"Too honorable to do murder for you, my lady." Rafe planted knotted fists upon his hips, his harsh gaze giving Lady Warburton no quarter.
"Enough! Both of you!" Elizabeth snapped. "I weary of your quarreling. Accusations, Captain Santadar, are most dangerous. We have little patience with them when they are unfounded."
The long, ruby-ringed fingers reached out to curve about the shimmering goblet, the canny eyes contemplating the dark red liquid within. And Rafe realized that there was a steely warning in her words. His memory stirred with the stories he had heard of the queen's mother, the witch Boleyn, tales of how King Henry's proud Anne had fallen beneath the ax because of questionable testimony.
"Your Majesty, my accusations are not unfounded, I vow—"
She waved him to silence then lifted the goblet and slowly swirled its contents. "What reason do we have to believe the bellowing of a Spaniard against the word of a peeress of our realm?"
Rafe gritted his teeth in frustration. His eyes slashed to Morgause, the light of victory in the woman's ghostly eyes filling him with barely leashed fury. Her pale, childlike fingers fluttered against her gown of night-black velvet, as though weaving some dark sorcery while the odd ring glinted upon her hand.
The ring!
His gaze flashed up just as Elizabeth Tudor touched the rim of her goblet to her lips.
"No!" His hand shot out and closed about the queen's wrist. A gasp of outrage sprang from the monarch. A dozen men erupted from their chairs, and the hiss of weapons being torn free of scabbards echoed among the cries of alarm.
Even Tessa had lunged forward, her eyes huge in her face.
"Poison!" Rafe's heart thudded against his ribs as the queen's fingers clenched beneath his grasp. "Your Majesty," he said. "The wine is poisoned."
The queen's eyes pierced Rafe's and yet, despite the aura of dignity that still clung to the monarch,
Rafe felt the slightest of tremors in the fingers beneath his.
"That is the most absurd of all your allegations, Captain. Everything is tasted before it touches our lips."
"Lady Warburton slipped the potion into your wine from a compartment concealed in the emerald she wears on her finger. She showed it to me when I was prisoner at Warvaliant, when she was attempting to lure me into dealing death to someone in her name. But I never suspected, Your Majesty, that you were her intended victim."
Elizabeth turned on the lady of Warvaliant, all eyes in the room bearing down upon Morgause's waxen face, and it seemed the hostile glares, fury, and suspicion would crush her.
"What say you, my lady?" Elizabeth questioned. "Shall we call in the castle hounds, have them sip this wine that holds the truth?"
Morgause's gaze flicked to the wine. "It will not be necessary to waste such a fine vintage on the beasts. You wish the truth, Your Majesty?" Morgause tipped the queen's goblet up and drank deeply.
"Sweet Christ!" Rafe grabbed for the vessel and knocked it away, but Morgause had already drained the dark liquid.
The whole room seemed frozen in a shattering silence, all faces turned toward the lady whose eyes blazed with madness.
"Why this plot of murder? Why end it in your own--?" Rafe couldn't stop the question as he stared at her icy face, the muscles stiff as the poison ate deep inside her. His fists knotted as Morgause staggered around the table toward him and clasped the fabric of his doublet in her chill fingers.
"For the same reason you sailed with your accursed armada! For the same reason you fought Drake—to bring... bring the true faith back to England."
Rafe's hands swept out and closed about her bone-thin upper arms to steady her, but her knees buckled. He eased her down gently onto the rush mats on the stone floor.
"A surgeon! Someone hail a surgeon," Rafe shouted, ripping open the close-fitting ruff about Morgause's scrawny throat in an effort to ease her ragged breathing.
"But my methods," he heard the woman rasp, "weren't honorable enough or noble enough for you, just as I was not beautiful enough to hold you—Ruy..."
Her fingers curved up over his cheek, the nails biting into his beard-roughened skin as he felt the spasms twisting her small frame.
"I loved you. I loved..."
The hand grasping at him was racked by the tremors that quaked through her frail body. Suddenly Morgause Warburton stiffened as though some agony had ripped through her. Then she sagged, limp, in Rafe's arms, her opaque eyes rolling upward beneath open lids.
Dead. She was dead, but on her face there lurked a smile that would haunt Rafe for eternity, not the chill madwoman's smile that had made his skin crawl in Warvaliant's turret chamber, but rather a smile touched with softness, the smile of a maiden running to meet her lover.
Rafe heard the babble of voices rise all about him as the courtiers crowded around, but in that moment it was as if he and Morgause were the only people in the world.
He took the noblewoman's hand and had started to lay it on her breast when his gaze snagged upon the miniature that was half exposed by the open emerald ring—a likeness of his father. Rafe stared at it, feeling as if he were peering into an enchanted mirror, viewing a scene of love and hate from a generation past.
He heard a furor as someone shoved through the maze of velvet and satin garbed figures—a broad-faced surgeon hastening through those assembled.
"Is there sickness? Has someone—"
"Someone has died, sir." Rafe released the lady of Warvaliant's hand and rose slowly to his feet.
"And perhaps someone has been reborn." It was the queen's voice, low and laced with gratitude.
Rafe regarded the monarch who now stood in regal splendor beside him. "Reborn?"
"Aye. Rafael Santadar, heir to the Earl of Valcour. A valued subject who was lost to us when he was but a child, but who has been given back to us—if it should please him to remain upon our shores."
There was a tightness in Rafe's voice he had not expected as he faced the woman who ruled all of England—Tarrant St. Cyr’s beloved captive princess who had become the greatest queen ever to sit on a throne.
Rafe tried to speak but couldn't. He felt Tessa's fingers soft and warm upon his arm and glanced into eyes dark with love and tentative hope.
"You have saved our life, Captain Santadar," the queen said softly. "Let us give you a gift of life as well, a life with this Tessa who is fortunate enough to hold your proud heart."
Rafe looked up into that regal, aging face that had known so much sorrow, held such strength.
Someone has been reborn...
He glanced at his grandfather, the noble Lord Valcour, and at the wood-sprite features of the woman he loved.
And then the heir Valcour slowly sank to one knee in silent tribute to his queen.
Chapter 18
Rafe arched his neck against the weariness grinding down upon him, trying to banish the haze that seemed to muddle his mind. It had been five hours since he was swept from Tessa's side and locked in a stifling chamber with his silent grandfather, Elizabeth Tudor, and her most trusted advisers. They had raked through every wisp of information Rafe had possessed concerning Morgause Warburton's plot, trying vainly to rip away the mystery that still shrouded the noblewoman's attempt at regicide.
But in the end there had been only a heavy sense of regret and impatience in the queen's sharp eyes as she had paced to a simple depiction of the Temptation of Christ worked in fine tapestry. She had shaken her head, like a mother wearied by recalcitrant children, and the words she had spoken clung even now to Rafe's memory: "Religion! Why cannot they all leave one another in peace? Catholic, Protestant, Puritan—let each one go to the devil in his own way."
There had been wistfulness and wisdom in her sentiment, and her words had filled Rafe's mind with remembered scenes of flames, crosses, and white-robed judges who worked atrocities in the name of God. The auto-da-fé held its own special horror, and yet those who embraced the faith of the new church were little better, wanting only to send different people to their
death for the same insane reasons.
And people like Lady Morgause were ready to do anything, commit any crime, to enthrone upon the altar their own version of the deity all Christians worshiped.
Was she now dancing with her own accursed devils in some hell woven of flame? Rafe shook off the thought, trying to drive away the clinging sense of horror her death had given him. No. There was no sense in trying to understand Lady Morgause's madness, even though Elizabeth's councilors and the solemn earl were still attempting to do so in that small chamber.
They had dismissed Rafe when their discussion turned to the ramifications the murder attempt would have on the state. Rafe had left the chamber relieved, yet restless, and now he wandered at leisure through the quiet halls.
It was so long since he had felt this inner stillness. He reveled in it, loving the freedom he felt to rove about the stone edifice his mother had so loved.
The nightmare was over.
Two lives had been struck through with horror, but the evil wreathed about the lady of Warvaliant had faded away at last. Rafe lifted a single taper from a sconce upon the wall and carried it with him as he made his way into a deserted sector of the castle.
He was not surprised to find himself drawn to the gallery in which he had first accepted the fact that he was of English blood. The room had been the site of excruciating anguish. His pride and his sense of honor had been snatched from beneath him there that long-ago day.
Yet now, as he stared up at the portrait of the mother he had loved, he felt only a strange contentment. And he wanted somehow to tell the dimpled girl-child in the painting that at last all was well. He longed to share with her the sense of peace stirring within him.
Even the lingering shadow of Lord Warburton had been banished. A contingent of armed men, under the command of the dauntless Sir Dinadan, had ridden for Warvaliant to place the nobleman under arrest for his part in the conspiracy to end Elizabeth's life.
Rafe's lips twisted grimly at the memory of the man who had tried to brutalize Tessa. Yet though Rafe hated the cruel lord, he much doubted the Englishman had any knowledge of the devilment his mother and Encina had been plotting. Regardless, Tudor justice would strike swiftly, thoroughly, and as devastatingly as Rafe's own sword would have done.
Rafe shrugged inwardly. In truth, it did not matter to him that Neville Warburton might be forced to pay for a crime he did not commit, for the man had been guilty of a score of atrocities that had gone unpunished. Warburton's suffering now would atone for those wrongs.
Rafe rubbed the back of his aching neck with his fingers. He had slipped into this long corridor to avoid the commotion of the countless courtiers who still lingered in the distant great hall, but it seemed that even here he could find no solitude, for as he looked upon the sweet face in the portrait, he heard someone approaching. No doubt it was one of his grandfather's servants coming to set the chamber ablaze with candles or to see if he was a housebreaker come to steal away the plates.
"I need no more candles," Rafe said without looking back. "It is light enough."
"I always thought so, too, whenever I came here to bask in the light of Anne's smile." Tarrant St. Cyr’s voice was low and heavy. Slowly Rafe turned to face the man who had shown little trace of his true emotions in the tumultuous hours since Rafe had entered the great hall.
In the time that had passed, he had not had a chance to speak privately with his grandfather, and he did not know how the earl felt about the grandson who had abandoned him. The mighty Earl of Valcour had shared in the gratitude of Elizabeth and her powerful courtiers for Rafe saving the queen's life, and yet Rafe had no idea how Tarrant St. Cyr, the man, felt as he was confronted once again with the grandson who had hurled the earl's proud lineage away as though it were something to be ashamed of.
He stared at Tarrant St. Cyr, knowing that he would scarce blame the earl if he chose to slam the gates of the castle upon him and Tessa and turn his back on those who had hurt him.
But despite the lines carved into the earl's face, despite the toll the past weeks had taken upon the strong glint in those indigo eyes, Rafe saw in Tarrant St. Cyr a tentative rejoicing, hidden behind a brittle facade of pride.
The earl cleared his throat, looking distinctly uncomfortable garbed in court finery, and Rafe had the sudden perception that the old man would be far more at ease balanced on the prow of a ship with the sea winds whipping his face.
"Grandfather." Rafe wanted to ask the older man's forgiveness, but the plea for understanding was like acid on his tongue. "There was no time to warn you before Tessa and I burst into the hall. No time to ask your forgiveness for my flight from the queen's palace. No time to ask your forgiveness for not having the courage or the decency to tell you good-bye. But I want... want you to know that—"
"That you wish your escape could have been otherwise? That you wished to confront me with your plan, but did not dare?" There was a kinship in those eyes so like Rafe's own that touched him with hope. "You would hardly have made an effective escape, Rafael, if your grandfather had locked you in your room like a fractious lad. And I would have. I wanted you to stay in England at any cost. I wanted you to be an English St. Cyr and to stand at my side."
"You were incredibly generous," Rafe admitted. "Accepting a stranger into your life."
"Accepting?" The earl's laugh was rough, yet heartening. "Do you not mean demanding? I demanded that you surrender yourself on my terms and become a loving grandson with the wave of a hand. People do not give their hearts that way, and I of all people should have known that."
"It was just that I was still raw from the disaster that struck my ship."
"Aye. And even after all these years, I was still hurting from the loss of my Anne. It was because of your mother—the way I loved her, missed her—that I all but crushed you in my eagerness to give you a place in my heart."
Tarrant's face was touched with a wistful sorrow. "She was everything to me, everything a father could have wished for in a daughter. Other men were hungry for sons, heirs, to fight at their sides, to bring honor to the family name. Sons—King Henry even did murder to gain them... But Anne was enough for me. From the first day I looked upon her little face, I loved her with a fierceness that frightened me."
"Your lady wife wanted no other children?" Rafe asked, sensing the old man's need to discuss his past with the one person who shared his blood, to talk about it without meeting surly resistance or outright belligerence.
The earl shook his head, a wistful smile pulling at his lips. "Alison was not... er, inclined to take joy in the marriage bed. The only thing she feared even more was childbed."
"But she wed you, an earl, who she must have known would need sons to inherit his title."
"We were forced to marry when we were but children, the ambitions of our parents outweighing any needs of our own. We were ill suited from the first—she so timid, and I stalking about with my fierce temper and wild ways. I tried to be gentle, but it is not in my nature. She feared me, feared everything, from the shadows in the castle buttery to the falcons in the mews. Even Anne seemed to frighten her. Alison cloistered herself in her room with her prayers and what priests I could smuggle in to give her comfort."
The earl paced toward Rafe, stopping beneath the portrait of his daughter, and the warrior's scarred fingers reached up to caress the gilded frame. "She was mine. Anne. From the very first. Willful, wild, yet tempered with such winning kindness and sparkling wit that everyone who knew her fell in love with her. She was forever taking in injured nestlings and fussing over the skinned knees of the servants' babes. Those who were hurting in body or in spirit seemed to sense the healing power within her, and they came to her, to let her ease their pain, to bathe themselves in the light of her smile. It seemed only natural that Morgause Bledford should do the same."
"Lady Warburton?"
"Aye. Her parents died when she was but six, and her brothers and their wives wanted nothing to do with the girl. She was neg
lected, ignored, unloved. A strange child, even then. But it never mattered to Anne."
"Anne and Morgause were close, then?"
"Yes. When they came to court their friendship was a jest among the beaux. They called Morgause 'Sweet Anne's Shadow,' because the two were never far apart. Yet it was more than friendship on Morgause's part. It was a pathetic mimicry. She imitated Anne's laugh, Anne's ways. Even the garments she wore were pale copies of Anne's. Morgause was a wistful child, and even I felt pity for her—until Ruy Santadar strode into your mother's life."
Tarrant's brow furrowed, and Rafe could see the aching light in his eyes as he regarded the likeness of his daughter. "Morgause wanted Ruy. She tried every sort of trickery to entrap him. But he, like so many others, had fallen beneath the spell of Anne's love. He wanted to wed Anne, and Anne... I've never seen a woman so in love. Ruy wanted to take her to Spain, make a life for her, and I thought that Anne would be safe there from Morgause's plots. I thought Morgause was but a foolish woman who would forget about Anne and Ruy once they disappeared from her life. I was a fool."
Tarrant strode to the window and looked out across his lands. "After Anne died, I was mad with grief. I wanted to attack Warvaliant and accuse Morgause of taking part in Anne's murder. But that was a ludicrous idea. By then the woman was wed to Warburton and had just been delivered of a son. She seemed to have forgotten about Anne and Ruy." Tarrant ran his fingers back through his riotous waves of graying hair as he berated himself. "How could I have failed to see how crazed she was regarding Santadar, how mad for vengeance? I could have forbidden Anne from ever seeing Ruy again. I could have refused to let her marry him... "
Rafe turned his gaze again to the portrait, the hazy memories he held of the woman portrayed there rushing through him with a stronger clarity than ever before. He smiled, a sad smile touched with understanding. "Even if you had handed my mother a sorceress's crystal and shown her all that would befall her if she went away with my father, I am certain she would have married him anyway. I believe she loved him from the first moment he kissed her until the end. To her the joy would have seemed well worth the suffering."
To Chase the Storm Page 24