At the King's Command

by Susan Wiggs

  “The fire casts bloody shadows on the snow. And then I see my family gathered in front of the steps. The blades of the attackers flash. Alexei, my betrothed, is fighting.”

  Her betrothed? Stephen opened his mouth to ask her about this Alexei, but she gave him no chance.

  “The steel blades are red in the firelight. My brother shrieks in pain. They do not cut him cleanly but—”

  Her voice broke. She buried her face in her hands. “They have to hack and hack, and his cries become gurgles, and I can hear no more. And then, at the last, while Laszlo is holding me back …” She swallowed, seemed to force herself to go on. “I see Alexei fall. The leader is about to order his men to search for me. And Pavlo leaps out of nowhere.”

  “Pavlo?”

  She nodded. “He had gotten free from the kennels. He is a very protective dog.”

  Stephen lifted a strand of hair from the nape of her neck. How soft it was, how fragrant. “I noticed.”

  “The rest, in my dream, is confusion. I see Pavlo leap, I hear muffled words. A curse. I cannot make it out over the roar of the fire, the sound of horses blowing, the other dogs baying. Pavlo yelps, and the man turns. He cannot see me, but the fire flares suddenly, and I wait, knowing I will see the face of a murderer.”

  Stephen held his breath. In spite of himself, he had gotten caught up in her tale of horror. Dream or not, it had an immediacy that seized him.

  “And?” he prompted.

  She sighed and pressed her brow to his shoulder. “And nothing. It always ends the same. A flash, as if a firearm is being discharged. And then I awaken.”

  “Without seeing the villain’s face?”

  “Villain?”

  He almost smiled, half enjoying the light pressure of her head against his shoulder. “The murderer.”

  “I always awaken before I see his face.”

  “You have this dream often?”

  “At first, just after the massacre that forced me to flee Novgorod, I had this dream every night. Now, not so often. But it is like opening a wound. I feel it all again. The grief, the rage. The helplessness. The loss of everything.” Her hand closed around his. Her palm was cool and damp with sweat. “The terror.”

  “Ah, Juliana.” He smoothed his free hand over her head, tucking it more securely against his shoulder. He did not know what to believe.

  “I’m frightened, Stephen. Always, Laszlo has been nearby to quiet my fears. Now I am alone. So alone.”

  “No, you’re not,” he heard himself say. “I’m here, Juliana.”

  The tension flowed out of her at his words, and for a moment he was struck by the wonder of it. That mere words and a soothing touch could bring comfort was a foreign notion to him.

  “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Stay with me and hold me while I sleep.”

  He was so stunned by her request that he forgot to be cautious. Before he knew what was happening, he stretched out beside her. He pulled the coverlet over her and held her tightly, her cheek against his chest, his chin resting lightly on her head.

  He told himself this was only for a moment, only until she was calm and able to sleep again.

  But an hour later he was still there.

  Juliana slept peacefully, her breath soft against his throat, her small hand resting in the curve of his waist. Her slim leg draped over his thigh.

  Stephen tried not to think about the fact that he was in bed with a beautiful woman. His wife. He had every right to kiss her, to touch her, to slide his hands beneath her nightrail and— He cut the fantasy short, and the effort made him ache. It had been so long since he had felt the softness of a woman’s breasts loose beneath thin lawn fabric. So long since he had listened to the breathing of someone slumbering nearby. So long since desire had stirred within him and then, lancelike, had stricken him with sharp arousal.

  As Juliana relaxed more deeply into sleep, Stephen tensed more painfully into wakeful awareness.

  Damn! He should have left the moment she had awakened. He had no business listening to her fearful dream. No business offering comfort to a woman he had married so reluctantly. No business feeling this ache of longing for a Romany wench.

  To draw his mind from his burning need, he concentrated on the tale she had told. It was the same one she had related to the king and his court.

  The one he had deemed a pack of gypsy lies.

  The flowing moonlight caught at something on the stool beside the bed. Her brooch.

  Moving his arm slowly, he picked up the jeweled cruciform bauble. It felt heavy and substantial in his hand. The pearls were as smooth and round as glass beads. The large central ruby had as many glittering, mysterious facets as Juliana herself. At first he had supposed the jewel to be paste or, at the very most, garnet. A pretty enough stone but hardly rare. Now he wondered.

  He held the brooch high in the stream of moonlight. He saw blood and fire, the same elements that had haunted her dream.

  If it was a real ruby, then she was either an artful thief or a desperate woman who had lost her family and fortune to tragedy.

  The long part of the cross curved slightly at the end, and on the back Stephen felt a tiny hinged catch.

  Freeing it, he felt two parts of the brooch separate. To his astonishment, he held a tiny razor-sharp dagger.

  Intrigued, Stephen studied the small blade, then sheathed it again. Working his thumb over the polished surface of the brooch, he felt a roughness on the gold. He squinted, angling it toward the light. Strange symbols were etched there—odd curls and angles, reminiscent of the ancient runes carved in the rock dolmens hidden in the secret dales of the Welsh marches.

  A shiver passed over him. Holding the brooch gave him the strangest sensation. An uneasy feeling of portent.

  He put the brooch down. Juliana stirred, settling closer.

  Don’t feel, he told himself. Think.

  What was it about her? She was like the ruby, winking in the light, revealing one shining facet after another.

  She was a gypsy horse thief one moment, a teller of tales the next. She spoke clear, melodic English but had trouble reading it. Her French was impeccable; she had demonstrated that during Jonathan’s visit. Her commanding yet gracious way of dealing with the household retainers seemed odd in a girl raised amid a tribe of itinerant beggars.

  Could she have acquired such accomplished skills simply by imitation?

  It was the last unanswerable question that occurred to Stephen before he turned to his wife and held her close, and before sleep claimed him, he wondered exactly who it was he held in his arms.

  Four

  “Gajo!” roared a furious voice. “When I finish with you, there won’t be enough left of you to feed to the swine!”

  Juliana sprang up in bed and blinked at the sunlit chamber. Between half-open curtains, she spied a familiar figure. Beside her, she felt Stephen stir.

  In the endless, frozen seconds, she remembered.

  Stephen had stayed with her last night.

  He rubbed his eyes, then narrowed them in shock when he glimpsed their guest.

  Juliana held the coverlet to her chest. “Hello, Laszlo.” She ran her fingers through her rumpled hair. “I knew you would come. Did you follow my vurma? What took you so long?”

  Laszlo ignored her. With fire in his eyes, he glared at Stephen while rolling up his sleeves with slow and menacing deliberation.

  “Milady!” Jillie called from the doorway. “Ah, forgive me, ma’am, but ’twas Meeks who let the blighter in. Here, I’ll be rid of the baggage in no time.” She grabbed the back of Laszlo’s collar.

  He jerked away from her. His dark eyes widened, and his thick beard seemed to bristle with a life of its own. “Name of God!” he burst out in Romany. “She is a giant troll!”

  Untimely laughter tickled Juliana’s throat. “She is my maid.” She, too, spoke in Romany, then switched to English. “Jillie, this is Laszlo. Our guest.”

  “Guest!” he barked. “I would not sully mysel
f under the roof of a tub-bathing Gajo swine.” He addressed Stephen in English. “Tell me your name. I would know at least that much before I kill you and send you to hell.”

  Stephen leaned against the bank of pillows and bolsters. There was a look of lazy ease about him as he lifted an eyebrow. “You certainly seem capable of doing so. Might I ask why?”

  Laszlo shook a furious fist at Juliana. “You ruined her! I would give my life to keep her safe, but you … you …”

  Heaving a sigh, Stephen stood. He was fully dressed in rumpled breeches and shirt. “Here now, wait—”

  With a roar of frustration, Laszlo lunged.

  Though Stephen was larger and heavier, the sudden attack unbalanced him and sent him crashing to the floor. The bed hangings quivered with the impact.

  Gypsy curses streamed from Laszlo as he grappled with his opponent. He cursed the air Stephen breathed, the ground upon which he trod, and the color of his liver. He questioned the virtue of Stephen’s mother and the virility of his father. He likened Stephen himself to something stuck to a wagon axle.

  As the air turned blue with curses, Jillie sent Juliana a pleading look. With one shake of her head, Juliana held the burly maid at bay. Laszlo had suffered insult enough without his being bested by an unarmed woman.

  “Laszlo,” she said as his fists struck about Stephen’s head. She grabbed his shoulder and tried to drag him off. “Laszlo, please.”

  “What?” His glance up was his undoing. With one swift shove, Stephen pushed him off and pinned him to the floor. Under Stephen’s knee, Laszlo bucked and strained, his bearded face red with exertion.

  “I had no idea sleeping with you was so hazardous, Baroness,” Stephen said through gritted teeth. Then, to Laszlo, he added pleasantly, “I think the lady wants you to yield to me.”

  “I came here to kill you. Why should I yield?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll have to hurt you.”

  “Pah!” Laszlo exploded.

  “And because,” Stephen added in a voice tinged with regret, “I am her husband.”

  Stephen sat in a leather-slung chair in his estate office, facing the gypsy called Laszlo, who refused to sit. The robust old man peered suspiciously into the cup Stephen handed him.

  “It’s malmsey,” Stephen said. “A sweet Madeira wine. You’ll like it.”

  “Gajo witch’s brew,” muttered Laszlo, but he tipped the cup and tossed back the drink, then wiped his sleeve across his mouth.

  Stephen felt the cool prickle of tension on the back of his neck. Without either of them moving, he and Laszlo seemed to be circling one another, each gauging the other’s power and strength.

  “There is no need,” Stephen said, “to make this unnecessarily complicated.”

  The man struck his thumb into his wide silk sash. His dirty fingertips rested lightly on the bone hilt of a long knife. “Tell me about yourself, Gajo.”

  “My name is Stephen de Lacey.” He did not add his title, for he doubted the gypsy would be impressed. “And you are Laszlo. Tell me, do you often barge into private bedchambers like an outraged father?”

  The stranger drew himself up proudly, his chest filling the embroidered vest he wore, his hawk nose poking the air. “Only for Juliana do I act the outraged father.”

  Stephen blinked. Her father.

  Beyond his office window, the morning sun dropped behind a puff of low-hanging clouds. The room filled with shadows, and the eyes of the gypsy turned as dark as mortal sin.

  Any hope that the girl might have told the truth died a quick death. Daughter of a Russian nobleman, indeed.

  Stephen searched Laszlo’s long, spare face for a family resemblance. Instead, he saw only stark contrast. Laszlo had high, bony cheeks while the girl’s were smooth and sweetly rounded. Laszlo’s hair was coarse and, though threaded with gray, had once been pure black. Juliana’s was a sable-rich, sun-catching brown. And then there were the eyes—Juliana’s wide pools of clear green bore no likeness to Laszlo’s.

  “She must resemble her mother, then,” Stephen concluded.

  Laszlo lifted his chin, the thick pronged beard jutting forward. “She does. In every way.”

  Stephen sensed something cryptic in the statement. “So Juliana is your daughter. Why did she run away from you?” His hand curled into a fist. “Did you beat her?”

  “No!” Laszlo’s ruddy face paled a shade. “I would never lay a hand on such as her.”

  “And yet she strayed from you. I caught her stealing my horse.”

  A scowl darkened Laszlo’s brow. “Caught her, did you? Hmph. I taught her better.”

  Stephen rolled his eyes. There was simply no reasoning with this angry foreigner. In that, at least, Juliana resembled him. “How did you know to come here?”

  “The girl left signs.”

  Stephen frowned into his cup. “Signs?”

  “We call it vurma. Signals along the way.”

  “Bits of cloth?” Stephen inquired. “Thread? Hair? Things like that?”

  Laszlo helped himself to another cup of malmsey from the jug on the table. “Yes.”

  Now Stephen understood why Juliana had ridden too close to the hedgerows, torn her skirts along the way. The wily female. He should have known. He could not trust her at all.

  “She was to have married Rodion, the bearward and captain of the kumpania,” Laszlo commented. He watched Stephen’s face closely as if trying to read it like a map.

  “Then she must have fled to escape the marriage,” Stephen concluded. “Is it not true that your people allow a woman to make up her own mind on such matters?”

  “Yes. If she knows her own mind.” Laszlo shook his head, and for a moment he seemed to forget where he was. “Juliana did not. Always dreaming, that one. Always planning to go back.”

  “Go back? To where?”

  “To her Gajo home.”

  “I thought you said you were her father.”

  “You said I was her father.”

  “And you did not deny it.”

  Laszlo picked up a clockwork horse made of tin. He frowned at the movable joints. Stephen had invented it to amuse the tenants’ children.

  “Well?” His patience thinned. “Are you?”

  Laszlo cranked the spring mechanism on the underside of the horse. “Am I what?”

  “Juliana’s father!” Stephen’s voice rang with frustration.

  “Are you truly her husband?” Laszlo set down the toy. It skittered across the tabletop and crashed to the floor. With a startled yelp, the gypsy backed off, muttering and making signs against evil.

  In spite of himself, Stephen felt a glimmer of humor. “By order of the king, we were formally wed.”

  “And why would the Gajo king give such an order?”

  Stephen hauled in a deep breath. He did not want to insult Laszlo by admitting that, for him, marriage to Juliana was a punishment. “It’s a long story.”

  “But you wasted no time bedding her.”

  Stephen thought of how soft she had felt to him last night. How sweet she had smelled. How very much he had wanted her.

  Fool, he told himself. That was undoubtedly part of her plan—to entice him into her bed so that he would have no grounds for annulment later. “That is none of your affair.”

  “If she is to be your wife,” Laszlo said stolidly, “you must perform the plotchka.”

  “Laszlo, no!” Juliana said from the doorway. Her maid had done something artful with her hair, pulling it back with combs and letting the great length of it cascade down her back. Before he could stop himself, Stephen imagined touching her hair as he had done last night, while she slept.

  Ungainly as a roe deer, Pavlo bounded into the room and launched himself joyously at Laszlo. The old man laughed and scratched the dog’s ears.

  “Laszlo, no plotchka,” Juliana said, folding her arms beneath her breasts.

  Stephen stared at her. Each day she looked more lovely than she had the day before. She wore a gown of viv
id peacock-blue, and he wondered where she had gotten it. Meg had never owned anything in that garish color.

  “It is not good!” Laszlo yelled, pushing the eager dog down. “You are not properly wed until you perform the rite.”

  “Exactly!” she said. “I don’t want to be properly wed.” She let forth with a stream of conversation in her strange tongue. Laszlo responded rapidly in kind, poking the air with his finger. Her chin came up, and she replied, but he seemed unmoved and, finally, ended the argument in a ringing shout.

  Juliana’s face drained of color. A hunted look haunted her eyes. She glanced at Stephen and then back at Laszlo. Her narrow shoulders seemed to constrict. Though he had not understood the exchange, Stephen sensed her torment, and for once he did not question his own need to end it.

  “What did he say to you, Juliana?” he asked softly.

  “I told him the king ordered our wedding as a jest, and that we will get an annulment. But Laszlo refuses to listen. He says I shamed him. Shamed the man who risked everything to protect me.”

  “What is this plotchka?” Stephen asked.

  “A Romany marriage ceremony,” said Juliana.

  Stephen raised his eyebrows. “Is that all?”

  “All?” Laszlo slammed his cup on the table. “Are you so grand, then, so lofty that a gypsy’s pride means nothing to you? Are you so great a man that I am but dung beneath your boots?”

  Stephen recoiled inwardly at his thoughtlessness. Sweet Jesus, he had become as intolerant as his king.

  “I of all men,” he said quietly, “should know the fragility of a man’s pride, sir. I would not presume to tread upon that of another.”

  “Then agree to the plotchka,” Laszlo said simply.

  “We are married in name only.” Stephen did not know why, but his own words bothered him. “Last night was not … as it must have looked to you. She had a nightmare and cried out, and I comforted her. Nothing more.”

  For the first time, Stephen saw approval in Laszlo’s eyes. Before the gypsy got the wrong idea, Stephen added, “I mean to give Juliana her freedom as soon as the king tires of the trick he played.”