At the King's Command

by Susan Wiggs

  It felt strange to write with ink on paper. The skill was one the gypsies did not possess and found suspect.

  She wrote the letter twice in case one copy got lost. Her message was simple. She told the Shuisky family where she was, calling herself a “guest” of Lord Wimberleigh.

  She had written numerous such messages over the years. She doubted any had found their way one thousand leagues to Muscovy. This time might be different. This time she would stay in one place long enough for them to find her. This time she had the money to pay the messenger handsomely.

  She prayed it would make a difference.

  While searching the desk for sealing wax, she encountered a locked drawer.

  The only obstacle to opening it was her conscience, and that didn’t last long. She owed no loyalty to an English lord who could not bear to touch her.

  The lock gave easily to her well-honed skills of pilfering, and she slid the drawer open. Inside lay nothing more than trinkets—a few whittled pen nibs, an ornate pair of scissors.

  And then she saw the three small oval portraits. Limnings, they were called. Tiny paintings done on smooth ceramic.

  With trembling hands, she laid them out before her. One was of the first baroness. From the portrait in the upper gallery, Juliana recognized the pale beauty with her demure eyes and aquiline features, the wispy white-blond hair.

  The other two portraits were of children. Two boys, very young, perhaps merely four or five years of age. They looked similar—brothers, no doubt, with sweet red lips and pink cheeks, pale hair and blue eyes.

  Eyes like Stephen’s.

  A chill skittered down Juliana’s spine. These were his children.

  Hastily she scooped up the limnings, replaced them in the drawer, and locked it. Children. Stephen had children. Two sons. So where were they now?

  The most likely possibility raised a lump in her throat. Stephen’s sons, like their mother, were dead.

  Juliana took her letters and left the great chamber. She would give the missives to Laszlo, who would take them to Bristol and find a ship bound for the East. Then she would find Jillie and ask her about Stephen’s sons.

  She accomplished neither objective that day. Only moments after she closed the door to Stephen’s chamber, she heard a commotion at the gate and rushed to the window to look out.

  Her husband, with the most remarkable group of guests in tow, had come home.

  Six

  “Who are these people?” Juliana demanded, confronting Stephen in the hall.

  He gave her a lopsided grin and winked a bloodshot eye. “Our guests, my dear.” He gestured at the busy scene in the huge room. “Shall I introduce you? That’s Jack Sharpe, a master of card play. And the fellow with the eye patch is Penry Luck. The women are Lovey and Peg. Skilled at various forms of … entertainment.”

  Lovey’s tightly laced bodice pushed her large breasts up so that they resembled twin half-moons above the dingy fabric of her blouse. She was pretty in a sly, coarse way, and she wore a smirk that made Juliana want to slap her.

  “Our guests.” Her temper smoldered. “And where, pray, did you find them?”

  “In Bath.”

  “Apparently none of them washed in the waters there.”

  “My dear wife, you brought a tribe of gypsies to Lynacre. Why shouldn’t I invite friends of my own?” With that, he left her standing by the screens at the end of the hall and went to join in the card game.

  Lovey smiled and lowered herself to a stool next to him, leaning close to whisper in his ear.

  Juliana’s fist clenched with the need to box Stephen’s ears. Curse him. The only way to rid the house of these vermin was to beat them at their own game.

  She walked to the table, her chin proudly aloft. Five years with the gypsies, five years outsmarting the Gajo in order to survive, would serve her well this night. “Deal me in,” she said, taking a seat opposite her husband.

  Juliana was cheating at cards and had been for hours. Stephen was sure of it. He knew his companions were aware, as well, but not even Jack Sharpe could catch her out. She held her parchment cards close to the chest and kept her sleeves rolled back, baring her dainty wrists. Not once did she put her hands out of sight. How in God’s name did she manage?

  “Hell’s bells,” Stephen muttered, taking a sip of ale he did not need from the mug being passed around the table. “You have the winning hand once again, my dear.”

  She merely collected her markers and nodded at Sharpe, the dealer.

  The wench called Lovey sighed and leaned her head on Stephen’s shoulder. It used to be easy to dally with a lusty wench. Now he felt distaste, as if someone had added a purgative to the ale.

  Lovey possessed a lazy indolence that kept her questions and demands at bay. Stephen had used women like her before. When a marriage prospect showed inordinate interest in him, he simply found a wench like Lovey. The tender young ladies always forgot their interest in him after that. It had worked every time.

  Except with Juliana. She joined them with her game smile and her damnably quick hands. She cheated and bluffed her way to victory time and time again.

  “I weary of this,” Stephen said, slamming down his hand of cards.

  “My lord, you’ve fallen so far behind in your winnings.” Juliana aimed a wry look at the pile of coins she had amassed. “Fancy that. I have won everyone’s money.”

  Jack and Penry exchanged disgruntled looks. Juliana touched a finger to her full lower lip. “My dear husband gives me everything I need. Everything.”

  Stephen braced himself. He never knew what she was going to say. From the corner of his eye he saw Kit, Nance and Jillie gathered at the foot of the stairs. They wore nightclothes and sleepy expressions that turned quickly to avid interest.

  “So I hardly need my winnings.” With a shrug of nonchalance, she pushed the coins toward them. “Surely you can find good use for these … in Bath.”

  Her message rang clear and did not need repeating. Jack scooped up the money and hurried out of the hall, Penry and Peg trailing behind him, whining for their share. Nance shooed them out of the hall with an indignant flap of her nightrail.

  Stephen regarded his wife with reluctant admiration. She had rid herself of them quite handily—and at his expense.

  Lovey, however, proved more tenacious. “Let’s to bed,” she suggested, grabbing Stephen by the hand, standing and tugging him to his feet.

  “You may either go with your friends to Bath, or bed down in the cow byre,” Juliana said simply. She, too, stood up.

  Jillie moved out of the shadow of the stairway, but Stephen saw Kit pull her back.

  “Oh, ain’t we the fancy one?” Lovey taunted. “I’ll take my ease where his lordship wills it.”

  Without so much as a glance at Stephen, Juliana said, “My husband thinks you should follow your friends.”

  “Mayhap we should let him answer for himself.”

  Stephen had no notion of what to say. Part of him wanted to laugh aloud; another part wanted to throttle one or the other of them. “I think—”

  “Not hard enough, my lord,” Juliana said mildly. Then she turned to Lovey, who had dropped Stephen’s hand and stood with arms akimbo, glaring at Juliana.

  Stephen had never seen such a small, beskirted female move so quickly. A slight form crashed into Lovey and shoved her back against the table.

  Juliana barely seemed to touch her brooch, but in an instant, it was in her hand, the small sharp blade touching the hollow of Lovey’s throat.

  “Christ Almighty,” Lovey shrieked. “She’ll kill me.”

  “Only if you do not do as I say,” Juliana said. “First, you’ll give back the things your light fingers took.”

  “I took no—”

  Juliana brought the blade down, slashing an opening in Lovey’s skirt. To Stephen’s astonishment, she revealed a secret pocket. One by one, she removed a button, a pewter spoon and a silver coin.

  “You’re good,” she said,
“but not good enough. He did not notice your pilfering, but I did.”

  Lovey’s face flushed red. “See here now—”

  “No, you see here.” Juliana leaned close. “You will leave this instant, or suffer the consequences. If you so much as breathe the air of Lynacre ever again, there will not be enough left of you to wipe the floor with.”

  Lovey uttered a word Juliana probably didn’t understand and stormed out. Juliana calmly replaced the blade. Kit and Nance nudged each other, grinning like Bedlamites. Jillie beamed with the pride of a fencing master at a prized student.

  “My lord,” Juliana said, “this is the end of your doxies and gamblers and low-living scoundrels. I simply shan’t tolerate jackfools.”

  “Tomfools,” Stephen said, still inexplicably close to laughter.

  She jabbed a tiny finger in his chest, punctuating each word. “I require a sober husband who does not make himself subject to beggars and thieves.”

  At last he found his voice. “And why, pray, is my character of such concern to you?”

  From the corner of his eye he saw Nance and Jillie and Kit withdraw.

  “Because I want your help.”

  He felt that unfamiliar twitching of his lips, and he realized how rare it was for him to smile. “Madam, you hardly seen to be a damsel in need of help.”

  “I want you to take me to Muscovy,” she said.

  He blinked. “Juliana. I have shown great restraint in allowing you to persist with your falsehoods and fantasies. But let us put an end to that, as well.”

  “No. You know I speak the truth. You know I was not born a gypsy. You know I am who I say I am.”

  “I know nothing of the sort.”

  “Then let me prove it to you. Take me to Muscovy. There are people there who knew my father, who would recognize me. They might try to kill me, of course, but you will not let them.”

  What an enigma she was, so small and earnest, and yet as fierce and courageous as a cornered vixen. Despite her wild claims, she was as sane a woman as Stephen had ever known. And lovely. Too lovely. His unreasoning desire returned, jolting through him, and he remembered why he had escaped to Bath in the first place. Now he realized bleakly that neither distance nor drink would keep his passion at bay.

  “This place you speak of is one thousand leagues distant,” he said. “Shall I go there simply to prove you’re a fraud?”

  “Ah. Then you did take pains to find out exactly where Novgorod is. The rewards will be great. Though you may try to deny it, you married far above your station.”

  “Such grandiose ideas, little comfit.” Stephen took her by the shoulders. He had meant merely to steer her to her own chambers where she would trouble him no more.

  Instead he felt himself drawing her close. Close enough to inhale her subtle scent of lavender, to see the individual bars of lucid light in her extraordinary eyes. To hunger for the taste of her full, unsmiling lips.

  “Juliana, what the hell are you, a witch?” he demanded.

  She shook her head, too wary or too startled to speak. Her teeth caught at her lower lip.

  “How is it that you set a torch to my blood when all other women leave me cold?” The question was torn from him before he could stop it.

  She tilted her head up so that her lips were just inches from his. “A torch to your blood, husband?”

  Husband. He wished like mad she had not called him that. He tightened his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t play the innocent. I think I’ve guessed your game. You make me want you, then—”

  “I do not ‘make’ you do anything. If I could, we would be on a ship bound for Archangel right now.” She looked deep into his eyes, and he felt naked before her, stripped of his defenses and vulnerable. It was almost as if she could see the secrets he kept hidden.

  “You’d best learn not to play with fire, princess, else you might be burned.” He bent low and crushed his mouth to hers. She tasted unbearably sweet, of summer ripeness and feminine mystery, tastes he had forbidden himself for years and suddenly craved with an intensity that took his breath away.

  She wrenched her mouth from his. “The last time you kissed me like that, you went to Bath and returned with a pack of thieves.” She pressed her hands to his chest and stepped back. “This time I shall be the one to walk away.”

  “ ‘Woman is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination and a painted ill.’ ” Forming the words with painstaking care, Juliana read aloud in a ringing voice.

  Passing by the east flower garden on his way to the stables, Stephen paused in the shadow of an arbor to listen. Silent agreement rose up like a dark tide inside him. Aye, a deadly fascination indeed, and growing deadlier with each passing day.

  “Nance, are you certain that is what this book says?” Juliana asked.

  Stephen pulled aside a low-hanging branch to see his very own “domestic peril.” She was with Nance and Jillie on a turf seat surrounded by soft grass. A basket of needlework and a stack of books in their midst. An open tome lay in Juliana’s lap, and Nance paused in her sewing to point to the text. “Aye, in the words of Saint Chrysostom himself. He says the whole duty of a woman is to learn silence with all subjection.”

  “Saint Chrysostom.” Juliana pronounced the name carefully.

  A most excellent scholar, though Stephen.

  “A churl of the lowest order,” Jillie Egan said with a scowl.

  “Let us read something else, Nance,” Juliana said, nodding vigorously in agreement. “I wish to learn to read English, not to learn to hate it!”

  “Are gypsy men any different?” asked Nance. “By my reckoning, the wife is under the rod of the husband no matter what manner of man he be.”

  Juliana nodded glumly. “It is the same in Muscovy.” She closed the book with a thud. “But at least there, the husband is not afraid of his wife.”

  Nance’s wimple quivered in an errant breeze. “Ah, his lordship’s not afraid of you, my lady. He’s just …”

  Don’t say it, Nance Harbutt. Stephen almost shouted the warning at her. Don’t you dare say it.

  “Just what?” Juliana asked.

  “I guess you might say he ain’t eager to …” As if she’d sensed Stephen’s fury from afar, Nance let her voice trail off and flipped to a new page in the book. “Maybe this one’s more to your liking, milady. ‘A dialogue defensive for women against malicious detractors.’ ”

  Juliana drew her knees up and planted her small chin on them, looking charmingly girlish. “How is it that you know how to read so well, Nance?”

  “ ’Twas me own precious daughter what taught me. A right gift had my Kristine, and took vows back before the king broke with Rome. Ah, she were an excellent nun, all pious and never moved by the worldly temptations of the flesh.”

  “I did not know you had a daughter.” Juliana left off her study of the book and measured a length of thread for her needle. “Nor a husband.”

  “I never had one of those,” Nance said with a cackle of mirth. “Didn’t you mark the words in that book? I’ll be under no man’s rod. Though time was, I weren’t averse to having his rod somewheres.”

  Jillie flung her apron over her face and, convulsing with laugher, collapsed backward on the lawn.

  Stephen half hoped for a show of dainty outrage from his bride, but instead she joined in the laughter and gave Nance a hug. The sun through the leaves spattered them in rich gold.

  “The company of women is so agreeable,” Juliana said. “Why do we let a man ruin it?”

  “It’s on account of that rod,” Jillie said, daubing at her eyes.

  Nance fixed her with a censorious look. “And what would you be knowing about that, Jillie Egan? Just what have you been up to with that Egyptian fellow?”

  His errand forgotten, Stephen listened in fascination.

  “Naught,” Jillie said. “But not for want of trying. I like Rodion. He’s … different. Makes me feel different, like anyth
ing is possible.”

  Nance sighed dramatically. “With the right man, anything is possible.”

  “Truly?” Juliana put aside her needlework, drew her knees to her chest and plucked wistfully at a blade of grass. “I wonder.”

  A terrible longing seized Stephen. He tried to tear his gaze away, but failed. She was wondrous; he could not deny it. Small and dainty as a rose she was, yet she had a steel inner core that commanded respect.

  She had swept into his household with the authority of a castellan, running Lynacre Hall as if she had been trained from the cradle to perform the duties of a great lady. From dawn to dusk she held dominion over kitchen and buttery, stillroom and hall, directing servants and tenants. In the evening he was likely to find her at her devotions, repeating words and phrases over and over until she spoke like a West Country maid.

  This same woman, he reminded himself, did not hesitate to draw a blade and hold it to a stranger’s throat. The picture was imprinted on his brain, and there it lingered as he forced his feet along the path leading away from the garden.

  In the weeks that followed, Stephen continued to disappear nightly. But never again to Bath, never far enough to be gone for long.

  Some mornings Juliana would encounter him brooding in the hall, morose and uncommunicative.

  A mistress was the only answer. The idea grew like a poisonous vine, choking her heart. He went to meet some woman, and judging by his moodiness, the relationship must not be going well.

  She thought often of the limnings she had discovered in his chambers. She wanted to know more about Stephen’s past, yet she kept silent, waiting for him to broach the topic.

  Summer spun along in a string of lazy days. The gypsies camped in a forest meadow by the river Avon, keeping much to themselves and living off the bounty of the land, poaching the occasional coney or deer from the royal forest in Stephen’s custodianship.

  Juliana staved off a gnawing sense of impatience by delving into the workings of the estate. At one end of the hall were the estate offices. There, she had her own room, a tiny windowless cubbyhole. Stephen had seemed surprised that she would make use of the office. Apparently his first wife had not troubled herself with business.