At The King's Command (13 page)

“It’s on account of that rod,” Jillie said, daubing at her eyes.

Nance fixed her with a censorious look. “And what would you be knowing about that, Jillie Egan? Just what have you been up to with that Egyptian fellow?”

His errand forgotten, Stephen listened in fascination.

“Naught,” Jillie said. “But not for want of trying. I like Rodion. He’s…different. Makes
me
feel different, like anything is possible.”

Nance sighed dramatically. “With the right man, anything
is
possible.”

“Truly?” Juliana put aside her needlework, drew her knees to her chest and plucked wistfully at a blade of grass. “I wonder.”

A terrible longing seized Stephen. He tried to tear his
gaze away, but failed. She was wondrous; he could not deny it. Small and dainty as a rose she was, yet she had a steel inner core that commanded respect.

She had swept into his household with the authority of a castellan, running Lynacre Hall as if she had been trained from the cradle to perform the duties of a great lady. From dawn to dusk she held dominion over kitchen and buttery, stillroom and hall, directing servants and tenants. In the evening he was likely to find her at her devotions, repeating words and phrases over and over until she spoke like a West Country maid.

This same woman, he reminded himself, did not hesitate to draw a blade and hold it to a stranger’s throat. The picture was imprinted on his brain, and there it lingered as he forced his feet along the path leading away from the garden.

In the weeks that followed, Stephen continued to disappear nightly. But never again to Bath, never far enough to be gone for long.

Some mornings Juliana would encounter him brooding in the hall, morose and uncommunicative.

A mistress was the only answer. The idea grew like a poisonous vine, choking her heart. He went to meet some woman, and judging by his moodiness, the relationship must not be going well.

She thought often of the limnings she had discovered in his chambers. She wanted to know more about Stephen’s past, yet she kept silent, waiting for him to broach the topic.

Summer spun along in a string of lazy days. The gypsies camped in a forest meadow by the river Avon, keeping much to themselves and living off the bounty of
the land, poaching the occasional coney or deer from the royal forest in Stephen’s custodianship.

Juliana staved off a gnawing sense of impatience by delving into the workings of the estate. At one end of the hall were the estate offices. There, she had her own room, a tiny windowless cubbyhole. Stephen had seemed surprised that she would make use of the office. Apparently his first wife had not troubled herself with business.

One day at the peak of high summer, she came out of her office and nearly collided with Stephen in the open, colonnaded passageway. It was chilling the way he managed to look through her—as if she had no more substance than air.

“My lady,” he said, inclining his head.

She tried not to notice how the sun struck his hair, tried not to notice the muscular shape of his legs. He wore plain hose and boots and tunic, for he worked as hard as any of his tenants. The day was warm, and the tunic was unlaced to the middle of his chest, revealing tanned skin glistening with sweat. Nonplussed, she looked into his eyes. The coldness there stopped her rising passion.

“Good day, my lord,” she said.

For a moment, they stood facing each other. What could she possibly say to a man who had wed her so unwillingly, a man who preferred the company of doxies and gamblers to her own?

He seemed to have the same thought, for he nodded and stepped into his own offices. Juliana stood in the passageway, absently greeting the tenants who arrived to discuss their affairs with the lord of the manor.

They cloaked their curiosity about her in deference, tugging a forelock while greeting her, then stepping into the office. For a time, she stood listening to the murmur of voices inside, the occasional ripple of male laughter.
Stephen was at ease with these people; he liked them and treated them fairly. She found herself thinking of her father, and a sudden sharp stab of yearning caught her unawares.

It was that ache of loneliness that made her enter the office after the tenants had left.

“Yes?” he asked without looking up. “What is it?”

“I…wanted to speak to you.”

He glanced up swiftly, and the chill mask slid over his features. In that moment he resembled a marble god she had seen in the gardens of Richmond Palace. “Juliana, what do we possibly have to talk about?”

I want to know you better. I want to know your sadness and your anger. And, God help me, I want to see you smile
.

She refused to be cowed by his brusque manner. Trying to appear nonchalant, she wandered to the middle of the room. “What are the markings on this table?” she asked, running her hand over the checkered surface.

“It makes tallying the accounts easier. I put markers on the squares to represent the sums. The notched markers stand for ten times the amount on the board.”

She had always excelled at ciphering. “I could tally sums for you, and have no need of checkers and notches.”

“I prefer to use the table.”

“My lord, it is no great shame to admit you are deficient in—”

“I have my deficiencies,” he cut in, “but not in ciphering. I use the table so my tenants can see each calculation. It puts their minds at ease.”

“Oh.” Had her father been a compassionate landlord? She could not remember. Self-conscious now, she walked over to a side table. “And what are these?” she asked, fascinated by the array of delicate-looking metal instruments.

Suddenly he was beside her, coming up swiftly and
quietly, startling her. “Calipers for measuring bore sizes,” he said. “And this is a scale. It’s far more accurate than the brass balance used by most.”

She glanced sideways at him. “You made all these things, didn’t you?”

“Aye.”

She thought of all the little conveniences she had noticed about the manor—a heat-driven spit in the kitchen, a lamp in a bowl of water to magnify the light, a rolling ladder in the larder, the conduits that carried water throughout the house. “Why?”

“I made them because I saw a need.”

“You—” she frowned, retrieving he word “—you invented them. You have a marvelous talent, my lord.”

“These are practical devices. I wouldn’t call making them so great a gift.” Turning sharply, he went back to the exchequer’s table.

A tentative knock sounded at the door, and Stephen hastened to let in the caller.

A woman in a homespun gown and bare feet shuffled slowly, hesitantly, into the office. One of her thin arms was looped through the handle of a willow withe basket.

“Mistress Shane?” Stephen asked, his voice soft and gentle as if he had not just spoken so harshly to Juliana.

The shawl-covered head nodded, and she raised her eyes. Juliana’s interest was caught by Mistress Shane’s milk-pale skin, her hollowed cheeks, and deep, dark eyes. “Aye. Forgive the intrusion, my lord. I should have come when the others did, but—” A mewling cry came from the basket. She jiggled it, and the babe quieted. “The little one was fussy.”

“Where’s your husband, mistress?” Stephen asked.

“Died, he did, while you was gone to see the king.”

Juliana watched in astonishment as compassion transformed her husband into a different man. His oak-hewn features changed, softened. His eyes warmed as he came around the table and took the young woman’s hand as if she were the grandest of noblewomen.

“Sit down, mistress.”

She lowered herself to the stool and settled the basket in her lap.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“It weren’t rightly your problem, my lord.”

Stephen’s breath caught. “Why in God’s name would you say that? How could you think I wouldn’t care?”

“Tell us what happened,” said Juliana.

The woman drew a deep breath, and Juliana recognized the shaking quality of it, the trembling effort to conquer grief. She had felt it so many times herself.

“’Twas a fever. The same one what carried off me eldest boy a month before.”

Juliana could tell Stephen had not been informed of that death, either. She pitied the reeve who was charged with keeping him informed of the tenants’ doings.

“What sort of fever?” His voice sounded different. Harsh. As if invisible hands were strangling him.

Mistress Shane lifted her shadow-rimmed eyes. “Twas the lung fever, my lord.”

The effect of the words on Stephen was startling. Juliana took his hand. His was rough and dry and cold. “Stephen?”

He seemed to shake himself then, blinking and all but ripping his hand from her grasp. “Mistress Shane, I deeply regret your loss. What land did your husband hold?”

“Three sections and a bit of water meadow by the river, my lord.”

“Your rents are waived until further notice.”

“Thank you, my lord!” She grabbed his hand and covered it with kisses.

Juliana thought he would snatch it away; he was so uncomfortable with displays of affection. But he stood still. With his free hand he lifted the woman’s face and peered into her eyes.

“You’ll need help with the work.”

“But, my lord, there is no one.”

“There are a dozen able-bodied men camped by the river,” Juliana said gently.

Stephen frowned. “The gypsies mislike working the land. ’Tis too constant for their natures.”

“Gypsies!” Mistress Shane clutched the basket too her bosom. “They steal babies. I’ve heard they eats them and—”

“I assure you, they do not,” Juliana said quickly. “And while gypsies do not like to work the land—” she sent Stephen a pointed look “—the men of Laszlo’s tribe will help you.”

The woman sought Stephen’s gaze. “Is it true, my lord?”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “We’ll see that you get your work done.”

With a flurry of thanks and bobbing curtsies, she left. Juliana looked inquisitively at Stephen. “That was kind of you.”

“Better to keep the land productive.” He cleared his throat and turned to shuffle some papers on his desk.

Juliana hid a secret smile. Let him pretend he acted out of sheer pragmatism. She glanced at the estate map pegged to the wall over the table. “This is Lynacre?” she asked.

He nodded absently. The map showed the great bend in the river Avon, the curve that marked the fertile
meadows the tenants occupied. It was fringed in fields and woods stamped with a portcullis device.

“What is this?” she asked.

“The king’s hunting preserve.”

“It takes up more than half the estate.”

“Aye.”

“And it simply lies idle unless the king wishes to hunt?”

“That is correct.”

“Such a shameful waste.” She traced her finger over Lynacre Hall, its H shape with the great chamber flanked by two gabled ends. Some distance away, there was a patch of empty green space. “What garden is this?”

“A forest.” A tic of impatience started in his jaw.

“Where does it lead?” Juliana asked, pressing on.

“Nowhere. ’Tis long overgrown and useless even for hunting. No one ever goes there.”

“Oh. Thank you for telling Mistress Shane about the gypsies,” she said. Anything, please God, but this terrible silence. Anything to move him to something other than complete indifference.

He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “Does that surprise you?”

“Yes,” she snapped, suddenly sick of his apathy. “As a matter of fact, it does, my lord. I was beginning to believe you had no heart at all.”

In two strides he sprang across the room and faced her, close enough to kiss her. “Believe me, Juliana.” His voice was taut with icy control. “Where you are concerned, I have no heart. My only burning desire is to see you gone.”

She stared hard at his face, into his eyes. And there she saw the pain. The lie. The secrets.

It gave her the courage to touch him, to rest her palm on his cheek for a moment. “What is it, Stephen? What is it that
tears at your heart, that makes you so tender with a grieving widow, so patient with Kit as he fumbles at the quintain and the archery butts? And then so callous with me?”

He flinched and drew away. “Damn you for a meddlesome busybody,” he said. Then, turning on his heel, he stormed from the room.

N
o matter how fast he rode, Stephen could not escape the demons. Still he tried. Still he punished his beautiful swift mare at a brutal pace, needing no spurs save his own voice to urge Capria to her greatest speed.

Across the greening landscape she carried him, over windswept fells and scrubby downs. To the barren chalk heights and then down again. Dizzying leaps across streams and hedgerows and terraced fences of stone.

He found no escape. Even as the perils of hard riding leaped up around him, his mind clung to her image: Juliana, with her rich gleaming hair tumbling about her shoulders and her eyes on fire with wanting him, wanting his secrets, wanting his soul.

His heart slammed like a hammer against his breastbone. At last he knew what he feared.

That he could love again.

No. No. No.
He pounded his heels against the mare’s sides. He drove her down to a hidden place that reminded him of exactly who he was and what he had done. A place that would help him freeze his emotions and keep his feelings for Juliana from devouring him whole.

When he reached his destination he was panting as if he, and not the mare, had raced for miles.

He threw the reins around a tree branch and approached the secluded spot. Aye, she was there, waiting for him, as always. Never changing, ever patient, biding her time. Sometimes he was able to stay away for weeks at a time and to go for days without thinking of her. But always he succumbed to her allure, her dark patience, her irresistible secrets.

Stephen was sweating now, his breath coming in great gusting pants as he fell to his knees before her, a supplicant begging indulgence from a deity.

He whispered her name, loud and harsh in the shadowy stillness.
“Meg!”

Juliana used a sidesaddle when she rode. Her request for a lane saddle had scandalized Stephen’s grooms. She thought it rather silly to ride sideways on a horse, but she gamely hooked her leg over the cantle, relaxed against the hindbow, and slapped the reins of the big dun mare.

“Let me escort you, milady,” said Piers, tugging his forelock and gazing up at her with worshipful eyes.

“Thank you. That will not be necessary.”

“But ’tis not safe abroad, milady. The hills and forests, they be crawling with cutthroats and gypsies—” He clapped his hand over his mouth and turned as red as a cherry. “Forgive me, milady. I didn’t mean—”

She summoned a smile. “Insults sting but a little when they stem from a man’s ignorance.” With that, she quirted the horse and trotted out of the stable yard.

Stephen had told no one where he was going. He rarely did, or so the servants said, and he was never questioned. She followed his trail easily enough, finding the imprints
of his mare’s hooves in the bruised earth freshly moistened by a rain shower at dawn.

He had ridden hard and without direction for a time, leaping hedgerows and stiles and plunging through a wood.

The signs grew more subtle, but still she found them. She had learned to read
vurma
from the gypsies; her sharp-eyed glance picked out a hoofprint here, a broken twig there.

She emerged from the woods to find herself on a broad slope that led down to a meandering stream. The remote, unfamiliar area was lush with reeds and forget-me-nots.

First she saw his horse tethered to a tree, placidly cropping at the clover and grass that grew thick and sweet in the spring-watered area.

Then, as she dismounted, her jaw dropped. The reins fell from her numb fingers. The dun mare seized the moment to sidle away. Juliana started after her, but the mare was off, trotting back toward the manor. With a shrug, Juliana returned her attention to the place by the stream.

The building was constructed of powdery yellow limestone. Though tiny, it had the same slim vertical lines that distinguished the large cathedrals at Salisbury and Westminster.

Yet this one—a chapel, was it?—would fit inside the stillroom at Lynacre Hall. Perhaps it was a shrine of some sort.

Filled with curiosity, she approached the chapel. It had only two small windows, no more than sidelights, actually, and a low-arched door that stood open.

Swallows flitted in and out of the eaves. Stopping outside the doorway, she looked inside and saw Stephen in profile.

He knelt with his head bowed, his clasped hands pressed to his brow. The light streaming through a high, cloverleaf-shaped window mantled him in gold.

Juliana felt a slight chill and a lurch of her stomach. She did not want to intrude upon a man at prayer. And yet at the same time she felt drawn to him and entranced by his pain, his need.

“Stephen?” She spoke his name softly.

He snapped to attention, coming to his feet and moving in front of something—or someone—as if to hide it. Or her.

“Is it not enough,” he asked in a curiously weary voice, “that I have given you my name, a roof over your head, plenty to eat, new clothes?”

“No, Stephen. I do not suppose it is enough.”

He seemed so huge in the small, shadowy space, the top of his head brushing the vaulted ceiling. And yet somehow, despite his size, despite the great golden strength of him, he looked vulnerable.

“Why?” he asked, his voice a harsh echo in the cavelike chapel. “For the love of God, Juliana, why must you meddle? Ask prying questions, follow me on private errands?”

She, too, had often wondered at her own insatiable curiosity about her husband. “Something about you cries out to me. I know we were thrown together. I know we were not supposed to concern ourselves with each other. But I cannot help it. I want to know everything about you.”

“No, you don’t,” he shot back, his voice ringing with clear certainty. “You won’t like what you learn. Run along, Juliana.” She bit her lip, and he seemed to relent. “I have given you all I am capable of giving. Please don’t ask for more.”

“Sometimes,” she said, summoning her courage, “sometimes in my life I have been forced to take without asking.” Before he could stop her, she entered the chapel.

It housed a pair of large effigy plaques of a woman and a small boy. The intricately molded brasswork was exquisite, set into the lids of two stone tombs.

“Oh,” she whispered, cocking her head to view the brass more closely. Stephen’s wife Margaret, Lady Wimberleigh. The artist had depicted a fair Plantagenet beauty—the thick-lidded eyes, the lyrical, aquiline cheekbones and nose, the firm and shapely thin lips.

Juliana said in a trembling voice, “I think it’s time you told me about her.”
I want to know why you still come here seven years after she has gone
. But she dared not go so far as to ask that.

His big hands clutched the back of a prayer stool until his knuckles shone white. “What is the point?”

“I am not certain. You are always so sad and distant. How much more can it hurt to talk about her?”

He blew out his breath. Again, she was struck by the impression of weariness. Grieving, for him, was an exhausting business. “Her name was Margaret.” He spoke in lifeless tones and stared out the unglazed window, though his distant eyes seemed to see something other than the green hills and the treetops nodding in the breeze. “Lady Margaret Genet. I called her Meg. She was just fourteen when I married her, and I myself a mere fifteen.”

Juliana nodded; her own match to Alexei Shuisky had been arranged mere hours after her birth. Margaret had grown up, wed and borne children before she had even reached Juliana’s present age. The thought raised a shiver up her spine.

“So the marriage was planned by your parents.”

“As is usually the case—when the king himself does not mandate it.”

She refused to feel the barb of his words. “But you must have loved her.”

“Why do you say that?”

He spoke so harshly that Juliana stepped back, half-afraid he would strike out. He made a menacing picture in his tight leather breeches and blousy white shirt, his golden hair falling about his massive shoulders, his big hands so tight on the back of the prayer stool that she feared the wood might snap.

The stance of restrained violence was meant to frighten her. She squared her shoulders. “So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Love her very much.”

With slow, deliberate movements he set the stool aside and placed his hands on his hips. “How can that possibly matter now?”

He seemed determined not to answer her question, so she let it pass. She brushed her fingers lightly over the smaller brass. “Which of your sons rests here?”

Stephen grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers biting into her flesh, and his eyes—his usually pale, cool eyes—burned hot with rage.

“Witch!” he said, not shouting but almost whispering. “My God, what sort of unholy creature are you?”

He was truly afraid, she saw, though anger took the greater part. For no reason she could name, she felt perfectly safe with him. Even when he was glaring at her as if he would like to set her aflame.

“I did not mean to upset you. I had no idea…” She swallowed. How was it that she had infuriated him? It was as if someone had burned him with a brand. “Is it so terrible, asking about your children? I just wondered which son—”

“I had only one son.” He spoke through gritted teeth. It seemed to take a sheer effort of will for him to pry open his fingers and let go of her.

Juliana’s thoughts raced. Stephen had fathered two sons. She had seen the limnings—one of Margaret, and two others, each of a small boy.

Perhaps each was a picture of the same child at different ages. Perhaps one was a relative, a nephew, a cousin.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to cover her confusion. “I just assumed…there were two.”

“Why?”

She had to answer carefully. If he truly did believe she was a witch, he could have her drowned or burned at the stake. “I just heard talk around the house.”

“Talk? What talk?”

She shrugged elaborately. “I suppose I misheard. I am not a native speaker of English, you know.”

He glared at her for long moments. Then he made a visible effort to relax. “This is Richard’s effigy,” he said quietly. “Dickon, we called him. He died just two months before his mother—when he was six years old.” A catch snagged his voice. “I loved him as hard as I could. Prayed and gambled the very surety of my soul, but the lad just got weaker and weaker. He died in my arms.”

Juliana could not help herself. She took his hand. When he did not resist, she carried it to her lips and pressed a kiss to his palm.

He watched her as if in a state of astonishment. After a few moments, he pulled his hand away. She sensed no resentment in him.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I cannot imagine what it is like to lose your own son.”

“It colors every thought I have. Every feeling. Every
breath I take. There is no such thing as joy anymore.” His hands were balled into fists, his eyes dark pits of sorrow.

She wanted to argue with him, to tell him he was wrong. But only a parent could gauge his grief. “Stephen? How did your wife die?”

“In childbirth.”

Her senses came alert again. Then there had been more than one child. “The baby was a girl?”

“The baby is dead.” Of all the statements he had made to her, that was the most chilling. The most final. “And now, my dear baroness,” he said, his voice laced with familiar sarcasm, “you had best run along.” With one hand firm at her back, he escorted her out of the chapel, out into sunlight diffused by evening mist and tinged with the green of summer leaves.

She turned and found herself very close to him, his chest inches from her. She did not know what to do with her hands, so she placed them in the crooks of his arms. “I know we are not supposed to like each other,” she said. “But I have not always been one who does as she is supposed to do.”

“What are you saying?” Again, that weary voice.

“That I am beginning to like you.”

“Madam, that is a pity indeed.”

She boldly touched his cheek. “Do not pity me for liking you. Pity yourself for not being able to accept my friendship.”

They stood like figures in an artist’s frieze, held captive by the golden evening sun. As she gazed up into his face, her senses came to a heightened awareness. She heard the low drone of bees buzzing in the dwarf thistle that glowed purple in its bed of green. She smelled the spicy scent of hawkweed and trefoil, and she felt the warm caress of the
gentle breeze on her face. It was as if they stood alone at the center of the world, as if the beauty of the meadow existed for none but the two of them.

She liked being alone with him, close to him. Though he often glared at her and gnashed his teeth, he was still the man who helped a widow with her planting, who filled a beggar’s belly, who counseled Kit when the young man sought his advice.

The world seemed to shift and tilt, and she realized it was because he had stepped even closer. Though a forbidding look darkened his face, his hands were gentle as they came to rest at her waist. His thumbs moved subtly upward, circling deliciously close to her breasts yet never quite touching them.