The Emerald Swan (10 page)

Miranda sprang to her feet, standing easily on the nag’s back, swaying comfortably with the ungainly motion. “I can see over the outhouse roof. There’s a tiny path just to the right, behind the cesspit. Maybe that’ll take us out.”

She dropped back with a gasp as a rock flew through
the air from the pursuing crowd, who had finally emerged from the garden.

Gareth wrenched the reins around and drove the now-panicked horse into the dark, narrow cut alongside the noisome cesspit. “I hope to God this comes out somewhere useful or we’ll be trapped like rats in a sewer.”

“It opens out into a field, I think.”

Once they were in the open field, the sounds of the mob faded. Gareth sighed with relief. “If I ever feel the slightest inclination to go along with one of your compassionate impulses again, Miranda, remind me to lock myself up.”

“We really couldn’t have left them,” she said simply.

“No,” he said with another sigh. “I don’t suppose
we
could have.” The earl of Harcourt could have left them very easily, but he was beginning to see that the world was a very different place in the company of Miranda d’Albard.

“Lord love us, but that was a close one!” Bert threw back his head and breathed the relatively fresh air on Gaol Street as the great iron doors clanged shut behind them.

“Aye, I thought they was goin’ to get us fer vagrancy, sure as hell,” Raoul declared. “But, God’s blood, don’t it look fresh and free out ’ere?”

“Let’s move along,” Gertrude said. “We’ve got to pick up our traps, then we’ll just find out where Miranda’s got to, then we’ll be on our way to Folkestone. Catch a boat there, shake the dust of this place off our heels.”

“ ’Ow are we goin’ to find the girl if half the citizens of Dover can’t?” Jebediah demanded, contrary as always.

“Of course we’ll find her.” Luke was already ahead of the rest. “I’ll ask in the taverns and the marketplace and at the carrier stand, while you get our things together. Someone will have seen her.”

“Take me, Luke.” Robbie hobbled after him, his little face screwed with anxiety.

“You’ll slow me up.” Then Luke took pity on the child. “Oh, very well. I’ll give you a piggyback.” He squatted for Robbie to clamber awkwardly onto his back. The child’s slight body was no weight even for Luke’s skinny frame, and he loped off into the town, leaving his fellows to collect their belongings from the quay, where they’d left them in charge of a sympathetic fisherman.

Chapter Six

“M
Y
G
OD
, if it isn’t Harcourt. Gareth, where have you been, man? It’s been this age since we laid eyes on you.”

The cheerful hail brought Gareth swinging round on the balls of his feet, an oath forming unspoken on his lips. Two men crossed the yard of the livery stable attached to the inn in Rochester.

“God, man, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” The taller of the two, a stout, merry-eyed man in a doublet of scarlet damask embroidered with jet, laughingly slapped Gareth’s shoulder with a jeweled gauntlet. “As whey-faced as a girl with her terms, eh, Kip?” He gave another booming laugh, turning for corroboration to his companion, a slimmer version of himself.

“Gareth, how goes it with you?” Kip Rossiter greeted the earl of Harcourt with a smile. “Take no notice of Brian, here. You know he can’t keep an opinion to himself.”

Neither opinions nor secrets.
“I landed two days ago from France,” Gareth said easily. “I’m trying to exchange a miserable nag, the best Dover could offer, for something that might get me home before the end of the year.” He gestured to the horse who, now unsaddled, was cropping peacefully at a bale of hay.

“Lord, what a broken-down beast,” Brian said in a tone of disgust. “You actually rode that creature, Gareth? Dear God, I’d rather walk.”

“The thought crossed my mind once or twice,”
Gareth agreed with a laugh, his covert gaze darting across the livery yard on the watch for Miranda. “What brings you here?”

“We’ve been visiting the old man in Maidstone. Duty visit, y’know.” Brian stroked his auburn beard, which like the rest of him seemed rather larger than life. Gareth nodded. The Rossiter brothers’ cultivation of their ancient, irascible, and extremely wealthy male relative was a standing joke at court.

“Aye,” Kip agreed. “Keep ’im sweet. He can’t last much longer … Have you dined, Gareth? We’re about to order a repast fit for the queen, as recompense for the gruel and stewed dry fowl that passes for victuals at the old man’s table. Let’s break a bottle together.” Kip flung a friendly arm around Gareth’s shoulder. “We’ve ordered a private parlor. No common-room company for us this day.”

“Aye, and afterward we’re goin’ on the town,” Brian declared with an expansive gesture. “I’ve been chaste as a monk for the last week and I’ve heard tell there’s a decent house hard by the cathedral.”

Gareth thought rapidly. Miranda had disappeared to the outhouse while he’d been negotiating the horse exchange. If his two old friends came face to face with her it would be useless to hope that they wouldn’t immediately notice the startling resemblance to Maude.

“I’ll join you shortly. I’ve yet to complete my business with the livery stable,” he demurred.

“Oh, we’ll send for the man to wait upon us in the inn. No need for you to hang around at his beck and call.” Brian flung an arm around Gareth’s other shoulder with an exuberant bellow of good-fellowship. “Come, my throat’s as dry as an old maid’s tits.”

At that moment Miranda appeared from the corner
of the inn, Chip, dressed once more in his now-dry jacket and cap, sitting on her shoulder.

She saw him, half lifted a hand in greeting, then abruptly turned on her heel and sauntered back the way she had come, her orange dress fluttering around her calves.

Gareth exhaled in slow relief. His companions had their backs to the corner and wouldn’t have spied her. She had swift reactions, this little d’Albard.

“I’ll join you in the parlor directly,” he said. “I’ve need of hot water and clean linen after the day’s ride.”

The Rossiter brothers agreed amiably to meet him in half an hour in the private parlor and he hurried into the inn and upstairs to the large front chamber he had earlier bespoken for himself and Miranda.

Miranda had gone immediately to the chamber, where she hitched herself up on the high bed and sat swinging her legs in the gloom as dusk’s shadows lengthened. She had reacted without a moment’s thought when she’d seen the earl with the two men and she had no doubt that she had done the right thing. But she was feeling a little forlorn until she heard the earl’s footsteps on the landing outside. The door was not fully closed and he stepped into the doorway, peering into the dimness.

“Why are you sitting in the dark, Miranda?”

“I don’t know,” she said frankly. “I felt as if I ought to stay hidden somehow, and it seemed more appropriate to sit in darkness.” She slid off the bed and struck flint on tinder, lighting the branched candlestick on the low table beside the bed. The golden light glowed through the veil of her hair as it fell forward from her bent head, sending dark red flares shooting through the rich brown locks.

So like her mother’s, Gareth thought. He could remember watching his cousin Elena brush her hair at her dresser and the candle had set alight exactly the same fires in the thick, dark mane.

“What made you disappear like that?” he inquired curiously, leaning against the dresser, resting his hands on the smooth cherry wood on either side of his hips.

“I didn’t stop to think,” she said. “It just seemed obvious that if we were to practice a deception in London then I probably shouldn’t show myself to people you know before then.”

“Not everyone would have thought so shrewdly … or so swiftly,” he said, smiling. “I congratulate you.”

Miranda flushed with pleasure at the compliment. “Do those men know your cousin?”

“They’ve seen her several times … more often than most people.” He unbuckled his sword belt, laying it over a stool, then threw off his cloak on his way to the washstand where he poured water from the jug into the ewer. “They would certainly notice your resemblance to her.”

“Even with my short hair and when I’m dressed like this?”

He looked over at her, saying consideringly, “It requires a leap of faith, I grant you.”

Miranda knew that tone by now and she grinned. “I suppose I’d better stay up here for the evening.”

“I think it would be best if you dined up here. You won’t be too lonely, will you?”

Miranda shook her head, although she knew that she would. She was not accustomed to being alone.

Gareth hesitated, unconvinced by the headshake, but he could see no alternative. As he began to remove his doublet, his fingers slid inside the inner pocket as
they did without conscious thought countless times a day. The waxed parchment was there and the little velvet pouch with the bracelet. He glanced at Miranda, who had wandered to the window and was looking out into the gathering dusk.

Her slim, straight back, the long, delicate stem of her swanlike neck, reminded him so much of her mother. Elena had had just such grace of movement, just such naturally erect posture. And the bracelet that had so graced her mother’s slender wrist would grace the daughter’s. For him it took no leap of faith to imagine the grubby, tattered urchin in courtier’s dress. She was Elena’s daughter.

He turned back to the washstand, rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt.

Miranda turned away from the window. She watched him as he performed the simple gesture. His fingers were so long and elegant, meticulously folding over the cuffs of the shirt before pushing the sleeves up to his elbows, baring the brown muscular forearms and strong wrists. The candlelight caught the fine dusting of dark hair on his forearms. A pulse in her throat began to beat fast and she felt a strange quickening low in her belly, a strange fullness in her loins. It was not a sensation she had ever before experienced.

“Could you look in my portmanteau for a clean shirt? This one reeks of sweat and horseflesh after that mad ride this morning.”

Gareth bent to splash water on his face and Miranda found herself gazing at the curve of his back, the taut swell of his buttocks in the short trunk hose, the long, hard thighs outlined under close-fitting black stockings. She swallowed as the strange sensation in her lower body intensified and she felt her cheeks warm.

Hastily, she turned her attention to the portmanteau, finding a clean shirt of soft cream linen.

Gareth took it from her with a word of thanks, tossed it over the bedrail, and pulled the shirt he was wearing over his head. His chest was broad and smooth, paler than the strong brown column of his neck. The muscles rippled in his upper arms, almost as powerful as Raoul’s, the strongman in the troupe.

Miranda’s eyes went to the sword and the heavy studded belt. She remembered the strength with which he’d wielded both that morning at the Adam and Eve. Maybe Milord Harcourt was a courtier, but he was also a powerful swordsman, it seemed.

Gareth emerged from the lavender-smelling folds of his clean shirt and tucked it into the waist of his trunk hose. Then he leaned against the bedpost and examined Miranda, suggesting with a quizzically raised eyebrow, “Maybe you’d like to use the water, too.”

“I wish I had clean clothes,” she said sorrowfully. “Or just a clean chemise. All my possessions are probably back in France by now.”

“We’ll remedy the situation as soon as we reach London,” he promised, lifting her chin on a forefinger. She looked so bereft. “Don’t look so mournful, firefly. I’ll order you a very special dinner to be sent up.” Now where had that oddly affectionate nickname come from? Then he heard Mama Gertrude’s robust tones as she’d stormed past him muttering:
That girl … like a firefly she is with her darting about.

He continued hastily, “I expect I’ll be late returning, but I’ve ensured that there’s a truckle bed for you.” He released her chin with a smile, picked up his sleeveless doublet again, and left the chamber, pulling the garment on as he went.

Miranda sat down again on the bed. Chip jumped into her arms and gently touched her face with one hand. She rubbed his neck, wondering why she was feeling so forlorn. She and milord were so easy, so companionable together that it was hard to believe they’d only known each other for two days.

Gareth stretched his long legs beneath the oak refectory table and reached for his tankard of mead. Around him the buzz of voices ebbed and flowed, the light, eager tones of the women interspersed with the rougher, more gravelly tones of men who had drunk deep throughout the evening. Ribald laughter gusted upward to the smoke-blackened rafters.

A thin-faced serving girl appeared at his side with a jug of mead. She refilled his glass, holding herself away from him as if she expected him at any minute to grab, pinch, tickle, or slap. But Gareth to his surprise found that he had no interest in the women on sale in the house hard by the cathedral. All around him, men examined, women displayed, and when negotiations were completed, the pair would disappear into one of the many curtained niches ranging along the sides of the great hall.