Hart, Mallory Dorn

by Jasmine on the Wind

  There was already a flush over his cheekbones from the wine. He turned his large face full to her, his protruding eyes wandering from the wavy auburn hair parted beneath her rolled-brim, jeweled coif to the warm plunge of satin-skinned bosom behind the silvery green silk bodice of her gown. His gaze finally came to rest somewhere below her chin, and she thought for one alarmed moment that he was drunkenly going to press his lips right then and there to the tender column of her throat.

  Instead he grunted. "I am not wroth with you, doña. I merely want what I cannot have."

  She kept her smile steady, for there were people all around who could see them if they could not hear. Her voice was cajoling as she tried to divert him, "Pray, Don Enrique, enjoy the banquet. I truly look forward to your leading me out in the dance. You turn so elegant a step."

  His heavy-lidded smile held sarcasm. "Sí, belleza, I am very good at the dance. It will be my pleasure to soon hasten to oblige you." Again he handed her her wine cup and saluted her with his own. She took a smaller sip this time, determined to stay sober.

  She gave her attention to the colorfully attired players on a balcony whose shawms, pipes, flutes, lutes, and drum had been floating music over the heads of the guests. She took a deep breath and opened wide her senses to all the grandiloquence of the Cardinal's celebration. She breathed in the expensive, heavy musk and amber perfumes worn by men and women alike. She fell to eating, savoring the several types of rich soups and devouring sizzling chunks of venison and roasted lamb, which she speared with her knife. A small, crackling-skinned fowl was placed on her golden plate, and she greedily pulled it apart with her hands. She took a bit of this and a bit of that from a dizzying succession of platters offered her, nibbled on some fine cheese shipped from France which the Duke proffered her on his knife, and perhaps drank more from her gold cup than she meant to of the aromatic wines. Lackeys passed her damp, perfumed cloths to wipe her greasy mouth and fingers.

  The center of the banquet U was paced by poets declaiming their verses and singers plucking lutes and twining together the polyphonic beauty of their voices in tender ballads of love. The last courses were accompanied by the shenanigans of a team of dwarf acrobats, who threw each other through the air so handily and with such shrill shouts they woke up the sleepiest of overeaters.

  Finally the smiling Queen, holding high her glittering arm as signal to the musicians, proclaimed the dance and turned a look of loving expectancy toward her husband, for they would lead the floor. The music began, a stately pavanne, and couples rose to dance, or to stroll the room or to find a cooler breath in the gardens outside. Servants hurried to push back the tables to make more room.

  Now. The apprehensive fluttering began again in Dolores's stomach. She allowed herself another swallow of wine, grateful for the courtesy greeting that had taken the Duke and his Duchess toward the dais. Sinuous as a cat—or as the urchin who had insinuated herself so often through crowds offering tempting purses—she quickly slipped past the knots of guests and exited by a small side door. Behind this she found her serving woman waiting for her, handily helped by a bribed house servant who was quite used to the clandestine comings and goings of the libidinous nobility.

  ***

  Francho wandered through several chambers occupied by groups in conversation or couples in various stages of amorous flirtation before discovering the little outside balcony where he could fill his lungs with fresh air and cool his jealousy until Leonora had danced her fill with Perens and her other gallants. It was only by good fortune that the diligently searching serving woman thought to glance out there and saw him half-sitting on the stone ledge and brooding into the dark, cool night.

  "Don Francisco?" the servant inquired softly.

  Francho started. He had been listening to the dance music emanating from the great hall and picturing with wine-heated yearning one golden stepper in particular, peevishly wondering if thwarted love could kill a man.

  "Sí. What is it?" he growled, frowning into the gloom.

  "I have a message, señor," came the high, tiny voice.

  Leonora! She needed him to rescue her from those louts, she had finally seen there was no one she cared more for... "Say on," he demanded.

  With a warning "sssh," the serving woman, head covered with a stiff linen kerchief, stepped out on the balcony and furtively offered him a wandlike object. Surprised, Francho reached out and took it. It was a soft leather bag rolled into a cylinder and tied with a thong. He frowned, puzzled. Could such be from Leonora? Something warned him that this wanted privacy. "I will step inside to the light," he told the servant. "Is there anyone in the chamber?"

  The small woman shook her head.

  "Good. You stand outside the door and see no one blunders in for the moment. But do not depart."

  The shadowed room was hung with carved wooden sculptures and swags of red brocade, but contained only a table and chairs and some locked chests. Several fat candles on the table guttered in the breeze from the balcony, and in the light of these he examined the unremarkable bag and then turned it over to unroll it, feeling something hard and tapered beneath his fingers. Feverishly he pulled aside the remaining flap. And stood staring, transfixed. A reflected tongue of flame leaped in the candlelight, a flash of metal darted into the shadows.

  He sucked in his breath. Madre de Dios, the snake-headed dagger! His dagger. There was no mistaking the elegant, ruby-eyed weapon the dying soldier Rodrigo had given to a restless little boy so long ago. He drew the slim blade from its heavily embossed sheath; a dollop of silver fire dripped from the wicked tip. "Por Christo!" he breathed. How often he had regretted having to abandon so artful a piece to whomever stumbled across his little cache at the hotel. For a second he blinked at the dagger, filled with the connection it gave him to his early years. And then it hit him. Someone was at Court who knew the real history of Francisco de Mendoza! More than that, well-wishers hardly sent messages of lost property in the midst of a Court gala. Swiftly he rewrapped the dagger and in two strides he reached the door, fearful the serving woman would be gone. But she waited without, patiently. "You! Who sent you? Who gave you this packet?"

  "Will you come with me, señor?" The woman had a flare she had brought with her.

  "To where?"

  "To the one who has returned your property. There is a need for discretion, señor, and time is important. I can say no more." The woman's wrinkled lips pressed together adamantly.

  He had no choice. He could not leave a mystery someone who might begin unraveling his carefully built up Mendoza heritage. Pressing his plumed hat firmly on his head and thrusting the packet into the belt under his surcoat, he motioned the servant ahead of him. "Lead on, woman." She lifted her flare.

  He had vaguely expected to leave the house, but instead he was led deeper into the palace, through one dimly lit or dark room into another in a chain of corridorless, square, and high-ceilinged spaces. At last they did come to a cross-corridor, quiet, lit by bracketed torches, and overseen at the end by a solitary guard in the Cardinal's colors. In a few paces down the corridor the woman stopped before a carved portal and knocked. She then opened the door and motioned Francho in. "Enter, señor, por favor."

  "Whose quarters are these?" he asked. He had not been in this wing before.

  "I cannot say, señor."

  "Who sent you?" he persisted.

  "I cannot say, señor," the woman whined, quailing. "But I swear, you will not come to any harm." Francho thought he heard a touch of irony in the little voice, but he stepped in and she backed away and closed the door softly behind him.

  This was a small chamber, almost empty as usual, for it did not belong to any of the permanent household and visitors had always to bring their furnishings with them. There was, however, a table and a curtained bed, and light was provided by an oil lamp set on the table and tapers in a double-arm sconce. The room was unoccupied. The utter silence, the sense of mystery prickled at his nerve ends; automatically he loosened his
dress dagger in its scabbard. Then the sudden loud squeak of the door opening in the far wall made him jump.

  The woman who glided in had come only a few paces toward him, her face still in the shadows, when, uniquely, from her bearing, it leaped to his mind that this must be the bruited Baroness de la Rocha, although he had rarely seen her slim, swaying-hipped figure except to admire it from the back. Her necklace of sapphires and pearls sparkled as she gracefully leaned to gather the short train of her gown. He dropped his hand from his dagger hilt as wordlessly as she approached him, finally coming full into the circle of pale, yellow light, and for the first time he had a close view of her oval face. With a quickening of admiration he realized that Don Enrique de Guzman had good reason to be jealous of this woman.

  Her beauty was sensuous, she was a true Spanish "cinnamon flower," rare, flamboyant, exciting. Clear gray eyes, wide, tilted, and sooty-lashed, gazed out at him from under winged brows; and they were provocative eyes, luminous with mystery and promise, even wit. Skin warm as a summer peach gleamed pale rose on the high cheekbones and stretched flawlessly over a straight, slim nose slightly spade-shaped at the tip. Her generous mouth which drew his stare like a magnet was pink-lipped, full and moist, and there was a seductive cleft in her firm chin. Her delicious coloring was enhanced by her darkly flaming cascade of waving hair, center-parted over a smooth forehead and held back by a rolled and beaded crownless coif.

  The seductive lips parted. Her eyebrow quirked, as if she were waiting for something. "Sir?" she finally said in a breathy voice.

  He bowed stiffly, but remembered to smile. "Don Francisco de Mendoza, doña, and so should you be aware since it appears you have requested my presence." Something tickled at him, in the back of his head. She reminded him of someone. Very much. But who?

  The gleam in the woman's eyes deepened. She chuckled throatily. With a shrug of her brocaded shoulder she glided closer to him. "And you should know that if you are seen here with me in such suggestive rendezvous you might have to answer dearly for it," she murmured.

  But Francho found himself harkening to the timbre of her voice, the certain tone-set. He drew his brows together and regarded her sternly, refusing to be trifled with. "An object was delivered to me tonight, evidently by way of message from you or from someone you represent. I wish to know what is your purpose in this, and then I will quickly disembarrass you of my presence."

  Dolores was enchanted with the situation. He just didn't recognize her, the ninny. But she had no trouble feeling comfortable with him, he was just the same, only bigger, the same crease between the brows and compelling blue eyes, the same curly dark hair and wide shoulders, the same insouciant, white smile against his pale olive skin—a smile not in evidence at this point, however. She was bursting to tell him who she was, but she couldn't resist toying with him for a few moments.

  "Ah, but it is my intention to enlighten you, señor. And I was merely teasing you; you may rest easy, we are safely closeted here." Her breath seemed to come quicker under his suspicious gaze. "But what discourtesy from a gentleman of such high birth, sir. Do you not even greet a lady properly?" She extended her hand with regal dignity.

  Her slim fingers were cool to his lips as he kissed them perfunctorily, to be polite. But her jasmine perfume tantalized his nostrils, her mobile, full lips kept drawing his eyes. And her curious air of familiarity with him was confounding; it made him uncomfortable. "I beg your forgiveness, lady, I did not wish to seem abrupt, but as you say, so private a meeting between us could prove precarious. Why have you summoned me, Baroness?"

  "Ah, then you know who I am? I am most flattered, señor, since we have never met before. Have we?" She accompanied her question by suddenly putting her hands up to his shoulders and lifting her smiling face up to his, fixing the full force of her exotic eyes on him and so mesmerizing him he did not even think to back away from such astonishing intimacy.

  Dumbstruck, he could only shake his head.

  "But Francho, you blockhead, don't you know me?" she cried gaily.

  Sangre de Dios! Francho? Who called him that now?

  He stared down at the female crowding him and as he did so a wild, impossible answer came to him, born of the sudden superimposition in his mind of a piquant, dirt-streaked little girl's face over the face of the bewitching young woman.

  Seeing light dawning in his eyes, she laughed. "Have you forgotten Papa el Mono's then, and Papa's daughter? Have you forgotten your old friends at the inn so soon, picaro?"

  Francho's jaw dropped. "Dolores?" he breathed. And then, a second later he shouted, "Dolores, per Dios!" and grasped her hard by the elbows.

  "Shhhh!" she giggled. "You'll wake up the dead...."

  "Diantre! Dolores, for the love of God, is it really you?" He shook her in delight.

  "Yes, yes, it is me. Ay, mi madre, you are rattling my teeth!"

  He stood her away from him while his stunned gaze traveled over her. She could almost see the myriad memories flashing through his mind. "But... but—" he stammered.

  "But I have changed," she laughed and finished for him, "and you are shocked that I am no longer as I was. But then again, neither are you, eh, Francho? Look, see here, is this the ragged hoyden you remember?" She picked up her short train and pirouetted in front of him in a rustle of pale green and silver silk and a glitter of jewels, preening in the unabashed admiration shining from his eyes, and finishing with a low, mocking bow that inadvertently gave him an entrancing view of her lovely bosom.

  He shook his head in wonder. "I don't believe it. The little nuisance that screeched like an eagle! Dolores? But... you are beautiful!"

  "And you are handsome, as you always were," she teased him, amused by the quick blush that suffused his olive skin. "Yet I almost didn't recognize you either the first I saw you, here in Toledo. I saw from a distance this strong, dark- haired caballero, so intent upon his lady he had no thought for anything else, and I wondered who was the dashing gallant Leonora de Zuniga had captured in Toledo, for had I seen the set of those shoulders in Madrid I would have noted them. And then, when you were presented to Their Majesties I saw you close, and I knew you immediately. I purposely waited until there was a chance of us being alone and uninterrupted, and then I gave my serving maid the dagger which brought you to me. I had kept it all this time."

  "I might have known. I might have surmised that if anyone found my secret little cache at the inn it would have to be Dolores."

  "The clever and curious."

  "The spying, you mean." He chuckled. "There were some open chinks in the wall of my cubby."

  "But are you glad to see me?"

  "Am I glad to see you? By all the Holy Saints, Dolores!" He grabbed her and hugged her, he lifted her off her feet like a feather and whirled her around in the air several times before setting her down. "Dolores, the most slippery light-fingers in all Ciudad Real! How many times I wondered how you did, and Carlos, and Tía—" He stopped as reality struck him, his high joy fading into confusion again. "But how did you come here, to the Court? And why are you called Baroness? And how did you—I mean, what is—"

  "Oh Francho, you have me all out of breath," she gasped out and momentarily silenced him with a slim finger on his lips. Looking around and spying nothing to sit on but the bed, she took his hand and pulled him to it. "Propriety or not, we cannot stand up all night, and my serving maid shook the dust off the spread earlier. Come, let us settle and I'll tell you everything and so shall you tell me. Oh, are you not just dazzled with us? Haven't we had unbelievably good fortune, the two of us?" she exclaimed, and held joyously out her arms so he could span her slim waist to boost her up on the edge of the high bed, which was without a step.

  He sat down close to her and she grabbed his hand affectionately, holding it in her lap like a sister. But assailed by her heady perfume, by her warm beauty, in spite of himself Francho was aware that she was not a sister, not real kin, nor had she acted so the last time they had been together, so he suddenl
y remembered. Disgusted with the faint stirring of lust within him, he cursed himself for a brute and closed off part of his mind to pay close attention to her tale.

  Her tone had sobered now. "I shall never forget the night they dragged you away, Francho. I trembled with fear for you. My heart broke and my eyes swelled almost shut from wild weeping for I was sure you were forever gone from us, gone from me. The next morning Carlos went to inquire from his friend among the Alcalde's guards and was told the Count of Tendilla had already quitted Ciudad Real and taken you along with his party, slung in a litter, hurt or dying, and certainly being transported to be hung up somewhere as a warning to others contemplating robbing a grandee. I wailed and Pepi wailed and Tía Esperanza, oh, that woman wept an ocean, for you had become part of our little family. But what could we do?"

  She squeezed his hand. "Yet I did not forget you, I lit a candle for you whenever I passed the church and I paid the priest to pray for your soul. Well, life went on. Carlos, Pepi, and I continued risking our skins to fill Papa's bottomless coffers, although we were chastened and much more cautious now. Some weeks later I heard a drunk in the common room blurt out that he had lately been a guard for the Count of Tendilla, and I cozened and flattered him and asked him questions until he recounted that he thought Tendilla had recovered a natural son right in Ciudad Real whom he had legally recognized and who was now living in his castle. I suffered his hairy paws on my shoulders until he remembered some description of the Count's son, and it was you, Francho! At least, it could have been you, I believed."

  "You were always a master of worming information from lips trying to be silent," he teased. But he squeezed her hand sympathetically.

  Her thoughts seemed to turn inward, and the innocent hopes of a dreamy girl slipped onto her face. "I prayed from then on that you would return to Ciudad Real—oh, not to join us again, for surely you had become a grand gentleman and probably would not even speak to us, but just so I could see you again, see you in your rich clothes. I... I just wanted to see you again."