At The King's Command (11 page)

With a huff of outrage, Juliana rapped out something in her foreign tongue. The huge dog laid his ears back and slunk off the bed, flopping down in the rushes.

For the third time since they had left the gypsy camp, Stephen felt like smiling. It must be something in the wine.

“For such a well-trained dog,” she said, glaring in mock anger, “he has terrible manners.”

Pavlo sighed, rested his long muzzle between his front paws, and closed his eyes.

“Well.” Juliana turned to Stephen. Her hands clasped and unclasped in front of her as if she were uncertain. Or nervous. “Well.”

He set the candle on the carved trunk at the foot of the bed. Perhaps it was the quality of the light or the linger
ing effects of the wine, but in that moment Juliana had never looked more enchanting to him. The veil was gone and her long hair draped like a brilliant mantle, dark as mystery, agleam with amber lights. Rose hues plumed in her cheeks. She looked pagan and ripe with a forbidden allure. Her eyes shone like jewels, only brighter, deeper, and yet he could not read her expression. What did he want, what did she expect from him?

She claimed to want the annulment, too. But he was cynical enough to know she would have changed her mind on seeing his rich estate.

The necklace of coins winked as she drew a small breath. Stephen glanced down and saw that her hands were curled into fists at her sides. The knuckles shone white.

The sight of those little hands, so honestly expressing her trepidation, caused his skepticism to heat and uncoil. He caught her in his arms, and this time there was no audience of gypsies expecting a performance. Now there was only Juliana, and he was only a man who had gone too long without her touch.

While his thumbs caressed the downy tendrils of hair at her temples, he regarded her wide, startled eyes and her soft, untried mouth. She swayed against him, her body pliant, and he remembered the way she had danced for him—her sinuous movements, the heat in her gaze—and his own yearning.

He closed his mouth over hers. She made a little gasp in the back of her throat. Then her hands smoothed up over his velvet doublet and slid around behind his neck. The force of his passion alone seemed to lift her off the floor, and her body melded and shaped itself to his, as if she were an empty vessel and he the liquid that filled it.

Even as he damned himself for a fool, Stephen laid
her on the bed and pressed himself down on her, his mouth ravenous and his mind in a whirl. With one hand he found the hem of her layered skirts, and his palm brushed the smooth column of her leg, rising over the curve of her knee and along her inner thigh, higher yet to discover with dark, hot satisfaction that she wore no smallclothes.

“Ah, Stephen, Stephen,” she whispered against his mouth, “is this what you meant by a glimpse of heaven?”

Her words made him remember. This was a chaste marriage. It had to be. Slowly, reluctantly, hating himself and trying to hate her, he dragged his lips from hers and stilled his hands. By an unfortunate play of the light he saw that her blouse had pulled taut, outlining the rounded swells of her breasts.

He swore and looked away.

“Stephen?” she whispered uncertainly into the semidarkness.

It took all the power of his will to stand. “I told you from the start that this was to be a marriage in name only. Nothing has changed that. Nothing can ever change that. Not a gypsy ceremony, not a dancing bride, not plum wine from a jug.”

He made himself look at her, into the wide, staring eyes that held a world of hurt—a hurt of his own making.

“Do you understand, Juliana?” he forced himself to ask.

“Yes, my lord,” she replied in her most studied, precise English. “I understand perfectly.”

Stephen traveled twenty miles and drank as many cups of ale in order to forget the look on Juliana’s face when he had left her.

He failed. Even as he sat in the mangiest tavern in the city of Bath, amid tricksters and cardsharps and whores,
he could not rid himself of the memory of her eyes, first heavy-lidded and smoky with passion, then tear-bright and startled when he pushed her away.

I told you from the start this was to be a marriage in name only
.

What was it like, he wondered, for her to hear such words from a man who had just brought her to the brink of passion?

He glowered at the beaten earth floor until a shadow fell over him. “I’d call for more ale,” said Jonathan Youngblood, “if I thought it would help. But I doubt that bousing a pint or two more would fix what’s amiss.”

Stephen lifted red, burning eyes to his friend. “What are you doing here? Go away.”

With a great sigh of weariness, Jonathan settled himself on the stool opposite Stephen. “I believe I’ll stay.” He held up a coin. Seeing the color of his money, the carrier hastened over with a clay mug and a promise to keep it filled.

Stephen scowled at his friend. Though he feigned nonchalance, Jonathan could not quite manage to keep the concern from his eyes. “How did you find me?” Stephen’s tongue felt thick.

“I knew you’d gone to Bath, for it’s the closest place with appropriately seamy alehouses and ivy-bushes. After that, I simply asked around. You’re not exactly a commonplace drunkard.”

“Ah. Then I’m a most singular drunkard.”

“Nor are you easily forgotten, especially on that horse.”

“You’ve found me,” Stephen grumbled. “I’m not lying bleeding or dead in the mews, so you can leave now.”

Jonathan huffed out his breath, blowing the prongs of his big mustache. “I’ve not finished my ale. And you’ve not told me what’s troubling you.”

“Shall I make you a list? It might take awhile.”

Jonathan smiled. His kindness annoyed Stephen. It was so much easier to be wroth with a bastard.

“Kit said you took part in a gypsy wedding.”

Stephen nodded glumly and glared into his ale. “Thought it would appease them, make them leave the vicinity more quickly.”

“It was you who left. Why, Stephen?”

He tipped up his mug. It hovered uncertainly; then his mouth found the rim, and he sucked it dry. “Because of
her
.”

Jonathan lifted one eyebrow. “Her? You mean Juliana.”

Stephen raised his empty cup. “Juliana Romanovna of all the Russias. A high eastern princess abased by the lowly and villainous English baron she was forced to wed.”

Jonathan frowned and tugged at the end of his mustache. “Can you find no merit at all in her claims? She spoke excellent French to me.”

“Tant pis pour elle.”

“No, too bad for
you
. Don’t mock the girl. Her table manners were excellent, and she seemed quite comfortable directing the servants. Could the gypsies have taught her the refinements, the social graces, the high French?”

“Teaching a female to speak another language is no great feat,” Stephen said, slurring his words. “A far greater feat is to teach a woman to be silent.”

“Ah. She talks too much. That is why you left her?”

“I left her,” Stephen said, looking Jonathan square in the eye, “because I want her.”

Jonathan whacked the table with the flat of his hand. “Such impeccable logic. It is time like this, my dear Stephen, when I remember why I am friends with you. You can be so amusing.” He loosened the top button of his doublet.
“So. You fled hearth and home because you desire your wife.”

Simply put, it did seem ridiculous. Stephen’s temper heated. “Damn it, Jonathan, you know the circumstances of our marriage. The king forced us together. I wed her to appease him. I hardly intend to make this a permanent arrangement.”

“Why not?” Jonathan planted his elbows on the table. “Is it Meg, still, after all these years?”

Black memories swept like a death shroud over Stephen. Jonathan was right…and yet he was not. “When I choose another wife,” Stephen said, “she shall not be a gypsy nor a false noblewoman nor anyone of the sort.”

“She shall be someone prim and properly dull.”

Like Meg was
. Only Stephen knew different. “Can you not leave me to my own affairs?”

He rocked back on the stool and spread his arms wide. “You manage them so well.”

“There’s naught wrong with me.”

“Naught that a miracle couldn’t cure.” The front leg of Jonathan’s stool clumped to the floor as he leaned forward. “Look, the girl is a mystery. But she’s beautiful and accomplished. Let her into your life. You never know. She might banish that storm cloud that has been shadow-ing you all these years. Mayhap that’s precisely what you fear.”

“What I fear,” said Stephen, “is that—that—” He broke off. He could not confess his true fears to his very best friend.

He amended, “I fear I shall get home and find my house looted, my offices robbed, and my tenants terrorized by my wife’s gypsy friends.”

“And what does the lady Juliana say in her own
defense? I’d wager she harbors some small tenderness for you, too. You’re a great yellow-haired brute of a fellow, but women seem to like you.”

“She’s a fool if she does.” He had a defense against females who wanted to open their soft hearts to him. He had played the role many times. He knew it cold.

“You’re a fool if you reject her.”

Stephen looked away, idly watching the man at the next table cheating at cards. He was a Spaniard, inhaling the tobacco herb, a new fashion from far-off New Spain.

A beggar slipped into the tavern, unnoticed by the aleman. A mass of tattered clothes and running sores, he limped past the crowded tables and groups of idlers, heading straight for Stephen de Lacey.

Stephen looked into the almsman’s good eye—the other was covered with a black patch—and stifled a sigh. No matter how stern and unapproachable he tried to appear, the beggars always spotted him for a gull.

With a sense of weary resignation, he peered into the beggar’s clack dish. A few clipped coppers rattled piteously in the bottom. “Alms, sir?” the man rasped in a voice roughened by quantities of cheap green wine.

Jonathan started to wave the man away, but Stephen grabbed his friend’s arm. He reached for his purse, then hesitated as an idea took shape.

Perhaps if he worked at it hard enough, Juliana would beg to leave Lynacre.

“I can do better than that, my poor unfortunate,” he said to the beggar.

Jonathan’s jaw went slack. “Stephen, you can’t mean—”

“Ah, but I can,” Stephen said darkly. “I already have a band of gypsies at Lynacre. What’s a few rogues and beggars added to that?”

Juliana hated herself for worrying about Stephen. Sweet St. Basil, she was a Romanov! Though he refused to believe it, Stephen had married far above his station. Why should she care that he held her in contempt?

Ah, but it hurt. Never one to deceive herself, she admitted that much. It hurt unspeakably to remember the compelling touch of his lips against hers. To feel his hands skim over her shoulders, her bare legs. And then to see him turn away, cold eyed and remorseless, unaffected by the fire he had touched off with his expert caresses.

I told you from the start this was to be a marriage in name only
.

That was her agreement, too, and yet he had been so blunt, so heartless.

Did it give him pleasure, she wondered bitterly, to make her want him and then push her away like a beggarwoman? Dear God in heaven, what sort of man had she married?

Rather than wallow in melancholy, she decided to find out. Like a military strategist, she moved through the huge rambling house, seeking clues to the character of the man who had made her want him so desperately.

She started with the great chamber in the upper gallery. From Nance, she had learned that this was where Stephen slept—on the rare occasions he stayed home.

Feeling like a sneak thief, she pressed down the door latch and entered a big, high-ceilinged antechamber. Richly furnished and decorated with painted cloths on the walls, the room had a quantity of books and scrolled maps stored on shelves. In the middle of the room stood a great globe on a stand, its amber land masses identified
in beautiful lettering, and the vast unknown seas embellished with dragons and serpents.

On a broad, low table with twisted legs lay a variety of unusual objects. Some looked like optical devices with thick lenses; others resembled a seafarer’s or cosmographer’s tools—an astrolabe and quadrant, calipers and protractors.

She studied the instruments for a moment, then looked at the rows and rows of books. Some were new printed works; others were hand copied and illuminated on vellum. Such books, she knew, had a value that could feed a peasant family for several years. She recognized a few works in Latin and French. There were many books in English, but at the moment she lacked the patience to decipher the titles.

She passed into the bedchamber proper. A massive bedstead, all hung with drapes and valances, dominated the room. An oriel window, projecting out over a breathtaking view of the main garden, let in great streams of light.

Everything, from the scholar’s books and scientist’s tools to the regally appointed bed, proclaimed this the domain of Stephen de Lacey—a man of knowledge, yet one who appreciated beauty and sensuality as well.