of dishabille. He was looking at her face. Into her eyes.
“You’ve been crying,” he said.
“The scent ball makes me sneeze,” she insisted, plucking up the pomander by its string and holding it at arm’s length.
He took the ball from her and set it on a table. “Is that why you sent the maids away? I went to some trouble to bring them here, with the dressmaker and that frock.” He gestured at the garment, a silken fantasy of ice blue and silver. When she had laid eyes on it she had gone weak in the knees, for she had never seen such a beautiful garment. But that was before the maids had started taunting her.
“They say it was originally made for a lady-in-waiting,” Aidan said, “but she—” He broke off and lifted one of the sleeves, inspecting it.
“She what?” Pippa demanded.
“She was banished from court.”
“Why?”
He dropped the open-worked sleeve and faced her with an honestly baffled expression. “According to Iago, the lady in question petitioned the queen for permission to marry, and the queen refused. A few months later, the lady was discovered to be with child, having secretly wed her lover. He was imprisoned in the Tower, and she was sent from court.”
For a moment, Pippa forgot her own troubles. “Why?”
“I asked the same question. One person dared to answer, but only in a whisper. The queen cannot find anyone to marry, and she is past the age to bear children.”
“Marrying and having children are not all they’re reputed to be,” she said.
For a moment, a cold shadow seemed to pass over him. Then, just as fleetingly, amusement danced in his eyes. “And you are an authority on such matters.”
“Dove once told me that celibate priests advise people on marriage.”
“Ah. Now. About the dress—”
“Surely a frock to bring me good luck,” Pippa said sourly.
“It’s not to your taste?”
“My lord, the gown is fine. The dressmaker and her assistants were not to my taste.”
“Did they offend you?”
“I didn’t take offense on my own behalf. I’ve been called far worse than whore, laced mutton, primped pigeon—or was it poppet…?” She sent him her most insouciant grin, then her most outraged scowl. “It’s what they said about you, my lord, that enraged me.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Oh? And what might that be?”
“Well, I’m not certain. I’ve never heard such talk before. What does bedswerver mean?”
His face flushed scarlet, and he ducked his head. “I do not understand the Sassenach, letting their women talk like tavern doxies.”
“And what do you ‘let’ your women in Ireland do?” she asked.
Icy fury replaced the sheepish humor in his face. Then he blinked, and the dark look passed. “We don’t let them do anything. They do as they please.” He stepped toward her. “I’m sorry you had to endure those harpies. Let me help you dress. I swear I’ll not call you names, except, perhaps…” He cleared his throat, endearingly discomfited.
“Except what?”
“A storin. Or perhaps a gradh.” His eyes smiled into her soul, raising a shiver on her skin.
She could not have resisted if she wanted to. “I submit!” she cried out in a theatrical swoon, bringing her wrist to her brow and swaying perilously. “I am yours to do what you will with me!”
Chuckling, he surveyed the elements of the costume on the bed. “I’m not certain I know how all this goes together. Truly, I do not know how you have managed to make the O Donoghue Mór play the handmaid not once, but twice.”
“You secretly love it. You know you do.”
He picked up an evil, steel-spined object. “A corset?”
“No, thank you. I have never understood why people wish to rearrange the way the Lord made them.”
“Let us do this underskirt, then. It is pretty enough.”
It was nothing less than splendid, the fine blue fabric shot through with silver threads, the hem worked in the same scalloped design as the sleeves. He pulled it over her head and positioned it around her waist. With his hands around behind her, he began tying the laces.
She experienced an overwhelming urge to lay her cheek upon his chest, to close her eyes and revel in their closeness. What would he say? she wondered, if he knew he had given her the only tenderness she had ever known?
Before she found the courage to confess her thoughts, he added the overskirt of heavier fabric, parted in the front to reveal the dainty underskirt.
Then came the bodice. “This is all backward, my lord,” Pippa declared when he stepped behind her to lace it. “What possible use is a garment that laces up the back?”
“’Tis of social value. It proves you’re rich enough to have maids to dress you.”
“Oh. And how rich need I be that I have an Irish chieftain to dress me?”
“For that,” he said, his warm breath caressing the back of her neck, “you need only be Pippa.” His knuckles grazed her as he worked, and she began to tingle all over.
He gave her a feeling of coming to a roaring fire from out of the bitter cold. If it were possible to actually float, she would have done so. He had a perfect sense of what to say, when to tease and when to be serious. He was magical, his charm so abundant that she paid no heed to the occasional shadow that fell over him.
She laughed at the extra sleeves he laced over her blousy white chemise. Apparently the more sleeves one possessed, the better. She balked, at last, when he picked up the stiff ruff collar.
“You can send that back to the torture chamber it came from,” she declared. “I’ve done time in stocks that are more comfortable than that. Why on earth would someone take forty spans of lace, then crumple it up and make it all stiff with—with—”
“Starch, they call it,” he said. “Because someone terribly clever invented starch, I suppose. This is meant to be sewn on after you’re dressed.”
“Is that how the collar stays on? How perfectly ridiculous. No wonder the nobles look like stuffed puppets who spend four hours dressing each day.”
He winked at her and set down the ruff. “If you don’t wish to wear it, I have a better idea.”
“What is that?�
��
From a pouch on his hip he took a glittering necklace. The stones were rounded and polished, aglow with violet fire. Strange and sinuous knotwork twisted through the silver setting.
“Holy mother of God,” she whispered. “It is too precious for me to wear.”
“Believe me, you have more worth than a bauble. I had meant this as a gift for another lady, but she’s being recalcitrant.”
A chill touched her heart. She should hardly be surprised by his preference for another, but that did not dull the hurt. “Surely, Your Serenity, you should save it for that lady.”
He paused with the necklace dangling elegantly from his fingers. “Glory be,” he said softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I believe you are jealous.”
“Ha!” she burst out, her face flaming. “That is but a fond dream of yours, my lord Peacock. Flatter yourself not at my expense.”
He laughed softly. “Your protests flatter me.”
“Conceit,” she said, “thy name is O Donoghue.”
When he stopped laughing, he said, “This was not a gift of the heart, but one of diplomacy. It was meant for the queen.”
It was the last answer she had expected. “You want me to wear a necklace you brought for the queen?”
“For Gloriana herself.” His tone mocked the name. “You would improve on the beauty of the jewel. It’s amethyst,” he said, “mined from the hills of the Burren.” He stepped behind her and fastened the clasp. “The design is Celtic. Very ancient.”
And lovely, its facets flashing as she moved this way and that. She whirled around to face him. “Are you magic?” she demanded.
He frowned, his black brows knitting in bemusement. “Magic?”
“You know. Under an enchantment. Mab once told me a story about a fairy prince who comes to life and grants a woman’s every wish.”
“I’m a chieftain, not a prince,” he said, “and I’m certainly no fairy.”
She almost laughed at his wry indignation. Then he bent and brushed his lips over her brow. The fluttering wingbeat of his caressing mouth echoed deep inside her.
“But I do confess,” he whispered, “the idea of granting your every wish does have a certain appeal.”