Twilight of a Queen (40 page)

Jane rose slowly gathering up her basket. Xavier had left her with the impression that his purpose in charming the queen was to secure himself another ship. But clearly once again Jane had misjudged him and Xavier in his pride had allowed her to do so.

As they emerged from the inn, Jane pressed his arm. “Xavier, please, may I have a word alone with you?”

“That sounds ominous. What have I done now?” he jested. He led her away to a quieter corner of the yard, out of the path of a troop of mounted traveling merchants. Smiling down at her, he tripped over a stray board that had fallen from a stack of haphazardly piled lumber.

Smothering an oath, he caught himself, clutching at a barrel and dislodging the lid. As Xavier was replacing it, an angry voice shouted out, “You there! What do you think you are doing?”

Xavier glanced around, his brows lifting in haughty surprise. “Nothing that need concern you.”

The man that had shouted strode toward them. One of the inn’s ostlers, he had an unpleasant countenance, his complexion the hue of raw meat. He bore down upon them in such a menacing fashion that Xavier stepped in front of Jane.

“Get away from there!” the man roared. “We will tolerate no spies here.”

“Spying? Upon what?” Xavier asked, looking nonplussed.

The ostler flushed, his chest heaving with indignation. “Upon the establishment of an honest Catholic citizen, that’s what you Huguenots do, isn’t it?”

“Do I look to you like the sort of man who sings psalms? This is my only religion.” Xavier shifted his cloak, his hand coming to rest upon the hilt of his sword.

The gesture filled Jane with more apprehension than their antagonist. Not yielding an inch, the ostler doubled his hands into fists.

“Maybe you aren’t a Protestor, but I’d wager your lady there is. She’s English, I heard her accent.”

“You have no business remarking upon my lady at all.”

Jane’s heart raced with alarm that this incident could escalate out of control owing to sheer masculine pride and belligerence.

Slipping from behind Xavier, she addressed the angry ostler in her most reasonable and earnest tone. “Pray, sir, you have nothing to fear from me. I am English, but I am a Catholic exile and I have no interest in spying upon anyone. Whatever we have done to alarm or offend you, it was most unwitting.”

Gazing down at Jane, the ostler’s face softened, his hard expression waxing a trifle sheepish. “Pardon. My mistake,” he muttered. “These are tense days here in Paris, my lady. It is not a good time to be prying into what does not belong to you.”

“We have no interest in your damn barrels,” Xavier snapped.

Jane tugged on Xavier’s arm, managing to draw him
away. She did not feel easy until she saw the ostler disappear inside the stable.

But now Xavier was the one who was frowning with suspicion. “What the devil was that all about?”

“I daresay that man was hiding something of an illegal nature in his barrel,” Jane conjectured. “Perhaps from the king’s revenue officers.”

“That barrel held nothing but rocks, Jane.” Xavier’s brow furrowed. “It is strange, but now that I think upon it, I have noticed such refuse heaped up near the other inn where we stayed. Stray boards, barrels, crates, piles of rubble almost as though people were preparing.”

“Preparing for what?”

“I don’t know.” Xavier shook his head. “It would make more sense if they were gathering up weapons. There should not be anything alarming about a few barrels and old boards, and yet it renders me damned uneasy.”

He seized Jane’s hands in a firm grip. “I want you out of this city. Go back to Faire Isle and take your wretched cousin with you.”

“Abby would never consent to go to Faire Isle.”

“Then knock her over the head. It is too dangerous for you to remain here.”

“How can you talk to me of danger when you insist upon going back to that witch?”

“If Catherine is a witch, then this city is a seething cauldron. Paris seemed bad enough to me when I was here last autumn and that was before the king banned the duc de Guise from coming to the city. The duke is practically a patron saint to the people of Paris. If he should defy the
king’s order, you could find yourself in the middle of a revolution.”

“I don’t care anything about dukes or revolutions,” Jane said. She laid her hand alongside his cheek. “All I care about is you. I beg you, Xavier. Don’t return to the queen. I am sorry if I ever doubted you. Your bluster about hoping to acquire a ship was all nonsense. You are doing this because of Meg, aren’t you?”

Xavier’s pursed his lips as though he was seeking a way to deny it. Finally he sighed. “The girl trusted me and I disappointed her as well as my sisters. And you. Maybe I would like to prove to you all that I am not such a worthless rogue.”

“You have nothing to prove to anyone.”

“Perhaps I need to prove something to myself. For most of my life I have been motivated by pure self-interest. I have always had a gift for chicanery and deception. This time I can put my talents to good use and convince the queen to leave Meg in peace forever. Just one more trance is all it will take.”

He caught her hand and pressed a kiss against her palm, cajoling her with his eyes. “I have always been a scoundrel. Let me play the hero for once, Jane. I swear I won’t make a habit of it.”

Xavier untied his purse from his belt. “If anything should go wrong, I want you to take this and use it to leave Paris.”

Jane backed away, shaking her head vehemently. “N-no, it would be like saying you won’t come back.”

“Then take it just to keep it safe for me,” Xavier insisted,
forcing it into her hands. “I swear I will come to claim it in a few hours.”

He brushed a kiss upon her cheek. “Although it wouldn’t hurt if you said a prayer for me. I haven’t had much trade with the Almighty for years. But I am sure he would listen if the prayer came from you.”

Jane nodded, her throat too thick with tears to speak. What a fool she had been to think she could guard her heart from this man. She had not been able to stop loving him and never would. She ought to find the courage to tell him so.

But Xavier was already striding away entrusting her to Jambe and Pietro, bidding them to see her safely back to her cousin’s.

Jane would far rather the two men accompanied Xavier, but it was clear he had resolved to go alone. Jane stood on tiptoe, straining for a last glimpse of Xavier. Almost as though—Jane could scarce acknowledge the fear—almost as though she would never see him again.

As he disappeared from view, she could not still the dark shiver of apprehension that coursed through her.

Jambe patted her shoulder. “There, now, my lady. The captain will be all right. I think the man is a bit of a magician. I never saw him land in any scrape he could not get out of.”

“Indeed,” Jane rallied, attempting to smile. “I should not let him worry or tease me so. He—he is a very wicked man.”

“Or at least he tries hard to be,” Pietro added softly.

X
AVIER KNELT IN THE CENTER OF THE PENTAGRAM
drawn on the salon floor. He would have preferred feigning his trance up in the astrological tower, alone with Catherine as he had done before.

His performance did not seem as effective to him in the sunlit salon. But the queen had declared that she was not well enough to mount the tower stairs. She had sagged down in her chair, the woman appearing as though she scarcely possessed the stamina to hold her head upright.

Her advancing years appeared to be telling upon her to a marked degree. Her life did not look as though it could be of much longer duration.

Xavier knew this would be his last audience. All he
needed to accomplish was to see that she forgot Meg for all time.

Xavier closed his eyes and extended his arms. Without Pietro to play the drum, Xavier was forced to focus on the rhythm of his own heart. To fake his trance, he recalled the sensations of what it had been like to fall into a real one. What it had been like when his magic elixir had seized hold of his mind. He pictured the bursts of colors behind his eyes, the sensation of soaring, his body transforming itself.

He chanted softly, feeling the power surge through him. He became the jaguar, sleek, swift, and cunning. Flinging back his head, he emitted a low growl. He fixed his gaze in a glazed expression as though he no longer saw the room, but peered into some hidden realm.

In truth he was fully aware of Catherine. The queen’s head bobbed forward, her chin all but resting on her chest. For one outraged moment, Xavier felt that she had fallen asleep, during what was surely the best performance of his life.

“You may ask your questions now,” he intoned.

When no response came from her, he had to repeat his command a little louder. Catherine’s head snapped up. She dragged her hand across her face as though willing herself to be more alert.

She said, “Tell me my future. What does the next year hold for me?”

“I see wealth and prosperity, a new zest for life as your ships sail the ocean to harvest for you all the riches and mystery of the New World.”

“And who do you see leading this expedition?”

For a moment, Xavier experienced the old temptation, to use his influence over Catherine to advance his own interests. But he had already come too close once to selling his soul to this woman.

“That part of the vision is not clear to me,” he said.

“Indeed?” the queen murmured. “And what does the future hold for my young enemy, Megaera?”

Xavier furrowed his brow as though lost in deep consideration. He closed his eyes. “She—she will perish of pneumonia. All memory of her will fade, her legend forgotten.”

Xavier was a little startled. Where had that prediction come from? In his mind, it was not Meg that he saw vanishing into the grave, but Catherine.

Silence descended after this prophecy as Xavier awaited the queen’s next question. She asked, “What is your greatest fear?”

The question surprised Xavier into opening his eyes. He was further startled to find the queen standing over him. Far from appearing weak, her eyes blazed into his.

“What is your greatest fear?” she repeated.

Xavier felt her gaze pierce his mind like a burning brand. Before he could prevent it, the old images flashed through his mind, being abandoned by his father, taken prisoner by the Spanish, the endless days chained to the oars of the galley.

He closed off the memories, steeling his expression, struggling not to betray himself.

“I don’t understand the question,” he said.

Catherine cocked her head to one side, regarding him with a smile. “How strange. That is what your mother always
used to say when seeking to evade my questions. It never worked for her either.”

“My mother?”

“Marguerite de Maitland.”

Xavier stared at her, the breath in his lungs seeming to freeze before her chilling expression. How could she possibly know or have guessed? That didn’t seem to matter. It was clear to him the game was up.

He was no longer the jaguar or the powerful necromancer, merely a man making a fool of himself kneeling half-naked before a haughty queen. No doubt that was what Catherine had intended.

He refused to allow her the satisfaction of seeing how chagrined or alarmed he was. Rising to his feet, he gathered up his discarded shirt and shrugged back into it.

“I gave you no leave to end your performance, monsieur.”

“There seems little point in continuing. It is clear that your performance was far better than mine.”

“What? No protestations of innocence?” the queen mocked him. “No seeking to deny who you are?”

“I never waste my breath in useless denials.” He donned his jerkin with a nonchalance that masked his tension. His gaze darted around the room, seeking opportunity of escape. At some point during his trance, two burly guards had slipped into the room and were blocking the doorway. Xavier suspected that more waited just outside the door.

He had no weapon. He had had to surrender his sword before being admitted to the queen’s presence. He glanced speculatively at the window, but Catherine appeared to divine his thoughts.

“It would be a long drop to the ground, Captain. Despite
the fact that you are called the Jaguar, I doubt that you would land on your feet.”

Her lips thinned into a smile. “I trust you have at least enjoyed your efforts to play me for a fool.”

“Yes, I have,” he admitted.

Catherine looked irritated. Perhaps she had thought to have him groveling for mercy by now. She beckoned to her guards to seize hold of him. Xavier tried to resist, but it was futile. His hands were bound swiftly in front of him, but he continued to regard the queen with defiance.

“It is a pity,” she purred. “You are a magnificent specimen of a man, ruthless, cunning. Who would have ever thought foolish little Marguerite and the noble but weak Chevalier Louis Cheney capable of getting such a son?”

The queen traced her fingers along his throat and over the curve of his scar. “Your mother died in the convent that adjoins this palace. Did you know that? I believe that she still pined for her chevalier until her very last breath. Her heart was broken when he never came back to her. But if he had, he would have returned to his wife. That is usually what men do in the end.”

“Truly? I had heard that your husband spent his last hours calling for his mistress.”

Catherine turned bright red and slapped him with the full force she could muster. Although his head snapped to one side and his cheek stung, Xavier still cast her a taunting smile.

She stormed away from him, drawing in deep breaths until she regained control. “Enough of this banter. I have one final question for you.” She produced the nearly empty vial. “Where did you really get this?”

“I don’t know, but sharing it with you was obviously a great mistake.”

“Obviously it was. I have never come across a recipe for any elixir so powerful, not in any grimoire I have ever owned.
Where did you get it?”