The Emerald Swan (40 page)

Henry smiled to himself, surprised to find that he was perfectly happy to leave things as they were. His impatience to press ahead with his wooing had abated.
There was a sweetness to this maid that he found refreshing and moving. Marguerite was lusty, powerful, manipulative, magnificent. His many mistresses had satisfied his physical needs, sometimes they’d provided mental companionship also, but his emotions had always been untouched. And he couldn’t remember ever feeling protective before.

He looked down at her and wondered if she was sleeping. Gently, he moved her head onto his shoulder. Nothing happened. The breeze fluttered the wispy strands of dark hair escaping from her coif and her eyelashes were thick crescents against the creamy pallor of her cheeks. He drew her cloak closer around her throat. Still she slept on. It was a very charming passivity, he thought, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb. Her eyes shot open, blue as a cloudless sky, and she jerked upright, snatching her hand from his grasp.

“What were you doing?” Her voice again came out as a squeak.

“Nothing,” he replied with a smile. “I was enjoying watching you sleep.”

Maude touched her coif, praying it was still straight. She blinked vigorously to banish the last treacherous strands of sleep. It was terrifying to think that she had been lying there, unconscious, her head resting in that shameless fashion against his shoulder, and all the time he’d been observing her as she lay defenseless.

“Forgive me, sir. I didn’t mean to be discourteous. It was just that the sun was so warm,” she stammered.
Had she revealed anything in her sleep? Had he noticed anything different about her while he was observing her so closely and without hindrance?

“It was very charming and not in the least discourteous,” he responded. “But now you’re awake, I wanted
to talk some more about the discussion we were having last night.”

Last night? What had he and Miranda been talking of last night? Miranda hadn’t told her, and the duke was waiting for Maude to say something and her mind was a blank.

“Yes, my lord?” she said, tilting her head invitingly. “Please continue.”

“I wish to be certain that you have no reservations about this union,” he said. “You understand what it means to marry into the court of Henry of France?”

“I understand that only a Protestant could marry into that court, sir.”

He nodded. “That is certainly the case.” Then he laughed and it was a bitter sound. “But there are always circumstances when a man’s religious convictions must be massaged to suit a certain end.” He was thinking of the dreadful night when, at Marguerite’s pleading, he had forsaken his Protestant heritage and converted to Catholicism. Her brother’s sword had been at his throat. The conversion had saved his life, and ultimately had brought him the crown of France. And it had been simple enough to refute when circumstances permitted.

Maude swallowed then said vigorously, “I could not imagine the circumstances in which I would change my religious allegiances, my lord duke.”

“Ah, you are fortunate in never having had to face such circumstances,” he said after a minute.

Maude looked up at him. “Could you imagine converting to Catholicism, my lord duke?” There was a strange, deep throb in her voice.

Henry laughed again, but it was the same bitter sound. “Paris would be worth a mass,” he said, with a cynical twist of his thin mouth.

“I don’t understand, sir?”

Henry the king had spoken, not the duke of Roissy. Henry, who would do anything to secure the crown of France. He cleared his throat, said, “An idle joke. But I am very pleased to find that you hold so strongly to our Protestant beliefs.”

Maude began to cough. It was a trick she had perfected over the years when she didn’t care for the turn a conversation was taking, or she wished to cause a distraction. It was a dreadful hollow cough and she buried her face in her cloak, her shoulders quivering with the spasms.

“My poor child, you are ailing,” her companion declared with concern. “I should never have exposed you to the river airs. There’s no knowing what contagion they may carry. Bargemen, turn back and return to Harcourt at once.”

Maude’s coughing ceased almost as soon as the barge had been turned and was on its return journey. She raised her head from her cloak and delicately wiped her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. “It’s nothing, sir.” The hoarseness of her voice was not feigned after the violence of her coughing. “I suffer from the cough now and again, but I assure you it’s not in the least serious.”

“I am relieved to hear it. I trust it’s an infrequent affliction.”

Miranda, of course, wouldn’t have exhibited the slightest tendency to coughing fits. Maude said, “Oh, yes, sir, very infrequent.”

He nodded and once again took her hand. She didn’t dare take it back but sat stiffly upright beside him, saying nothing except murmured monosyllables to his various attempts at conversation, and when they reached
home, she parted from him with a curtsy and a blushing farewell.

“Until dinner,
ma chère.”

“Yes, indeed, sir.” Maude fled up the stairs to the safety of her own bedchamber.

Chapter Twenty-One

M
IRANDA WALKED
over London Bridge. The shops lining both sides of the bridge were crowded with customers, women haggling over material, ribbons, thread; merchants in fur-trimmed robes examining gold and silver; men arguing over the price of chickens, ducks, geese, squawking in their overcrowded cages; a man and a boy leading a ragged dancing bear by a rope through the ring in its nose.

The houses were rickety, leaning at all angles as the wooden bridge rode its pylons, the top stories beckoning to each other across the street. Chip rode on her shoulder, crouching close against her neck. There was a volatility to this crowd that disturbed him. The voices were too loud, too argumentative, and when a scuffle broke out in the doorway as they passed, he leaped into Miranda’s arms and clung to her neck.

She stroked him to quiet him as she hurried on her way. If the troupe were heading for one of the Channel ports, they would have crossed the bridge to the south bank of the Thames. She would find news of them in one of the taverns. They would have stopped for the midday meal and they would have chatted with the innkeeper and his customers over their ale. Once she knew what port they were making for, she could send a message. The carriers who carried letters as a side business lined up at the gates of London advertising their destinations. They’d have no trouble finding
the troupe for the right coin. And coin she would have to beg or borrow from Maude.

This determination kept at bay the great waves of unhappiness, but the dikes were fragile and she knew that it would take very little for them to collapse. She tried to strengthen them with common sense. But then everything would become muddled under the invincible memories of that morning. She had lost all her mistrust in the joy he had given her. But it had returned in full force the minute he had spoken words outside the charmed circle of that loving.

Bitterly, she blamed herself for being so gullible, for thinking that a nobleman could ever really care a farthing for a vagabond, a strolling player. He had simply bought her services. It was as simple as that, and only a fool would think that there had been anything else.

And like a fool, she had forgotten that. She’d allowed herself to see something else.
She’d allowed herself to love him.

Miranda laughed aloud as she threaded her way through the narrow streets of Southwark. She laughed at the absurdity of someone like herself falling in love with a nobleman at the court of Queen Elizabeth.

She drew amused glances from the men hanging on street corners, waiting for the brothels to open up for the day’s business. But apart from calling insults after her no one bothered her. A girl in a ragged orange dress, laughing aloud to herself, must be crazed. And, indeed, she had to be as mad as any bedlamite.

Stupid … stupid … stupid. But no more.

She found news of the troupe at a tavern on Pilgrimage Street. They’d stopped for dinner here but to Miranda’s surprise hadn’t paid for their dinner by performing for the tavern’s customers as they so often did.
Instead, they’d paid in silver. The tavernkeeper remembered the little dog, and the crippled lad, and the large woman with the gold plumes in her hat. But she hadn’t noticed whether they seemed cheerful or downhearted. Only that they’d talked of going to Folkestone.

Miranda made her way back over London Bridge. Where had the silver come from? The only explanation was so terrible she had to force herself to think about it. They couldn’t have sold her for Judas’s thirty pieces of silver? It wasn’t possible. Unless the earl had told them some lie … that Miranda herself wanted them to go, to leave her. Had he told them that Miranda herself no longer wanted to be associated with them? That she was moving up in the world and believed herself too good for her old associates?

Could he have done something as dastardly as that? But perhaps he’d threatened them. Threatened to have them arrested for vagrancy. He could do that easily enough. An earl’s power was enormous when compared to the puny hand-to-mouth struggles of a troupe of strolling players. He could have threatened them, then bribed them with silver. Not even Mama Gertrude would have been able to resist that particular carrot and stick. They were powerless.

Miranda flew on wings of rage through the streets back to the Harcourt mansion. And she arrived just as Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, and her retinue landed by royal barge at the water steps.

Miranda had forgotten that the queen was to dine at Harcourt mansion. The guests were already gathered in the hall to make their obeisance to their sovereign and the musicians were already playing in the gallery of the dining hall, when she slipped into the house through a side door. She took a flight of back stairs and
emerged into the upstairs corridor just as Maude, dressed in a gown of peacock-blue damask embroidered with golden daisies, came out of her bedchamber.

“Miranda! Where have you been? I haven’t told anyone you weren’t here. The queen has just arrived and I was going to take your place at dinner … I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You look wonderful.” There was no way she could confront the earl at such a moment and Miranda pushed her own concerns aside, examining Maude with new eyes. Maude was looking radiant, vibrant, her eyes glowing. “You must take my place again,” Miranda said, knowing that this was right. It wasn’t intended, but it was right. “I can’t possibly be ready in time.”

Maude’s own searching look took in her twin’s unusual pallor, the shadows in her eyes. “What’s going on, Miranda? Did you discover news of your family? Is it bad?”

Miranda shook her head. “I don’t know. They’ve gone to Folkestone.” She cocked her head, listening to the voices from below. “Quickly. You must be downstairs to greet the queen.”

Maude hesitated. For the last hour, she’d been in a fever of impatience and uncertainty. She hadn’t known whether she wanted Miranda to return in time to take her place downstairs, or whether she hoped she would come too late. But now the situation was resolved—it would take Miranda half an hour to get out of her gypsy dress and into a courtier’s farthingale. There was no time for the transformation. And Maude realized to her shock that that was what she had really been hoping for.

“You’re staying here, though, aren’t you? You’re not going anywhere?”

“Not tonight … Now,
go
, Maude.”

Maude gathered up her skirts and hurried away without another word. As long as Miranda wasn’t going to disappear again suddenly, Maude could enjoy this wonderful thrill of excitement and apprehension. For whatever reason, she was looking forward to the company of the duke of Roissy. It was only a game, of course. A purely temporary game.

She reached the hall not a moment too soon. The queen, on Lord Harcourt’s arm, was entering from the garden doors. Maude dropped into a low curtsy, her heart hammering.

“Ah, Lady Maude.” The queen stopped with a benign smile, and extended her hand. Maude kissed the long white fingers and swam upward, for the first time in her life meeting the gaze of her sovereign. She was too dazed for a minute to see more than a diffused sea of faces surrounding the queen, but the duke of Roissy stepped forward from his place on the queen’s other side and offered his arm.

“My lady, may I escort you?”

Maude curtsied again but her tongue seemed thick and tied in knots. She laid her hand on the duke’s velvet sleeve, and they fell in behind the queen and the earl, progressing to the dining hall between the lines of reverential guests.

Gareth hid his shock, but his mind was in turmoil, as he stood at the queen’s chair, waiting for Her Majesty to be seated. Everyone stood until Elizabeth had settled into the carved armchair with its high back and her attendants had arranged her skirts. Then, with a rustle of silks and velvets, the guests took their places on the long benches and servitors bearing laden platters began to move around the tables. The lady of the
bedchamber, whose responsibility it was to taste Her Majesty’s food, sampled each platter before choice morsels were placed before the queen.