by Jane Feather
"Are you awake now, milord?"
He sat up, aware that the sheet was tangled around his thighs, leaving the best part of his body exposed. He tugged the covers up to his waist and lay back against the pillows waiting for his heart to slow and his ragged breathing to ease.
"Did I wake you? Forgive me," he said after a minute.
"Robbie had dreadful nightmares, too, so I'm used to it," Miranda said, hovering by the bed. "Is there something I can get you?"
"In my saddlebag… a flagon of brandy…"
Miranda went to the corner to fetch the saddlebag.
"My thanks." He unscrewed the top and put the flagon to his lips. The fiery liquid burned down his gullet and settled warmingly into his cold belly.
"Do they happen often?" Miranda asked softly.
"No," he said curtly. He put the flask to his lips again.
What could this fresh-faced innocent know of a woman's madness, of all-consuming sexual appetites that had to be satisfied just as the body needed food and water to go on living? Miranda could never know what it had been like to watch helplessly as the cruel sickness destroyed the woman he had once loved… what it had been like to know that only Charlotte's death would free him.
What could Miranda know of such things? And what could she know of the dreadful moment when his cold, purposeful hands had felt for and failed to find the pulse of life and he had wanted to shout for joy that this beautiful, vibrant young life had been extinguished? How could she judge a man who had prayed daily for his wife's death to free him from torment; who knew whose violent hands had answered his prayer? How could she judge a man who intended to take that secret knowledge to his grave?
Miranda turned aside to pick up Chip, who was still looking alarmed on the windowsill. If Lord Harcourt didn't wish to talk of his nightmares, so be it. Maybe, like Robbie, he didn't understand them or know what caused them. Robbie could never even describe them afterward. All he could ever say was that he'd fallen into a black hole. She leaned out of the window to breathe the freshness of the night air, observing the very faintest pearly shadow in the east. "It'll soon be dawn."
Gareth set the flagon on the table. "I've a mind to try for an hour's peaceful sleep, then. Do you do the same, Miranda."
Miranda stayed at the window for a minute longer, then she returned to bed. But she was no longer sleepy and lay watching the darkness beyond the window lighten slowly, listening as the dawn chorus heralded the new day with all its jubilant song. Where would she be at the end of this new day? In some palace in London in a world she knew nothing about… a world she had never expected to know anything about. How could she possibly expect to play the part of this London lady, Maude? She was a strolling player, an acrobat. It was ridiculous to think she could pretend to be someone so very different from herself. But the earl seemed to think she could do it.
Chip, with a low chattering, jumped from the bed to the windowsill and vanished into the spreading branches of a magnolia tree.
It was no good, she was not going to be able to sleep again. Miranda flung aside the covers and stood up with a luxurious stretch. She dressed quietly then glanced around the chamber. Milord's clothes lay scattered on the floor, some half on, half off the chest at the foot of the bed where he'd thrown them. She bent to pick them up and her nose wrinkled at the familiar odor clinging to his doublet and shirt. It was one that clung to Raoul after one of his nighttime forays into town. He'd come back bleary-eyed, loose-lipped, disheveled.
"You smell like a whorehouse, Raoul," Gertrude had complained one morning when the strongman in a fit of alcohol-induced benevolence had attempted to lift her in his powerful embrace.
Men and whorehouses were one of life's natural conjunctions, but Miranda was oddly disappointed to think milord had taken comfort there.
She shook out the soiled garments vigorously. Something flew out of the silken folds of the doublet and fell to the floor. She bent to pick up the small velvet pouch. The laces had loosened and she caught the glitter of gold within.
She laid the doublet and shirt neatly on the chest and then shook the contents of the pouch into her hand. A gold pearl-encrusted bracelet most intricately worked into the undulating curves of a serpent lay on her palm. She held the object up to the light. A serpent with a pearl apple in its mouth. From the gold links depended a golden swan inset with perfect emeralds. The jewel was both beautiful and forbidding. There was something sinister about its exquisite sinuous form and yet the swan, glowing an almost liquid green in the rays of the early morning sun, had a curiously innocent quality to its beauty.
An involuntary shudder rippled down Miranda's back. There was something about the bracelet that filled her with a nameless dread. And yet she felt a shadow of familiarity, although she knew she had never laid eyes, let alone hands, upon such a precious object.
She was about to slide it back in the pouch when the earl's voice spoke from the big bed. "What are you doing, Miranda?"
She turned with a jump. "I was shaking out your clothes, milord, and this bracelet fell from the pocket." She slipped it back into the pouch, continuing almost in an undertone, "Judging by the reek of your clothes, you went a-whoring last even."
Gareth linked his arms behind his head. A smile quirked his mouth. "And what if I did?"
Miranda shrugged. "Nothing, I suppose."
Gareth's eyes gleamed with laughter. "Oh, so I've taken up with a prude, have I?"
Miranda didn't reply, but a slight flush warmed her cheeks. She wasn't a prude, and yet she felt very much like one at the moment.
Gareth took pity and changed the subject. "Bring the bracelet over here."
Miranda did so and he took the pouch from her, shaking the bracelet out into his palm. "Give me your wrist."
Miranda held out her hand and watched half mesmerized as he clasped the jewel around her thin wrist. She held it up to the light, and the emeralds danced deepest green and the pearls glowed softly against the rich gold. Again she felt that strange dread, that same little shiver of foreboding and familiarity. "It's very beautiful, but I don't like wearing it," she said, puzzled, fingering the charm, the pearl apple in the serpent's mouth.
Gareth frowned, reaching to take her wrist, to examine the bracelet himself. "You wear it well," he said, almost absently, and his eyes were distant, as if he were looking backward into some memory. Elena too had worn it well. Her wrist had been as thin as Miranda's, her fingers as long and slender. But where Elena's thinness had denoted fragility, Miranda's had a sinuous strength.
He remembered seeing the bracelet for the first time on the night of Elena's betrothal, when Francis had clasped it around her wrist. And he remembered how Charlotte later had coveted it. How shamelessly she had hinted
to Elena, praising the bracelet, touching it, begging to be allowed to borrow it for an evening. He had scoured the streets of Paris and London for another such bracelet, but Charlotte had rejected with careless displeasure every substitute he had bought her.
"I don't like it," Miranda persisted, a note almost of desperation in her voice as she tried to unfasten the intricate clasp with her free hand.
"How strange," Gareth mused, unfastening it for her, holding it curled in the palm of his hand. "It's unique and very beautiful. You will have to wear it to play your part." What if he told her the truth? Told her that it would not be a part? For a moment he toyed with the idea. Would it make it easier for her or harder?
"I expect I'm just being fanciful," Miranda said. "Perhaps it's because I'm a little anxious about things."
It would come as too much of a shock, he decided. When she'd settled into this new life, then the truth would be easier for her to accept. The last thing he wanted was to frighten her off. And on the surface the story was so incredible, it would be more natural for her to disbelieve it and suspect some evil design, than embrace the truth.
"There's no cause to be anxious," he said bracingly. "Nothing will be asked of you that will not come easily. In a day or two, you'll be astonished that you could have worried."
Miranda did her best to believe him.
Chapter Seven
"We'll see how she likes a diet of black bread, gruel, and water!" Lady Imogen strode the length of the gallery, her gown of purple damask swaying over its massive farthingale. She smacked her closed fan into the palm of her hand in emphasis. Her ordinarily thin mouth had almost disappeared and her eyes beneath the well-plucked eyebrows were hard as small brown pebbles.
"Forgive me, my dear, but I believe Maude relishes the role of martyr," Lord Dufort ventured from the safety of the doorway.
"Nonsense!" was all he got for his pains as his lady wife swirled and came toward him, snapping her fan. "The girl will soon tire of being confined to her chamber without fire and without all the little delicacies she is used to commanding."
Miles was not convinced. Lady Maude seemed to thrive upon opposition; indeed, it seemed to him that she was looking more robust on her guardian's punishment regime than ever before. But maybe it was just the determined gleam in her blue eyes that enlivened the wan pallor of her countenance.
"I will have her submission before Gareth returns," Imogen declared. "But where in God's name is he?" She paused at one of the long, arched windows that looked down onto the courtyard formed by the two wings of the mansion and a high fence of sharp metalrailings. The great iron gates set into the fence stood open to the street and its ceaseless traffic of horsemen, carts, iron-wheeled coaches, rattling over the hard-packed mud. A barge horn sounded from the river behind the house, mingling with the shrill cries of the ferrymen.
But Imogen saw nothing of the scene below. Her heart was filled with dread. Could something have happened to Gareth? His boat gone down on the Channel crossing? An attack by footpads? Or even soldiers? France was a country at war, and the highways were wild and lawless.
If disaster had befallen Gareth would it be her fault? She had sent him there. Gareth hadn't wanted to go, but she had pushed and prodded until he'd given in. But she'd forced the issue to give him a purpose, an aim in life. To try to drive out the cynical lethargy that had dogged him for so long. She was so desperate to see once again the old sharpness in his eyes, the vibrancy in his bearing, the crispness to his manner-all the characteristics that his marriage had destroyed.
Not once in the years before Charlotte had Imogen doubted that her brother would attain the heights of power and influence due a man of his ambition, character, wealth, and lineage. She had nurtured him, thought of nothing but Gareth, his happiness, the dazzling future ahead of him. He had been deeply enmeshed in the political life of the queen's court and intricately involved in the affairs of the Harcourt family in France suffering under the religious persecution of the Huguenots. And his sister had watched his advancement with pride, a pride that was utterly personal. Everything she had done since their mother's death had been for Gareth, all her thoughts and plans were directed toward her younger brother's interests. She knew his potential, knew what he was owed, and with every last fiber of her being, she had striven for his benefit. And she had watched her efforts come to fruition.
Until the slow poison of Charlotte's madness had seeped into him.
He had been so desperately in love, so deeply in thrall to his beautiful, deadly wife, and his sister had watched helplessly as he'd withdrawn inch by inch from the world he was beginning to dominate. Nothing she could say or do had had any effect. All her influence was as naught. She had understood his shame, but she hadn't understood why he would not disown the woman who shamed him. No one would have blamed him if he'd locked her away somewhere. Divorced her, even. Instead, he'd stood by as she'd destroyed him. And behind her stony countenance, Imogen had wept tears of rage and grief, her frustration a constant open wound as she watched the collapse of the man she believed she had created and the ambition that would serve them all.
Not even after Charlotte's death had he recovered his interest in anything but the idle games of the courtier. In fact, if anything he had become even more withdrawn. And Imogen's torment was increased a hundredfold. She had believed, she had had to believe, that once the irritation had been removed, Gareth's wounds would heal. She had done the only thing that would right the wrong done her brother. But in vain.
Miles regarded his wife's averted back, reading her thoughts with the long familiarity of their dreary marriage. He'd early on accepted Gareth's place as the single recipient of Imogen's affections and pride, and he knew exactly how anguished she was at her brother's prolonged absence. Unfortunately, her anguish tended to make life even harder for those around her. He stretched out one foot and noticed with approval how the wedged heel of his cork-soled shoes gave a pleasing curve to his skinny calves, resplendent in black-and-yellow cross-gartered hose. He glanced up and met his wife's scornful gaze.
"I'm surprised you don't take up the new fashion in heels, dear madam," he said tentatively. "A little extra height adds consequence."
Lady Imogen's frown became less derisive, more attentive. If there was one area in which she trusted her husband's instincts and knowledge it was in the matter of fashion. "You think so, indeed?"
"Aye," he said decidedly, thankful to have diverted her thoughts, even for a moment. "I have heard it said that Her Majesty has ordered three pair… one in leather, one in rose damask, an
d one in blue satin."
Lady Imogen scratched the side of her neck reflectively, her long fingernail rasping against the yellowing parchmentlike skin. "Then I shall order a pair to go with my new black satin ropa. Crimson leather, I think."
"A perfect choice, madam." Miles bowed. "Are we expecting guests to supper?"
"You know perfectly well your sister and her boorish husband are coming. The man will drink himself insensible as always and your silly widgeon of a sister will witter and whine so that no sensible conversation can be held."
The moment of accord was clearly over. "You could seat my sister with the chaplain," Miles suggested. "Of course. Whom else would I inflict her upon?"
Imogen returned to her morose observation of the court below.
"Ah, my dear Imogen, how glad I am to find you at home. And Lord Dufort, I give you good day, sir." Lady Mary Abernathy swept into the long gallery, offering a curtsy to Lord Dufort, and her cool cheek to Lady Imogen. "I can stay but a minute. The queen has returned to Whitehall Palace for the night, and while she's with Lord Cecil, I have a little liberty. I came straightaway to discover if there is news of Lord Harcourt as yet?"
She looked anxiously at Imogen. "I do begin to fear for him, so long has he been away."
Imogen shook her head. "No news as yet." She had chosen Lady Mary Abernathy as wife for Gareth not only because she was eminently suitable in birth and appearance to be wife to a man of power and influence, but because Imogen believed she could control the lady herself and ensure that she didn't usurp his sister's influence over Gareth. Gratitude was a powerful motivator.