The Emerald Swan (15 page)

“I suppose because you won’t take it yourself.” Miranda threw off the wet towel with a shiver and began to dress. “What fine clothes,” she murmured appreciatively as the soft silk and lawn caressed her clean skin.

“Don’t you mind being an impostor?” Maude sat down again on the settle, huddling into her shawls. She was not at all sure she cared for the idea of anyone impersonating her, let alone this mirror image of herself. It made her feel as if she were somehow split in two.

“It’s a job. I’m to be paid well for it.” Miranda held up a thick canvas underskirt inset with wicker hoops. “I’ve never worn a farthingale,” she said doubtfully.

“But what good will it do anybody?” Maude demanded.

“I’ve no idea.” Miranda found Maude’s slightly petulant insistence rather irritating. “Will you help me with this farthingale?”

Maude slid off the settle with an unusual burst of energy, losing several shawls as she hurried over to Miranda. But she didn’t seem to notice. “How can you possibly expect to be me when you’ve never even worn a farthingale? Here … you step into it, then I’ll tie it at the waist … There. Now we drop this underskirt over your head.” She held out a starched linen skirt. “Like so.” She smoothed it over the canvas farthingale. “See,
it completely covers the hoops. And now we put on the overdress.”

Miranda ducked her head, raised her arms, as Maude maneuvered the gown into place, shedding shawls as she did so. Miranda felt enclosed, confined, almost suffocated by the weight of the garments.

Maude deftly laced the bodice of the periwinkle blue gown. It had a stomacher of embroidered damask, a white silk partlet covering the throat and shoulders, and the skirt lay over the cone-shaped farthingale in straight lines, except for the back, where it was gathered in soft folds that fell to the ground in a train.

Miranda peered down at herself. “It feels dreadfully confining, but I think it must be very elegant. What do I look like?”

“Like me … more than ever.” Maude shook her head. “I still don’t understand it.”

Miranda surveyed the other girl with a frown. “You’re very pale. Are you ailing?”

“A little.” Maude shivered and bent to gather up dropped shawls. “It’s so cold in here.”

“It seems warm enough to me. But why don’t you light the fire? There’s flint and tinder on the mantel.”

“I don’t know how to light a fire!” Maude exclaimed in shock.

“Lord love us!” Miranda murmured. “I suppose it would get your hands dirty.” She laid kindling in the grate and struck a flame. The wood caught immediately and Maude with a sigh of relief moved closer to the heat.

“Can’t you do anything for yourself?” Miranda asked in genuine curiosity.

Maude shrugged, holding her hands to the flames. “I don’t have to.”

“Seems to me, if you’d been able to light your own fire, you wouldn’t have had to stay up here shivering,” Miranda pointed out. Maude confused her more than ever. How could someone be so different from herself when she looked exactly like her?

Maude sat down on the settle again. “I suppose you have a point,” she admitted reluctantly. She looked at Miranda in frowning silence. “Are you really a strolling player?”

“I was, and I suppose I will be again. But tell me what all that fuss was about.”

“What religion do you have?”

Miranda shrugged. “Lord, I don’t know. Whatever’s convenient, I suppose. Does it matter?”

“Matter?”
Maude stared.

“Ah, obviously it does.” Miranda somewhat gingerly sat on the far end of the settle and was pleasantly surprised to discover that her skirts arranged themselves around her of their own accord. “Tell me why, then.” She put an arm around Chip, who had jumped into her lap.

At the end of an hour, she understood a great deal more than she’d bargained for. “So they want to marry you into the French court to advance the family?” she recapitulated slowly.

“But I intend to be a bride of Christ.”

“I always thought life in a convent would be rather dreary,” Miranda mused. “You’re really certain that’s what you want?”

“I have the calling,” Maude said simply. “And Berthe will come with me.”

Miranda had heard about Berthe and guessed that the elderly nurse’s influence had had as much to do
with Maude’s conversion and vocation as a spiritual calling, but she said nothing, merely sat staring into the flames.

“Why would it help them to have you substitute for me?” Maude asked the question again. “You can’t
be
me, can you?”

“It’s only for a little while,” Miranda said. “Lord Harcourt didn’t know how long, but he promised me fifty rose nobles at the end, so …”

“Then they’re probably intending to try to make me convert back, but I will
never
do it. They can break me on the rack or the wheel before I will abjure.”

“Very praiseworthy,” Miranda murmured. “But not very practical.” They were still no nearer to any answers, and as her confusion grew, she was beginning to feel even more like a pawn than ever.

In the parlor belowstairs, Imogen read for the third time the proposition from Henry of France. “Oh, it’s beyond belief,” she murmured.

“Not beyond belief,” Gareth said, taking up his wine cup. “The d’Albards and the Harcourts are a fine match for Henry of Navarre.”

“But such a marriage will put the Harcourts in the very fore of the French court. I shall go to Paris. We shall be cousins of the French king. Even here, at Elizabeth’s court, our position will be advanced.” Imogen’s brown eyes glittered with a greedy anticipation.

“The wedding will be the most magnificent affair, of course. In Paris, once the king has the city’s submission. Or should it be here?” She began to pace the small parlor as she debated this vital question. “And for your wife, what a splendid position. You will be bound to receive
an ambassadorship, Gareth, or something equally important. Lady Mary will be over the moon.”
And even more grateful to her sponsor.

“But I don’t see how the marriage can take place now. Henry of France won’t marry another Catholic,” Miles pointed out, having heard the dread tale of Maude’s conversion.

“Maude will abjure!” Imogen declared, her fingers unconsciously closing over the royal parchment, crushing it in her palm. “I will have her submission, never you fear.”

“If our cousin lets King Henry know that she’s an unwilling bride, he’ll not pursue his courtship. You might cow the girl into overt submission, Imogen, but you will not be able to prevent her telling Henry the truth in private.”

Imogen stared at her brother. “You sound as if that pleased you!”

A slight smile touched Gareth’s mouth. But it was neither pleasant nor humorous. His sister’s greedy excitement reminded him unpleasantly of his own and he found the recognition nauseating. “Miranda will substitute for Maude during Henry’s visit,” he said deliberately. He was by no means ready to share Miranda’s true identity, let alone his adaptive plan to his supposed accomplices. Miles was probably trustworthy, but he drank deep and in doubtful company; Imogen was too volatile to be trusted to keep her mouth shut in a fit of rage.

“Is Lady Mary to be apprised of this substitution?” Miles inquired, examining his fingernails intently.

“No,” Imogen said immediately. “It must remain only among the family. I’m sure Mary is to be trusted,” she added in hasty afterthought, “but it’s unwise to
spread one’s secrets too far afield, particularly such a dangerous one. If Henry were to discover…”

“Quite,” Gareth agreed, and the disconcerting, if not downright unpleasant, thought occurred to him that he couldn’t imagine sharing anything of such vital importance to himself with his betrothed.

Gareth shook his head in a vain attempt to banish this distracting reflection. He continued briskly, “Miranda will take Maude’s place at court and in this household. Maude may spend her days with her breviary and her psalter in the company of her maid, as she has always done.”

Miles could not contain his shock. “Henry cannot marry some girl from the streets just because she looks like a d’Albard!” he gasped.

“Of course not,” Gareth agreed smoothly. “He will marry a d’Albard.”

“But how?” wailed Imogen.

“You may safely leave that to me, my dear sister,” Gareth said calmly.

Imogen’s eyes were hard and calculating. Perhaps her brother intended to lull Maude into a false sense of security, then at the last moment he would force her to do her family duty.

She nodded. “You have my full support, brother. I’ll do my best with the girl, if you’re sure that she can be trusted to do her part.”

“I believe she will play it to the manner born.”

“Can you really trust a hireling?” Miles asked.

“This one … most certainly, I can.” Gareth drained his goblet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get out of my travel dirt before dinner. Oh, and have a decent dinner sent up to Maude, Imogen. And she’s to have the attentions
of her maid immediately.” He departed in a swirl of crimson silk.

“Lord Dufort seems quite pleasant,” Miranda observed, after she and Maude had been sitting in perplexed reverie for a few minutes.

Maude shrugged. “He’s hagridden, but quite well disposed, I believe.”

“What of his sister?”

“Lady Beringer.” Maude’s lip curled derisively. “She’s a fool, and so’s her husband. Why do you want to know?”

“Because they’re to be guests at dinner and I’m to meet them. I might as well know what to expect.”

“Well, they won’t give you any trouble,” Maude pronounced. “Anne Beringer doesn’t see anything beyond her nose and Lord Beringer is always drunk and vicious with it. Who else is to be there?”

Miranda frowned. “A Lady Mary, Lord Harcourt’s betrothed, I believe.”

“You
will
enjoy yourself,” Maude said with another derisive smile that reminded Miranda forcibly of Lord Harcourt in his less pleasant persona.

“You don’t care for her?”

Maude laughed. “She’s just like all the others. None of them have any conversation, any wit, any talent. They’re empty … just like everyone in London.”

“That’s a bit sweeping, isn’t it?”

“Just wait,” Maude said direly. “You’ll see.”

“Then why would milord betroth himself to someone like that?”

Maude shrugged. “Expediency, convenience. Why else does anyone in society do anything?”

Miranda got up off the settle and wandered restlessly around the large bedchamber, noting the rich furnishings, the elegant carved furniture, the gleaming diamond-paned windows, the thick tapestries on the walls and floor. How could someone who had lived in such magnificence and luxury all her life ever understand what it felt like to sleep on straw, to huddle under haystacks out of the rain, to live for days on moldy cheese and stale black bread?

And by the same token, how could someone who had lived like that fit in with all this grandeur? How could she possibly sit at a table with all those lofty aristocrats, even if they were as stupid as Maude said they were? She was bound to do something hideously wrong. Drink out of a finger bowl or something? She’d never even seen a finger bowl on a table, but she’d heard they were used in palaces and mansions.

“The house chaplain will be at dinner, too, I expect,” Maude said. “Lady Imogen always bids him to table when the Beringers are there. He’s supposed to keep Anne occupied. He knows I have Catholic leanings, but he doesn’t take them seriously … thinks they’re the silly fancies of a young girl.” She laughed bitterly.

“You’d better be prepared for Chaplain George to grill you in the most odiously teasing manner about making confession and showing an unhealthy interest in the martyrdoms of the saints.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about any of that.” Miranda came back to the settle, a worried frown drawing her fine arched brows together. “Perhaps I’d better pretend to have a sore throat that makes it hard for me to converse.”

They both turned at a light knock at the door. Maude bade the knocker enter and Lord Harcourt
came in. He had changed into a doublet of midnight blue silk embroidered with silver stars and the short blue cloak clasped to one shoulder was edged in silver-fox fur.

“I was saying, milord, that if I pretend to have a sore throat I wouldn’t have to say very much this evening.” Miranda rose from the settle, regarding him with that same anxious frown.

But Gareth had other matters on his mind. He examined her appearance, lips slightly pursed in thought, then said, “That gown suits you beautifully, but the fit needs a seamstress’s attention. However, it will do for this evening.”

He slipped a hand in his pocket and withdrew the serpent bracelet with its emerald-studded swan. “You must wear this from now on. It’s a betrothal gift from the man who would court you.” He clasped it around her wrist.

Miranda felt the same shudder of revulsion as the delicate gold links lay against her skin. “I do dislike it so.”

“May I see?” Maude, curious, peered at the jewel. “How strange it is. So beautiful, yet so … so …”

“Sinister,” Miranda said for her. She held up her wrist. “Is it worth a deal of money, milord?”

“It’s priceless,” Gareth said almost carelessly. “It belonged to Maude’s mother.”

“Oh.” Maude bent closer. Then she raised puzzled eyes. “Do you think that’s why I find it familiar, my lord?”

“I don’t see how,” Gareth replied. “You were but ten months old when your mother died.” The fanciful thought occurred to him that on that dreadful night of killing, the hideous death of the mother while she held
them in her arms had burned into the infant brains of her twin daughters. That somehow the bracelet carried for both of them the deeply buried memories of that terror.

Abruptly, he changed the subject. “What are we to do about your hair, Miranda?” He ran a hand over her head, pressing the dark auburn-tinted crop against the shape of her skull. “Cousin, a cap or a snood, perhaps.”

Maude correctly interpreted this as a request that she find the article herself. She riffled the drawers in the big chest and drew out a dark blue snood, bordered with pearl-strewn lace. “This would go with the gown.”

Gareth took it from her with one of his quick smiles and slipped it over Miranda’s head. Maude was so astonished at her guardian’s smile—one she had never seen before—that she found herself smiling in return.