At the Queen's Summons (16 page)

As gently as he could, he stopped kissing Pippa and pulled the robe back around her. In the shadows and moonlight, her eyes looked huge, bewildered.

He sat up. For a moment, he could not speak. It hurt too much, and not just in his aching loins. In his heart. For that was where he wanted to bring Pippa, and—God help him—he could not.

He touched her cheek. “Colleen?”

“What?” She sounded wary, like a child who knew she was about to be punished.

“I want to make love to you,” he said. “You know that, don't you?”

“I sensed it as soon as you threw me on the ground and started ravishing me.”

He tried to smile at her cocky words.

She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. “I have one question, Your Excellency.”

“Aye?”

“Why did you stop?”

Tell her,
he urged himself.
Tell her the truth.

Instead, he brushed a curly lock of hair from her forehead. “I don't want to hurt you. Can you believe that?”

“Of course,” she said, and faith shone in her eyes. She looked away. “But it hurts when you stop.”

“God!” His chest felt ripped in two by a devastating
struggle. Before he could talk himself out of it, he grabbed her by the shoulders. “I do want you.”

He fumbled for words. Other men made adultery look so easy, and in his case it was justifiable, some would say. Donal Og and Iago had been urging him for months to indulge himself. “I want you for my mistress.”

She clutched his arms with her hands. “Mistress!”

“You'll wake the household.” He dragged himself to his feet and pulled her up with him. “I desire you, Pippa. You desire me. I'll be good to you. I swear it. You'll want for nothing.”

“Except for my pride. But of course, someone of my station should be honored by your offer. In fact, I
am
honored. Look at me. I'm all choked up.” A humorless laugh burst from her, and he heard her desperation. She laughed to keep from weeping. That was how she had survived this long.

“I'm sorry,” he said in a low voice. “I should have thought—I'm sorry.”

“You need not apologize,” she said, “for you see, you can't hurt me, Aidan. Don't you remember why I came out here to find you?”

“To tell me you don't love me.”

“Exactly so. I do not love you. I will not. Ever.”

He took a step toward her, cradled her face between his hands, and glided his thumbs gently over her warm, damp cheeks. “Then why the tears,
a gradh?”
he asked quietly.

“I'm just…just…”

“Just what?”

“Trying to get used to not loving you. And you're not helping one bit.”

She was so revealing, so honest with him. “Colleen—”

“This is going to sound insane to you, but I do not feel
honored after all. I feel insulted, Your Stupidity. Let go of me. Don't hold me like this.”

He wanted never to let her go. It felt so good, so right, to hold her.

“Aidan, if I have to do serious damage to your codpiece, I will.
Let go.”

He dropped his hands to his sides. It was the hardest thing he had ever done.

The second hardest thing was to let her walk away.

 

After a week passed, Pippa realized that she was not going to die of a broken heart.

She was going to live with it.

And what was more, she was going to ignore it, try to find her family, and meet the queen of England.

She meant to use the opportunity to find herself another rich patron. One who appreciated her. One who didn't insult her. One who didn't break her heart.

Standing at her chamber window, she looked down into the central cloister of Crutched Friars. It resembled an innyard just before a play, with men running to and fro, fussing with their hair and weapons.

Only this time the hair was long and wild, and the weapons were real. Aidan had certainly taken her advice to heart. All one hundred of his kerns or gallowglass or whatever he called them were girding themselves for battle.

Shortly they would march on Whitehall Palace into the presence of Queen Elizabeth. Then what? What if the plan went awry? The queen would have them all put to death.

Pippa forced herself to calm down and moved away from the window. She stopped to study her reflection in the sheet of polished brass that served as a mirror.

“A face not even a mother could love,” she said,
poking sullenly at her hair. “I look like a mop standing on end.”

“I would not say that.” Resplendent as a Turkish sultan, Iago sauntered into the room. “You have more curves than a mop.”

For a moment, she could do no more than stare at him. He wore loose trousers of blue silk and knee boots that laced up the sides. His chemise gaped open to reveal a broad, hard-muscled chest bearing scars similar to those she had seen on Aidan. Rather than a doublet, Iago wore a short, sleeveless coat and a brilliant sash around his waist. A long, thin rapier traced the length of his thigh.

She could not help smiling. “Truly, Iago, you should have been a showman. The women will be on you like flies on honey.”

He grinned back at her. “Is there a court lady in my future, I wonder?”

“If you smile at everyone like that, there might be more than one. Perhaps the queen herself.”

He shivered. “No, thank you. Her admirers do not always fare so well.”

She scowled back into the mirror. “At least I won't have to worry about being plagued by pernicious admirers.”

He stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders.
“Pequeña,
why do you not let the maids help you dress? Are you modest? Hiding some secret deformity?”

She leaned against his chest and tilted her head back to look at him. “I do not like the maids of Lumley House. They're not like the ones at Durham or Wimberleigh. They say ugly things about me.”

He made a hissing sound of anger and squeezed her shoulders tight. “
Putas.
Why didn't you say something?”

She lowered her head. “They were right. Except for
the part about me being the lover of the O Donoghue Mór.” The only part I wish could be true, she thought, cursing her wayward heart.

Iago said something else in Spanish, then turned her to face him. With hands as deft and gentle as any skilled costumer's, he began to dress her, layering garments over her shift and chemise. First came the backlaced corset, then the belled petticoat and underskirt.

As he worked, he spoke in the low, melodic patois she found so fascinating. “I do not understand you,” he muttered. “You have everything—charm, youth, beauty, humor—and yet all I see when I look into your eyes is sorrow.”

She bit her lip as he made her hold out one arm for a sleeve. “Then you have a wild imagination. What have I to grieve about? I've had you and Aidan both for my handmaids. Can any other woman in London make that claim?”

“I know what sorrow looks like. You cannot hide it from me.”

She studied his face, sculpted and grave, the eyes snapping with lively intelligence, and yes, there it was. A pervasive, soul-haunting melancholy that burdened him even when he smiled.

“Save your pity for homeless beggars.
I
have a plan for my life.”

“Fine,” he said. “But tell me. As long as I am playing lady's maid, I should play the confidante as well.”

He finished with her sleeves and started on her hair with a wooden comb. She took a deep breath. “Iago, it is this. I don't know who or what I am. One day I convince myself I am a princess lost by mistake. The next I am certain a fishwife spawned me and left me to die or to be succored by strangers. I could accept either explanation,
as long as I knew it was true. I think what hurts is not knowing.”

He took out a net coif decked with seed pearls. It had been in the chest with the other things, but she had not known what to do with it. He scooped up the loose curls at the back of her neck and fitted on the coif. Its draping folds gave the illusion of length. She was heartened by the improvement.

“Listen,
pequeña,”
he said, “I am hardly the one to complain to about that. Look at me.”

She looked. “You are an uncommonly beautiful man.”

He shook his head, beaded braids clicking. “My father was a rapist, and my mother a murderer.”

She blinked. “Your stories are almost as outrageous as mine.”

“No, I tell you the truth. My father was a Spanish hidalgo who owned a huge hacienda in the islands. My mother was a mestiza house servant.”

“Mes—what?”

“Mestiza. Of mixed blood—island native and African slave.”

She saw it all in his face, then, a magnificent blending of haughty Spanish nobility, rich African coloring, and the exotic native bone structure.

He finished pinning on her coif. “My father raped my mother, and she killed him. So you see,
pequeña,
there are worse things than not knowing who you are.”

“Ah, Iago. I am so sorry.”

He kissed her brow, and she marveled at his gentleness. He had been born of sin and rage, had been beaten and enslaved, and yet here he was, bathing her in the radiance of friendship and understanding.

“Aidan was my salvation,” he said suddenly.

“What?” Just the sound of his name raised prickles on her skin.

Iago smiled. “There is such goodness in him as the angels would envy. But—” He looked away and distractedly plucked at her hem.

“But what?”

“Too many depend on him. He is like the poui tree of legend. It is a tree so large that its top branches brush the clouds. It supports everything that comes to it—monkeys and parrots, lizards and snakes, beetles and bees. The natives use its branches and leaves for shelter, its bark and sap for building
canoas
. But finally, the poui cannot support all who demand life from it, and the tree dies.”

He turned her to face the brass mirror. “Now, look at yourself. The fishwife's daughter is a princess, no?”

“No,” she said, yet a thrill chased up her spine. “But let's see if we can fool the royal court.”

S
ometimes at night, when he thinks I am asleep, my husband arises and paces the floor. Oliver does not want me to see his worry; ever has he been protective of me.

It is concern for our son Richard that stirs my beloved husband from his slumber. Richard is as young and golden as the morning—and in many ways as innocent. He does not know what it means to go to war. He thinks only of flying pennons and blares from trumpets, thundering hoofbeats and grand, dramatic gestures.

Oliver knows better. He has seen the face of war; he has looked death in the face, and it is not a thing he wants his son to encounter.

But this is a matter of state, and women are not supposed to concern themselves with such things.

That I find to be a grand fallacy. For the person most concerned of all is a woman—Elizabeth of England.

—Lark de Lacey,
Countess of Wimberleigh

T
he queen had finally summoned the Lord of Castleross to court. All the way to Whitehall Palace, Pippa had not been able to catch a glimpse of him, for Iago insisted on keeping her at his side, ahead of the bodyguard. Like a king from a mythical realm, Aidan remained invisible, remote, holding himself back, waiting to appear suddenly with dramatic impact.

As his escort of one hundred armed Irishmen tramped along the Strand, she understood the full impact of marching. The sound of feet pounding on the road had a profoundly visceral effect, like a sinister heartbeat.

The citizens of London and Westminster seemed to share her opinion. People tripped over each other to move out of the way. Men plastered themselves against walls or slipped into side alleys. Women gathered children into the shelter of their skirts and retreated into doorways. Pale young students of Westminster School clutched their scholars' scrips and stared with wild eyes.

Iago had been sent ahead to act as herald, and he arrived early with Pippa in tow. The entrance to the palace was an arched portal overburdened by a forbidding gate
house. Iago and Pippa waited in an open court called the Preaching Place. She felt the pricking eyes of guards and pensioners and palace officials, but like Iago, she held her chin aloft and ignored them.

Iago stood in the middle of the Preaching Place, staring the onlookers into silence. “Aidan, the O Donoghue Mór,” he shouted after a long pause. “Chieftain of the sept O Donoghue, and known in these parts as the Lord of Castleross.”

After some minutes, she heard again the pulsebeat of marching. The iron portico of the court gate gaped open to admit the Irish chieftain. So that his escort would not be shut out, he came in last, mounted on his fully caparisoned mare.

Grooms and ministers and lesser folk of the palace rushed out to look. The crowd jostled Pippa back against a thick wall. She craned her neck but lost sight of Aidan.

“Never mind,” whispered Iago. “You'll see him when he greets the queen. If he gets his way, the whole world will see him.”

From a distance, she watched him dismount with a blue flutter of his mantle. Then Donal Og called something in Irish and the troops formed two lines. A piper and drummer began to play a strange, minor-toned march, and the entire assembly crossed the court to the Privy Gallery.

“This is an outrage,” blustered a liveried, soldierly looking man stationed at the entrance. “The O Donoghue might as well fling down a gauntlet and declare war.”

“May his cursed Irish head roll,” said another guardsman.

“It may indeed. Watch him dig his own grave.”

Iago and Pippa exchanged dubious glances. Then they, too, hurried into the long, elegant building.

The main gallery seemed endless, with stone walls and stone floors that made the marching footfalls reverberate like thunder. At the end, a soaring doorway opened to the Presence Chamber.

Pippa entered with Iago. He led her along the side of the chamber where it was less crowded. They continued toward the light-flooded end of the room where there was a dais with a canopy so high that it resembled a great tent.

“Where are we going?” Pippa demanded.

“This will do.” Iago stepped to the middle of the gallery, bowed low, and repeated his announcement. Then he returned to Pippa's side and escorted her to the end of the room. “Can you see now?”

She peered past a thick stone column and felt as if the very hand of God had frozen her in place, stricken her so that she could not move.

It was her first glimpse of Queen Elizabeth, and Pippa was awestruck. Here, she thought, was majesty. It was a quality far more rare and fearsome than mere beauty, noble grace or lively intelligence, although the queen possessed all three in abundance.

Elizabeth sat on her throne of state, a huge box chair carven and canopied and draped with hangings. An array of shields were hung along the wall behind her.

Wearing the most elaborate costume Pippa had ever seen, the queen appeared tiny, yet her diminutive size was like the very heart of a flower, the nectar surrounded by lavish petals.

A starched white collar framed her face, and braids of pearls and jewels adorned her cloud of fading reddish hair. From where Pippa stood, the queen's face looked stark white, her eyes a shining, canny black.

Fascinated, Pippa moved away from the pillar and
began edging closer to the dais. Iago hissed something at her, but she ignored him. She found a spot in the shadows where she could observe the queen in profile as well as the grand aisle leading to the dais.

The thump of drums and the scree of pipes sounded from the antechamber. The deadly tramp of marching feet never faltered.

Elizabeth's black eyes flashed like moonlight on water. She leaned over to the man standing at her side. “Robbie, what
is
the meaning of this?”

“The Earl of Leicester,” Iago whispered to Pippa. “Her lord chancellor.”

“I know. He tried to have me arrested the day I met Aidan.”

Essex, the preening lord she recalled unpleasantly from the masque at Durham House, bent to whisper to the queen. The feather in his ridiculous velvet hat brushed the queen's cheek. “Out of my sight,” she barked. “I have not forgiven you for winning at mumchance.” Flushing, Essex stepped back a safe distance.

The heavy doors parted. Even Pippa, who had expected the ploy, caught her breath and gaped in amazement. The unsuspecting courtiers simply froze and stared.

In came Aidan's escort of one hundred gallowglass, looking more savage than a pack of wolves. They wore their rough beards and wolfskins like trophies of conquest, and each man bore full arms. She doubted the Presence Chamber had ever seen such an array of battleaxes and broadswords, maces and pikes and clubs.

The queen's guards bared their own swords, but the Irish made them look like toy soldiers, dressed for show rather than action.

The sound of the pipes shrilled and expanded, rolling out to each corner of the room before falling silent. The
gallowglass formed two long lines, the sheer numbers of their bodies sweeping aside the palace guards.

Then a shadow loomed in the arched portal. Backlit by a blaze of sunlight from the antechamber, Aidan appeared massive and godlike, his gleaming cloak rustling and belling out like a huge set of wings.

His mane of hair flowed with his movements, the single decked strand looking defiantly pagan. His face wore an arrogance and pride Pippa had never seen before.

Somehow, the light managed to pick out every angle and plane of his remarkable face: the broad, intelligent brow. The high cheekbones and square jaw. The sensual lips and fierce eyes. He radiated authority and majesty.

He was the O Donoghue Mór.

No one who saw him today would fail to know that. No one would ever forget him. Not even the queen of England.

He stood there long enough for the impact of his appearance to peak. Then he strode into the room, past frozen sentries and the Irish escort, directly to the base of the dais.

To her credit, the queen did none of the gasping and whispering and bosom fanning that erupted among her ladies, who stood in a group near Pippa. Elizabeth merely sat still, pale as ivory, unsmiling, her eyebrows barely lifted.

Aidan flung his cloak back over one shoulder. His silver rowan brooch flashed. Then, with a movement so abrupt Pippa feared he had been shot, he prostrated himself on the floor before the dais.

He lay facedown with his arms spread wide, looking like a fallen angel.

Clearly the queen had not anticipated this show of submission. No doubt, like everyone else, she was wondering just what it meant.

Submission? Even in this prone pose, the O Donoghue Mór radiated power. Fealty? That was doubtful indeed, given his distrust of things English.

“Rise, my lord of Castleross,” the queen said at last. She had a rich, loud voice, the vowels round as cultured pearls.

Aidan stood before her. Sunlight streamed down through the high, arched windows, cloaking him in translucent gold. He could not have arranged for a more dramatic setting.

Pippa felt a tightness in her throat. She had never seen such a man, and she had sneaked her way into dozens of plays and revels in which men transformed themselves into birds and angels and Greek gods. But this was no playacting, no illusion of costume and character. There was something intensely moving about such a princely man confronting the queen in this manner.

He broke the silence then—with a howl so loud it caused people to jump in startlement. With savage fury he flung back his head and bellowed an ancient war cry—at least it sounded so to Pippa.

Then he began to pace, his hands clasped behind his back, his boots and spurs ringing on the flagstones. His speech was in Gaelic, delivered with such passion and conviction that the foreign words did not matter. His tone said it all. He was an Irish chieftain, a ruler in his own right.

Beside Pippa, someone stifled a chuckle. She glanced over to see Iago nearby, cloaked in shadow.

“What is he saying?” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

Aidan ranted on, sometimes pausing in his pacing to gesticulate while the tirade never ceased.

“You do not want to know,” Iago whispered. “But the
least
of what he is saying could earn him a penalty of death.”

“God have mercy,” murmured Pippa, thinking of the comments she had overheard in the antechamber. Chills swept over her skin.

As Aidan paused to draw breath, the gentleman pensioner on the queen's right thumped his halberd on the floor.

“My lord,” said Sir Christopher Hatton, “Her Majesty desires for you to address her in English.”

Pippa held her breath to see how Aidan would respond.

He faced her directly and bowed his head. “Madam,” he said, “it is an honor to address you in your native tongue.”

“Ooh,” whispered a lady-in-waiting. “He has the most gorgeous Irish brogue!”

Pippa rolled her eyes. Clearly, Aidan O Donoghue had the desired effect on these ninnies. The question was, did his powers affect the queen?

“I wonder if he is in need of company,” the lady's companion said. “Surely he is lonely, so far from home.”

“He has plenty of company,” Pippa hissed at them. “So back off!”

The ladies gasped and fell silent.

Iago chuckled softly. “You are always so discreet,
pequeña.”

“…my absolute authority as Lord of Castleross,” Aidan was saying. “And furthermore, whilst I am in London, I shall attend mass at the Spanish embassy. These matters are required of my station as the O Donoghue Mór, good madam, a station that must carry equal respect, as your own.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said in a loud, unpleasant voice.
“But I have not challenged you in matters of faith, my lord, have I?”

He sent her a grin that started the ladies' fans fluttering again. “Nay, in this you are the soul of tolerance. I come to you on far more immediate matters, madam.”

She tilted her head, clearly intrigued. “Go on.”

“My people are suffering. Their crops have been burned. The women raped. Men hanged for made-up offenses.”

“Your people have defied their English ruler,” she countered.

“We would rule ourselves and send a tithe to Your Majesty,” he shot back. “Under present conditions, you will receive nothing, for our lands are in ruin, thanks to Lord Constable Browne and other greedy opportunists. Keep on your present course, and there will be nothing left to claim.”

The queen seemed, uncannily, to swell and grow in size. Pippa knew it was impossible, yet as Elizabeth's temper flared, so did her presence.

She was like a thin flame goaded to brightness by a blast of wind. In her intense, diminutive way, she matched the powerful presence of the Irish chieftain.

But she did not exceed it.

“Are you quite finished, my lord of Castleross?” she asked at last.

“Madam,” he replied, “I have barely begun.”

Her nostrils flared. “If you seek to impress us with your defiance, you have succeeded.”

Pippa cocked her head to one side. She heard a quavering thrum in the queen's voice. “Oh, no,” she whispered to Iago. “She is absolutely furious.”

“Therefore, my lord,” Elizabeth said, “we would ask one thing of you. It is a small matter, but one you might be hard-pressed to give.”

“And what is that, Your Majesty?” asked Aidan.

“We should like you to give us one reason why we should not have you clapped in irons.”

Aidan O Donoghue did the unthinkable. He threw back his head and laughed. It was that banner of dark mirth Pippa had heard the first day she had met him, and the rich, sultry sound of it echoed through the chamber.

The queen's eyes flared brighter. Leicester bent and said something to her in a pleading tone, but she waved him away.