Dark Angels (4 page)

Alice sipped slowly at a goblet of wine and watched as two fresh fifteens, maids of honor, full of wine, threw bread at each other. Everyone was talking to someone. She was barely acquainted with half the young women and girls sitting here tonight. Before she’d left, she’d known every one of them, and what’s more, they’d known her. If there could be such a thing as chief maid of honor, she’d been so.

“We’ve been talking about your hairpins, Alice.” It was Kit, younger, a maid of honor to the queen and known to Alice. Alice’s hair was thickly riotous and had to always be held back with pins. The ones she wore this night were roses of beaten gold with pearl centers, quite old. She’d won them in a game of cards in France, from one of Princesse Henriette’s ladies-in-waiting who swore they’d been her grandmother’s, that the great Henri IV of France himself had pulled them out of her grandmother’s hair when he made love to her.

“And those stockings,” continued Kit. “I want a pair just that shade.”

“I’ll give you mine tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you the kind one, Alice.”

It was Gracen, another maid of honor to Queen Catherine, cool Gracen, mocking Gracen, grown up in the time since Alice had left. Now there was an edge to her that made her formidable. Alice didn’t remember Gracen being formidable.

Alice could be mocking, too. “I thought you’d be married, a babe on each hip.”

“Oh, I but follow your example.”

Touché, thought Alice.

“We were spiteful to Caro, Alice,” said Kit, sopping her sleeve in food as she reached for her wine goblet. “We repaid her for you.”

Dear Caro, bumbling Caro, loyal Caro, who had married Alice’s affianced. It had been the scandal and jest of the court. Had Alice thought it wouldn’t hurt to hear of her again? Yes. I hate hearts, she thought. They’re unpredictable and capricious.

“Their little boy just died.”

The little boy whose beginning made the marriage imperative.

“Another on the way. Colefax is clearly an attentive husband.” Gracen watched Alice to see what her face would show.

“Hush, Gracen,” said Kit. “You’re unkind.”

“Do drink another goblet of wine, Kit,” said Gracen. “It becomes you so.”

“You’re nasty.”

“And you’re ugly.”

“I’m not.” Kit began to weep the easy tears of someone who has had too much to drink. “Am I, Alice? Tell me.”

“Of course you’re not. Excuse yourself and go and dry your eyes. Hurry, before Brownie sees you.” Alice sat back in her chair, met Gracen’s eyes, big and innocent. “That was cruel.”

“Only if she were really ugly.” Gracen pointed to where Barbara and Renée sat, men standing two and three deep behind their chairs, courting them. It was one of the sports of court, to seduce a maid of honor. A young woman had to be very beautiful or very clever to survive. Barbara was the reigning beauty—languid and fair, and when she blushed, it was as if cream were suddenly mixed with new strawberries. Though now Gracen could give her a run for her money. But Renée was simply dazzling—a pale oval of a face, crowned with crisp, dark, curling hair, eyes the color of beryls, dropped like jewels in the midst. “And her name would be?” Gracen asked, nodding toward Renée.

“Louise Renée de Keroualle.”

“Now the fashion will be for sheep.” Gracen made a bleating sound, and the young women around her, who heard, laughed.

Well, thought Alice. What sharp eyes and what a sharp tongue our Gracen had grown. There was a wide space between Renée’s eyes, so that it might be said she resembled a sheep, albeit a very beautiful one. Did Gracen set the tone these days? It hadn’t been so when Alice had left. It had been Alice—well, Alice and Barbara, with Caro as their faithful third. “Who is that directly behind Barbara’s chair?” Alice asked.

“John Sidney. Do you remember him?”

“Slightly.”

Frowning, Alice watched an earnest young man hover over Barbara, something possessive in his stance. Alice pointed to the tall Life Guard with eyes like blue ice who had been aboard the yacht, and who had stationed himself behind Renée’s chair early on and had not moved. “Tell me about him.”

“Richard, Baron Saylor,” Gracen said. “Our handsome soldier, as handsome as Monmouth, I think. He came to court as you were leaving. His sisters are at court, too.”

Yes, that was what one did at court, clawed a position and then brought in family and scattered them hither and yon, to pick up honors and positions as they might. The old order had been destroyed with the long civil war and the protectorate afterward. The new order King Charles brought in ten years ago was still coalescing. If Alice had had any family to speak of, she’d have done the same. As it was, she treated her friends as family.

“Point them out to me, Gracen.” Alice followed the line of Gracen’s elegant finger. The Saylors were a handsome family. Something proud, bright, tawny about all three.

Kit sat down among them again, her tears dried, her eyes on Gracen. “Louisa Saylor is a dreadful flirt and after your father, Alice. Her sister took Lord Cranbourne right out from under Gracen’s nose and married him. It was too funny—Ouch! Gracen! Don’t pinch!”

“Who are you tearing to pieces?”

Barbara had left her admirers and sat beside Alice in her chair, scooting Alice over with a swift motion of her hip. She leaned her head against Alice’s shoulder and smiled happily. “Not me, I hope.”

“We were talking about the Saylors,” said Alice.

“Richard is an archangel dropped among us. He looks an archangel, don’t you think, that straight nose, those eyes?” Barbara had had too much wine. Her normal demeanor was reserved and quiet, but wine made her talkative and funny. Everyone loved it when Barbara drank.

“Not an angel. A Viking. He looks as if a Viking warrior ravished a woman of the family long ago, and he’s the living proof.” Gracen shivered suggestively, then turned charmingly wheedling. “Alice, I want to meet your friends. They seem so witty and worldly.”

Friends? thought Alice. She had none in Princesse Henriette’s household, save for Renée and Beuvron. Gracen was looking at the Marquis d’Effiat and the other handsome, glitteringly fashionable young men who held a kind of court of their own in another part of the chamber. They weren’t supposed to have made this visit; they’d been forced on the princess by her husband. There had been a huge quarrel over it.

“The Marquis d’Effiat is not my friend. He is rude beyond measure to Madame—”

“Madame who?” interrupted Kit.

“Madame nobody. ‘Madame’ is what Princesse Henriette must be called in France, and her husband is called ‘Monsieur,’” Alice said impatiently, thinking she’d never end if she began to explain the intricacies of the etiquette of the French court. “The French are very particular about titles. You’ll be burned at the stake if you make a mistake. D’Effiat belongs to the household of Monsieur and makes no bones about despising the princess. He slanders her every chance he may. And he really is dangerous.”

“Then I really must meet him.” Gracen made the others listening laugh.

“You’re stupid to say something like that.”

Gracen sat back, color in her cheeks. She flicked her head in an angry gesture, looking lovely and a little dangerous herself.

Alice stopped. She was making it worse. Of course they wouldn’t understand. They hadn’t lived for two years in a war between two households, a prince’s and his princess’s, everyone from master to servant involved, where bitter accusations began in the morning and hadn’t ended by night, where revenge, no matter its hurt, was never finished. King Charles could be cruel, but his court was lazy and easy, the way he was himself, and he despised quarreling, would do anything to avoid it, was angered, in fact, by being made to summon the energy to argue. One of the things she wanted to do during this visit was talk to someone about the unhappiness in the princess’s life. But she wouldn’t do so with these friends. She moved to another topic. “Where is His Grace the Duke of Balmoral?”

Balmoral was not among the great men sitting to either side of the royal family, where he should have been. He was her savior. A true gentleman. The only one of them with any dignity in the stupid little drama she and Cole and Caro had played.

“I haven’t seen him,” said Barbara.

“Why don’t you ask Lord Colefax?” Gracen paid her back. Colefax—Cole—was Balmoral’s nephew and heir.

“What an excellent idea.” Alice dropped a great damask napkin in a bowl and rose from her chair. “My compliments, Gracen. I may just do that. And by the way, if a Viking had his way with the Saylors once upon a time, I do believe a spider performed the same deed among the Sidney women. I’m sorry, but John Sidney has spider shanks.”

Everyone, even Barbara, burst into laughter. If it was the fashion for a woman to hide her legs under long skirts and petticoats so that a glimpse of ankle was erotic, it was also the fashion for men to show their legs in tight breeches that came to the knee, in stockings that clung to every muscle of the calf. Handsome, muscular legs were as much admired as a woman’s shoulders. Campaign begun, thought Alice. Score one against this John Sidney.

Her friends watched her sail away, her shoulders rising pale and bare and taut from the bodice of her gown, the beautiful little golden roses shining dully here and there among her curls.

“She wouldn’t talk to Colefax, would she?” asked Gracen, wide-eyed, admiringly.

“She might,” said Barbara.

Gracen stared after Alice with narrowed eyes. “She’s not going to stop me from flirting with whomever I please. I’d be a perfect comtesse.”

“You don’t speak French,” said Kit.

“I have other charms. What’s the matter with you, darling?” Gracen noticed that Barbara was slumped in the chair she’d been sharing so happily with Alice.

“Mister Sidney doesn’t have spider shanks, does he?”

Kit exploded into laughter.

“As long as another shank is made well, never mind, I always say,” said Gracen, making even Barbara, never as rowdy as the rest of them, smile.

“A
LICE.”

A royal page gave her a hug, his arms clasping hard around the waist of her gown, the smile on his face and in his voice genuine. She stroked his shoulder a moment. The pages, boys anywhere from eight to thirteen, served the royal households as messengers and aides. To Alice they were like the young brothers she didn’t have. “Where’s Edward?” she said, asking of her particular favorite.

“Somewhere near the queen.”

“Well, you find him and tell him I have need of him. It’s very important.”

She heard loud laughter and glanced toward its cause. There stood the intruding men of Monsieur’s household, d’Effiat foremost among them, speaking rapidly in French, their hands gesturing and animated, and whatever they were saying clearly amused the crowd they’d gathered. And why not? They were richly dressed, of noble birth, proud as wild falcons, and all that was fashionable at the moment in Paris, belonging as they did to the second most important household in the kingdom of France, that of Monsieur, the only brother of the king of France. Already they’d attracted the wits of court. Beuvron saw her and quietly detached himself from his friends.

“Are you having a good time?” she asked after they’d touched cheeks. He was the only one of them she liked, and even he she only half trusted.

“Surprisingly so.”

“Why surprising?”

“We expected chickens to be wandering among the chambers and hay in everyone’s hair.”

“We English can be civilized upon occasion.”

“Alice, my sweet—”

She knew him. “How much?”

“A guinea?”

“I don’t have that, but I’ll give you what I can.” She turned and fiddled with her skirt, pulling out a small bag from a secret pocket, shaking coins from it into her hand. She always kept coins about her. It was a legacy from her precarious past, a precaution drilled into her by her father.

“You are an angel, Alice.”

She didn’t answer, watched him return, just as discreetly as he’d left, to the group. He didn’t want the others to see that he’d approached her. There was some new edge to these men. She’d been noticing it, feeling it, for weeks. It couldn’t be a good sign. Where in this crowd was her father? Dancing had begun, the intricate, stately steps the French court had made the rage, and everyone was watching the royal family, who danced the first dance by themselves. King Charles partnered his sister. The Duke of York was with the queen. Monmouth danced with the Duchess of York; and Prince Rupert, in dry clothing, bowed to Monmouth’s wife. There would have been a fit in Paris if an illegitimate son like Monmouth had joined the royals proper, but here it was different. He’s grown up, Alice thought, her eyes measuring him, her first friend. They’d known each other in the wild, uneasy days when King Charles was in exile and no one in the ragtag court around the king knew where the next meal would come from. She and Monmouth had been children of the exile and children of the return. Her feet began to move into the positions of the dance even though she hadn’t a partner. There was nothing she loved better than dancing.

Young Edward appeared before her, and she circled the court page in measured, graceful, gliding steps, saying as she did so, “You’ve grown two inches, Edward. How dare you be so unmannerly?” She sank into the curtsy reserved for the end of the dance, even though the music continued.