Constant Heart (21 page)

My love fed him? He did not have my love. Had not even asked for it. So he was only flirting with me? Well, I could flirt too. I took my spoon and rolled an olive to the top of the greens. Then I put my spoon down and stretched my fingers toward the olive, looking not toward my plate but toward him.

His eyes glinted and then he snaked out a hand toward the countess’s plate once more. She was conversing with her husband and did not notice that the earl had stolen not one but two radishes from her plate.

I am sorry. I am sorry.

He grimaced as he swallowed them.

I hoped they were bitter.

He placed a hand over his heart and bowed his head, almost imperceptibly. Then he pulled a leaf of winter savory from his plate.

Pausing before he placed it in his mouth, he looked straight into my eyes.

I offer my love.

His love? Was he flirting still or did he mean it in truth? As I tried to sort intention from flirtation, he again pulled a leaf of winter savory from his plate and ate it.

I offer my love.

And what was I to do? What was I to say? I glanced down at my plate to ascertain my choices, but fate had left me only one way in which to respond.

I fingered a rosemary flower, lifted it to my nose, and then put it in my mouth.

I accept your love.

Only after I had swallowed did I dare to meet his eyes.

Again, he lifted a hand to his heart and bowed his head. Then, with his head still bowed, he lifted his eyes toward mine. A smile played at the edges of his lips.

I felt my cheeks warm and was thankful the ceruse would keep anyone from noticing.

Later, after all the courses, strawberries were brought to the table.

I lifted one to my lips, as did Lytham.

I am yours.

And that time, the blush spread further than my cheeks.

After dinner, there was to be a pageant. As I rose from the table, the earl rose as well. He offered me his hand and escorted me from the hall. “I abhor radishes.” The words were meant only for my ears.

I could not keep my lips from curving and did not look on him for fear of laughing. “Then, my lord, you must give care that you never have cause to eat them. It is a bitter fruit meant for bitter words.”

“
However
, I would have eaten one thousand to rest once more upon your good graces.”

In the watching of the pageant, the earl stood behind me, but he stood too close. The pressure of his stance was communicated through the strain on my farthingale’s hoops.

I turned my head, as far as I was able, against the ruff, but I could not see him. I tried again, in the other direction, but failed at that as well. Advancing back, toward him, I hoped to signal him to my side.

He did not move and I felt the front hem of my skirt rise, as if, like a bell, it had been pushed from behind. I made a hasty retreat forward.

At last, the pageantry finished and the whole began to break into groups for purposes of entertainment. Here, a party to play cards; there, a party to sing with a virginal. The earl grasped my elbow and hastened me toward the door. I could not get him to slow until after we left the hall.

“Do you be good, my lord.”

“Pray why, when being bad yields so much more gain?”

I reached out and rapped him on the nose with my fan, which did little good, being made of feathers.

“Come, you will have to do better than that to banish me from your sweet self.”

“Count you not upon my sweetness. Have you not heard of the wolf that hid herself in a sheep’s skin?”

“Aye. But the one howls while the other bleats.” Of a sudden, he steered me into a darkened hall, leaned forward over my farthingale, and kissed me. I had no chance of responding, save a quick, indrawn breath.

“As I thought. You are a very lamb, my sweet.”

I leaned forward and slapped him for making light of me.

He winced, then smiled. “I find I must amend my opinion. You are a lamb . . . with the heart of a tiger.” He bowed.

I could not control the warming of my heart. “I shall eat a radish for that.”

“There is no need. I have eaten enough for the both of us. Come.”

He offered his hand and I took it.

Later, back at Lytham House, he helped me to dismount. “Nicholas once told me you were not the woman I thought you were.”

I smiled. “He told me the same about you.”

“If it were the season for lily of the valley, I would give you them. In heaps.”

Lily of the valley:
kiss me.
“Between two hearts, there is no room for flowers.”

22

O
nce inside, he escorted me past my chambers and into his own.

“My . . . I do not . . . my clothes . . .”

He cast a glance at his chamberer, then approached me and began to pull the pins from my ruff. “A pincushion and my lady’s box for ruffs.”

His gentleman left the room and quickly returned with the same. Lytham deposited a fistful of pins into the man’s hand. “A pox on the pinmaker! Lady, how many pins does it take to keep a ruff in place?”

“As many as your own. And one or two more. Perhaps my own chambermaid could assist . . . ?”

“ ’Tis a sorry excuse for a man who cannot pull a pin from a— Ow!” He put a finger to his mouth and sucked on it. “They have treacherous points to them. Stand still. Stop your laughter.”

I tried. And finally, he was done. As he unwound it from my neck, he kissed the skin as it was revealed.

My eyelids fluttered and then I remembered where I was. “Your chamberer?”

“You there! You may go.” He did not even lift his head from his task.

I saw his chamberer bow and then leave the room. He closed the door firmly behind him.

Before that evening, all of the earl’s gallantries had been perfunctory. But the earl in pursuit of a goal was a valiant warrior. When I put up a wall, he scaled it. When I set up some obstruction, he demolished it. He made quick work of all of my defenses.

I discovered that night where desire lives. And I felt her sigh. Ever so gently he prevailed upon me to yield. And when I did, it was not so much sacrifice as surrender.

She looked so peaceful. So . . . beautiful . . . sleeping as she was, one hand tucked under her cheek, the other curled up underneath her chin. I wanted to . . . in truth, I knew not what.

I wanted to lie beside her and watch her sleep until she woke.

I wanted to stroke her silken cheek as if she were some prized pup.

I wanted to . . . bask in the glow of her goodness as if she were the sun. But most of all, I wanted to be the first person she looked upon.

I wanted to be the sight those fair eyes awakened to.

But I could not do it.

I had to go to court. The Queen would wait for no woman. And especially not this one.

Thinking upon our conversation the previous night caused me to nearly laugh aloud in delight. The number of radishes I had consumed! Perhaps . . . perhaps there
was
a memory that I could leave her with. A token that would cause her thoughts to be possessed of me throughout the day.

I slipped from the bed and stopped the chamberer with a hand when he would have come to my side. I crossed the room to him instead.

He aided me into my hose and shirt, but when he would have buttoned me into my doublet, I asked for a gown in its stead.

“My lord.” He bowed, but I knew I had caught him unawares, for he had to put down the box of ruffs and leave the doublet he had laid out in exchange for a fur-edged gown which he helped me to put on over my shirt.

At this point Nicholas entered my chamber.

“My lord.”

“Nicholas.”

He eyed my clothing. “You do not go to court this morn?”

“I am off to the garden first. To find some forget-me-not.”

“I can do it for you, my lord. It would be a pleasure.”

“Nay!”

Nicholas’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairs.

“But many thanks . . . I would do it myself.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

I descended the stairs and wound my way into the courtyard, where a small garden had been nurtured between the walls. By the time I had identified the flower that I sought, I had a contingent of servants trailing behind me. The gardener stood ready with his shears, one maid with a basket, and another with a cloth, presumably for my hands. Behind them all, with a bemused twinkle in his eye, stood Nicholas.

Could a man have no privacy?

I withheld a sigh and reached for a stem of the flower.

Before I could pull at it, a snip of clippers had severed it clean from the stalk. The gardener held it out toward me. For appreciation? For inspection?

I nodded.

He laid the stem in the maid’s basket.

“Another, my lord?”

One stem would seem a miserly offering when I had promised her an armload of lily-of-the-valley just scant hours ago. I wanted the whole bush of blooms, but what would the gardener think of me? The lord of the house, standing outside at the sun’s rising in his night’s shirt picking flowers.

“My lord?” He held his clippers at the ready.

I nodded. The man clipped three more before I was satisfied.

“A different kind of flower, my lord?”

“Nay. That will be all.”

The man bowed.

The girls curtsied.

But just before they left, I relieved the maid of her basket.

I extended it toward Nicholas. This foolishness had taken long enough. I needed to be on my way to court. “Would you see that the countess gets these?” I would leave it to his own discretion to figure out where she was and why.

Later, as I trotted toward the palace, I thought of her once more. Nay. Thought of her
still,
if the truth be known. Could one see my thoughts, I would surely be thought a chuckle-headed boy gone daft on love.

Love!

That word gave me pause. I could not, would not be in love.

Love was the one luxury I could ill afford. The one extravagance I did not hope to possess. The only reward for falling in love at this Queen’s court was a cell in the Tower. Love meant a certain fall from grace. Love was the only sure way to destroy any chance of success that I had. I was not in love. At least not with the girl.

The only person one could possibly fall in love with was Her Majesty the Queen.

Aye. If I were in love, then it was with the Queen. She of gilded hair and . . . rotted teeth. She of alabaster skin and . . . sunken cheek.

Of such noble carriage and such . . . cantankerous speech. Aye.
That
was my beloved. I would much rather pledge my heart to my Queen than my head to the executioner’s axe.

Of course, that did not mean that I could not maintain a discreet liaison. If I had spent extra time abed, if I had gone about the garden in my gown, it was only because it was something any man would have done. Any courtier. To court a woman with whom one was . . .upon whom one bestowed . . .

Well.

I was a courtier. I courted. It was what I did. And I excelled at it. It mattered not that I courted one woman. It mattered even less that she was my wife.

When the gentleman of the bedchamber opened the bed curtains the next morning, the sun revealed me to be in Lytham’s bedchamber still. And on the pillow a note:
Her Majesty summons
. But beside me lay a bouquet of forget-me-not bound up in crimson ribbon. I smiled. A doubled message.
Forget-me-not. True love.

Or, perhaps, a third message.

Forget me not, my true love.

23

T
he days that followed proceeded as if they were a sequence in the best of dreams. I felt my cheeks flush at the very sight of the earl. Felt my limbs grow weak in the presence of him. I became a master at pretext. I learned ten thousand reasons to excuse myself from company so we could closet ourselves together. There was never enough time to be alone. In the presence of others, we tried to ignore what was growing between us. As Lytham kept reciting to me, a courtier was only to make love to his Queen. So in public, the Earl of Lytham remained a loyal and fervent devotee of His Majesty. But in private? Those loyalties were quickly, if shamelessly, discarded.