The Maiden's Hand

by Susan Wiggs

  Twelve

  “How long have you known?” asked a gentle, accented voice.

  Lark blinked at the fuzzy shape looming over her. She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. She felt the billowing softness of a downy mattress beneath her, the comforting weight of a counterpane covering her. Inhaling, she smelled the pungence of dried flowers. She blinked again and the shape resolved itself into a beaming, round-faced woman with vivid green eyes.

  Lady Juliana, Oliver’s stepmother.

  “Known…what?” Lark asked.

  With deft hands, Juliana held Lark’s head and pressed a cup to her lips. As she took a sip of the broth, Juliana said, “About the babe. How long have you known?”

  Lark nearly choked on the drink, and Juliana took the cup away. “Babe?” Lark managed to gasp.

  “Ah, you poor child. I thought you knew. I suspected it the moment I saw you.”

  Lark’s hand slipped down to her midsection. It was as flat as unleavened bread. “How?”

  Juliana smiled. “I daresay I have an eye for such things. There is a pallor, and a sort of dreamy wistfulness in the face. Then when you fainted, I became quite certain. Do you not know the signs?”

  Lark shook her head. How would she, raised in a solemn household by a man forty-five years her senior, a man who all but denied that she even possessed a female anatomy?

  “Are your monthly courses late?” Juliana inquired.

  “Aye. I think so.” Indeed, when that female event had first happened, Lark had been sure she was dying. Spencer had then subjected her to a lecture on Eve’s sin that left her more confused than ever.

  “Waves of nausea? Sickness in the mornings?” Juliana asked.

  With growing fright, Lark nodded.

  “Tenderness in the breasts?”

  A flush scalded Lark’s cheeks and she nodded again, mute and guilty as a felon.

  “No one told you of these signs? No one prepared you?”

  “No. I had no idea.”

  Juliana whispered something in a foreign tongue. Lark did not understand the words, but she comprehended the heartfelt catch in the lady’s voice and the diamond-bright sparkle in her green eyes.

  “I am so happy for you and Oliver,” Juliana said in English. “I never thought…That is, I worried that Oliver would not settle with a wife and start a family. He has ever been one to shy from devotions of the heart. I am so glad he has changed.”

  Lark lay speechless as the revelation tumbled through her mind. A babe. She had never even seen one up close. The idea that she would give birth to a naked, helpless creature was overwhelming. Awesome. Unimaginable.

  “I’m afraid,” she said.

  “Of course you are.” Juliana’s tenderness and sympathy were so natural and so comforting that Lark wanted to weep. She had never known true friendship, never known the simple solace of quiet talk between women. At the same time, Lark felt deceitful, for she knew Juliana did not understand the truth.

  Oliver had undergone no epiphany. He had not suddenly changed from reckless rogue to family man. He had married out of a sense of obligation. His vows sprang from duty, not love. From a promise wrung from him by a dying man.

  She still saw the hunger in his eyes, the need for adventure. She knew he would always put his own feelings and pleasures before those of anyone else. He would probably hate the idea of a child.

  “Do not tell Oliver,” Lark pleaded.

  “You will tell Oliver in your own time.” Juliana hesitated; then her smile grew pensive. “I made that mistake myself once, long ago,” she said. “Had I told Stephen, I could have spared us both a great deal of hurt.”

  “How so, my lady?”

  “I let myself believe the bitter words he flung at me, rather than listening to the silent words of his heart. He loved me. He wanted our child. I just did not trust that love.” She seemed to catch herself and said, “Listen to me, passing out advice like old Zara.”

  The name sparked a memory in Lark. “The soothsayer? Oliver and I met her just after leaving London. She said that she knew you.”

  A puzzling array of emotions lit Juliana’s face—shock, fear, amazement, and finally, an odd look of satisfaction. “I have known her since I was a girl in Novgorod. She came to England a few years ago.” Juliana smoothed Lark’s hair on the pillow.

  “I was prepared to dislike the Gypsies, but I found I couldn’t. I was drawn to them, especially to Zara.”

  Juliana smiled. “She has a kind heart. And a very powerful presence.”

  Lark held up both hands. “Before I quite knew what was happening, Zara was studying the lines of my palm and speaking in a strange voice.”

  Juliana did not move; her expression did not change, yet Lark had the impression Oliver’s stepmother was riveted, her attention completely caught. “What did she say?”

  Lark frowned, trying to remember. She still had not quite absorbed the news about the child, and her thoughts were scattered. “She said I was…one of the three.”

  Juliana drew a quick breath.

  “She claimed that she saw my fate before I was made. There was something about the circle of fate. I confess, I paid her little heed. She…disturbed me. Not by intent,” she added quickly.

  “She is very wise.” Juliana patted Lark’s hand. “I, too, feared her sometimes. Other times, I felt that her words guided me. I feel them guiding me now.” She hesitated for a moment, then unfastened a large jeweled brooch from her shoulder. “This ornament is very special to me, and I want you to have it. Let it be a symbol of your welcome to this family. There is much sadness attached to this, but much triumph, as well.”

  The setting was gold, a cruciform shape thrust through a circle of gold encrusted with pearls. At the apex of the cross gleamed a large, glorious, bloodred ruby.

  The jewel glowed as if the light were shining from behind it. Lark had never seen the piece before, but it looked hauntingly familiar to her. “It is too dear,” she said. “I can’t accept—”

  “Then you will insult me,” Juliana said briskly, as if she had made up her mind. “This brooch is a relic of my family.” Solemn remembrances hovered in the faraway look in her eyes. “They are all gone now, my parents and brothers. They perished in an uprising many years ago. I escaped with this.”

  Hot tears filled Lark’s eyes. “Oh, my lady, you should keep it.”

  Juliana shook her head, her gray-misted curls framing her face. “I have a new family and a new life. As will you. Someday, you will give it to my grandchild, and so the circle will be complete. This was meant to be. I feel certain.”

  The circle was begun before you were born, and will endure long after you are gone. Lark heard the Gypsy woman’s words as if someone had whispered them in her ear. She shivered, drawing the covers up over her shoulders. Thinking of the babe as someone’s grandchild made the pregnancy painfully, frighteningly real.

  “I can but thank you, then,” she said after a long silence.

  Juliana showed her the etchings on the back of the brooch. “This is the Romanov family motto in Russian—Blood, vows and honor.”

  There was something both fierce and touching about the motto. A steely certainty that made Lark feel stronger simply repeating the words.

  Juliana touched a tiny catch. The brooch separated, and a pointed dagger of polished steel emerged. “There was a time when this was quite useful to me.” She put the weapon back and placed the brooch in Lark’s hand, closing her fingers around it. “You’ll not need a weapon,” Juliana said with a broad, bright smile. “After all, you have Oliver to look after you now.”

  “I have no idea what to do with a wife,” Oliver admitted glumly to his father. A week had passed since their arrival. Lark had recovered from her unfortunate spell in the great hall. Never had Oliver felt such a helpless fear. Seeing her carried off, pale and limp, had chilled him to his bones. When Juliana had emerged from the bedchamber to announce that Lark was fine, Oliver had nearly staggered with relief.
>
  It was a sad notion that family love proved toxic to Lark.

  Cantering along beside him on a tall Neapolitan mare, Stephen de Lacey chuckled. “I never thought you’d be at a loss in regard to a woman.”

  They were riding the high chalk hills of Wiltshire, where the sheep were gray-white clumps against the deep, eye-smarting green of the high pastures. The air smelled richly of earth and dung and new spring growth.

  Oliver reined his horse toward a treeless, grassy down that led toward the royal hunting park. Years earlier, Stephen had been named perpetual warden of the holding, a high royal honor.

  “I did not mean in that regard,” Oliver corrected him, “but the other—the worrying, the caring.”

  Stephen’s face hardened. “It hurts sometimes, doesn’t it? To care for another more than for you own life.”

  Oliver heard layers of meaning beneath his father’s words. Then he scowled, his riding boot brushing a scrubby hawthorn bush beside the path. “I never asked for this. Never asked for someone to love. I tell you, Father, it makes a man daft, even just the day-to-day living. Waking up to the same woman every day is a new notion for me.”

  “Ah. I wonder that you did not consider that before marrying Lark.”

  “I considered very little before marrying her.” Restless with frustration, Oliver spurred his horse. The mare took off at a gallop, her long, fluid strides sailing over furzy heath and rubbled, ancient rises.

  With a shout, Stephen followed, and they raced without aim across hills and ridges, finally plunging along the rich verge of the royal forest. Blue succory and dawn-hued lady’s-glove whizzed past in streamers of vivid color. The breeze was keen and piercingly fragrant, and for these few moments Oliver was supremely happy.

  He glanced over his shoulder at his father. Stephen had the better mare—he always had the better mare—but it was only slightly better, and he held back so that Oliver could take the lead. Age had silvered Stephen’s tawny mane and etched lines of contentment about his eyes and mouth. In his early boyhood, Oliver had seen helpless torment in that regal face. Juliana had changed Stephen’s grief to hope and joy, and ever since, he and his father had been as boon companions.

  Oliver slowed his horse to a walk along the fringe of the forest. No matter how fast or how far he rode, he could not outrun the events of the past weeks.

  “The marriage took place against my will,” he confessed. “And Lark’s.” He watched Stephen’s eyebrows lift and then told him of Spencer, with whom Stephen had been acquainted during the reign of King Henry.

  “He was a curious old man,” Oliver said. “A keener mind I’ve yet to encounter. But for some reason, he took it into his head that Lark and I should marry.” He spoke only briefly of Wynter and Blackrose Priory. He did not want to worry his father.

  “So you married her because of a deathbed promise?”

  “Aye.”

  Stephen laughed, his massive shoulders shaking with mirth. “The reason was no worse than my own basis for marrying your stepmother. And I have no regrets. So shall it be with you.”

  “How can that be? Lark’s so…so proper. And virtuous. And self-righteous. She hates the things I like. Sometimes—outside the bedchamber, of course—I think there’s no pleasing her.”

  “But she loves you,” Stephen said. “When I saw her watching you at breakfast today, the look in her eyes was filled with that bewildered wonder of a woman newly smitten.” With a lopsided grin, he added, “De Lacey men are simply irresistible to a certain type of female.”

  “The difficult type,” Oliver said.

  “You would not want an easy one. You have ever thrived on a challenge.”

  “Quite so. Which brings me to my other problem—Richard Speed.”

  Stephen’s brow blackened with a scowl. “Your sister Natalya is unhinged over him.”

  “I noticed.” Oliver shuddered. “All those sighs and bovine gazes. Disgusting.”

  “So he’s a scoundrel?” Stephen asked. “A jackanapes? Should he be sleeping in the stables?”

  “Certainly not. He’s a good man. I’ve met none better. But who, I ask you, is good enough for my sister?”

  Stephen grinned. “Precisely. I’ve given the matter some thought, and I have a plan for Speed.”

  “If it involves donning skirts again, he’ll revolt,” Oliver said.

  “Are you sure you’re strong enough?” Oliver asked, holding open a garden gate on rusty hinges.

  The look of tenderness and concern on his face flustered Lark. She clutched at the jeweled brooch that fastened her cloak at the shoulder and wondered if…No, he could not know about the baby. Lady Juliana had sworn she would say nothing.

  “Lark?” With his shoulder propped against the ivy-covered wall, he looked boyish and appealing. As usual, his uncommon allure scattered her thoughts. Some men had beautiful eyes, others a strong and pleasing form, still others a wonderful, sculpted face and a smile that dimmed the sunlight. Oliver had it all.

  “Of course.” She cleared her throat and spoke loudly. “I am completely recovered.” And so she was, since Juliana had taken her into her care. Before she was allowed out of bed in the morning, she drank a draft of mare’s milk. Tisanes of mint kept the nausea down through the rest of the day, and Juliana insisted on a nap every afternoon.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “Quite sure. I must have been overtired from traveling. That’s all.”

  “Completely recovered.” He stroked his chin and eyed her with a frank lust that brought a jolt of heat to her loins. Without even touching her, he had the power to rouse her ardor. To make her want him with an intensity that frightened her. All her life she had been taught that base yearnings of the flesh detracted from her devotion to God. She had learned the truth of that firsthand. She wanted to explain her feelings to Oliver, but she could only stare at him, helpless and spellbound, a victim of his smoldering, suggestive stare.

  “You have no shame, my lord.” Her cheeks burned with color.

  “I should hope not.” He used one hand only, reaching around behind her and sliding his hand down, teasing, his eyes laughing at her. He did this often and with startling inventiveness, whether he was chastely pressing her arm during morning devotions or snatching her into the shadows of the hall and kissing her deeply and seductively while musicians played.

  “Oliver, please.” She tried to keep the smile from her voice.

  “Then let’s go,” he said at last. “I want to show you something.” He put his fingers to his lips and whistled. A pack of graceful borzoya hounds came streaking across the freshly scythed yard. As the tall animals streamed through the gate, Oliver stroked their silky coats.

  “My first real friend was a windhound,” he said, half to himself.

  Lark stepped through the gate, pausing to look up at him in surprise. “A dog? Didn’t you play with other children?”

  The merest tinge of bitterness hardened his smile. “Sweetheart, I did not even know other children existed.”

  Finding that difficult to believe, she moved along the path, flanked by a low, well-tended hedge.

  “This used to be a maze,” Oliver said, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow. The dogs leaped the hedges at will, eventually disappearing into a profusion of woods. “For years, no one save my father even knew this garden existed.” He gestured upward. “The hedges were tall, touching like archways at the top. Very few who blundered in were able to find their way out.”

  “It sounds rather dangerous. Why would your father cultivate a maze like that?”

  “To keep this part of the estate separate. Secret.”

  He came from a family of eccentrics, she reminded herself. A father whose odd inventions made Lynacre a place of wonder, a stepmother who had lived with Gypsies, brothers and sisters who pursued unusual vocations. Inadvertently, she touched her stomach and wondered, for the first time, what her child would be like.

  “You’re certain you feel up to a walk
?” Oliver said.

  Though flustered, she managed to nod—thinking of the babe as a person had a profound effect on her. Soon she would tell Oliver. Part of her dreaded that. Although he had spoken of children from the very start, it had been teasing, abstract. He had no real desire to take responsibility for a child.

  She feared, too, that he would make her stay here with his family through her confinement. She did adore his parents, but she did not want to spend so many idle months in the countryside when there was important work to be done.

  She told herself not to worry. Wynter had disappeared to London. She and Oliver had brought Richard Speed to Wiltshire without incident. When they lay in each other’s arms at night, nothing in the world seemed amiss.

  And so she kept her secret locked in her heart, just for a little while longer, she told herself. Just until she was certain Oliver would not run from the responsibility or leave her to bear it alone.

  They wended their way along the path, and at the end, stepped beneath an arbor.

  Lark gasped and squeezed Oliver’s arm. “What an extraordinary garden.”

  “Isn’t it?” They passed a line of wych elms and arrived at a fountain. Winged fish and carved dragons spouted water into a basin of blooming yellow brandyball lilies. All around them grew a menagerie of topiary, giant ivy lions, gryphons and mythical beasts with wings and horns.

  “Your father’s doing?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And who lives in that cottage?” She pointed to the snug, half-timbered building all draped in morning glory.

  “I used to live here.” He spoke without his usual jaunty, devil-may-care attitude.

  There it was again, that shadowy anguish, hinting at a darkness he kept hidden from her and from the world. “Oliver—”

  “Come.” He took her hand and led her to the house. “When the Gypsies pass through on their wanderings, they often stay here.”

  He pushed at the door and let her into a small, sun-flooded hall. The cottage smelled of dried herbs, which hung in ribbon-tied bunches from the rafters above the hearth. The furniture consisted of a trestle table and benches, a box chair and a wooden settee.