Kissed by Shadows

by Jane Feather

  Robin made his way across the lawn, his head down as he debated the best way to make his approach to Elizabeth. But his clear thinking was disturbed by a sense of unease. He worried at it for a while, like a terrier with a rat, until he identified it.

  Pippa. Pippa was not herself. She hadn't been for the last three or four weeks, now he came to think of it. Perhaps she was pregnant. But she wouldn't keep that to herself. She certainly wouldn't keep it from her husband and Stuart showed no signs of a joyful father-to-be.

  The sunless ground beneath the willows was damp and smelled loamy. It was a pleasant smell, only faintly corrupted by the river mud. A bed of pink marsh mallows clustered thickly along the edge of the riverbank and Robin was suddenly reminded of a day long ago when he and Pen had walked through the meadows of her mother's house in Derbyshire and he had picked a bouquet of marsh mallows for her.

  He had been twelve years old, Pen ten. They had held hands sticky with heat and emotion and had walked in tongue-tied silence all afternoon.

  He smiled now at the memory. He adored all three of his sisters; Anna, his little half sister, and Pen and Pippa, his stepsisters. But Pen's place in his heart was very special. That childhood infatuation had given way after their parents' marriage to the deep abiding love of unbreakable friendship, and he missed her now. She had been in France with her husband and their four children of assorted parentage for almost a year.

  But in December, by Christmas, they would be back. He bent to pick one of the pink flowers at his feet.

  There came a sudden shout of alarm and then the desperate flapping of a flock of mallards as they rose as one body from the river and skimmed over its surface with hoarse cries.

  “Madre de dios!” The exclamation was followed by a string of Spanish that was beyond Robin's comprehension. The voice, however, was distinctly female.

  He stepped to the edge of the bank and peered down at the river some three feet below. A flat-bottomed punt had driven itself, or been driven, prow first into the soft mud of the bank. The punt's occupant was struggling with the pole to push the craft free but with little success.

  “How did that happen?” Robin inquired, squatting on the bank.

  To his surprise the young woman spoke in perfect English with just the faintest accent. “I don't know. I was trying to steer it into the shallows and a big barge went by and then a great wave came behind and . . . well, see for yourself.”

  She gave an expressive shrug as she leaned forward again in renewed effort to free her boat from the mud. The pole in her hand stuck in the mud. She yanked on it with another string of Spanish. It came loose with a great sucking sound and with such sudden violence that she toppled backwards and lay in an ungainly tangle of stockinged legs and rather dirty petticoats.

  Robin couldn't help laughing although he knew it was unkind. The unlucky sailor scrambled to her knees and glared at him. “You think it is funny, you? I tell you it is not funny. Why can you not be gallant and help me?”

  Robin looked down at his finely tooled leather boots, his cranberry-colored kidskin hose. He regarded the muddy river with disfavor. He looked at the young woman as she knelt in the punt.

  A tangle of black hair roughly bound in a kerchief that was already coming loose, eyes the color of midnight, creamy skin smeared with mud and tinged pink with annoyance and frustration.

  He jumped down into the mud, resignedly hearing the squelch of his boots as he sank to his midcalves. He leaned on the prow of the punt and heaved it backwards.

  “Harder . . . harder!” the girl in the punt exhorted.

  She was a girl, not a woman, Robin thought from the distance of his own thirty years, as he put his shoulder into the work. “I can do this without your encouragement,” he declared acidly. “And sit still. Every time you move, the balance shifts.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said, all contrition, and sat on the thwart, hands folded demurely in her lap.

  Robin paused, panting slightly. “'Tis no good,” he said. “'Tis stuck fast. When the tide comes in it will float free.”

  “But when will that be?” The girl sounded shocked. “I cannot sit here and wait. Someone will find me.”

  “I'd have thought that an outcome to be desired,” Robin observed, wiping his sweating brow with his handkerchief.

  “Well, it's not,” she said. “I must return home before Dona Bernardina wakes from her siesta. I just wished to go out by myself for an hour.”

  She sounded so distressed Robin lost his desire to tease. “Perhaps if you get out of the punt it'll be easier for me to free it,” he suggested. “I could lift you onto the bank.”

  “I did not think I was so heavy,” the girl said with a frown. “But if you think it will make a difference . . .” She stood up, holding out her hands.

  Robin caught her around the waist and lifted her unceremoniously onto the bank. She was actually no light weight, but he had spent too much time in the company of his sisters to venture a comment on the normality of puppy fat.

  “So, where does your duenna lay her head?” he inquired, leaning on the pole, regarding the girl quizzically.

  “Up the river a little way.” The girl gestured in the direction of the Savoy Palace. “I found the boat moored along the bank while I was walking and thought to take it just for half an hour. But now . . . Oh, can you not free it?” Her voice rose with sudden agitation.

  “Yes, I'm certain I can,” Robin reassured. “But tell me your name. Where are your parents?”

  It was clear to him that she must have arrived in England as part of the contingent of Spaniards. It was clear she was not a servant. Spanish servants didn't have duennas, and neither did they speak near-perfect English. But he had never seen her at court, and he thought, despite her present disarray, that he would have remembered such a face.

  “You will not tell anyone?” She regarded him closely.

  He shook his head. “No, but I will see you safely home.”

  She seemed to consider, then said with a touch of the Spanish arrogance that so annoyed him among the courtiers, “I am Dona Luisa de los Velez of the house of Mendoza.”

  “Ah,” Robin said. The house of Mendoza was one of the oldest and greatest in Spain. He frowned suddenly. “There are no members of the Mendoza family here at court.”

  “No,” she agreed.

  Something in her expression made him drop the pole and join her on the bank. He sat beside her. “How old are you, Dona Luisa?”

  “I have eighteen summers.”

  A woman then, he thought. Not really a girl. “You have a husband?”

  She shook her head. “I was betrothed to the Duke of Vasquez, but then he died of the pox when he was thirteen. Then they would have me wed the Marques de Perez, but I refused.”

  Restlessly her fingers trawled through the bright pink flowers at her side. “I said I would rather take the veil. He is an old man, past fifty. I would not let him touch me.”

  Robin said nothing. He picked marsh mallows, threading them together in a chain as he remembered seeing Pen and Pippa do.

  “My father died a few months ago. He left me to the guardianship of Don Lionel Ashton.”

  At the name Robin's fingers stilled. “An Englishman?” he queried softly.

  “An old and trusted friend of my father's. I have known him all my life. My mother relies on him absolutely. It was decided that he would bring me to England when he came with Philip and that I would thus be diverted.” A note of irony entered her voice but Robin noticed that her fingers quivered slightly among the flowers.

  “And are you?”

  “How can I be diverted when I am kept immured in a stone mansion on the river, constantly under the eye of Bernardina. I have no diversions.”

  “Why does your guardian not bring you to court? You are of an age.”

  Luisa did not immediately reply. After a minute she said, “'Tis not that Don Ashton is neglectful or unkind, indeed he is not, but I think he's too busy to thi
nk of me. He is not often at court himself, and whenever I ask him if I might not meet some of the young ladies there he says he does not know any.”

  She raised her dark gaze to Robin. “Could that be so?”

  Robin thought of Lionel Ashton. He had never seen him in the company of others. In any gathering almost always he stood alone. It was clear that his business for Philip of Spain did not lie in the public corridors of diplomacy.

  “I do not know your guardian,” he said. “He does not usually take part in court diversions, so it is possible.”

  “Well, he cannot then blame me for seeking my own,” declared Luisa.

  “Stealing punts and getting stuck in the mud is a strange diversion for a Mendoza,” Robin said dryly.

  “Ah, what right have you to criticize?” she demanded.

  Robin lay back on the bank, linking his muddy hands behind his head. “None at all. It was merely an observation.”

  “Well, what am I to do?”

  “I think as a start it might be wise to return you to your slumbering duenna,” he suggested.

  Luisa flung herself on her back beside him and gazed up into the sun-tinged tendrils of the willow above her. “Is that all you can think of?”

  “For now.”

  She sighed. “I wish I were not so sensible.”

  Robin gave a shout of laughter and a starling scolded him from way above in the leafy fronds.

  “You may well laugh,” she said bitterly. “But if I were not sensible, and not a Mendoza, I would run away, seek my fortune on the high seas.”

  “The high seas seem rather ambitious for one defeated by the River Thames.”

  For answer she threw a handful of marsh mallows into his face. Laughing, Robin sat up, brushing the flowers from his doublet. “For a Spanish lady, I have to say that you are remarkably ill-schooled,” he declared, grinning at her.

  “High-spirited is the term,” she returned, lifting her chin with an air of great dignity.

  He laughed again and got to his feet. He reached down his hands to pull her up. “You remind me of my sisters.”

  Her astounded expression told him he had made a grave error. “Only in that you're so unconventional,” he said hastily.

  There was a moment's silence. Luisa smoothed down her muddy skirts with an air of decorum that was so ludicrous Robin had to fight to keep a straight face.

  “You think me not womanly,” she stated finally.

  “No . . . no, of course not. Indeed you are . . . are most womanly,” he amended quickly.

  “But I am like a sister . . . a baby sister.” With downcast eyes she smoothed the creases from her bodice, adjusted the lace at the neck.

  Robin regarded her. He had the strangest sense that he was being manipulated in some way. Now, where he'd seen the plumpness of emerging womanhood, he saw voluptuous curves. Tangled and begrimed though she was, Dona Luisa aroused in him none of the feelings of a brother.

  “I think you had better return home,” he stated. “Wait here while I free the punt.”

  She made no demur as he jumped down into the mud and pushed the craft free of the bank. When it was once more afloat he reached up and lifted her into the boat. He tried to keep his hands beneath her breasts but there was no way to avoid their soft upward swell. She smelled of mud and flowers, a young sweetness that took his breath away.

  “No, wait,” he said as she immediately took up the pole with a businesslike air, standing feet braced on the bottom of the punt. “Let me do it. You might not find a knight in shining armor the next time you run aground.”

  Luisa raised an eyebrow, just the most delicate twitch of a most delicate arch, and handed him the pole as he jumped aboard. She sat on the thwart, observing after a while as they reached midstream, “I see I am in the hands of a master.”

  Flirtatious little minx!

  She was worse than Pippa had ever been, Robin reflected, grimly driving the pole into the shallow river bottom close to the bank.

  “Tell me which water steps,” he instructed after fifteen minutes of silence, during which the punt moved steadily.

  “Over there is where I found the punt.” Luisa pointed to a narrow wooden pier jutting out from the bank. “I don't know who the punt belongs to, but I should return it there, and then I can walk to the house along the bank.”

  “Very well.” Robin steered the punt to the pier. He jumped out with the painter and tied it securely. “Come.” He held out his hand and helped her up beside him.

  “My thanks.” She looked at him without a smidgeon of her earlier flirtatious mischief. “I don't know whom I'm thanking.”

  “Robin of Beaucaire, at your service, Dona Luisa.” He executed a formal bow and with the utmost solemnity she curtsied, her bedraggled skirts falling around her in perfect folds.

  He offered her his arm and they walked along the bank until they reached the lower sweep of lawn leading up to one of the new stone mansions on the Strand.

  “Whose house is this?”

  “My guardian's. Don Ashton's,” she replied. “I believe he bought it through a steward before we landed at Southampton.”

  “I see.”

  Lionel Ashton grew ever more intriguing. A man who owned one of the palatial mansions on the Strand, and yet did not live in England.

  “My thanks again, Robin of Beaucaire,” Luisa said now with an almost shy smile. “I don't suppose I will see you again.” Suddenly she stood on tiptoe and quickly kissed his cheek. Then she hurried away, gathering her skirts high as she ran up the slope towards the house.

  Robin shook his head. They would certainly meet again. He glanced down ruefully at his ruined boots and hose. He'd been particularly fond of the cranberry hose, but then he recalled that Pippa had told him that when he wore them he looked as if he'd been treading grapes.

  Perhaps she was right. Pippa had style, not that he'd ever taken any notice of her opinions before. But maybe the cranberry hose weren't that great a loss.

  He walked back along the riverbank to Whitehall. It was a long walk and mud squelched in his boots, but he whistled softly to himself.

  Three

  The tournament ground baked beneath the late-afternoon sun. The contestants sweated atop their gaily caparisoned horses; the spectators languidly fanned themselves on the padded benches beneath striped awnings. The queen wearily closed her eyes, retreating farther into the shadow cast by the canopy of state over her chair.

  The imperative summons of a herald's trumpet signaled the start of the fourth joust of this interminable afternoon and the queen leaned forward again, an expression of alert interest now on her face as she watched her husband enter the ground, his milk-white destrier caracoling in obedience to its rider's commands. It was an impressive display of horsemanship and Mary's smile became fond and proud as she glanced around at her companions to make sure they too appreciated her husband's expertise.

  Another tucket from the herald and Lord Nielson entered the lists from the opposite end. It was a much less spectacular entrance although Stuart was every bit as accomplished a horseman as Philip of Spain. But Pippa, watching from one of the lower benches, guessed that her husband was governed by discretion.

  She glanced up at Robin, who stood beside her. He had no part to play in the present tournament and having changed his river-muddied garments was content to be a mere spectator. His mind until Stuart's appearance had been most pleasantly occupied elsewhere.

  “It wouldn't do for Stuart to outshine His Majesty before his wife and the entire court,” Pippa murmured sardonically, her derision barely concealed.

  Robin frowned, his eyes on the bout. Stuart made a very clumsy pass with his cane and Philip wheeled his horse and brought his own stick to crack against his opponent's. Stuart's weapon split in two.

  “I think your husband carries his diplomacy too far,” Robin declared. “He's not even trying to give Philip a match.”

  “No,” agreed Pippa, frowning now in her turn. “He seems to spend m
ore time in the company of the Spaniards these days than that of his own people. Have you noticed?”

  “Aye.” Robin nodded. He was about to say how he'd also noticed that Stuart was curiously and distastefully deferential and ill at ease even with the most peacocking of the Spanish courtiers, but decided to hold his tongue. He would not criticize Pippa's husband to her.

  The two jousters clashed again and this time Stuart's cane hit true and the king's flew to the ground. Robin drew a deep breath. He glanced up to where the queen sat. She was still leaning forward on her chair, her eyes now concerned as they rested on her husband. He could not be made to look bad among this already hostile crowd.

  But there was no fear of that. Stuart lost the next two bouts, his cane split resoundingly on both occasions. There was wild cheering from the Spaniards and a sullen silence from the English as the two contestants rode over to the stands to make their bows to the queen.

  Pippa scrutinized her husband's countenance. It was expressionless, pale, his eyes hooded, his full mouth set. He looked at her just once and she could feel the embarrassment and anger radiating from him in great waves. And she felt too that some of that anger was directed at her. But how could she be to blame for his deliberate decision to allow Philip of Spain to humiliate him? She gave him a consoling smile and he turned his shoulder to her.

  “I don't understand it,” Robin said. “He could let Philip win if he felt he had to, but not so completely.”

  “You forget how very good at jousting Stuart is,” Pippa said thoughtfully. “I suspect it's harder to lose by a hair if you're very good.”

  Robin didn't agree but once again kept his reflections to himself.

  “I think I've had enough,” Pippa said. “Having seen my husband soundly defeated by the king, I should think I would be permitted to leave, don't you?” Irony laced her voice as she glanced back up at the queen.

  “I'll escort you,” Robin said. “You're very pale, more so than usual. All your freckles are standing out.”