Amanda Scott (16 page)

“Do they, madam? Then I shall certainly take care,” Adela said.

A moment later, she was making her deepest curtsy to the King, although he seemed to take little notice. He merely blinked his reddened eyes briefly in her direction before turning away again.

“Our beloved King does not see well, I fear,” a familiar voice said from behind. Turning her head as she rose from her curtsy, she saw that Chevalier de Gredin had joined them.

He flashed his charming smile, looking deep into her eyes. “Good evening.”

Observing him with a renewed flicker of doubt, she wondered why he had ignored his own advice to keep distance between them. But as the thought crossed her mind, something about it struck her as wrong. She did not try to analyze the feeling, but she did not reject it. She said only, “Your accent has diminished.”

“
Oui, madame
,” he said. “You declared that my Frenchiness displeased you, and I mean to show you how amiable I am. I’m glad you came tonight. I feared you would not recover from the fatigue of your journey before tomorrow.”

“Roslin is only seven miles away, sir,” she said. “Moreover, the countess wanted to speak to Donald of the Isles before he departs for home.”

“You are looking remarkably beautiful tonight,” he said. “That gown is enchanting. Will you stroll with me, or do you desire to eat something first? The food is excellent here.”

“We’ll take supper first,” Lady Clendenen said, cutting off the flow. “But you may join us at table, Etienne. Thank you for removing your belongings from Clendenen House as I asked. I’m sorry to have put you out, but it would have been most unsuitable for you to remain. Doubtless you have found acceptable quarters.”

“
Bien sûr
,” he said. “A friend managed to acquire a small apartment here in the Castle for me. I shall be nearly as comfortable as I was with you.”

“Excellent, but I must warn you yet again not to be too particular in your attentions to Lady Ardelve. Few will condemn her for staying here in town with me or appearing at court, but she must still be careful about her behavior.”

Having watched a woman plop herself in a man’s lap, fling her arms around his neck, and kiss him soundly without anyone looking the least shocked, Adela wondered what her ladyship thought she might do to upset anyone accustomed to such a place. She hoped her companions would not want to stay long and that if they ever took advantage of Henry’s invitation to use his apartments, it would not mean having to stay overnight in the Castle.

Her discomfort increased when they sat down to supper. The entertainment had grown wilder and noisier. Even the servants seemed to have taken too much to drink. But her companions were oblivious, or had become inured to such activities.

Lady Clendenen had placed de Gredin on her left with Adela on her right, so Adela did not have to contend with the chevalier’s fulsome compliments. She liked him well enough but wished he were less effusive in so public a place.

Henry had disappeared into the crowd.

Isabella’s calm dignity offered a measure of reassurance, but whenever anyone passed too near, Adela jumped like a nervous tabby. She nibbled bread and a slice of apple but felt no enthusiasm for the rest of her food.

When de Gredin offered again to escort her around the chamber, she glanced at Lady Clendenen, who said, “We would both enjoy a stroll, Etienne, thank you.”

If he was disappointed that she meant to accompany them, he was too much of a gentleman, or too intelligent, to say so.

Isabella was chatting with the woman on her other side but paused long enough to tell them to go without her. So Adela arose with her ladyship.

When de Gredin laughingly offered an arm to each, her ladyship immediately accepted the one offered to her. When Adela shook her head, the chevalier smiled his understanding, saying lightly, “I had forgotten you come from the Highlands, my lady. ’Tis generally much quieter there,
n’est ce pas
?”

“Aye, sir, it—” She broke off, starting violently again when the lord chamberlain’s trumpeter blared another fanfare.

“Your grace,” the chamberlain bellowed, “I beg leave to present Sir Robert Logan, third Baron Lestalric, who comes tonight to swear fealty to your grace.”

The last portion of his announcement sounded unnaturally loud, because the chamber had fallen abruptly and astonishingly silent.

Looking to see what had caused such a phenomenon, Adela beheld a ruggedly handsome, broad-shouldered man with a tapered waist and powerful-looking, well-shaped legs. He was dressed in the height of fashion in a tight fitting, scarlet-velvet doublet, cross-laced with gold cording down the front. Its short “skirt” barely covered his hips. He wore a matching scarlet, white-plumed cap and parti-colored, red-and-black silk leather-soled hose with pointed toes.

The lace-edged sleeves of his doublet sported ornamental gold buttons from elbow to wrist where each fanned out to his knuckles. Around his hips, he wore a jeweled knightly girdle of gleaming gold links and an ornamental sword. His deeply dagged lavender silk mantle, buttoned to the right shoulder and thrown back, hung in graceful, fluttering folds down his back to his heels. It billowed as he strode forward. He swept his hat from his head as he knelt before the King of Scots.

“Sacrebleu! C’est paré des plumes du paon!”

Adela, hearing the muttered epithet, looked at de Gredin. His eyes had narrowed, and his jaw tightened until a muscle twitched low on his cheek.

“Is aught amiss?” she asked him. “I do not know that phrase.”

“I said he’s a damned peacock, that’s all,” de Gredin said. “The fellow makes a mockery of court fashion.”

“Doesn’t everyone dress finely?”

“Not like that.”

To be sure, the gentleman’s appearance represented the height of masculine fashion. She decided de Gredin was right. The effect was a bit overwhelming.

The newcomer straightened, looking directly at the King as he said in a flat but carrying voice, touched with a most unusual accent, “I regret that I have no handful of Lestalric dirt to cast at your feet, sire, but the House of Lestalric swears fealty to your grace and to the House of Stewart, now and forevermore.”

The voice sounded familiar, but before Adela could identify it, the sight of the King of Scots emerging from his lethargy and leaning forward to peer at Sir Robert through narrowed, bloodshot eyes diverted her.

“Robbie, lad, is it truly yourself?” the King asked, his voice gravelly and uncertain. “We thought ye’d died years ago, lad.”

“I trust you are not disappointed to see me still alive and hale, your grace. I vow I am not eager to plow myself six feet under yet, even to gratify you.”

The King chuckled along with many others in the chamber. Then he beckoned the baron closer, apparently desiring to converse privately with him.

“Do you know him, Isabella?” Lady Clendenen asked as the countess joined them under cover of the increasing din of renewed, buzzing conversation. “He must be a kinsman of mine. Indeed, if he is who he says he is, he must be Lestalric’s younger son, but I doubt I’ve ever laid eyes on him before. Have you, Etienne?”

“
Non
,” de Gredin said. Then, apparently realizing she had expected more, he smiled ruefully and said, “I beg your pardon, cousin. I am a villain to be so curt to you, who have been so kind to me.”

“Oh, aye, but we are all agog at this, after all.”

“I do know Sir Robert,” Isabella said. “That is to say, I remember him well. He took his training at Dunclathy in Strathearn, you see, with Sir Edward.”

Adela looked at her. “Sir Edward Robison? Hugo’s father?”

Isabella nodded, her gaze scanning the royal dais. They came to rest several seats from his grace on a man who rose abruptly.

He was tall and thin, and wore black velvet trimmed with gold lace. The only other colors on his person gleamed from the jeweled belt he wore low on his hips. His hair was nearly as dark as the velvet, his face long and lean, his features harsh, and the fingers of the hand he raised for silence were unusually long and slender.

“That is the Earl of Fife,” Lady Clendenen said for Adela’s sake. “He’s the King’s second son and, some say, the real power behind the throne. They say he has had his eye on the crown of Scotland since he first learned of its existence. He has declared that all noble estates without obvious heirs should revert to the Crown.”

“Forgive me, your grace,” the Fife said smoothly, “but have we proof that this fellow is who he says he is? ’Tis not yet a fortnight since the second baron and his son died. Whence comes this dazzling fellow to present himself so quickly?”

“I will speak for Lestalric, your grace,” Henry said, striding forward.

“Nae need, Henry,” the King said. “Even I can see that he’s the spit o’ his late grandsire, the first baron, named so by the Bruce himself.”

“Come, walk with me, Lady Adela,” de Gredin said. “This mummery can hold little interest for you.”

But Adela watched Sir Robert and the King. Their voices had hushed, but whatever Sir Robert said to the King must have amused him, for his grace laughed aloud. Henry had joined them, and his eyes were alight with laughter, too.

However, when de Gredin repeated his invitation to stroll, she collected herself and accepted politely, assuming Lady Clendenen would go with them. But her ladyship had either forgotten her intent or had decided Adela needed no protection from de Gredin, for she did not take her eyes from the high table.

Adela and the chevalier completed only one turn of the chamber, however, before Henry approached with the baron beside him and said, “Lady Ardelve, permit me to present my good friend Sir Robert of Lestalric.”

Adela curtsied. “’Tis an honor, my lord.”

“The honor is mine, Lady Ardelve,” the baron said, sweeping off his plumed hat again and bowing as deeply as he had to the King.

Adela stiffened. Although he had spoken only six words in the flat, oddly accented tones he had employed before, any faint, lingering notion that de Gredin was the man she had met on the ramparts vanished. Her palms itched, her temper rose, and for the first time since her rescue, she felt truly deep emotion. Only her training and long-held fear of making a public spectacle of herself kept her from smacking the finely clad baron or snatching him baldheaded.

She was aware that Henry was watching her. She noted, too, the warily speculative glint in the baron’s hazel eyes, turned almost golden in the reflected light of the myriad candles, cressets, and torches in the hall. His lashes were as long, thick, and dark as women so often wished theirs could be.

“De Gredin, I’d like a word with you, sir,” Henry said. “My mother tells me you returned recently from France and are acquainted with the Duke of Anjou. I’ve a notion to visit there again this year, and I wondered if you might advise me.”

De Gredin clearly wanted to linger, but he was no match for Henry’s cheerful determination. Isabella had drawn Lady Clendenen aside, as well, Adela noted, although Henry had not yet formally presented the baron to either of them.

Thus, she was as alone with the baron as two people could be in the midst of a crowd when that familiar voice, its odd accent and flatness gone, murmured, “Will you walk with me, lass, or are you determined to murder me?”

“I’d prefer to murder you.”

“That’s what I feared.”

“What is this deceitful game you are playing with me, sir?”

“Peace, my lady,” he murmured. “We’ve a fascinated audience, who must all be wondering why you are flashing such fire at me. But if you will condescend to walk with me, one circuit of the room at least, mayhap when the noise increases, as I’m sure it soon will, we may speak more freely.”

Realizing that nearly everyone in the room was watching them, Adela nodded with as much grace as she could muster and placed her hand on his outstretched forearm, noting as she did that although he wore a fine pearl pin on his hat and other jewels about his person, he wore only one rather plain ring on his left hand.

She said nothing to him until, as he had predicted, the noise level returned to its previous din. Then she muttered, “Someone is bound to ask why I looked at you so, although I swear I could not help myself. Whatever am I to say?”

He said ruefully, “I’d hoped my disguise, and my accent—”

“’Tis an absurd accent,” she said. “What sort was it meant to be?”

“Orkney,” he said. “Orknian? Sakes, I don’t even know what such folk call themselves when they’re from home. I’ve only heard their accent once, you see, when I … when I chanced to visit the Isle of Orkney last summer.”

“For Prince Henry’s installation?”

“Aye, that’s it.”

“I was there, too,” she said.

“I ken that fine,” he told her. “Twas the first time ever I saw you. I thought then that you were the most—”

“Don’t, please,” she interjected. “I am not accustomed to compliments from you, sir. Indeed, I am not accustomed to hearing them from anyone. Moreover, Chevalier de Gredin has already paid me more than my share tonight.”

“We can discuss whether you deserve them another time,” he said equably. “At the moment, I should like to know why you encourage that appalling fellow.”

“I don’t encourage him,” she said, looking up at him.

He was gazing straight ahead, his lips thinned to a straight line. His profile was admirable and stirred another, different tickle of familiarity. But the fleeting sensation vanished before she could identify its cause.

He looked about to speak to her, but before he could, she said severely, “You must have guessed that I thought he was you. Faith, sir, I told you as much!”

“I’ll forgive you almost anything, my lady, and I richly deserve your censure for deceiving you as I did. But learning that you had mistaken that rogue for the man you had met in the darkness … Well, it was a hard blow, I can tell you.”

“Do you expect me to apologize?”

“Certainly not. Every fault is mine, whilst you remain the perfect woman.”

Adela repressed an unexpected bubble of laughter. It would never do to forgive such deceit easily, no matter how she felt. Still, her mood had lightened, and the strain caused by the uproarious crowd had vanished. She said, “Have you known so many women that you can judge perfection, sir?”