Constant Heart (5 page)

“The girl wants to change.”

“Your countess, my lord?” At least Nicholas was speaking to me once more.

“I am overdue to the palace.”

“And towing her into court looking like a lamb dragged through the countryside will earn you no favors with the Queen, my lord.”

“I suppose we could stop at Lytham House.”

“You do not have to profess your undying love to her, but it would not hurt relations between you to be gracious, my lord. And as Lytham House sits in the middle of your path to Whitehall, you might be accused of being unfeeling if you did not.”

Curse the man, he was right. I had been known to show more kindness to mere servants. But if I looked on her, if I talked to her, then how could I escape the enchantment of her beauty? “If we stop, it will be you who oversees the unloading.”

“Of course, my lord.”

“And it will need to be done with all haste.”

He nodded.

“And it is you who will show her to her chambers.” I had not been in them since Elinor had gone. And I saw no use in visiting them now.

“The rooms have been redone, my lord.” He paused. “As you had asked.”

Nicholas gazed at me in expectation. “If you have a question, then ask it!”

“The countess might feel more warmly welcomed to Lytham House if it were you who did the welcoming, my lord.”

“There is no time. Perhaps on the morrow . . .” Perhaps on the morrow she will have grown ugly. Perhaps on the morrow I will have grown blind.

I saw the city long before we entered it. It had smudged the horizon with its walls and soiled the sky with the smoke of coal. We entered the city through Bishopsgate after a short delay due to a waiting line of carters. The farther into the city we went, the greater was the assault upon my senses. Voices in all tone and timbres shouted their wares. Around me dodged all manner of people, some porting goods on their backs, others driving livestock before them. And from all sides of the street rose a stench so great it threatened to smother me. Trapped in a maze of buildings, absent any breeze, the reek of rotting food and human waste thrown out into the streets invaded the air. And the hooves of our horses and the feet of the sellers only served to mix it into the mud lying atop the pavement and drive it further into the foundations of the city.

Joan lost short time in retching.

By clamping my teeth together and endeavoring to ignore the filth around me, I was able to preserve my own dinner. We came to an intersecting of five streets, where the buildings had been pushed back to save room at their center for a market. A place of flesh and fish, it was vibrant with odors and blood, flies thick upon the sellers’ offerings. We rode round the stalls and still we kept going. But quite soon the earl turned off onto a quieter street lined with enormous houses. At one of them he turned into the gate and trotted up into the courtyard. And there, at last, we could escape the worst of the stench.

Grooms came out to collect our horses, and as I sat there, staring about me in amazement, the earl walked up the stairs to a massive door and disappeared inside.

Nicholas reined his horse beside my own, dismounted, and then offered me his hand. “Welcome to Lytham House, my lady.”

I placed my hand in his and he helped me gain the ground. After having ridden so hard for so many days, I should have wanted only to collapse upon a bed, but the sight of the magnificent building in front of me swept all thoughts from my mind.

It was a new house and handsome, built of brick with a cobbled courtyard. The roof was heavy with huge, fantastical bricked chimneys and a cupola in the middle that flew the earl’s coat of arms. The arched windows were outlined in dressed stone and echoed the shape of both the arched gate and door.

“It was built to honor the Queen.”

I looked for some sign of that honor but could find none.

Nicholas cleared his throat, and I turned back to find his eyes sparkling. “It was built in the shape of an E.” He gestured me in front of him. “And so, my lady, would you like to step in upon her backbone?”

I smiled and then, on legs made wobbly from riding, I took him up on his invitation, walking through the door into a sort of short hall. To my left was the great hall, projecting two stories in height with large expanses of mullioned windows playing a game of shadow and light on the floor. Nicholas bid me walk farther into a long corridor that stretched away from me on both my sides. To my left was a grand staircase, and it was there that Nicholas led me.

Up those stairs and off a long gallery, the twin of the corridor beneath it, were my rooms. Two of them. An inner and an outer chamber. I reveled in the luxury of painted wainscoting and intricate tapestries, the fabulous curtains at the windows and the woven matting beneath my feet. There was a great bed with its four posts carved in flowers and vines and topped with indigo feathers. The mattress was covered with azure damask fringed with gold, and crimson velvet bed curtains hung from its rails. As soon as Nicholas left us, Joan and I went and sat on it, falling backward into its softness.

“I could spend the rest of my life in this very bed.”

“And I could spend the rest of mine right here beside you.” Joan spoiled the sentiment by poking me in the ribs with her elbow.

“Stop.”

“Move.”

“I command you to stop.”

“And I command you to move.”

“You are a worthless servant.”

“Perhaps, but you have trained for this for years. And if you do not move, the earl will have to wait on you.”

Nothing could have made me move faster.

Joan helped me out of my traveling clothes and into my best dress, my marriage gown, as quickly as she was able, but still the earl was waiting for us, pacing the corridor as we descended.

We rode in the same manner as we had come: accompanied by Nicholas and the earl’s men. We entered the palace grounds through a crenellated gate and rode wide around some painters working a golden drapery upon the walls. The area was bustling with people and animals, and even the horses were dressed in finer livery than most of the people I had beheld in London.

We left our horses in Nicholas’s care and entered the palace.

The earl offered me his hand, though he did not look at me, and we walked, hands held before us, down the long gallery that ran the length of the building. His silk-clad arm, embroidered with silver love knots, matched my own in color. We traveled between groups of men whispering and scowling, shuffling sheets of paper in their hands. They were clothed in all the colors of a summer’s flower garden. And around them, like bees careening from blossom to blossom, ran pages. Sun had doused the passage with light, glinting off jewels and causing stiff lace ruffs to glow. It made the men look like the very flowers they resembled. There stood a plump, frilly carnation-colored gillyflower. And there, a French marigold dressed in cloth of gold, turning toward the sun so he would sparkle.

A smile played with my lips, but I swallowed it when we entered the Presence Chamber. The finery in the gallery was gaudy in comparison.

The whole of my life had been focused on getting me to court. All of the lessons. All of the money. All of the advantages I had been given. But none could have prepared me for the scale of this grandeur. The throne was worked in brown velvet, embroidered with gold, and set with diamonds. All about were instruments of music made of glass, of silver, or of gold. The walls themselves were laid with gilt. Light blazed from myriad gold chandeliers, hung from golden cords. Everything glittered, from the jewels on the ladies’ dresses, to the mantel of the fireplace, to the gown of Her Majesty, the Queen.

The earl led me forward toward the dais, then paused to whisper to one of the women clothed in white attending Her Majesty.

The woman nodded and approached the Queen, curtsied, and, when acknowledged, stood and spoke to her.

Her Majesty leaned back slightly and eyed us, behind the woman’s back. Then she sat forward once more and gestured to the woman.

That lady returned and bid us approach the throne. I felt my belly tighten.

The earl bowed.

The Queen extended her hand toward him.

He took it and kissed it. Then he extended his other hand to me and introduced me to our sovereign as his wife.

As the Queen turned her attentions toward me, the smile she had bestowed upon the earl slid from her face. She raked my form with her eyes and then fastened them upon my face.

“What have you brought us, Lytham? A Moor with darkened skin? A gypsy child?”

My smile died as I comprehended Her Majesty’s words. She did not like the girl! What had gone wrong? I threw a glance toward the girl at my side, but everything seemed as it should. She was already bent in a curtsey; she had not uttered one word.

But I needed words. And quickly! “Your Majesty . . . compared to your alabaster beauty . . . the very moon would be suspect as a gypsy.”

There was no response from the throne.

I chanced a glance at the girl. God, help me, she was going to cry! She could not cry. She would make me a laughingstock.

Thank heaven, in the next moment my prayers were heard, for there came the suggestion of laughter from the Queen. All was well. And then, she spoke. “I shall take note: I must banish the moon from the kingdom. And, Lytham?”

“Your Majesty?”

“Have a care. Warn your wife. It is not wise to gaze too long at the moon.”

To gaze too long at the moon was to risk the loss of one’s sanity. Warn my wife? It was a warning meant for me. Parliament had granted me one annulment. It would not grant me another. And should another wife of mine take leave of her senses, then my career as a courtier would be over.

The court gasped.

In my surprise, I did not think to gasp. I did not even think to breathe. Had she just warned me from . . . from madness?

The earl’s hand, suddenly moist, squeezed mine, forcing it toward the ground.

I bent still further, feeling the stiff busk in my corset press into my belly. I trapped my breath inside my chest.

“You may go.”

Beside me, Lytham dipped even further, pulling me with him, urging me to do the same. But I could do no more.

Taunted by laughter, we backed away from the Queen and left the Presence Chamber. In laughing, she had made a royal joke of us.

I will not cry. I will not cry.

What good would my marriage do my father or husband if I sniveled in front of the Queen like a child? But still the tears would not stop gathering. I was soon in danger of spotting my gown with them. I felt them gather behind my eyes, felt a drip form just inside the tip of my nose.

Her Majesty’s dark, glittering eyes had sent a message, if I could only decipher it. Had I glimpsed mistrust? Suspicion? Hate?

How could she hate me? She did not know me.

But her smile had ceased the moment the earl had made my introduction. The moment her eyes had come to rest upon me.

The ride back to Lytham House was made in great haste and complete silence.

Once inside the courtyard, the earl dismounted quickly. I tried to follow him, but my feet became tangled in my skirts. Nicholas helped me loose myself and held my hand as I dismounted. I nearly forgot to thank him in my rush toward the house. But my hurry was justified; the earl was waiting for me inside the front hall.