A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court) (15 page)

Dormbois was shaking his head. “I’d help and gladly if I could, but no, I didnae see him, though maybe I would have, if I’d been in the city at the time.”

“You were with the court in Fife?” I asked.

“Och, no,” said Dormbois, to my surprise. “I’m in command of Rene of Elboeuf’s retainers but I’m not always with the court. I’m often at my home. I’ve good captains under me. I descend on them now and then and put the fear of God into them, but for the most part my life’s my own. I’m no’ dependent on my pay, anyhow.”

He grinned in a disconcerting fashion. He had thick black eyebrows and eyes that were not merely hazel-green like my own but a cold, clear green. When he was
amused, they glinted like ice water in sunlight, and he had the kind of grin that slides right up the sides of the face and presents you with a view of its owner’s molars. His teeth were in superb condition. He was extremely attractive and somehow, alarming as well. He also gave me an odd feeling that I had seen him somewhere before, though I couldn’t think when or where.

He sobered. “My home’s outside of Edinburgh, between here and Stirling, and as it chances, I had something to call me back there not long since. My land agent, Jamie Fraser, had a brother to visit him. I wanted a look at the brother. Jamie’s been lame since he fell into a gully while he was stalking deer and broke his leg. I wondered if the brother would make a replacement, if I could get him away from his present folk. But no, Hamish Fraser is just an indoor steward and has no wish to change. Och well. Jamie has good men under him and he knows his business. He can still ride a horse. I’ll make do with him for a while yet.”

“Hamish?” I said. “That reminds me of something—he wouldn’t be steward to a family called Thursby, at St. Margaret’s, just south of the Scots border?”

“Aye, that’d be him. You know the Thursbys?”

“I stayed with them on the way north,” I said. “You know them also?”

“Och, all the families of any standing know each other, here and in Northumberland. That’s the way it is up here in the north. I warn you, if you go to any banquet or gathering here, be careful what you say. Ask who a pretty girl is, and you’ll likely find the person you’re talking to comes from a family that’s got a feud with the lass’s father. And beware of sharp answers, even to a fellow
who’s been impertinent, in case you find that on the other side of you, you’ve got his brother-in-law or his second cousin twice removed. Till you know who’s married to who, and who’s feuding with who, better keep a still tongue.”

“Can I talk about the weather?”

Dormbois laughed, giving me another magnificent view of his teeth. “Aye. Yes, that’s safe enough.”

I said suddenly: “I would like to know a great deal more about Adam Ericks but I don’t know how best to find out. Can you advise me?”

“Ah.” The glinting eyes fastened on me with a keen interest. “I guessed right, then.”

I was nonplussed. “You guessed . . . ?”

“It’s not just a tale of your cousin’s last days that you’re after, is it? Not just a matter of a few word pictures of him to put into his wife’s mind to comfort her. You want to know who killed him. You’ve a feud with his murderer and you’re out to hunt him down. Mostly men’s work, that would be, but you wouldn’t be the first woman to set out on such a quest for want of a man to do it for you. Am I right?”

More disconcerted than ever, I answered him truthfully. “Yes.”

“Well, and why not? You’d make a good Scotswoman, my lass. You think the way any of us would. I know nothing of Ericks, but I can find out more for you, I daresay. If you think it’ll help.”

“I can’t tell, not until the knowledge is in my hands.”

“I’ll try,” said Dormbois briskly. “I’ll see what I can learn this very day. There’s a hawking party tomorrow
morning. Queen Mary’s fond of falconry. I’m invited and free to bring a guest. You’ll join it and ride with me? While we ride, I can tell you what I’ve learned.”

“Well . . .” The thought of a morning’s sport appealed to me, but I wasn’t altogether sure I wished to be Dormbois’s guest. “Would I need Queen Mary’s permission? After all, if she is to be present . . .”

“She’ll not object. Darnley said she had taken to you. And I take leave to say, Madame de la Roche, so have I.”

I blinked. The gaze that Sir Brian Dormbois had now fixed on me had become bold and searching, as though he were wondering what I looked like beneath my cloak and my black velvet.

I took an involuntary step backward. I had been right to find this man alarming. This sounded ominously like a complication, of a sort that I decidedly didn’t want.

“There will be no objection either, I trust,” I said modestly, “if I come attended? It is my custom to have my groom always nearby when I ride out.”

The ice-water eyes glinted again. “Pretty ways, very becoming! But I shoot straight for my target, lassie; I don’t believe in havering and nor do you, I fancy. If you did, you’d not be setting out to hunt a murderer. I like you fine already and I’ll know you better before long or my name’s not Dormbois. What’s a groom? We can always lose him!”

For purposes of unraveling the mystery of Edward’s death or the fate of his list, the hawking party was useless. It wasn’t even enjoyable just as an outing, not as far as I was concerned, anyway.

With Dale and Brockley, I had moved into Holyrood the previous evening. Queen Mary herself had come to see if I was comfortable and reiterated that I must stay for Mary Livingstone’s wedding, which was to take place a week later. “And I hope you will stay longer. Be with us for two weeks, at least. It is such a pleasure to welcome congenial guests,” said Mary engagingly.

Our new quarters were certainly an improvement on the lodgings down in the town. We had three rooms, not overlarge but very comfortable, and Brockley approved the stabling for our horses. He had our mounts saddled and ready in good time for the hawking party.

When, attended by Brockley, I joined it in the courtyard, Queen Mary was already there, dashingly attired like a man in breeches, doublet, and a hat with a feather in it a good twelve inches long (the effect, oddly enough, was not masculine but enchantingly female). With her were Mary Seton, the earls of Moray and Bothwell, Henry Darnley, and half a dozen lesser gentry. Dormbois came out of the palace last, accompanied by a short, red-faced priest, with whom he seemed to be arguing. Catching sight of me, he raised a hand in recognition and turned to the priest and visibly snapped at him, at which the man’s face turned a deeper shade of red and he retreated—or rather, scuttled—back indoors.

“That was my secretary, Father Bell,” Dormbois said, coming up to me. “He ministers to all the Catholic souls at my home but comes with me when I travel, since I’m no great hand at the reading and writing. He is forever forgetting his place and reminding me that I should arrange this or write a letter about that. Are we no’ ready to go?” he added restively, putting a foot in his stirrup and swinging himself astride. “Ah. Here is my falconer.” He smoothed the leather glove on his right hand and leaned down to take his bird, a beautiful female peregrine, onto it. “Let us hope for good sport.”

Brockley helped me into the saddle, and then mounted his own horse and positioned himself behind me as we moved off. I had neither hawk nor falcon, but I was ready to take pleasure in this outing across the heathery hills outside the city. The skies were gray but the cloud was high, and beneath it the weather was dry
and there was a silvery winter light in which one could see for miles.

Except that from the very beginning, Sir Brian Dormbois rode close beside me, and the first thing he said to me was: “I am sorry, lassie, but the time has been too short and I havenae discovered anything aboot Adam Ericks. I’m for my home tomorrow, but I’ll be back two days before Mistress Livingstone’s wedding, and maybe then I can do some prying for you. We shall meet at the festivities.”

“Thank you,” I said, and wished that he were not riding so very close that his right knee was almost brushing my left one. I was glad that Brockley was at hand.

“You should ride astride for this kind of sport,” Dormbois remarked. “As Queen Mary does.”

“I’m used to the sidesaddle.”

“You ride verra well,” he conceded.

“Thank you,” I said, wondering doubtfully just what form Dormbois’s prying, as he called it, was likely to take. Looking at the thick, dark eyebrows and the glinting eyes and teeth, I thought that if ever there was a man who was not of a tactful or dissembling nature, Dormbois was that man. Changing the subject, I said civilly: “You say you have to go home for a few days. You have a family there? You have a wife?”

“Two,” said Dormbois with a sigh, and I turned to stare at him, before recovering myself and saying in tones of scientific inquiry: “You follow the Muhammedan faith, then?”

“No,” said Dormbois, acknowledging the hit with another ice-water glint. “They’re in the churchyard,
poor souls, and I didnae have them both at the same time. There was Jeannie, when I was no more than a lad, and a richt sweet wee thing she was. But she was young—too young, verra like, and she died in childbed and the baby with her. Then I went to France, to visit kinsmen there and to serve Queen Mary—Queen of France as she was then. My father was French, a younger son of a good family. He liked to travel, came to Scotland, and fell for my mother, who was her father’s only child, and heiress to our keep and our land. He wed her and stayed. I look all Scots, like her, but I wished to see France and my father—he died only last year—arranged it for me. It was there I met my lord Rene of Elboeuf and entered his employ. It was also there that I met my second wife, Marguerite.”

“That’s a pretty name,” I said.

“She was a pretty lass. But when we all came back to Scotland with Queen Mary, well, the climate of Scotland is raw and harsh compared to France and it didnae agree with her.”

“Queen Mary spoke yesterday of a guest who had fallen sick at Holyrood,” I said. “She put it down to the northern winter.”

“Verra likely! Scotland is fine for those that are bred there. My mother loved it; it was some malady from badly cured meat that was her death, not the climate. But poor Marguerite never even survived one winter. Also, my home of Roderix Fort is a rough place compared to the châteaux of France. I brought her here in August but she shivered even then, and she pined in Roderix as though it were a prison. She fell ill as soon as
the cold set in, and I spent that Christmas in mourning. I believe that ye’ve also been wed twice, Madame de la Roche? Edward did not speak of you to me, but it is known here at court that Matthew de la Roche wed a young widow.”

I found myself obliged to tell him something of my history, of my runaway marriage with Gerald Blanchard, of the birth of our daughter Meg and Gerald’s death in Antwerp from smallpox, and of my second marriage, only a few months later, to Matthew de la Roche, who was then a visitor at Elizabeth’s court.

As I talked about Matthew, however, I grew extremely uncomfortable. The main reason was the simple fact that Dormbois and I were on a hawking party. For it was on a hawking expedition, though admittedly on a hot day in Richmond Park rather than a cold one in Scotland, that I had first met Matthew. Like Dormbois, he was half French, and he had talked to me and asked me about myself just as Dormbois was doing now. At that time, I had been still grieving for Gerald, who was only a few months buried; now, in the same way, I was suffering from the loss of Matthew, also only a few months dead.

This ride with Dormbois was too much like an echo of that long-ago ride with Matthew. I had known very quickly that Matthew was interested in me and now I was sure I could see the same signs in Dormbois. When a man like Dormbois canters at a woman’s side with his eyes fixed on her, talking to her continually, and listening attentively to every word she says, it only means one thing.

When Matthew began to court me, though, I knew
from the first that I was drawn to him, and I was not drawn to Dormbois in the same way. With Matthew, thinking that it was too soon, I had tried to resist a temptation. Dormbois was different. He too was attractive in his way, but I did not find him a temptation, but somehow or other, a threat.

I was glad when a shout from Bothwell told us that the business of flying hawks at game had started. The party scattered over the hillside. Dormbois unhooded his falcon, which roused her feathers and showed immediate interest in the world. Then he threw her up and she soared away, to hover and glide above us, awaiting a glimpse of prey, and we broke off our conversation in order to attend to her.

Over the next half hour, our hawks brought down a few small birds and rabbits, and I got away from Dormbois, to exchange brief, laughing remarks with Mary Seton and Darnley. But then there was another hiatus and once more, there was Dormbois at my side, expressing triumph because his peregrine had caught a brace of rabbits, and asking me to tell him about my daughter and my home in the south.

I found his intent gaze worrisome and looked ahead between my horse’s ears while, politely, I talked about Meg and described Withysham. Withysham interested him.

“It must be verra different from Roderix. Now, Roderix is a plain Scottish fortress, somewhat in need of civilizing—aye, I’ll admit that, much as I love the place—but my lands are wide and the soil is good, too. I care for my lands and let nothing go to waste.”

He paused so that I instinctively looked at him.
Once again, I encountered that bold and searching gaze that had made me uneasy in the garden at Holyrood. To my annoyance, I felt myself redden, and the maddening Dormbois promptly gave me the full benefit of that glittering grin. “I don’t like to see a woman like you go to waste, either, lassie,” he observed.

I didn’t answer, mainly because I couldn’t think of an answer. The grin intensified. “There’s one thing that both Jeannie and Marguerite would have said of me,” he declared. “I’m a damned good lover.”

• • •

I could hardly believe my ears. The man was impossible. Another shout, from Moray this time, gave me an excuse to spur my horse and gallop away from Dormbois, and a furious signal with my arm brought Brockley up beside me in his stead.