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At The King's Command
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Two
While the courtiers gasped in scandalized disbelief, and Lord Wimberleigh seemed to turn to stone, Juliana folded her arms to contain the frenzied beating of her heart.
“I cannot marry him,” she said in a rush. She tried to suppress her accent, but when she was nervous it became more pronounced. “He—he is beneath me.”
Uproarious laughter filled the air, and the sound stung like a glowing brand.
“Have you heard nothing I have said?” she shouted. “I am a princess. My father was a Romanov—”
“And mine is the Holy Roman Emperor,” said Cromwell, his thin mouth pinched with dry humor.
Sir Bodely nudged her, none too gently. “Show a bit of gratitude, wench. The king just saved you from the gibbet.”
She fell silent and still. Marriage to an English lord? But that would mean abandoning the goal that had driven her for five harsh years. It would mean putting aside her plan to return to Novgorod and to punish the assassins who had murdered her family.
King Henry brayed with laughter. “I did nothing of the sort, my good Bodely. I simply left the choice to Wimberleigh. And he chose to let her live.”
“So I did,” came Wimberleigh’s quiet answer. He stood close to her, his presence as threatening as a rain-heavy storm cloud. His light hair swirled about his face, and she noticed tiny fans of tension bracketing his eyes. “But I think we’ll both soon find, sweet gypsy, that some things are worse than death.”
She stiffened her spine in response to the chill that suddenly touched it. She tore her gaze from Wimberleigh. There was something disturbing about him, a ruthlessness perhaps, and deep in his eyes lurked a glint of raw panic. A dread that matched her own.
“A charming observation, Wimberleigh.” King Henry wore a jovial smile that Juliana instinctively mistrusted. Of all the men in England, only this king came close to the splendor she had known every day of her life in Novgorod. The dark raisin eyes darted from her to the baron. “This is an apt way for you to fulfill your vow to me, my lord. You promised to take a wife, yet insisted on a chaste woman. Why not the Egyptian princess, then?”
A fresh wave of laughter burst from the courtiers.
As Stephen watched the small bedraggled captive, she did a most amazing thing. Her dirt-smudged chin rose. Her narrow shoulders squared, and her hands balled into fists at her sides.
It was that stern pride, so incongruous in a girl in tattered skirts and matted hair, that caused Stephen to betray himself.
Summoning his massive frame to its full height, he glared the courtiers into silence. Even as he did so, he cursed himself for a fool. He shouldn’t ache for her. He shouldn’t defend her.
“Sire,” she said, her voice composed, yet still lyrically rhythmic, “it is a great compliment that you find me suitable for so lofty a lord, but I cannot marry this stranger.”
“Will it be the gibbet, instead?” the king asked, a cold smile on his face.
Though she did not move a muscle, she turned pale. Only Stephen stood close enough to see the pulse leap at her temple. He wanted to turn away, to shield his eyes from her. He did not want to see her courage or her desperation. He did not want to pity her or—may God forgive him—admire her.
He felt like a blind man in a thorny maze, unable to find a way out. Henry had aged rapidly and badly. He had grown as volatile and unpredictable as the Channel winds. Yet his craving for revenge was as sharp as ever.
“My lord of Wimberleigh,” Henry shouted in his most blustery I-am-the-king voice, “I have offered you true English beauties—ladies of breeding and wealth. You have refused them all. A gypsy wench is no better than you deserve. The de Laceys were ever a mongrel lot anyway.”
More laughter erupted. Yet some of the mirth began to sound forced. When the king lashed out with cruel insults, all feared the razor edge of his choler turned next upon themselves.
Thomas Cromwell cleared his throat. “Sire, for a nobleman to wed a common gyp—”
“Be silent, you spindle-shanked little titmouse,” King Henry thundered at Lord Privy Seal. “Better men than Wimberleigh have wed women of low station.”
Anne Boleyn, Stephen thought darkly. The woman who had shaken the monarchy to its foundations had been naught but the daughter of an ambitious tenant farmer.
Cromwell flinched, but with his usual aplomb, he said, “Perhaps, then, ’tis a matter for the clergy to debate.”
“My dear Cromwell, leave the canon lawyers to me.” Henry turned to Stephen. “Your choice is clear. Marry the wench, or see her hanged for thieving.”
“She’ll need cleaning up,” Stephen blurted. “And it will take her months to learn the new catechism. Then perhaps—”
“Nay, bring a cleric!” Dismissing Stephen’s attempt at stalling, King Henry gave a regal wave of his hand. “To hell with banns and betrothal arrangements. We’ll see them wed now.”
Evening mantled the knot garden outside the chapel. Like a flock of gulls after a fishing boat, the courtiers moved off in the wake of the king. Hushed whispers hissed through the fragrant night air, seductive and yet somehow accusing.
Feeling numb and emotionless, Juliana stopped beneath an arbor and fingered a long, spiny yew leaf. Its rough edges abraded her fingertip. She had no idea what to say to this stranger. A king’s caprice had made him her husband.
Stephen de Lacey turned to her. Stephen. Only during the hasty, almost clandestine ceremony had she learned his given name, learned it when she had been obliged to pledge a lifelong vow to this tall, unsmiling English lord.
Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.
She wondered if the cleric’s awesome words still rang in his ears as they did in hers.
He stood between two shadowy hawthorn hedges. The breeze ruffled his gold-flecked hair, and for a moment the thick waves rippled as if disturbed by the fingers of an invisible lover. He had the most extraordinary face she had ever seen, and the play of light and shadow only made it more so. His eyes caught an errant gleam of waning light, and she saw it again: the pain, the panic. The stark, lurking fear.
“Is he always this cruel?” she asked.
He cleared his throat. “The king, you mean?” He spoke in low tones, though his deeply resonant voice carried.
Juliana nodded. “Who else maneuvers lives like chess pieces?”
Wimberleigh pressed his palms against the railed border of the garden. He stood quietly for a moment, seeming to study the razor-clipped hedges. “He possesses both passion and whimsy. He grew up the second son, nearly forgotten by his father. Then his elder brother’s death launched Henry into the succession, and he seized power as if he feared someone would snatch it away. When a man of such qualities also happens to be king and pope alike, it can make him unspeakably cruel.”
“Why does he take pleasure in tormenting you?”
A bitter smile tightened Wimberleigh’s lips, and she knew she would get no honest answer to her question. “Your complaint surprises me. The king saved you from death.”
“I would have fought my way free,” she declared.
“For what?” His voice had a taunting edge. “So you could return to the gypsies, who would make you a serving wench and a whore for the rest of your days?”
“And you, my lord?” Juliana shot back. “What will you make of me?”
Stephen de Lacey stepped closer, his large shape filling the twilit path. She stood her ground, though instinct warned her to flee. There was danger here, close to her, just a whisper away.
“My dear slattern,” he said gently, in the voice of a lover, “I have just made you a baroness.”
His mockery cut at her pride. “And for that you expect gratitude, yes?”
“’Tis better than hanging as a horse thief.”
“So is having one’s nostrils slit, but that does not mean I relish the reprieve. Why did you save me? Clearly you like me not.”
Dark laughter stirred his broad shoulders. He leaned close, his breath warm upon her cheek. “Your powers of observation are keen, my gypsy.”
“You have not answered my question. You seem to be a man fond of his independence, yet you jumped like a trained spaniel when the king gave his orders. Why, my lord? I sense King Henry has a lance aimed at your heart.”
His chin came up sharply, and she heard his breath catch. “Do not amuse yourself with idle speculation. My affairs are hardly your concern.”
Resentment and frustration built inside her. She was supposed to be on her way to a horse fair now, planning her first audience with the king, who would help her win back her birthright. “It is my affair since you just took me as your wife.”
“In name only,” he snapped. “Or did you truly think I would take this marriage seriously?” With frigid disdain, he glanced at her from head to toe. “That I would honor vows wrung from me at the whim of King Henry?”
Juliana thanked God he did not mean to treat her as a true wife. She decided in that instant to stay in the tattered, lice-ridden guise of a gypsy wench, for it obviously disgusted him.
Still, a perverse sense of injured pride darkened her spirits. “I am free to go, yes?” she inquired. She fought an urge to clutch at the neckline of her blouse, to hide from him. “Well?”
“Not yet. I’ll take you to Wiltshire. Once the king tires of his trick, we’ll get an annulment and you can go back to—to fortune-telling or pocket picking or whatever it is that you do when you’re not off thieving horses.”
Juliana gritted her teeth. “I happen to do a good number of things. Some of them are quite clever. Tarrying in Wilthouse—”
“Wiltshire, my tenderling. ’Tis a few days’ ride west of here.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “Tarrying in Wiltshire was not part of—”
“Of what?”
She could not tell anyone, especially this stranger, of her secret schemes. “My plan,” she stated simply.
He bowed from the waist. “I regret the inconvenience, then. Perhaps you’d be more pleased had I left you swinging from the gibbet.”
She hated him for being right. Though she did not want to acknowledge the truth, he was as much a victim of the king’s wrath as she.
A sigh of resignation gusted from her. Darkness now filled the knot garden, and the first stars of evening pricked the sky. “What about tonight?”
“I managed to dissuade the master of revels from leading the bedding ceremony.”
“What is the bedding ceremony?”
“We would have been escorted to bed by a group of drunken revelers and…never mind. You may stay alone in my chamber. My squire and I will take the anteroom. Be ready to ride out at first light.” He turned to leave.
“My lord.” Juliana lightly touched his sleeve. The fine lawn fabric covered a hard, masculine warmth, and the sensation startled her.
Apparently it startled him, as well. His eyes widened, and a look of revulsion broke over his shadowed face.
Searingly aware of how long it had been since she had bathed, Juliana snatched her hand away. “I am sorry.”
“What were you going to say?”
“I…forget.” But as he showed her to the chamber where she was to sleep, she acknowledged the lie. She was going to thank him for saving her from the noose. For glaring the courtiers into silence when they would have made high sport of her. For speaking his vows loudly over the titters of the ladies.
But his look of disgust when she had touched him drove any sense of gratitude from her.
It was her wedding night, and save for the company of a large white windhound, she lay alone. More alone than she had ever been before.
As if the king had commanded it, the next day dawned clear and brilliant, the weather a sharp contrast to Stephen’s gloomy mood. He should have let the gypsy girl flee on his horse, should have forfeited the wager to King Henry. Capria was precious to him, but not nearly so precious as his freedom.
Instead, he had foolishly allowed himself to be captivated by the horse thief’s wide eyes, so clear and disarming in contrast to the dirt on her face, the tangles in her hair.
Gypsy eyes, he told himself. As false and full of lies as her Romany soul.
“Ah, Kit,” Stephen said, sitting on a heavy box chair and holding his head, “say it was all a bad dream. Say I’m not truly shackled by God’s law to a wild, half-mad gypsy.”
Kit Youngblood’s mouth quirked in a curve that suspiciously resembled a stifled grin. He held out Stephen’s plain frieze jerkin. “It was no dream, my lord. The king waived the banns and called for a clerk. You are well and truly married to the strange girl.”
Stephen lifted his head, rubbed his hands over his stubbled cheeks, then pushed his arms into the jerkin. “Must you always be so blunt?”
“My lord,” Kit said, lacing Stephen’s sleeve to the armhole of the jerkin, “why did you not simply refuse?”
Stephen did not answer, for not even Kit knew the truth—that if he had dared to cross the king once more…
“She would have been hanged,” Stephen said brusquely. “We shall collect my gypsy baggage and get ourselves home. Then I’ll find a way out of this mess. Where is the wench, anyway?”
Juliana was already mounted and ready to ride when Stephen came out to the park beside the river Thames.
“My blushing bride,” he muttered under his breath. She sat frozen upon a gray gelding, her cheeks still smudged with dirt, her eyes wide and wary with pain and uncertainty.
The look brought on a flash of remembrance. A few years earlier, Stephen had come upon a poacher’s trap. The sharp-toothed iron jaws were clamped around the foreleg of a young doe. The dying creature had gazed up at him, that same look in its eyes, begging for a quick death.
Stephen had slit its throat.
“The lady,” he said with a mocking bow, “does not seem to take joy in seeing her new husband.”
“I take no joy in riding off with my jailer,” she spat. “I’d no more pretend to like you than I would care to warm your bed.”
He slid his gaze slowly over her. She sat astride, her patched skirts hiked up and billowing over the saddlebow. Long bare legs and dusty feet clung expertly to the horse’s sides.
“Believe me,” Stephen assured her, “I have higher standards for the women I bed.” His fury at the king honed an edge of cruelty to his words. “You seem better suited to certain other domestic tasks.”
She glared at him with loathing hot in her eyes. “I will not do your Gajo washing, nor work in your Gajo fields.” With her strange dog trotting at her horse’s stirrup, she rode stone-faced, looking disturbingly like a scatterling from a siege. When they stopped at wayside inns along the way, she ate and drank mechanically. At night she lay unmoving on a pallet. The dog never left her side, and while she slept he remained vigilant, lifting his black lip and growling if Stephen even so much as blinked at Juliana.
Kit, understandably discomfited by the tension, kept up a constant, mindless chatter as they trudged through the terraced green west country: King Henry had sent aides abroad in search of a new royal bride. At the royal court of France, people drank from cups that, when drained, revealed a man and woman in flagrante delicto. Sebastian Cabot, the mariner, had sent a savage from New Spain to London, and the creature was on display at the Bear Garden.
By the time the broad fields, scored by stone fences and thorny hedgerows, yielded to the ancient bounds of Lynacre, Stephen’s shoulders ached with strain.
He glanced back and caught a familiar sight. Juliana had ridden too near the roadside hedgerow, and the hem of her skirt had snagged on the spiny bush. She yanked at it, and a piece tore off.
He knew her to be an excellent rider. Yet throughout the journey she had been careless with her person, leaving bits of thread or fabric or a few strands of her unkempt hair in the hedgerows.
She was clearly up to mischief and would bear watching.
“Ride ahead and announce us, Kit,” Stephen said to his squire. “Let the kitchen know we’ve not eaten since breakfast, and tell Nance Harbutt the baroness will require a bath.”
Kit kicked his mount into a canter and rode off, a plume of dust filling his wake. Stephen started off again—slowly, knowing with dread certainty that he was bringing havoc into his well-ordered world.
A lark in the hedge trilled, then fell silent. Only the soft thud of the horses’ hooves and the creak of saddle leather punctuated the heavy stillness.
Moments later the gypsy’s dog snarled and bounded across a field, a white streak flowing over the ancient barrows and undulating downs.
“Where’s he off to?” Stephen muttered.
“He heard something.” Juliana cocked her head. “Other dogs—I hear them now.”
Stephen scanned the horizon, looking past the clumps of bright, blossoming furze and stands of thorn and holly to the chalk heights in the distance. When he spied the rider, he cursed under his breath. “Of all the people to encounter…”
Juliana followed his glare. “Who is it?”
“My nearest neighbor, and the loudest gossip in Wiltshire.”
“You are afraid of gossip, my lord?”
Juliana watched Pavlo set upon the lurchers that accompanied the rider. The baying and yelping startled a flock of rooks from a stand of ash trees. The birds rose like a storm cloud, darkening the sky before wheeling off over the chalk hills.
Somewhat pleased that Pavlo had broken the monotony of the journey and the strain of their silence, Juliana clapped her hands, then cupped them around her mouth and called a command in Russian. Pavlo came bounding back, his narrow head held high, his feathery tail waving like a victor’s banner.
While the lurchers ran for their lives, the rider cantered down a sheep walk that joined the road through a break in the hedge. He pulled his horse up short and glared at the huge dog. “The blighted beast should be garroted,” he grumbled.
“He’d probably fight back, Algernon,” said Lord Wimberleigh.
“God’s holy teeth.” The young man peered past Stephen and stared at Juliana. While he studied her tattered clothes and matted hair, she stared back, taking in the fine cut of his doublet and riding cloak, the slimness of his gloved hands on the reins. Beneath a velvet cap, a wealth of golden curls framed his narrow, comely face. “What the devil have you got there, Wimberleigh?”
“A very large mistake,” said Stephen de Lacey, “but one I fear I am saddled with until I make some arrangements.”
Saddled with! As if she were a mare with the botch, to be foisted on some unsuspecting gudgeon at a horse fair. Juliana’s esteem for Lord Wimberleigh, never particularly high, slipped another notch.
“Marry, I forgot my manners,” he went on in that blithe, sarcastic way of his. “Algernon, this lady calls herself Juliana Romanov. Juliana, this is Algernon Basset, earl of Havelock.”
The jaunty young man flashed her a smile. He removed his cap, the long feather fluttering as he held it against his chest. “Charmed, Lady Error,” he said with a merry laugh.
Juliana felt a small spark of recognition. Havelock was a man of humor, breeding and manners. He would not have been out of place in her father’s elite circle of friends. Havelock was very unlike Stephen de Lacey, the brooding man who had, on a cavalier impulse that he clearly regretted, married her.
She gave the earl a cautious smile. “Enchantée, my lord.”
Algernon’s pale eyebrows lifted. Juliana was not certain what surprised him—her accent, her voice…or her smile. “And what brings you to our district?”
Juliana sent him the sly trickster’s grin she had learned from Rodion’s younger sister, Catriona. “Marriage, my lord.”
“Ah. You look to wed a sheepman, perhaps, or one of the dyers from the village?”
Though Juliana would have enjoyed cozening him awhile, Wimberleigh gave an impatient grunt. “She’s married to me, Algernon, and the tale is long in the telling, so I—”
“To you?” Algernon’s eyes bugged out. Juliana imagined she heard a clanking sound as his jaw dropped. “To you?”
“By order of the king,” Stephen explained, his voice tight, as if each word were wrung from him. “And Algernon, I’d appreciate it most highly if you could silence yourself—”
“Silence myself? Not for a third ball, Wimberleigh,” Havelock said, grinning broadly and resting a hand on his codpiece. “A Tower warden couldn’t muzzle me.” With a guffaw of sheer delight, he jammed on his hat, spurred his mount, and galloped back the way he had come.
Wimberleigh squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. He uttered a strange word that probably referred to some disgusting body function.
During the remainder of the journey, Juliana fought to remain calm and rational. She was a nobleman’s wife. His charming disposition notwithstanding, she might turn her new status to advantage. Her role as a baroness might help her bring her family’s murderers to justice.
Regrets rattled in a small, hollowed-out place inside her. She was to have married Alexei Shuisky. Her memories of the young boyar had been gilded by yearning dreams, and in her mind he had grown more handsome and engaging with the passage of time. How happy they would have been, living at one of the splendid Shuisky estates, raising their children amid beauty and splendor.
Juliana scowled at Stephen de Lacey, who sat his horse like a commoner, his broad shoulders clad in the simplest of garments, his golden hair overlong and in need of trimming. He had ruined any chance she might have had at a future in Novgorod.
Unless…Insidious as the wind through the hood of a caravan, an idea took hold. The king of England himself had claimed the power to end a marriage. It had been all the talk when Juliana first arrived in England. King Henry had put his Spanish wife on the shelf in order to wed a dark-eyed court lady. Even the gypsies had been impressed by his boldness.
They had been even more impressed by the eventual fate of Anne Boleyn: death at the block.
As a tall, turreted gatehouse hove into view, Juliana shuddered. Englishmen who did not want to keep their wives were very dangerous indeed.
An unearthly screech sent Stephen pounding up the stairs to the second story of the manor house. He hurried along the half-open passageway that ran from gable end to gable end, ducking low beneath slanting timbers.
What the devil could be amiss? They had arrived only minutes earlier. Yet the terror in the woman’s voice indicated nothing short of murder.
He passed the gilt-framed portraits of his grandsires, his father, his mother, himself. From long habit he averted his eyes from the last painting. The portrait of Meg. Even though he did not let himself look, it touched him—a quick, searing arrow wound to the gut—then he hurried on to the chambers of his gypsy bride.
Though somewhat small of stature, she had a rather robust set of lungs. Her cries were long and harsh, probably loud enough to carry to the village beyond the river that bordered the estate.
Stephen stopped in the doorway and surveyed the scene.
Juliana stood backed up against a gargoyle-infested cupboard. The carved, leering faces with their wooden eyes and lolling tongues surrounded her dirt-smudged face as if they recognized her as one of their own.
Nance Harbutt advanced like a besieging force on the gypsy. Nance had been part of Lynacre for as long as Stephen could remember, as ever present and unchanging as the gargoyle cupboard. The goodwife wore a starched wimple tied with a strip of cloth knotted beneath her well-fleshed chin.
“Stay away from me, you old gallows crow,” Juliana yelled.
Nance gestured at Juliana’s tattered skirt and blouse. “I know you felt pressured to wed, my lord, but where in God’s name did you find this slattern cat?”
“Long story,” Stephen said, perfunctorily searching Juliana for signs of physical abuse. Old Nance had never been averse to applying the switch or the rod where she deemed it necessary. “What’s the trouble?”
Juliana tried not to wince as a knob from the cupboard pressed into her back. What manner of man was Stephen de Lacey that he would come barging, all unbidden, into a lady’s chamber?
“She’s trying to make me sit in that—that—” Feigning horror, Juliana waved her hand at the trunklike bathing tub on the hearth. “That cesspool!”
“’Tis a fine, hot bath and you’re in sore need of it,” Old Nance snapped, scrunching her doughy face into an expression of disgust. “Jesu, you reek like a jakes-farmer.”
Juliana recoiled from the tub, when in sooth, she yearned to plunge into the steaming water. It was a singular arrangement with an open conduit that could be connected with a cauldron over the hearth fire for a steady supply of hot water. Steam rose from the tub. Bits of harsh-smelling herbs floated upon the faintly oily surface.
For Juliana, dirt and grime had been a shield from lusty men for five years. With the exception of Rodion, she had managed to keep all interested males at bay, and she meant to continue with the disguise.
“That is what all the yelling is about?” Stephen said with a short laugh. “A bath? I view it as an occasional necessity, not a cause for panic.”
Juliana shuddered. “I have seen people catch fever and die from sitting in stagnant water.”
“You never bathe at all?” Stephen asked calmly.
Juliana sniffed, folding her arms protectively. “I bathe once a twelvemonth in running water. Not—” she pointed a grimy finger at the tub “—in a stagnant vat that reeks of poison simples.”
“Poison simples!” barked Nance, all a-quiver. “Those are my own good herbs. I’m no necromancer, not like that Jenny Fallow, who done in her husband with mandrake. Told him it’d prolong the sex act, see, and—”
“Nance,” Stephen said, and Juliana suspected the woman had a penchant for meandering bits of gossip.
“And she said it did for a time, but—”
“Nance, please.” Stephen’s tone was edged with impatience.
“Ah, I do go on, don’t I, my lord?” She glared at Juliana. “God blind my eyes, she’s a pert one.” Scowling, she planted her fists on her hips and leaned menacingly toward Juliana. “If you want running water, go bathe in the millstream.”
“Never!” snapped Juliana. “I take orders from no one.” For good measure, she kicked out with a grimy bare foot, knocking over the ewer beside the tub. Several gallons of water spread over the rush-strewn floor. Not yet satisfied, she ducked past Nance, grasped the edge of the tub, and upended it.
As Nance yelled to the Catholic saints and reeled back against the wall, a tide of scented water flooded the room.
A blur of motion streaked toward Juliana. Stephen cursed—another disgusting body-part word—and she felt herself being lifted and slung with dizzying speed over his shoulder.
She screeched, but it did no good. She pounded on his broad back and earned a slap on the rear for her troubles.
Pushing past Nance, Stephen grabbed a stack of linen toweling, a cake of lye soap and a vial of dark liquid and marched toward the door.
Her great bosom bobbling, Nance ran after them. “My lord, have a care—”
“I’ll be all right,” Stephen said. “She doesn’t bite.” As he hastened from the room, he added, “Actually, she probably does, but I haven’t caught her at it yet.”
When they emerged from the manor house, Pavlo launched into a barking frenzy. Slung upside down over Stephen’s shoulder, Juliana called a command to the borzoya, but saw that he had been tethered to a hitch rail.
She felt the ground slope as Stephen stalked on, muttering under his breath, toward their destination—a swift-running river.
“You would not dare,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Your charms give me courage, darling,” he said. Handling her like a sack of cats he wished to drown, he threw her into the stream.
A mouthful of water silenced Juliana’s screams. The cold shocked her, but not nearly so much as the cruelty of the man she had married. She planted her feet on the pebbly bottom and surfaced, her hand on her dagger, ready to do battle.
He gave her no chance. He had waded out, fully clothed, and he, too, was armed—with a block of soap.
Juliana howled like Pavlo when he was confined to a cage. She bruised her hands and feet against her husband’s hard body, all to no avail. Stephen de Lacey was relentless. He drenched her hair in a witch’s brew of noxious herbs, then scrubbed every thrashing, squirming inch of her, and dunked her as if she were an armful of soapy bed linens.
When he finished, he did not even look at her, but turned and sloshed his way to the riverbank. “The towels are there,” he said, indicating them with a jerk of his head. “And supper is at the toll of six. We’re having company.”
“I hope I gave you lice,” she yelled after him.
Old Nance tucked a finger up under her hat and gave her head an idle scratch. Then she sighed heavily, the sound of a woman who was absolutely convinced of her own saintliness.
“I’ve set the lady’s chamber to rights, my lord.” She waved her chubby arm, showing off the fresh rushes. “It were no small task, I might add.”
Stephen offered her a straight-backed chair, and with a self-important rustling of fustian skirts, she lowered herself to the seat. He had hastily donned dry clothing and combed his damp hair.
“Well,” she said, her manner brisk. “I’ll not devil you with questions, my lord. We’ll leave the gossips to mull over how it is that the baron of Wimberleigh came to wed a wild gypsy.”
“Thank you.” Stephen pulled up a chair of his own, straddling it and folding his arms over the back. He was grateful she did not demand an explanation. Yet at the same time, he realized she alone would have understood, for she alone knew the nature of the blade King Henry held poised over Stephen’s neck.
“Aye, ’tis not my place to ponder the whys and wherefores of your new wedded state. Lord above knows, my poor old mind is too feeble to grasp how you got in such a fix.” She clasped her work-reddened hands. “Now that you’ve seen to the bathing, my lord, the gypsy needs a set of clothes. As to her savage ways, we’ll see about them later.”
“Is she truly strange, Nance?” Stephen asked, trying hard not to relive the tempest in the millstream. “Sometimes I glimpse something in her manner, hear a note in her speech, and I wonder.”
“She’s a gypsy, my lord, and everyone knows gypsies are great imitators.” The goodwife sniffed and poked her broad red nose into the air. “Much like a monkey I once saw. ’Twas a mariner at Bristol, see, and he…”
His attention fading, Stephen nodded vaguely and planted his chin in his hand. It struck him that he had not entered this room in eight years. The chamber, with its adjoining music suite and solar, wardrobes and close-rooms, had been Meg’s domain.
Though hastily aired and dusted for the new baroness, the room still bore Meg’s indelible imprint—the fussy scalloped bed draperies of fading pink damask, the blank-eyed poppet propped on the window seat, the mirrored candle holder Stephen himself had designed. And on a slim-legged table lay a bone hairbrush, its back etched with a scene of the Virgin guarded by a unicorn.
Fearful of the emotion building inside him, he scowled at the floor. And spied, half-hidden by the fringe of the counterpane, a bright bit of string. Distracted by the out-of-place object, he stood and crossed the room to pick it up. “What is this?”
Nance caught her breath. “Milady was playing at Jacob’s ladder the very night—”
Stephen turned toward Nance. His icy glare stopped her cold.
Nance’s hand fluttered at her bosom. “Ah, the sweet-ling. Ever the child, she was.”
The memory stung like salt on the wound of Stephen’s guilt. He thought of his vagabond bride invading this room, sleeping in Meg’s bed, handling Meg’s things.
Like a weed, Juliana would blight the perfectly ordered chamber.
I’m sorry, Meg. Sorry for everything. The regrets poured like quicklime through him.
“…burn the clothes, of course,” Old Nance was saying, having slipped back into her matter-of-fact manner.
Stephen shook his head, drawing his mind from painful remembrances. He stalked back and forth in front of the windows. “What’s that you say?”
“The gypsy, my lord. Her clothes are no doubt infested with vermin. ’Tis best they are burnt.”
“Aye, but then she’ll have nothing to—oh.” Stephen pressed his fist on the window embrasure. “She is of a size with Meg.”
“Not quite so plump as your first wife, my lord, but I could take a tuck or two in some of the gowns. Er, that is, if you don’t mind—”
“I don’t.” He slammed the door on his memories.
“And about a lady’s maid, my lord—”
“She doesn’t need a maid, but a warden.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Nance said. “While you was occupied with your wife, I sent to the village for Jillie Egan, the dyer’s daughter.”
“Jillie Egan?” Stephen aimed a mocking scowl at Nance. “Oh, you are naughty, dear lady. The Egan girl’s the size of a bullock, and has a stubborn will to match.”
Nance winked broadly. “She’ll not tolerate any stomaching from the gypsy.”
Stephen strode to the door. “Do as you see fit. I’ve a pressing engagement elsewhere.”
Nance Harbutt nodded in complete understanding. “My lord, what will you tell your new wife about—”
“Nothing at all,” he cut in, his voice as sharp as a knife. “Not a blessed, solitary thing.”
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