Kissed by Shadows (18 page)

She leaned forward suddenly and switched the subject. “And you will tell me nothing of these games you talk about?”

“Not yet.”

“But sometime?”

The prospect of telling her the truth was so dreadful to him that he could not contemplate it. He would find a way to get her and her child to safety without revealing the horror of what had been done to her. He
had
to.

Pippa scrutinized his expression and could read nothing there. It was wiped clean, as so often when he was physically present, but absent in mind or spirit. “Where are you?” she demanded. “Where have you gone?”

He shook his head. “Nowhere, love. I am here, with you.”

Pippa leaned back against the window, her hands loose now in his. They all had dark places. They all had secrets. Was it unreasonable to expect Lionel to reveal his dark places and his secrets in order to gain her trust? They had known each other such a short time. They knew so little of each other. Maybe knowledge and trust went hand in hand. And they could have neither without some struggle, some effort, some compromise.

“You are and you aren't,” she said with a tiny smile. “Do you think, since we are to spend so much perfectly legitimate time in each other's company, that we might spend some of it without clothes?”

He laughed, his relief sharp in his eyes, spreading through his body. “I am certain of it.” He released her hands and stood up. “I have a suggestion, one that I hope will please you.”

“Tell me.” Life seemed to have come back to her. Her skin felt warm, her hands hot where he'd held them, the blood pulsed strong once more in her veins.

“This evening, would you care to come and sup with me?” He regarded her closely. “My ward is desperate for company and I thought perhaps it might please you to learn a little more of me. For us both to spend time together in a more ordinary situation.”

“Your ward?” Pippa was astonished.

“Dona Luisa de los Velez of the house of Mendoza,” he supplied. “I knew her parents well in Seville. She refused a marriage contracted for her, and to divert Luisa and any possible scandal I brought her with her duenna to England. She's a sweet-tempered girl on the whole, but she's bored to tears, and I have sadly neglected her entertainment—” A knock at the door interrupted him and he frowned with annoyance.

“Who is it?” Pippa called, rising from the window seat.

“Robin.”

She glanced at Lionel, who said almost to himself, “How convenient.”

Pippa had no idea what he meant but she went swiftly to the door to open it.

Robin wrapped her in his arms and hugged her. “I've just met Stuart. What is this tale he's telling me?” He stepped into the chamber and his eye fell on Lionel.

“I didn't realize you were still here,” he said coldly, keeping one arm around Pippa. “I rather assumed that having delivered your message you would have had the decency to leave my sister alone.”

“That would be rather difficult, Lord Robin,” Lionel said gently. “Since I am charged by Their Majesties with your sister's care and well-being, I expect to be often in her company.”

Robin looked askance at Pippa. To his surprise she didn't seem either angry or resentful at Ashton's calm statement.

“'Tis true enough, Robin,” she said. “See for yourself.” She handed him Philip's document and moved away from the protective circle of his arm.

Robin perused the parchment, then he tossed it disgustedly onto the table. “Why would they do this to you?” He addressed the question more to Lionel than to his sister.

Pippa shrugged. “Lionel . . . Mr. Ashton . . . thinks it's possible that Mary's afraid my pregnancy will draw attention away from her own.”

She gave a short laugh. “'Tis an absurd fear. She bears the heir to the throne, after all, while I carry no more than a viscount's babe. But Mary has her megrims, as we well know. And I fear she's been looking for a chance to punish me further for my loyalty to Elizabeth.”

Robin absorbed this. He looked at Lionel. “Is that what's behind this?”

“It could well be,” Lionel responded. He stood beside the empty grate, one arm resting along the mantelpiece, one booted foot on the fender. His free hand was tucked inside his doublet, his fingers feeling the presence of the slim packet of letters from Flanders that as yet he had not had time to examine.

“But that does not explain why my father and his family are forbidden to come to
London . . . why my sister is denied the comfort of her mother at this time.” Robin stood foursquare, his cheeks flushed with anger and distress for Pippa, his puzzlement clear in his bright blue eyes. “That is surely simply punitive.”

“It may be,” Lionel agreed. “But perhaps together, we can give your sister the care and protection she needs.”

“And what of her husband?” Robin demanded. “Why is he not charged with his wife's care?”

“I believe Philip and Mary think he will be kept too busy on their concerns to have time for mine,” Pippa said with undisguised sarcasm. She returned to her seat in the window, tapping out a rhythm with the ivory sticks of her fan against the stone sill.

Robin looked at her. He knew that obdurate set of her mouth, the defiant light behind her hazel eyes. There had been no improvement, it seemed, in Pippa's relations with her husband.

He glanced at Lionel Ashton, then again at Pippa. He remembered her earlier interest in the man. He hadn't known they were acquainted beyond that vague interest, and yet it struck him now that there was some connection between them. Pippa seemed remarkably at ease in the company of the man who had been designated her jailer, as if his presence in her bedchamber was perfectly natural.

“I was hoping, Lord Robin, that you would join with me in taking care of Pippa,” Lionel said, reverting to his earlier statement. “There is little restriction on her movements, so long as they meet with my approval and she avoids the public rooms of the palace. If we put our minds to it, I am sure we can make the months of her pregnancy neither lonely nor tedious.”

Robin frowned. He had no inclination to align himself with a man who was a member of Philip's cohort, and yet he could not refuse Ashton his help in a matter that concerned Pippa. But it was all too smooth and simple sounding. Something felt awry.

Pippa's unnatural acquiescence, for instance. The ease that seemed to flow between her and Lionel Ashton, the informal, comfortable manner in which he used her name. Surely she should be fighting this? Resisting Ashton in some way? And surely Ashton should be playing the part of jailer and not comforter and friend?

But Robin could feel himself drawn to the man. He could detect no insincerity in his relaxed and friendly manner, or in his suggestion that they should join forces to help ease the harshness of Mary's edict. He began to wonder if Lionel Ashton was not exactly what he made himself out to be.

The insistent, monotonous tapping of the ivory fan on the stonework was filling his head, making it impossible to think clearly. “God's bones, Pippa, stop that! 'Tis driving me crazy.”

Pippa looked surprised; she hadn't been aware of her musical diversion. “Your pardon.” She folded her hands into her lap.

Lionel spoke into the sudden silence. “I have invited Pippa to sup with me at my house this evening. I think it might divert her to leave the palace for a few hours. I hope you will do me the honor of joining us too, Lord Robin. If you have no pressing engagements, of course.” He raised an interrogative eyebrow.

Robin was dumbstruck. Luisa's lively countenance swam into his internal vision.
Dear God, how could he have forgotten her so completely?

Pippa glanced at him curiously. “Is there a difficulty, Robin? I cannot visit a single man alone, even if I am ostracized at court, and he is in some sort my jailer.”

“Even a single man with a ward and her fearsome duenna.” Lionel laughed. “As I was explaining to Pippa, my ward is in sore need of diversion. You would be doing me a great favor by escorting your sister to sup with us this evening.”

Luisa! In need of diversion! Oh, didn't he know it!
Robin struggled to gather his thoughts. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of such an invitation. How on earth would Luisa react? Was she clever enough to dissemble? Would Ashton tell her ahead of time who his guests were to be? Would she be prepared for him?

What a deliciously absurd tangle.

“Robin?” Pippa prompted, puzzled at his continued silence. “Will you come?”

He could not possibly refuse even if he wished to. “Yes . . . yes, of course,” he said hastily, a choke of laughter in his voice. Pippa would be immensely diverted by this situation but he could hardly share his secret at the moment.

He composed his features into a thoughtful gravity. “I was just thinking of what I must rearrange. But there will be no difficulty, I am sure.”

He turned solemnly to Lionel. “I had not realized, Ashton, that you had a domestic establishment in London. A ward, no less. From Spain?”

“Aye,” Lionel said. “Her parents were close friends of mine. I have known her since early childhood.”

Robin nodded with the same solemnity, observing, “I fear my command of the Spanish tongue is not sufficient to conduct much of a supper-table conversation.”

“Dona Luisa's English is very accomplished. Dona Bernardina, her duenna, however, speaks little, but Luisa and I will act as interpreter for her.”

“What time should we come?” Pippa asked. The prospect of the evening had diverted her. She was aware of a very female curiosity that demanded satisfaction. There was a whole side to Lionel that would be revealed in his domestic situation. Was he as distant and remote a guardian as he was a courtier?

“Eight o'clock, if that will suit you. My house is close to the Savoy Palace, about thirty minutes by water. You will recognize the steps by the iron gate leading into the garden. Two cressets will be hung from the gateposts, and someone from the house will be waiting for you.”

He had no need of signposts, Robin thought with an inner chuckle.

Pippa glanced at Robin, who said without a hint of his amusement, “Then I will come for you here at seven-fifteen, Pippa.”

She nodded. He hesitated, waiting for Lionel to take his leave, but the man had not moved from his position by the fireplace. Robin could see no alternative but to make his own departure.

“Until later.” He bowed to Ashton, bent to kiss Pippa, and strode from the chamber to rearrange his evening's plans.

“How strange that you should have a ward, and a house, and a whole life that I know nothing of,” Pippa mused. “A life filled with people who know you so differently from the way I know you.”

“I am an open book, my love,” he said with a smile. “Step into my parlor at eight o'clock tonight and read what you may.”

He took her hands and brought them to his lips, kissing her fingertips. “The more you know about me, the more you will know that you can trust me.”

“But you will not tell me of the deep games you play?”

He shook his head. “That I cannot . . . not yet.”

She sighed. “Well then, I will be satisfied with what I can glean for myself.”

He left her then and Pippa rang for Martha. An evening away from the palace, conducting herself with perfect propriety in her lover's company, promised only the most delicious, clandestine diversion.

She would put aside her doubts and confusions for this evening and enjoy herself. There were perhaps compensations to be had from Mary's harsh orders. And no one had said she might not write to her mother. Seven months was a long time. Perhaps things would change and her mother could at least be beside her for the birth.

Lionel did not immediately return home. He would not deal under his own roof with the letters he carried and always took the most elaborate precautions to protect Luisa from the consequences of her guardian's true loyalties.

He walked through the narrow alleys towards Charing Cross, taking his time, ears and eyes on the alert for the possibility of a follower. Certain he was not being watched he ducked beneath the low lintel of a tavern. A man behind the counter looked up briefly, then without catching Lionel's eye returned to drawing ale for a customer.

Lionel made his way across the floor thick with clotted sawdust towards a narrow staircase at the rear of the taproom. No one appeared to notice him, certainly no one acknowledged him. He climbed the stairs swiftly and entered a small loft under low eaves. It was hot with the trapped stale air of a summer just ending, but he resisted the urge to open the small shuttered casement that looked over the street below.

He threw the heavy bar across the door and lit the stub of a candle on a rickety table that together with a three-legged stool offered the only furniture in the place.

He laid the packet of letters on the table, drawing the candle closer, and bent over them as he untied the string that held them together. He read in silence. War was brewing between France and the Hapsburg empire. The emperor was terrified that if Mary died childless then her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, betrothed to the French dauphin, would be the natural Catholic heir to the English throne. France and England would be united against the Hapsburgs. Lionel's informants had learned that to avoid such an outcome the emperor was prepared in the event of Mary's premature death to support the claims of Elizabeth to the throne. On condition that she marry her sister's childless widower, Philip.

A cynical smile flickered across Lionel's mouth. A papal annulment was easily arranged in the name of political expediency. But would Elizabeth be prepared to accept such an arrangement? She would have to abdicate her own independence, and then accept the Catholic faith. Lionel thought she would have no objection to the latter, the lady was the ultimate pragmatist, but he rather doubted she would accept the former.

It was his task, however, to inform her that in the right circumstances she would have support from an unlikely quarter. That implicit support could only strengthen her hand at present and provide stronger safeguards against the threat of assassination. Once Philip was aware of his father's second-string planning, he could begin to put pressure on Mary to receive Elizabeth at court once more.