by Susan Wiggs
“Yes, yes.” Faint impatience underscored the queen’s words. “Do stand up and let me look at you.”
Pippa stood. The queen’s bird-black eyes flicked over her, and she said, “That gown is familiar to mine eyes.”
“I am told it belonged to Lady Cheyney,” Pippa said baldly, knowing the truth was safer than lying and then being found out. “But here’s the fact, ma’am. The gown does not a fool make. I have worn this for two days and have not felt the slightest urge to invite a gentleman to my chambers.”
The queen tapped a long finger on the arm of her chair. “You are a fool in name only.” Her smile tightened. “Still, you should consult the master of revels for the proper mode of dress. My sister Mary, of honored memory, did make her fool shave her head and wear striped garb.”
Pippa lifted a hand to the curls escaping her coif. “There are worse things, madam, than shaving one’s head,” she said bravely. Still, she felt a heavy disappointment. Her hair was finally beginning to grow out to a more becoming length.
“Fear not, for I—” The queen glanced at the distant doorway of the Presence Chamber. “Yes?” she called.
“The O Donoghue Mór, Lord of Castleross,” intoned the majordomo.
Elizabeth waved away the other courtiers clustered round the canopied throne. Pippa found herself standing next to the Contessa Cerniglia. Of the many people Pippa had met at court, Rosaria was her favorite. Fair and tall, she had a pleasantly cynical view of life and a keen ear for gossip.
With her heart pounding wildly, Pippa trained her gaze on the door. Aidan!
Why had he returned? Part of her prayed he had come for her, while another part dreaded seeing him again, feeling that twist of raw wanting and the sting of his indifference.
She stood as still as a marble pillar and waited.
With the dramatic suddenness of a darkening storm, he filled the doorway, flanked by Donal Og and Iago. Looking like mythical giants, they made their unhurried way down the center of the room.
He wore his princely garb, the stone-bedecked tunic and rich blue mantle. He knelt before the queen. Iago and Donal Og did likewise; then simultaneously the three of them stood.
“We bring gifts, my queen,” Aidan said formally. He kept his gaze straight ahead, but Pippa had an uncanny sense that he was aware of her in the room.
“Ah, and he speaks English today,” Elizabeth said with wry humor. “We are making progress.”
Iago and Donal Og placed the gifts at her feet. One was the most elaborate salt cellar Pippa had ever seen, a tall fantasy of spun glass. It resembled a stylized castle, its slender turrets reaching upward, the tiny chamber where the salt was held surrounded by thin threads and coils of glass.
The other gift was a bracelet of cut amethyst that caught the light and seemed to shine from within. Pippa remembered wearing the matching necklace, remembered the magic of that night, and she blinked back tears.
“That is lovely.” The queen held out her hand for the bauble and lifted it to spin on its gold chain in the light.
“The jewels were mined by Irish hands in the Burren,” Aidan said.
“Indeed. For that honor, I thank you, my lord.” She spoke pleasantly and smiled, yet at the same time her small, slippered foot pushed at the base of the salt cellar.
Pippa gaped in horror as the perfect glass tower shattered on the flagstone floor. Tiny shards and needles of glass scattered every which way.
The O Donoghue Mór did not flinch. The bright, wasted glitter covered the floor all around his feet.
“Such a pity.” The queen fixed her black-eyed stare on Aidan. “You see, my lord, when a man builds a castle without proper consent, accidents are bound to happen.”
The Contessa Cerniglia gave a soft murmur of dismay. Delicately she plucked at her skirt. A small cut marred her ankle. Instantly Donal Og knelt at her feet and touched the tiny bright bead of blood that seeped through her stocking. The lady’s dismay changed quickly to romantic interest as she gazed down at Donal Og. She had large bosoms, which she displayed proudly with a low-cut, jeweled bodice. The effect was not lost on Donal Og.
“It is also a pity,” Aidan said, “that accidents are capricious by nature. Sadly, it is often the innocent who suffer.” He directed a meaningful look at the blond contessa.
“Sometimes the strong suffer, too.” The queen rose from her throne. Leicester and Hatton moved in fast to escort her out of the Presence Chamber. Before she left, she said, “My lord of Castleross, I trust you’ll join us at supper and revels tonight.”
No. Pippa tried to will him to refuse. It was dangerous for him here. The queen was playing some cruel game with him. He ought to leave while he had the chance.
The O Donoghue Mór bowed from the waist. “Madam, I am most humbly honored.”
The revels that night consisted of wild, skirling music and a troupe of Italian acrobats. Donal Og and Iago watched with rapt attention.
Aidan watched Pippa. She sat at one of the lower tables amid minor officials and the queen’s lesser ladies. Court, he noted with a pang, agreed with Pippa.
She laughed with practiced charm and wielded her fork and knife as if she had dined at table for years. Though he could not hear what she said, he guessed that she was in rare form. She looked animated and flushed. Everyone nearby listened to her and laughed.
Yet he began to notice an almost feverish desperation beneath her chatter. Her gaze darted about the hall and searched every noble face.
He knew what she was looking for. The mother and father whose image she had tended so lovingly in her imagination. When, he wondered, would she realize the futility of her dream? Not only had he hurt her, but she was bound to suffer when her impossible quest failed.
As soon as the dancing began, he sought her out. She was standing beneath the musicians’ gallery with Donal Og and the Venetian contessa, urging them to dance the volta.
Aidan could not help smiling at the picture they made, giant Donal Og gazing in helpless adoration at the blond beauty.
Pippa shooed them out onto the dance floor, then watched them with a satisfied air.
“In Ireland,” Aidan said softly, coming up behind her, “we do leave matchmaking to crones and tanists.”
She turned and caught her breath. He stopped walking toward her, wanting to freeze the moment, to hold this image of her forever in his heart. She had that look of timeless beauty, her face smooth, eyes wide with a startled look, a crown of curls gleaming in the rushlight.
How had she done it? he wondered. How had she managed to stay so winsome and innocent when every day of her life had been a struggle to survive?
Finally she spoke. “I’m sorry about the salt cellar.”
He smiled. “Revelin used to say ‘When you sup with the devil, you need a long spoon.’”
She laughed and said something, but her words were drowned by a brassy blare of trumpets from the gallery above.
“Come with me.” He steered her by the elbow toward a side exit. Within moments they had gone through a low-ceilinged passageway and emerged into a garden. At the end of the sloping yard, the river gleamed with starlight. Aidan took a deep breath of the cool night air. “That is better,” he said.
“No one is supposed to depart until the queen gives leave,” said Pippa.
“Is that so? I wonder how I dared.”
“Must be your long spoon. Aidan—”
“Pippa—”
They both spoke at once, both laughed awkwardly.
“Go on,” he said. “What were you going to say?”
She strolled down a walkway, her slippered feet silent on the path. Then she stopped and turned to him, leaning back against the rail of the knot garden. “I wanted to explain why I left.”
“Without a word,” he reminded her, staring at the slim, pale column of her throat, the tops of her breasts where they pushed up from her bodice.
“This was all your idea,” she said. “You said I might find a way to discover who
I am, where I came from.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or was that another of your lies?”
Her distrust cut at him like a blade. “I never—”
“You did,” she shot back before he could finish. “You asked me to be your mistress. You had me begging to be your lover, and then you denied me.” She fixed him with an insolent stare. “I tell you, my lord, I have had better days. Much better days. Such as the time I was set upon by dogs at the bear-baiting ring.”
“You were attacked by dogs at the bear-baiting ring?” He felt sick. He had seen the curs kenneled outside the ring at Southwark. Slavering, vicious beasts, they were.
“No,” she snapped, “but if I had been, it would have made for a better day than being cast off by you.”
Aidan swore in Gaelic. She had managed to singe his temper, and he was glad. It was the only way to keep his desire in check. “You’re a fine performer indeed. Tell me, was the queen as gullible as I was when you came to beg a place in her household? If you had said your loyalty was for sale, I would not have worried so much.”
“The queen’s offer tempts me far greater than yours,” she retorted. “I would have paid for yours in heartbreak.”
If her voice had stayed firm, he could have stood it. But it did not. Instead, her speech quavered with a bitter hurt that seared his soul. “Ah, Pippa. You were right to leave me. I can’t give you what you need.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. He had a powerful urge to kiss her, to use mouth and tongue to change her expression from pain to pleasure. But he resisted.
“We should not quarrel. It serves nothing.” She drew away from him. He folded his arms to keep from pulling her back into his embrace.
“There is a dream I used to have of a dark-haired woman bending to kiss me,” Pippa said. “‘Mind Mama’s brooch, darling,’ she would say. ‘Don’t prick your finger on it.’” Pippa plucked at the head of a rose. “I don’t know if it’s a flight of fancy or a true memory, but I do know that last night I dreamt it again. And I dreamt of a man’s merry laughter, and a grandmother singing to me in a strange language.”
“Singing what?” he asked. “Do you recall the tune?”
“The song lingers still.” She sang, the words so unfamiliar they sounded like gibberish, but she seemed quite sure of herself. “I feel close to them here, Aidan. As if I might spy a face in the crowd and recognize it. Recognize myself.”
For a long moment, he did not—could not—speak. What must it be like, not to know one’s family? Aidan O Donoghue had known from the cradle who he was. It had brought him little pleasure and much pain, but at least he had known. Again he ached for her. The chance of finding her family was too painfully slim. She could walk right past her mother and not know it.
“I think I understand your hunger,” he said at last. “And I am Irish. I would never be so foolish as to underestimate the power of a dream.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she said. “All I want to know is that someone once loved me. And perhaps then I can believe someone could love me once again.”
Someone wants to love you, a gradh, Aidan thought, biting his tongue to keep from blurting out the words. The problem is, the wrong man wants to love you.
Wimberleigh House, the soaring Strand residence of Richard de Lacey, teemed with activity. The garden doors of the house had been flung wide open, and servants paraded down a path to the river, carrying parcels of all shapes and sizes to a commodious river barge.
And there was the low-bellied bastard Aidan was looking for.
“Lord Castleross!” From the river landing Richard waved in greeting.
Feeling grim as winter, Aidan stalked down to the landing where Richard stood amid parcels and barrels.
“You just missed making the acquaintance of my parents, the Earl and Countess of Wimberleigh,” Richard said. “They’ve taken themselves off to Hertfordshire. We did celebrate a grand farewell. My aunt Belinda set off colored fire and rockets, ah, that was a sight to see, and—”
“I’m certain it was.” Aidan wasted no time in idle talk. “Why didn’t you tell me your commission was a post in Kerry?”
Richard’s ears reddened. “In sooth, my lord, I did not know. I expected a post in Ireland, but my assignment to your domain came as a surprise to me.”
“But you accepted it,” Aidan said tautly. All during his wild ride through the streets of London, he had hoped the gossip he’d heard the night before was wrong.
Richard made no attempt to deny it. He planted his feet wide. “The queen gave me no choice. No more than you had about coming to London.”
“Aye,” Aidan lashed out, “but I did not come here to butcher the citizens, steal their land, rape their women and raid their livestock.”
“And that is not my purpose in Ireland.” Richard cursed and flung his velvet hat to the ground. “I am being sent to keep the peace.”
“Ah, that is rich,” said Aidan. “Did you ever think, my young lordling, that if the Sassenach would stay out of Ireland, then we would be at peace?”
“If we were not there, the Irish would fight amongst themselves.”
“Then give us that freedom, man!” Aidan roared. “Let us destroy ourselves at our own discretion, with no help from you.” He flung out his arm in agitation. His fist hit a canvas-wrapped parcel, toppling it. There was a tearing sound, and the corner of a crate ripped through the parcel.
“God’s teeth.” Richard bent to pull aside the wrapping. A large portrait of a lady, now pierced by the wooden crate, stared up at the gray morning sky.
“I’m sorry,” Aidan said brusquely. “’Twas an accident.”
The woman in the picture was remarkable—dark and serene with misty eyes the color of winter rain. “Your betrothed?” he asked, picking up the ruined painting.
“My mother, Countess Wimberleigh. God knows when I shall see her again.” Richard called out in a foreign tongue. The burly servant with the mustache hurried over and reached for the portrait.
“Wait a moment.” Aidan held up a hand and frowned at the picture. The countess wore a rather plain gown of dove gray. Her one ornament, a brooch, looked out of place pinned to her bodice.
His heart lurched. The ornament was large and unusual, cruciform in shape, decked with a huge red stone encircled by twelve matched pearls.
He swallowed past a sudden dry heat in his throat. “When was this painted?”
Richard shrugged irritably. “Sometime in the first year of my parents’ marriage, about twenty-five years ago.”
“Does your mother still wear that jewel?”
He frowned and shook his head. “I’ve never seen it.” He exchanged words with the foreign servant who then carried off the portrait.
“I’ll pay to have it repaired.”
“Never mind,” said Richard. “My lord, I’m sorry to part with you on these terms. I would that we could—”
“How did you come to have Russian servants?” Aidan’s mind was starting to pull together the fragments of an amazing puzzle.
“My family has ties to the kingdom of Muscovy. The Muscovy Trading Company was begun by my grandfather Stephen, Lord Lynley. He and my grandmother still live in Wiltshire.”
“Did she sing to you?”
Richard regarded him with a confused scowl. “Sing?”
“You know, ballads. Lullabies. In Russian.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. I don’t remember.”
Aidan saw that he was rousing Richard’s suspicions. He cut himself short and said, “I have no quarrel with you until you set foot on Irish soil. Then, it will be as if our brief friendship had never occurred.”
If Richard replied, Aidan did not hear him. He had sudden pressing business at Whitehall with the queen’s fool.
Pippa pretended to be totally absorbed in the game of chess she was playing with Rosaria, the Contessa Cerniglia. In reality, her attention was secretly trained on the travel-weary courier who claimed he had urgent news from Ireland.
The crow
ded room buzzed with activity. The courier, a man with long cheeks and sunken eyes and a clear tenor voice, pressed his hands on the petitioner’s table in frustration. Pippa noticed that he was missing a finger on his left hand.
“What do you suppose his problem is?” asked the contessa.
Pippa smiled at her across the chessboard. “Who, my lady?”
The contessa’s lips thinned. “You know very well who. You have been staring at him since he walked in. You have also been cheating at chess, but I like your company, so I’m letting it pass.”
Pippa stared at her. No one—no one—had ever caught her cheating.
The contessa laughed softly. “I am the daughter of the Venetian ambassador,” she reminded Pippa. “My father built his life around observing people, seeing what is in their minds by watching what they do, particularly with their hands and eyes. I learned all I know from him.”
“Sorry about the cheating,” said Pippa. “It is a habit with me.”
The blond contessa gave her a brilliant smile. “Never mind. Are you interested in learning the news from Ireland?” She nodded toward the courier, who was still arguing with a palace official. Leicester and his stepson, Essex, went to join in the discussion.
“Certainly not.”
“Of course you are.” The contessa rose from the table. “The news might concern your lover.”
“The O Donoghue Mór is not my—” Pippa clapped a hand over her mouth, furious at herself for letting the contessa trick her into blurting out his name.
The cool, beautiful woman patted Pippa’s arm. “I thought as much.” She led Pippa through the packed room, exchanging polite snippets of greeting with the courtiers they passed. “Now, what about the other one—is he a brother?”
“No, Donal Og is Aidan’s cousin.”
“Donal Og.” The contessa’s mouth stretched into a smile. “Has he a wife?”
“No, he—” Pippa stopped walking. “You’re smitten with Donal Og!”
“Smitten is too chaste a word, cara.” The contessa winked and took her hand. “My feelings have progressed well past smitten.” When they drew close to the petition table, she paused and took out her fan, fluttering it in front of her face.