Maid of Secrets (14 page)

“Ah, yes, my
report
.” I barely constrained myself from spluttering the words. “Where shall I begin? You dallied during your act of the play, despite my express warnings, and returned too late to the stage.” And now, I realized, I would have to betray yet another secret to this man. I had to transfer the packet of letters from my bodice to my waistband, since that was the easiest place for me to hide the letters so that I could quickly retrieve them and return them to Rafe. Unfortunately, my waistband was already weighed down with my spoils from earlier in the evening, which meant I needed to empty it. Now. In front of Walsingham. I’d been warned not to pick-pocket, but . . . there was nothing for it.

“Oh, very well,” I huffed. I shoved my hand into the tight wrap of my waistband and pulled out the offending jewels. A brooch. A cuff. A hairpin with a stone the size of an egg. I thrust these at Walsingham, and he took them without a
word. “Since I was not of a mind to be discovered, I abandoned my role,” I continued. “I now find myself still with a final act to complete and no idea what lines I will say.”

Walsingham frowned at me, clearly confused. I got the impression he was not much one for the theatre. “You still have the packet of letters,” he said dourly.

I pulled the papers out of my bodice and brandished them at him. “I do.”

“I was afraid of that.” Was that an eye roll? My blood began to simmer in my veins. I’d like to see
him
try to light-finger a set of papers both into and out of a man’s trunks, verily I would.

“You’ll need to intercept the boy before he reaches Ambassador de Feria,” Walsingham continued, scanning the ballroom. “De Feria is already making noises to Cecil that he must needs retire, and the moment he leaves the ballroom, you can expect the young count to follow him. You won’t have much time.”

I shoved the letters into my newly emptied waistband. “And how do you expect me to get close to the Count de Martine again if we are not in the midst of a dance, Sir Francis?” I asked, my words tight. “It’s not as if we’re countrymen, nor even well acquainted.”

Walsingham gave a short, derisive laugh. “You are a young woman of the court who has just had the pleasure of dancing with a bold young count from the Continent. I’m sure you have enough experience with the
theatre
to imagine how the next scene might play out, Miss Fellowes. Count de Martine won’t be so eager to meet with the Spanish ambassador that
he won’t take the time to tip the chin of a wide-eyed and willing maid.”

I stiffened. “Tip the chin?” I repeated.
Tip the chin!
“Surely you can’t mean what I think you do.”
Had the whole of the court lost all sense of decorum?

And just that quickly, Walsingham’s humor turned to irritation. “Do not try my patience, Miss Fellowes. You are seventeen years old, not ten. I’m not asking you to tumble the boy, just get him to tarry with you down a dark hallway long enough for you to set everything to rights. You cannot tell me that your training with your acting troupe did not include how to make eyes at a man. I won’t believe it.”

I bit my lip, but the man had a point. As soon as I could easily pass as a woman and not just a girl, Grandfather had made sure I was taught enough tricks of fluttering femininity to make a man think I was interested in him for something other than his money. Still, could I use those tricks to fool Rafe? I somehow didn’t think he’d be pulled in simply by my blinking a great deal and giggling into my hand.

“It’s time,” Walsingham said abruptly. “De Feria is leaving the ballroom now, and de Martine is tracking his departure. You can rest assured your young count will take his leave of Beatrice the moment the music ends.”

I glanced to where Walsingham gestured, and caught sight of just the hem of de Feria’s dark cape as it sailed through the west entrance of the Presence Chamber. Rafe would exit through that same doorway, and there were any number of long corridor-like antechambers in which he could meet with de Feria. The castle was a rabbit warren of intersecting
rooms, and I’d have to move quickly if I planned to intercept Rafe before he reached the Spanish ambassador—or before he realized his letters were gone.

I left Walsingham without another word, nimbly threading my way through the crowd. I cleared the west entrance to the Presence Chamber just as the Volta came to a close, to the enthusiastic applause of all those watching. I’m sure a good portion of that applause was for Beatrice, fluttering and simpering and cooing simpleton that she was.

Focus
. I couldn’t go too far outside the Presence Chamber. There were too many possible corridors Rafe could take.

I moved down the hallway with purposeful strides, glancing into this room and that. What would a young woman do if she were waiting for her would-be lover? Where would she go?

And what would she do once she got there?

“Don’t even think about it,” I muttered, poking my head into an antechamber.
Would it suit? No. Only one entrance. I’d feel trapped in a room such as this.
“The game is the letters, nothing more.”

“Talking to yourself, fair maid?”

I squeaked and whirled around, doing such an admirable job of sounding like a startled little girl that I would have commended myself, had any of it been on purpose. I looked up to face the Count de Martine, who was lolling in the doorway, his eyes glittering in the half-light. A single sconce in the room lit his face, making him look almost saturnine. “My lord!” I breathed.

“I thought we’d decided on ‘Rafe.’ ” He smiled, shrugging himself off the wall and stepping toward me. Trapped,
trapped, I thought.
Trapped
. “What brings you to such a dark and silent room? Did the dancing fatigue you after all?”

“I . . . ” I swallowed, feeling seventeen inches the fool. I knew what had to be said, and I gathered up my skirts in my fists, willing the words to come out. “It’s just that . . . I saw that you were heading toward the west entrance, and I went out ahead. I’d hoped we could . . . talk.”

It was honestly the lamest speech I’d ever contrived. I could have died from shame right there on the spot.

But Rafe merely smiled.

“You wanted to . . . talk with me?” he asked, taking another few steps forward. At least, I assumed he took actual steps. Somehow he’d glided toward me far too quickly, and he was now near enough to touch. I felt the heat radiating from his body, sweeping over me in a rush.

“Yes, ah . . . to talk,” I said, my words barely more than a whisper. I took a step back.

He took another step forward. “And what did you want to say to me, fair maid?”

My smile faltered, and I stepped back again. “I thought we’d agreed upon ‘Meg,’ ” I said, playing for time.

“So we did,” he said, his words low. He stepped forward again, even as I moved yet farther back from him—and I came up hard against a damask-covered wall. Rafe stopped in front of me and rested one hand on the wall over my head. He suddenly seemed . . . very tall. And very close. “So, Meg,” he said quietly, smiling down at me. “What did you want to talk about?”

My head was swimming, but the nearness of him at least helped to instill the urgency that had been sorely lacking in
my playacting up to this point. A voice shouted deep inside me to get this task over with already. So I tilted my head up in the semidarkness, the movement positioning my lips only inches away from his. Exactly where they should be.

I think . . . I think I should like you to kiss me, Count de Martine,
I said, my words soft and subtle and full of promise.
I think you should do that right now.

Well, that was what I wanted to say, anyway.

Instead I opened my mouth—and stopped breathing.

Rafe’s gaze seemed to swallow me whole, his dark eyes intent, his own breath suddenly quickening. “I think that’s a very good subject to discuss, sweet Meg,” he murmured.

And he leaned down and pressed his lips against mine.

The touch of his mouth was a sparking flint strike, and suddenly heat flooded through me like mead drunk too fast, burning its way through my body and lifting me along a current of excitement and urgency unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
I was kissing Rafe!

Lest you think I handled the rest of that moment well, let me assure you, I did not.

This, of course, was not my fault. Despite the very generous nature of my fellow actors in the Golden Rose acting troupe, up until the moment I’d been unceremoniously hauled off to the Queen’s dungeon, I’d had yet to have any success in getting any of the men to kiss me. First, of course, there had been their fear of my grandfather—and I could understand no one wanting to run afoul of the old man. But Grandfather had passed away in the early fall, and I had increasingly been asked to act like an experienced woman as I moved through the crowds. How was I to act like I was knowledgeable in
the ways of women and men if I’d never been kissed? I’d demanded. It was just a kiss, for heaven’s sake!

Still, no one had been willing to indulge me. Not even Troupe Master James, who’d looked positively sick when I’d asked.

All of this is why, I am sure, I was so unforgivably
poleaxed
by such a straightforward event as one young Rafe Luis Medina, Count de Martine, pressing his soft, luxurious, heavenly lips against mine. It felt dangerous. It felt glorious.

But mainly it felt like I was going to die.

I think I may have swooned.

In any event, I did find myself falling forward, a bolt of sheer fiery bliss shooting through me, starting from my mouth and coursing all the way to my toes. Rafe caught me easily, and somehow managed to wrap his hand around the nape of my neck in the process, moving his lips to my cheek, my jawline, and then . . .

He kissed my
ear
.

(!)

Somehow my right hand moved up Rafe’s chest to press firmly against him, and I felt Rafe’s warmth through the gold brocade of his doublet. My mind was consumed with that heat, overwhelmed with it. I felt stricken. Delirious. Fevered.

Then my left hand dropped to my waist. With a thud.

And, to be wholly honest, that’s the only reason why I remembered that I was still carrying Rafe’s letters on my person.

I stiffened reflexively, and Rafe chuckled against my ear, which made me dizzy all over again. “If you’re only now
surprised at my kiss, fair maid, I must not be as skilled at this as I am told.”

What?
“N-no,” I said quickly as Rafe moved away from my ear to trail a line of kisses down my jawline. The fire in my toes went screaming back up my legs and coiled in my belly. God’s teeth, somebody should have prepared me for this! If this was how it felt to have one’s ear kissed, what would I do if he ever touched my lips again?

At long last, the logical part of my mind finally awoke, and my left hand dipped inside the waistband of my gown, even as Rafe seemed to find my neckline above my ruff to be of excruciating fascination. He lifted his head slightly and drew his tongue along my earlobe, and I felt all coherent thought fleeing me. Struggling to breathe, I fumbled the packet of letters out of my waistband, even as Rafe began to whisper something to me in Spanish that was lyrical and lovely and impossible for me to understand. I sighed heavily, pressing my full weight into him on the right side, which allowed my left hand to have free access down the length of his torso.

Rafe shifted into me as well, whispering another round of Spanish that I wanted very much to understand. I only prayed I would remember it, but I couldn’t focus on his words. Instead, as stealthily as a cat, I drew my left hand down his doublet, found the slash pocket in his trunks, and slipped the papers inside.

The moment I did so, I pressed myself to Rafe as if I’d been rapturously swept away by the heat of passion . . . .

And Rafe immediately pulled back.

“What ho! What’s this?” he asked. His grin was victorious, but his gaze was filled with curiosity at my apparent forwardness. “I suspect you are not the innocent girl you first appeared to be.”

Had he caught me out? I blinked at Rafe, barely recovering in time. “I am so sorry, my lord,” I said, opening my eyes wide, my embarrassment wholly unfeigned. He was grinning, though. A man wouldn’t grin if he thought he’d been duped, would he?
How could I salvage this?
“I overstepped my place. I cannot apologize enough, I—”

“Shhh,” he said, pressing a hand to my lips. “I rather like it. It would not do for me to be caught out with an untrained maid.”

A what? Did he know I was a spy . . . or did he simply suspect that I was a trollop? And which was worse?

“I—I don’t understand,” I whispered, and that was true enough. Instead of explaining, Rafe kissed me on the forehead.

“And that’s to my advantage.” He chuckled as he stood back from me. “We’ll see each other again, sweet Meg, fear not. But now I must be off. Be assured you’ve given me plenty to think about this eve.” He grinned again at my expression. “All good things, I promise you.”

“Oh,” was all I could manage as he bowed gracefully to me in the semidarkness. Then he was turning and out the door in three long strides.

And I was left alone, completely unsure of what had just transpired.

But the letters had been delivered successfully, it seemed. Which meant I was safe, for the moment. Wasn’t I?

And just as quickly I thought of Marie Claire. Had she too thought she was safe, fresh from her secret mission? Had she been similarly threatened by the Queen’s own advisors, even as danger stalked her steps? Had she known that death surrounded her, before it was suddenly too late?

I swallowed, taking one step toward the chamber door, then another. I had to get out. I had to
move
.

Rafe de Martine’s kiss had been a distraction for him, a wayward moment before he moved off to some dark intrigue with the Spanish ambassador. My kiss back to him had been a different kind of distraction, solely intended to misdirect him while I replaced what I had stolen.

Secrets and lies surrounded me here, and death and darkness waited just outside the door.