The First Princess of Wales (8 page)

The cut of the sleeves of her kirtle was fashionably full at the wrists, and the neckline for this summer style was a low oval so that the rounded tops of her breasts showed to full advantage. She was warm on that sunny May afternoon before she had even traversed the Upper Ward to go out the small garden door, so she leaned her lute against the wall and removed her furred
surcote
to carry it over one arm. If only she could dare to rid herself now of her angular headpiece with its trailing tippets of scarves Isabella had given her as one of several lavish presents she knew the other
demoiselles
resented. If only she could even be so bold as to let her heavy gathered curls free of their restraining cauls and go barefooted here as at home, she would feel free indeed.

She retrieved her lute and hurried across the northern edge of the Upper Ward annoyed at the pounding, clattering contingent of knights, servants, and packhorses that rode in and dismounted to bring noise and riot to the calm area directly beneath the windows of the royal apartments of the queen. All she needed was Isabella or Her Grace glancing out to see her leaving the premises of the castle.

There were at least ten men with the trailing company, but she quickly turned her head and hurried away under the Queen Tower to the postern door to the gardens Lyle Wingfield had told her about. Fortunately, he had gone home to Liddell with her brother and she might not see him again for weeks.

A fat, sleepy porter with a rusty sword and a patch over one eye grunted and opened the door for her without a word. Evidently, she thought, he was quite used to lords and ladies scurrying through like this for lovers’ trysts. Mayhap, Isabella’s butterflies, as the clucking tongue of Lady Euphemia called them, should interview this porter for some real tidbits and their precious, scandalous
bonbons.
It jabbed at her that she went along with their frivolities, which she thought quite silly, to earn their approval, to get on well here and prosper as Edmund always wanted. Would she not become like them eventually and not care for singing with her lute and riding free and forest glades? No, that could never be, she told herself, and that was why she was here today.

The gardens just outside the walls at the edge of the royal park were wilder than the perfectly tended pleasure gardens of clipped yew and boxwood and tinkling, sculptured fountains within the walls. Paths twisted naturally here, fruit trees looked untrimmed, and the greens were hardly rolled or swept. Wild hollyhock grew sporadically, and she stopped to harvest a few white blooms to tuck them in her low bodice and her hair cauls after she removed the constricting headpiece.

The forest began a little way beyond, its tall elms and hickories pierced by taller firs which definitely made the area look different from the forests of Liddell in Kent. She followed a crooked, splashing rill into the fringe of the forest thinking it might lead to the pond Lyle Wingfield had spoken of. There seemed to be a hint of a beaten path here, and she hoped no lovers had chosen to come out today. For now, this was all hers, and she meant not to entertain anyone else with her songs of longing for her own secret forest haunts of Liddell.

She thought of her mother then as the forest deepened, the slender Lady Margaret delicate and calm as she had seen her last when they had parted in London at the cloister of the St. Clares. “I will send for you when it is my time,” she had said once and then again. Was it true what Edmund and even Morcar had said, that the Lady Margaret of Wake and Liddell felt the arms of death closing about her? Joan shuddered from the cool touch of the shade as she walked farther into the forest. If only Mother had talked to her, loved her, they could have been such a comfort to each other.

Then, over there, the little quiet pool appeared, and even a broad, shifting shaft of sunlight filtering through the thick trees lit its calm, gray-green surface. The little rill she had followed seemed to feed it with a merry sound, but its shallowness seemed silent. A doe across the narrow expanse of water lifted its graceful head, glanced with its brown, liquid eyes and darted off. Two weeping willows trailed their slender branches on the pond’s surface, and the banks looked soft and sedgy green.

Joan gave a heartfelt sigh of utter peace and contentment: she had escaped the bustle and all the eyes at mazelike Windsor. It was beautiful and simple here, and for now, it was all hers alone.

She explored the short shoreline and discovered a little stone castle with turrets and towers and wards—a miniature Windsor—tumbled to ruins near the two weeping willows. A child’s castle, an intricate toy close enough to the water to have once had its own encircling moat. She loved the enchantment of this place, a fairy castle, under the time-stopping spell of some cunning witch like Morgan la Fey of the King Arthur romances she loved to read or sing so dearly.

She lay her folded
surcote
and ornate headpiece carefully under a shagbark hickory tree and strummed her lute idly with a goose quill while her eyes drank in the peaceful scene. She loosed her heavy hair cauls and shook her long tresses free. On a whim, she removed her slippers, untied her garters, and peeled off her green cotton hose to dip her feet in the water. From the hickory tree, she harvested two bark boats and sent them wafting their lazy paths across the glassy surface. Her bare feet in the water, her green skirts hiked up to bare her knees, she sat on the grassy bank and reached for her quill and lute again. The melody was gentle, plaintive; her delicate, sweet voice sent the words that matched the music over the mirror of water to chase her two little makeshift bark boats. It was, she remembered, the same song about which Lyle Wingfield had teased her as they rode away from Liddell forever ago:

“When the nightingale singeth,

The woods wax green;

Leaf and grass and blossoms

Spring in May, I have seen.

And love is to my heart

Gone with a spear so keen,

Night and day my blood it drinketh

My heart in suffering.”

Her voice hung suspended in the air; her heart lurched to a stop. A tall figure across the narrow pond took a step forward, and an errant shaft of sunlight struck thick, mussed tawny hair, a strong nose and chin, and broad shoulders. Still, the eyes were in shadow. His tunic, hose and shoes were all of deepest brown.

“Has your lover not come to meet you and that has pierced your heart then?” The deep voice floated to her. “Shame on the bloody fool. Had it been I, I would have been here long ago, but I see I did ride into Windsor just in time. And that sad song of a hurt heart—what sort of knave would do that to a maid as ravishing as you?”

From an absence of all but calm and peace, embarrassment and anger flooded in. It was the tall, blond man from the muddy quintain last week. Here—here, no doubt to meet someone and he had thought the same of her.

“You!” she managed and scrambled unsteadily to her feet on the slippery bank. One foot shot backward with a splash, and she balanced awkwardly to hold her lute carefully aloft. When she righted herself farther up on the bank and shook her skirts down to cover her bare, wet legs, he had come quickly much closer. His height, his stern handsome face—the mere impact of his nearness—hit her with stunning force. The little, unbidden fluttering low in her stomach began again like frightened butterflies’ wings, and the bewildering thudding of her pulse astounded her.

He came past the willow, bending his tall body down to come through the leafy curtain of limbs, heedless that his boots splashed through the shallow edge of the pond.

“So—you have not forgotten me in these eight days since you came to Windsor,
demoiselle
? You look beautiful today, all in forest green, but then I found you entrancing in mud and windblown hair tangles, too.”

“Do not make a jest of me, sir. And I had forgotten you. I have not seen you about, so I quite put you out of my mind.”

“Alas,” he said in a low voice, and she could not discern if his voice was teasing or not. “And here it was my fondest hope the lover in the song who had wounded your chaste heart might be me.”

Head down, she darted him a quick look up through her lashes before turning away. “No, of course not, sir. It is a mere song, a madrigal, or do you only know of such callous practices as charging furiously at the quintain all day and interrupting a lady’s private songs—”

His strong arms shot out an amazing length to grasp her gently but firmly above her elbows, and she noted his right arm looked much more healed than it had a week ago. “Is that insult meant to imply I know no tender mercies like charity or chivalry—or love, sweet lady? I must warn you, I delight in challenges so flippantly flung in my face and fear I must school you so you understand such gentle pursuits can be my deepest pleasure.”

He bent forward, leaned close, his eyes a shattering blue like the clearest heavens on a windy day. His heavy mane of hair, tousled as if he had just ridden a great distance, fell loosely to just above his collar and hung over his broad forehead. His breath was of wine and cloves, his lips stern, then intent. His hands tightened on her arms as his lips claimed hers in a mere brief brush of firm mouth. He pulled back only slightly while his eyes studied her face; then he tipped his head to take her lips again, just a taste, before he settled closer and the kiss deepened.

Her head spun, her knees trembled as her mouth opened softly under the gentle demand of his lips. All thoughts, protests or pleadings screeched to a halt as his tongue darted over her lower lip to skim her even, lower teeth, then tease and plunder deeper within. A little sigh escaped from her throat as he pulled her, lute and all, one step closer until her soft breasts pressed against the iron muscles of his chest. His lips fluttered now across her cheek and into the loose tendrils of her hair. She turned her head away to try to break the spell and glimpsed the crushed white hollyhocks in the top of her bosom where she willingly pressed against him.

“Flowers, flowers everywhere,” he breathed and touched her long, loose hair where she had stuck the other hollyhocks behind her ears. His warm, calloused, and scarred fingers trailed down her slanted cheek, across her chin, and down her throat while she stared up at him mesmerized. His tawny brows were thick, rakish over the deep-set eyes. The nose was, like his cheeks, a bronze sun color, and there were tiny crinkles at the sides of his eyes where he squinted against the sun. His thick eyelashes were brownish, but bleached nearly white at the tips, and his eyes—his eyes devoured her.

His roving fingers went lower down the alabaster column of her throat, across her delicate collarbones to skim the low-cut oval neckline where she had placed the flowers. Something hit her then, to awaken her like a thousand little slaps at once. He was smiling, his eyes low on the swell of her breasts while the curved, lightly haired backs of his fingers went lower than the neckline.

Suddenly, she knew fear; she wanted him to continue, to do all those other things Isabella’s butterflies whispered about. He was enjoying this entirely and must know she wanted desperately to give him his way.

“No! No, do not! Loose me!” She yanked back so suddenly they nearly pitched off balance, but he steadied her at one elbow until she righted herself and backed away.

His face went instantly austere and hard, and he dropped her arm immediately. “A tease as well as a scold then? St. George, I should have guessed it.”

“You have no right—to insult me like this, sir!”

“Damn, but you can put on a good entertainment,
ma chérie.
I would have wagered my best falcon you were enjoying my insults, as you put it.”

His eyes lit to see her cheeks so flushed and her full, heaving breasts straining hard against the green bodice. She caught his intense, hungry scrutiny and spun her back to him.

“You have no right to accost me like this—to come out here when I am wanting to be alone and bother me like this! You have no right to be here!”

He shouted a gruff laugh and, astounded at his reaction, she turned back to face him, her lute cradled like a barrier between them.

“I must admit I am relieved to hear there is no lover to come then—besides me, of course. And, I have every right to be here or anywhere else about, as you shall be convinced of soon enough, my teasing, little shrew.”

“I resent your calling me all these pet names. You—you are enjoying all of this!”

“Immensely! And now since you have ruined this so lovely afternoon for the two of us with your ranting, let me tell you that you are never to come out here alone again. If someone else had stumbled upon you here, who is to know what might have befallen you?”

Her voice shook but in as icy a tone as possible, she managed, “What did befall me was quite awful enough. I hardly expected some rude, unchivalrous knave, who at least washed off the mud this time, to stumble on me, as you put it.”

His square jaw set, and she could see the rapid beating of the pulse at his throat she had noted that first day. His hands clenched, then unclenched as though he would seize her, but he seemed frozen like a statue. “Damn,
petite femme,
but you have a lot to learn and need taming badly! I have every right to forbid you this forest and I do so now. Disobey and you shall answer to me.” His eyes went roughly, almost possessively, over her from head to toe while she faced him defiantly. “And the queen shall hear of it,” he bellowed as an afterthought. “Now get your slippers on because we are heading back immediately before I completely lose my hard-won temper!”

Energized to action by the look on his face and the volume of his voice, she bent to retrieve her stockings and shoes. He came at her again, but only took the lute from her hand. “No, not just the slippers. Don the stockings, garters, and the slippers, too, and then I will help you get all that hair up under this headpiece. Your
surcote,
too.”