She relaxed a bit, but was by no means lulled into confessing her identity. “’Tis unlikely we’ve met before, sirrah,” she said, adopting a simpering tone she’d overheard the other women present using. “I fear that many masked faces look alike in such a crush.”
“Mayhap. But all shall be revealed at dawn.” His remark frightened Isobel until she remembered there were hours yet until the sun rose, when the participants of the masque would finally remove their masks, to the delight of many and the doubtless indignation of a few.
“Are you an acquaintance of Tempest’s?” Kit persisted. “The man’s reputation precedes him and ’tis whispered he brought back a lovely little morsel from the Continent.”
“Oh, oui, Monsieur Tanner,” Isobel stammered, seizing desperately upon the notion, anxious for any excuse to fend him off. She only hoped her pitiful grasp of French would be convincing enough. “You have found me out, I fear.”
“It need not distress you, madam. Your secret is safe with me.” He smiled at her, never imagining how those bantering words made her innards shrivel. “May I inquire as to your name?”
She shook her head. “Just call me Madame Mysterie.”
“As you wish. I would, however, ask a small boon, my Madame Mysterie. If you will not tell me your true name or title, then I ask that you favor me with one dance.”
Kit’s request startled Isobel. The musicians were strumming a simple bransle, a romantic ballad that she recognized as “Now I See Thy Looks Were Feigned.”
She drew in her breath, her conscience pricked. “Methinks you mock me, Sir Christopher.”
“Not at all. I merely wish to determine, once and for all, if those incomparable eyes I glimpsed across the hall are blue, or green. A dance would provide excuse for me to gaze into them, n’est-ce pas?”
Whereupon you will be sorely disappointed, Isobel thought. For my eyes are grey, as dull and ordinary as iron. Instead she sought for a clever retort that would throw him off guard.
“Were we to dance and you to gaze into my eyes, your memory would surely stir, and then the game would be over,” she teased him in the most seductive lisp she could manage.
“Ah, then I do know you, madam. I was not mistaken.”
“Aye,” she murmured, fluttering her lashes in a desperate move to obscure her eyes from him.
“Very well, then,” Kit persisted playfully, “if you will not permit me to partner you in the dance or accept a compliment about your eyes, then at least receive one on your costume. Few ladies can carry off such dramatic hues, but then I can attest I’ve seen few with such exquisite skin.”
His fingers briefly caressed her wrist where he held it, and Isobel held her breath. She wondered if he could feel her skin tingling, her pulse pounding, and then despaired he might be mocking her. Kit was, after all, a renowned wit. Even a court jester, when warranted. Was he making sport of her now?
Yet she saw his handsome face was grave when he raised her hand to his lips. Kit sought out her gaze, and for a forbidden second she gazed back into his smoky-green eyes.
“Adieu, Madame Mysterie. Forgive my boldness, but I’ve always been one to follow my instincts. And they cry out I must not let this moment pass without a parting gift.”
Slowly and deliberately he turned over her hand and pressed a kiss upon her open palm. Isobel shivered at the sensation, terrified he would glimpse the truth in her eyes.
“Methinks a lady like you will tire of Lord Tempest ere long,” he said, as he straightened. “I know another masque is planned a fortnight from now here at Summerleigh. Should you desire it, meet me again at midnight, in this very spot.”
An unfamiliar, reckless notion seized Isobel then, and she found she could not beg off. “Oui, monsieur. Mayhap then you shall have your dance.”
Kit smiled, bowed again, and vanished into the crowd. When he was gone, she clutched her hand to her heart, as if grasping a precious treasure. Finally, she, too, turned to flee.
Isobel was so preoccupied, torn between fleeting elation and frightful despair, that she did not see another figure in her path. She literally bowled into a white silk doublet belonging to their notorious host, Lord Tempest.
“M’dear! Mustn’t dash off just when things are getting interesting.” Tempest gripped her shoulders in a fatherly fashion, pinning her in place. He was a large, florid-faced man whose frightening size was belied by his merry manner. Though he presently reeked of French cologne, a decided fop with his enormous cartwheel ruff and slashed white trunk-hose, Isobel found Percival Tempest oddly endearing.
“I fear I must slip away for a bit, m’lord,” she murmured, relieved when her host did not demand an introduction. “Some fresh air would be most welcome before the pavane begins.”
“Ah, the pavane,” he exclaimed with real enthusiasm. “I confess I’d almost forgotten how things are done down here — er, back in the blessed Motherland. Been at Good John’s court far too long, y’know.”
Isobel’s brow furrowed. “John’s? Don’t you mean French King Henry’s court, sir?”
“Aye, aye, of course,” he said, rapidly if somewhat absently. Tempest yanked a lacy kerchief from the pocket of his white taffeta jerkin and mopped his sweaty brow.
Isobel had heard the other ladies whispering that Percival Tempest was terribly eccentric and thus wore only white. It served to foil his vividly red face now.
“I, uh, regret I cannot escort you out for a breath of air myself, m’dear. Summerleigh’s white gardens are rightfully famous. But as I recall, you were just talking with Tanner. Mayhap Sir Christopher — ”
Tempest swallowed a laugh when Isobel’s queenly composure vanished in one fell swoop at the mere mention of Kit Tanner’s name. She muttered a hasty excuse, dropped him the poorest excuse for a curtsey he’d seen in two hundred years, and disappeared into the milling crowd.
Truly, he had his work cut out for him! But he enjoyed a good challenge. Though being forced to resort to angelic, rather than underhanded, measures was going to prove devilishly difficult, he feared.
Chapter Two
Ambergate
Near London, August 1579
“Iz-bel?”
“Hmmm?”
Sweet pink clover was thick and fragrant in the meadow where four figures lay, skirts spread in a semicircle, and gazed skyward at the puffy clouds.
“What’s wrong, Maggie darling?” Isobel brushed sleepily at a bee droning somewhere above her and crinkled her nose just in time to stop a sneeze. She felt unusually dreamy and distracted of late, though she must confess it was due far more to Christopher Tanner than his offspring.
“Do horses go to heaven?” Four-year-old Maggie Tanner sounded worried, but before Isobel could respond in time to reassure the girl, her sister Anne stole the scene with an exaggerated, superior sigh.
“La, of course they don’t. Don’t be such a baby, Maggie. Horses don’t have souls.”
“Do, too!” vehemently chimed in Grace, the middle child, and hence often the last to get a word in, but she more than made up for it with her volume. Isobel winced, her ears ringing, and hastened to deflect the mounting tension.
“Remember today’s lesson, girls. We’re supposed to be looking for pictures in the clouds.”
“I ’member. But that cloud — ” Maggie’s chubby index finger pointed heavenward, “’minded me of Nimmie.” The smallest girl’s voice trembled, and her lower lip puckered out. She was valiantly trying to resist the urge to suck her thumb, Isobel saw, but old habits die hard and a moment later the digit was snugly back in its usual resting place.
She didn’t try to coax it out again. All three girls had been through enough traumas within the last year, everything from the death of their mother to that of Nimmie, their old brown mare. Not surprisingly, the loss of Nimmie seemed to upset them more.
Despite her lifelong admiration for Kit Tanner, Isobel resented their father for his failure to shore up to his new responsibilities. His daughters practicall
y worshiped him, but since Elspeth’s death he had stayed at court and not visited Ambergate save once briefly at Christmastide.
And, as she personally evidenced a few nights ago, he was hardly remorseful. No, indeed! He was too busy ogling French court vixens to spare those back at Ambergate a thought.
Isobel was bewildered by this sudden change in a man she had known and admired for over eight years. She’d been only ten herself when she’d first come to Ambergate, shortly after Anne’s birth. Cousin Elspeth had sent for her in order to help out with the children, and since Isobel was an orphan and her prospects were dim in Cornwall, she’d come to London to serve as temporary nursemaid and proxy mother.
The “temporary” assignment had extended to a more permanent arrangement after Grace and Maggie were born. Elspeth had proved unable to cope with the children in any degree and had turned them over to her more capable cousin.
Isobel quickly came to adore the Tanner girls. All three were clever, redheaded charmers like their sire and constantly kept her on her toes trying to anticipate their antics. She loved them all the more for their high spirits and secretly envied them that inborn confidence. Perhaps it was a Tanner trait.
Heaven knew she hadn’t any backbone herself. How many times had she sat down in order to compose a severe, censorious letter to Kit, chiding him for his neglect to visit Ambergate these past few months? Yet for some reason her urgent missive had never made it past those amber-studded gates.
She was hoping Kit would gallop one day soon through those same gates on his flashy golden steed, grinning, ear-to-ear as he tossed the reins to his groom, Jem.
Like old times, he’d stop to visit a moment in the hall with the servants. Kit might have been knighted last year by the queen at Greenwich, but he never forgot his own humble roots, nor did he lord it over any common fellow. This was one of the things Isobel most admired about Kit, his down-to-earth nature and generous heart.
Finally, Kit would holler upstairs that he’d brought presents for them all. Then three urchins would rush down and swarm their courtly sire while he in turn, smothered them with kisses, perhaps tossing each of them gaily in the air or catching them all in a great bear hug.
At least, that was the way it used to be and the way the children prayed it would someday be again. I, too, Isobel had to admit. But when Kit came last Christmas, he had not stayed more than a single night, just long enough to attend church services and then soberly bid them all farewell again in the morning.
How the girls had cried after he had gone. Isobel’s heart ached just remembering the crushed look in their eyes. Yet she could not hate the man who had taken her in when she herself was orphaned, treated her generously, and — as Cousin Elspeth had always been so quick to remind her — the same one who had also provided a roof over her head.
Nay, if she resented anyone, it was her recently departed cousin, not Kit or his daughters. She knew Kit must’ve hurt at times, too. How could he not, after the way Elspeth had treated him?
It had been nigh impossible to ignore all the malicious digs, thinly veiled insults, and cruel comments Madame Tanner had hurled at her husband over the years. The couple had never created scenes in public, for Elspeth was nothing if not conscious of propriety, but the tension in the house had been razor-edged for eight long years. Isobel overheard more than her fair share of arguments.
So had the children, when they were not themselves the recipients of their mother’s blistering tongue. Isobel suspected they had gotten over Elspeth’s death much more quickly than their father had.
Children were amazingly resilient, she knew, while adults often clung to the past. Not that Kit surely wished his wife were back to torment them all, but there was some small comfort to be had in routine, even if it were a miserable one.
At least the girls still had Isobel, and she them. Many times over the years, they had begged to call her “Mama”; but sensitive to Elspeth’s disapproval, and her own sense of right and respect, Isobel had firmly forbidden them the loving moniker.
“You know I am not your mother,” she scolded them gently each time, cutting off their wheedles and pleas.
“Oh, but we wish you were, so it’s the same thing. Mayn’t we call you ‘Mama,’ please?” she recalled Anne begging her prettily.
“No, dear. You have a mother. I am simply Isobel.”
Simply Isobel. What did it mean? It meant these darling children would never be hers, not even now that they’d lost their natural mother. She could hold them in her arms, tuck them in at night, croon lullabies to her heart’s content, but always, always, there would be that deep, cruel hunger that was destined to remain unsatisfied.
Isobel sat up in the grass and surreptitiously wiped a stray tear from her cheek, but Grace was quick to notice.
“Poor Isobel! You’re crying now. Do you miss our Nimmie, too?”
“Yes, poppet. But for your sakes’ rather than mine.” There was no point in lying, especially since the girls knew she didn’t ride, though they didn’t understand why.
It was the only thing Isobel steadfastly refused to do with them since she’d been thrown and kicked by a horse during her own miserable childhood in Cornwall and still recalled the terror and pain of clutching a bleeding head.
Their father had always been the one to ride with them. Isobel smiled at the memory of watching Kit, the consummate horseman, tearing across this same meadow more than once on Aurelius, his favorite mount, with his own blazing mane tippling in the breeze.
She’d noticed at Summerleigh that he’d let his auburn hair grow longer over the winter, and she liked it. It suited him. She remembered he’d worn it in a stylish queue, neatly tied with a black velvet ribbon. When Kit smiled he was devastatingly handsome.
The forbidden thought startled her into action, and she quickly rose and brushed the grass from her fustian skirts.
“Time for your French lessons, girls. Madame Rouissard is surely waiting up at the house. I think I heard a carriage turn up the lane a moment ago.”
Isobel ignored the collective groans and gathered up the remnants of their picnic in a wicker basket. Looping it over one arm, she took Maggie’s hand in her right and Grace’s in her left for the long march back to Ambergate.
Anne, of course, fancied herself far too adult now for hand-holding and malingered behind them, clearly reluctant to exchange fresh air and sunshine for a stuffy day room and Madame Rouissard’s choking attar-of-roses scent.
Had Isobel any small talent for French, she would have attempted teaching them herself, but Elspeth had frowned on excessive education in her case, pointing out that it would only be wasted on a poor drab like Isobel.
Her cousin had been right, of course. Any girl who’d inherited the Weeks’ hair and ordinary features could not be expected to marry well, if at all. There was no need for lessons in French, deportment, courtly dancing, or any such frivolous things.
Besides, there was no dowry for Isobel. She’d been orphaned young, and only through the intervention of her maternal uncle and his wife had she received any sort of early home life. But it had hardly been the loving home she’d craved.
Rather, she had helped look after Uncle Simon’s ten rambunctious children in exchange for room and board in a mean cottage, so being invited to live at Ambergate instead seemed almost paradise by comparison.
Certainly, Cousin Elspeth had never let her forget whereby she owed her gratitude. Isobel’s steps slowed as she and the girls neared the family cemetery, situated roughly half a mile from the house. It would be far quicker to cut through the plot, skirting the headstones, but something in her rebelled at the notion of doing so. It was mere foolishness, of course, but of late Grace had complained of nightmares about her mother, and after several traumatic nights, Isobel had finally relented and let the child sleep with her.
Grace’s nightmares seemed centered on this place. Isobel herself had to admit the cemetery could be daunting, especially at twilight. A stand of overgrown ald
er and willow trees cast flickering shadows over the tall grey stones, even at noon.
Only a handful of Tanner ancestors were buried in the plot, including Kit’s parents, but this place had not seemed to bother Grace at all until her own mother was laid to rest with them.
Isobel was secretly relieved when Maggie tugged her hand free and veered off the other way, chubby legs pumping beneath her sky-blue taffeta dress as she seized a last moment of freedom.
“Maggie,” she cried in exasperation, letting go of Grace to pursue the toddler instead. Within moments, all the girls had escaped her clutches, shrieking with mischievous laughter as they dashed back across the meadow.
Isobel ran after them a short ways, then halted and clutched a painful stitch in her side, cursing the whalebone stays that made women so ineffective in a physical world.
“Miss Isobel. Miss Isobel!”
Someone was calling her back at the house. She turned and shaded her eyes against the midsummer sun, recognizing the stout figure of the downstairs maid, Susan.
Well, she couldn’t very well catch all three urchins now. She would head back anyway and pray Anne, at least, would be reasonable and return for her lessons, hopefully in time to pacify Madame Rouissard.
Catching up her dragging skirts in order to move more swiftly, Isobel eventually arrived at the house, and Susan hurried to meet her at the edge of the garden.
“Oh, Miss Isobel,” the little maid gasped, wringing her freckled hands in her apron. “I’ve been lookin’ fer ye ever so long. The carriage came awhile ago.”
“Aye, I imagine Madame Rouissard is furious at the delay,” Isobel said, trying to catch her breath. “Don’t fret, Susan. I’ll go in now and have a word with her.”
The maid shook her head, sending black curls bouncing beneath her mob cap. “Oh, but Miss Isobel, ’t’isn’t the great French lady here to see ye.”
“Who, then?”
Susan gulped for air and rushed on, her eyes wide with excitement. “Why, it’s yer da, Miss Isobel. He says he’s come to take ye home!”
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