Blinking, she gazed up at him. He grinned back at her, silken hair disheveled around his shoulders, the rapid rise and fall of his chest the only indication of the death-defying stunt he’d just flung them into.
“Never tell me,” he panted, “that upright stick of a Pickering could have topped that.”
“Ye’re impossible!” Suddenly realizing she was still wrapped in his arms, she released him hastily. “Are ye bloody daft, to try such a stunt? We could have both been killed. Anyway, where is Pickering?”
“Unavoidably detained.” Gracefully he shrugged off his cloak and began untangling himself from the harness.
“How did ye learn his part?” She busied herself with her own repairs, brushing her damask skirts into order, tugging discreetly at her low bodice.
If only Lord Robert hadn’t made her dispense with the partlet. Her breasts were nearly spilling out of the bloody gown—an observation that made her blush hotly and steal a peek at the man beside her.
His deft fingers were busy with the harness buckles, though a smile still lingered in around his lips. “I watched your rehearsal this morning. His part, as you put it, wasn’t exactly a challenge for any proper musician. I only had to hear it once.”
In the midst of smoothing her escaped curls into order, she shot him an upward glance. He seemed unapologetic about that flash of arrogance, but she supposed he’d earned the privilege. No doubt about it, Sir William Pickering could have practiced for a lifetime and never achieved the exquisite performance his replacement had produced so effortlessly.
“So ye’re a minstrel after all?” she asked, uncertain. Where else could the man have come from, if not one of the theater troupes Elizabeth Tudor had begun to patronize?
“Among other things.” Free of the harness at last, he adjusted the spill of silver lace at his cuffs. He even extended his arms to admire the effect, the little peacock.
“What other things?” she asked.
Then Lord Robert Dudley burst onto the scene.
Onstage, sober Temperance and gaudy Greed lurched into their duet, and the redoubtable musicians had never lost the pace, so the performance had likely been salvaged. But she supposed the unexpected appearance of an unknown actor for Indolence’s key role and their dramatic departure from the script might well unhinge a far more experienced master of events than Lord Robert.
“What in the name of God did the pair of you fancy you were doing out there?” he erupted in an outraged whisper. “And who in blazes are you, man?”
Zamiel shot the irascible newcomer a cool look and swooped into a careless bow. “Zamiel, Lord of Briah. God save you, sir. Unless I’m much mistaken, I believe I’ve just made your reputation for theatrical brilliance at this court.”
Hearing the title, Linnet’s ears pricked up. Dudley himself took in the stranger’s sumptuous attire in a swift glance and unbent enough to return the bow curtly. “God save you, sir. I don’t care for such surprises.”
“Oh, lighten up, man!” Zamiel of Briah cuffed his shoulder lightly. “You ought to thank me for stepping in. Pickering would have been a disaster, and you know it.” He shot a conspiratorial glance toward Linnet, as though they’d plotted the affair together. “My lady’s beauty deserves a better partner. Joshua’s Trumpet, did you hear her sing?”
The warmth in his voice made her belly flutter as though butterflies were trapped beneath her corset. Saints above, the man looked positively unholy, with his extraordinary eyes gleaming like amethysts and that sly smile lurking at the corners of his fascinating mouth.
But his reference had the unfortunate effect of drawing Dudley’s ire. Irritably, Lord Robert rounded on her.
“And you! What on earth possessed you to hurl yourself into this reprobate’s arms and imperil life and limb on that rickety apparatus? It was never designed for two, damn it!”
Before the towering fury of the Queen’s favorite, her momentary boldness evaporated. She nearly cowered before the angry lord.
But she was a countess now, and must carry herself accordingly. She hugged her ribs, as though to protect herself from an angry fist, and managed to stand her ground.
“I do regret my part in this wee stramash,” she said softly. “But it was that, or bring the entire performance crashing to a halt, aye? We made our exit safe and sound, and the play goes on apace.”
They all glanced toward the stage, where Temperance’s sweet resolve was slowly bringing a besotted Greed to his knees. The sight seemed to soften the worst of Lord Robert’s wrath.
“That you did.” He shot her an appraising look, his dark eyes gaining a speculative gleam. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you, my lady—such a passionate embrace before so many watching eyes. You have a reputation for shyness and timidity that is perhaps unwarranted.”
Though she was relieved to see his threatening anger dissipate, and knew she’d averted the worst of a distressing reprisal, she was no less discomfited by the masculine appraisal now lurking in both men’s eyes—a reaction with which she had little experience.
Of the two, she found Lord Zamiel of Briah by far the more disconcerting.
He lounged in apparent indolence against the mock catapult that had launched the Vices’ assault on Castle Virtue, as idle as the character he’d portrayed. But his violet eyes moved alertly between them, missing no nuance of the exchange.
Now he stirred, casually adjusting the basket-hilted blade sheathed at his hip. He was wearing the same heavy, silver-stitched gauntlets she recalled from their last encounter.
“I begin to suspect, Lord Robert,” he murmured, “that this court knows nothing about Lady Linnet Norwood and her secrets. She’s a fiery creature...when aroused.”
The subtle inflection he placed on the last word made her tingle. An indecent word, really, the way he said it.
Aroused.
“I wasn’t aware you knew the lady so well, sir, as a newcomer to this court.” Lord Robert shifted his gaze from Linnet’s tight-laced bodice to give the other man an assessing look. “Unless, perhaps, you knew the countess before...?”
Dudley’s delicate pause was sufficient to scald her cheeks. That oblique reference to her checkered past unhinged her: those notorious years when she’d disappeared, her wild assertions when she returned. If only she’d been more reticent—but she’d been no one then, just the new earl’s odd, bookish, painfully shy sister, destined for a convent where her madness could be quietly forgotten.
She cleared her throat and spoke stiffly. “We met at Her Majesty’s coronation parade, aye? Lord Zamiel did me a kindness when some ruffians caused a scuffle.” Recalling that debt, she turned toward Zamiel. “I’m obliged to ye, my lord, for yer assistance that day. I hope it caused ye no great inconvenience?”
For some reason, that brought the devilish gleam of amusement back to his eyes. “No inconvenience worth mentioning, my sweet. To the contrary, I owe you a debt of gratitude for delaying me most pleasurably in London, when I would otherwise have flown long since. Indeed, one could say my presence here is entirely due to you.”
His air of diabolical enjoyment, as though they shared a secret Robert Dudley could never know, piqued her curiosity. Despite her residual annoyance over his antics, she recognized the prickle of interest in a mystery any scholar found impossible to resist. As the rogue no doubt intended, blast the fellow.
Reluctantly intrigued, she tilted her head. “Oh, indeed? I’m surprised ye found the incident such a pleasure, with two souls d—”
Her mounting ire was interrupted when a page popped into view, clad in the Tudor livery. Political creature that he was, Dudley turned with alacrity.
“What is it, boy? Some message from Her Majesty? Am I summoned?”
“I beg your pardon, Lord Robert.” The young boy made him a courteous leg, but his attention was fixed on Zamiel. “Her Majesty desires the presence of Indolence the musician. She bids you present yourself, Lord Indolence, that she may grant you a token of her favor for y
our fine performance. And Lady Norwood as well, to present herself after the sweets are served,” he added. “You’ll be summoned.”
Linnet swallowed a sigh. Her whole life she’d been an afterthought, the quiet brown finch in a bevy of quarrelsome swans.
At least she would finally be presented—an audience she needed to begin her husband quest. Too, she was eager to gain access to the royal archives. Even if she feared what secrets her studies might unearth.
Here also was her moment with Robert Dudley. Another whose family archives she needed to explore.
Determination flowing through her, she gave Lord Zamiel a distant smile. “Run along, my lord. Ye may explain to Her Majesty for both of us, no doubt, why Diligence and Indolence strayed from the script.”
All of England knew the young Queen’s fondness for her dashing male courtiers. Better to let him make their collective apologies for disrupting the night’s divertissement.
“But you, too, are summoned,” Zamiel pointed out. “Shall we not go together to greet your Queen?”
My Queen, but not his. Again she wondered about his unfamiliar accent, the Hebrew sigils stamped on his medallion. She must look up those symbols. Hadn’t she brought a Hebrew text from her library to court?
Aware of his eyes upon her, brow furrowed as though he strove to read her, she said, “I’ll follow ye after the sweets. I’d fancy a word first with Lord Robert.”
Chapter Four
After the earnest page hauled off a bemused Zamiel for his royal audience, Linnet found herself forced to wait for the Queen’s favorite, as the masque yet demanded Dudley’s attention.
She sought refuge near the sideboard, groaning beneath the weight of pewter and silver plates. There, a handful of lesser lords and ladies huddled like a flock of nervous sheep when the wolves are hunting—remnants of the old Catholic faction from Mary’s reign.
All of them outcasts, like herself.
The knowledge did little to ease her painful shyness. She smiled uncertainly and hid behind the hippocras, gripping her wide goblet in both hands to sip the spiced wine.
There Dudley found her. Flushed with triumph, he strode through the Catholic sheep with the cocksure confidence of the Queen’s Master of Horse, another favored position he’d lately assumed.
Some whispered that Elizabeth would show him higher honor still—that she would take no other lord but Dudley for her King.
“You look like a creature from a Faerie tale hiding behind that goblet, my lady.” Dark eyes flashed in his swarthy face as his gaze roamed from her tight-laced bodice to her silver lace ruff, a luxury forbidden by the sumptuary laws for any woman below a countess. “You stole everyone’s heart tonight, including mine.”
Empty gallantry, a courtier’s easy flattery. All the same, Elizabeth was a jealous Queen, and would not be pleased to hear it.
Nervously, she twined a loose ringlet around her finger. “I make a poor Diligence, idling about near the wine, aye?”
“Nay, I miscast you.” Dudley beckoned for a goblet and tossed back a swallow. “We should have done something from the Arthur legend. That cup could be the Holy Grail, and you the Lady of Avalon, a shining vision to lure knights to madness.”
Her heart fluttered uneasily beneath her ribs. Talk of King Arthur and the sacred hollows of Avalon drew perilously near forbidden terrain.
For two years she’d been nowhere on this earth, nowhere at all. If she said she’d dreamed of Camelot, that she’d seen the Grail glimmering, untouchable in her dreams, that she’d loved with a maid’s innocence Sir Lancelot of the Lake himself—if she said any of that, Dudley would shoot her the pitying look she’d grown to dread, and make any excuse to be free of mad Lady Linnet.
And who could blame him?
Smiling politely, she scanned the Great Hall, where a colorful line of dancers dipped and spun in a saltarello. She wondered if Zamiel of Briah was somewhere among them. Though she hadn’t seen him since he’d gone to the Queen, she sensed his nearness, like the fire’s warmth flickering against her skin.
She banished that fanciful notion and cast about for a way to broach her topic.
“The masque came off well, aye? They’re all praising yer brilliance—and wondering what became of Sir William Pickering. Did ye ever learn what happened?”
Dudley frowned, his eyes following the dancers. “It’s the oddest thing. The blasted man came puffing in not five minutes past. Claimed he’d dozed off in his parlor and lost track of time. Something about a dream of wings, if you believe that rubbish.”
He grimaced. “I advised him to tender his apologies to Her Majesty. She’s not one to tolerate an admirer’s defection.”
Beneath his vexation, Linnet detected a note of rich satisfaction. If his handsome rival had lost his chance for the Queen due to some befuddled dream, it was clear who stood to benefit.
“If only the Earl of Arundel had made such a misstep,” she observed, naming another rival for the throne, “ye might have been rid of him too.”
“That prune-faced grandsire?” His lip curled in disdain. “There’s no place for him on my stage. He’s probably off cosseting his bad knees with a hot posset.”
Linnet felt no impulse to join his mean-spirited banter. She’d been the target of enough ridicule herself. Besides, she had her own agenda.
She cast him a sidelong glance over her cup. “Ye must have taken part in many masques over the years? ’Tis said ye grew up hand-in-glove with the Tudors.”
This strategic flattery seemed to please him. He afforded her a short bow. “Indeed. The Tudors have always been great patrons of the arts. There was less of that in Mary’s reign, poor wretched woman that she was.”
“What of her father?” She strove for a casual tone. “They say the Great Harry had a veritable passion for masques and disguisings.”
“That he did, the old lion.” Dudley was frowning, intent on the cluster of courtiers who obscured his vision of the Queen’s canopied chair. No doubt he was wondering which other young gallant Elizabeth Tudor favored tonight.
Linnet herself was wondering whether Zamiel of Briah held that honor.
She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. Afraid the wine might blunt her senses, she put her cup aside.
“I—I wonder if ye might recall my mother—Catriona Norwood, the Countess of Glencross? She spent a summer here in ‘36. ’Twas when Queen Jane Seymour was bearing the young prince. Him who died so young, the poor mite.” Absently she crossed herself. “The King went on progress all the same, and my mother went with him.”
“In ’36, you say?” He shrugged, gaze fixed on the rivals angling for the Queen’s favor. “I was an infant in swaddling clothes. But it’s possible my elder brothers or my father knew her. He was Duke of Northumberland at the time.”
This was delicate territory, with Northumberland later attainted for treason and sent to the scaffold for supporting Lady Jane Grey, the nine days’ queen. Linnet knew any impulse to sympathize would lead only to a cold rebuff, and the death of any hope for his aid.
Far better to retreat to the safer terrain of her own crisis.
Her voice softened, wistful tears blurring her vision. “My mother told me so many tales of that golden summer. She said the court visited yer family’s estate—Kenilworth Castle, at the time. Would ye be having any record of that visit, any old household accounts or letters?”
“Possibly,” he said. All but ignoring her, but Linnet was well accustomed to that. “Family historian, are you, Lady Norwood?”
Family sleuth, more like, and me the last Norwood to do it.
She managed a smile. “An idle pastime, Lord Robert. My mother was...lost on the moor when I was five years old, aye? Tracing the path of her life is a wee diversion of mine.”
“Lost?” At last, she’d snared Dudley’s fickle attention. In his narrowed gaze, a memory flickered. “Now you mention it, I seem to recall hearing something of that. There was talk of it when you came to court. They say Ca
triona Norwood was a great beauty.”
“Aye, she was that,” Linnet said softly. “She loved to sing and tell Faerie tales and roam through the wood. She’d gather Scottish poppies—they were her favorite flower, and the scent clung to her. Russet curls down her back, and such eyes. Gold they were, like a cat’s.”
“Some distant connection to the Scottish throne, wasn’t there?”
“A distant one.” Linnet kept her voice casual.
In truth, the connection was not so distant. Catriona Norwood was the not-so-secret daughter of King James IV, born on the wrong side of the blanket to a light-hearted gypsy lass. Edward Norwood, an English lord on the Scottish marches, wedded her to woo his Scottish neighbors.
But Linnet would rather speak blasphemy than utter the word “bastard” in this court.
Dudley’s gaze sharpened, and she thought he’d heard or guessed some of this. “Lost in a snowstorm, your mother, wasn’t she?”
Aye, that was the convenient fiction her father had put about. The stiff-necked Earl of Glencross would never suffer it to be known that his half-royal wife had abandoned him. That the captivating Catriona fled Glencross like a fugitive, abandoning their lone daughter and three sons, the youngest a babe in the cradle.
Far easier, and a balm to his lacerated pride, to say his wife had been lost on the moor, her body never recovered. The fact that she’d bidden her daughter a hushed, dead-of-night farewell before she vanished—that she’d fled her loveless marriage—was a truth Linnet had learned never to utter.
Instead, she’d learned to collude, to bury the family secret. Far better to be thought an orphan than have it known her own mother had abandoned her, not found her worth keeping.
“Aye, ’twas a great tragedy,” she said now, voice unsteady as she let the falsehood stand. Deception was immoral and unchristian, and she was dreadful at it besides. But after the scandal of her own disappearance, she’d learned to grit her teeth and do it.
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 7