Mistress by Magick

by Laura Navarre

  “You are a scholar,” she murmured. “In your study of angel lore, have you read of the Nephilim?”

  “Nephilim?” He shot her a quizzical look. “They’re in Genesis and the Book of Enoch. The sons of fallen angels, si? Fearsome giants of the ancient world who brought forbidden knowledge of the heavens and their workings to men. Why do you ask?”

  Jayne nibbled worriedly at her lip. There was no easy way to tell him this. She brushed the heavy silver links that gleamed at his throat. The key itself was hidden, concealed under the stiffened lace of his ruff.

  “Your mother,” she said gently, “told you Michael gave her this token, did she not? An Archangel of the Presence, called the Strength of God?”

  He turned his head away. “She was a raving lunatic. I told you that.”

  “Aye, you told me.” She laid her fingers against the hard line of his jaw, smooth as satin beneath her fingers. After days sharing his cabin, she knew beyond question he never shaved. He did not grow whiskers. “What if she was not mad after all?”

  Roughly his callused hand closed around hers. “What are you saying? That she experienced a divine vision? That the Archangel himself descended from Heaven and spoke to her?”

  “What if he did?” she whispered. “What if you are not a murderer’s son? The Bible itself states that Nephilim exist. What if your mother told the truth?”

  For a moment, she dared hope he was actually listening. Gripping tightly, he held her hand to his chest. Through gleaming damask, his heart thudded hard and fast against her palm.

  Then he chuffed out a sound of disgust and dropped her hand.

  “Son of an angel, am I?” he scoffed. “Why stop there, Jayne? Why not call me the Son of God Himself, returned to hail the second coming? Or more likely, the Son of Lucifer?”

  Because someone else aboard your ship already claims that honor, she thought dryly. Perhaps we’ve all gone mad.

  “Is it so impossible to believe?” she asked. “Rational men believe the Fair Folk are creatures of myth, Calyx, yet you were ready enough to accept evidence of their existence. Why not angels and the sons of angels?”

  “Perhaps they do, for all I know,” he countered, low and fierce. “But I’m not fool enough to claim I’m one of them! What the Hell are you trying to do to me, Jayne? Drive me as mad as my mother was?”

  “Will you not at least consider the possibility that she was sane?” she cried.

  Behind them, the crew’s lively conversation faltered.

  They think it’s a lover’s quarrel, she reminded herself, angling her cap so they couldn’t see her face. Calyx gave her his broad back.

  “I don’t know what the Devil you’re trying to pull,” he said tightly. “Whatever it is, I’m telling you now, it won’t work.”

  Distressed, she twisted her hands in her lap. “I know ’tis difficult to imagine—”

  “Difficult? Try bloody impossible.” He snorted. “You delivered a command performance last night, I’ll grant you that, with your tears and the bit about your captive son. If it’s true, you have my sympathy. But I’m not some gull to be played by a pretty skirt, the way you played Don Alonso the night we met. I won’t trust a liar and informer.”

  Jayne stared into the dazzling facets of sunlight sparkling on the sea. Tears rose to film her gaze. A sinking sense of despair sucked at her and sapped the last fragile hope she’d clung to. Foolish to believe she could convince him of anything.

  She’d lied to him too many times, and told him the truth too rarely. He would never accept anything she said now.

  Before them loomed the rocky shore. She gazed forward in mute misery as the longboat bumped against the rocks. While the rowers shipped their oars, one leaped nimbly ashore to secure the craft.

  Calyx remained where he was, staring straight ahead. Her heart burned like a live coal in her breast.

  Somehow she gathered the strength to rise. The movement seemed to penetrate the captain’s brooding reverie. Without looking at her, he leaped ashore, staring toward the stone fortress.

  “Do you need money?” he asked curtly. “To make your way back to Lisbon?”

  “I’ll manage,” she said huskily.

  Without meeting her gaze, he gripped her waist and swung her ashore. For the last time, her body thrilled before his effortless strength, the fortitude that had been her despair and her refuge throughout her unforgettable time in his keeping.

  He released her as though he couldn’t stand the sight of her and stepped back, putting distance between them.

  “Philip’s name will earn you entree at the castillo.” He reverted to gruff Spanish. “Given your vaunted reputation as Spain’s benefactress. Or you can hire transport down the coast in town. Tell Antonio here your wishes and he’ll escort you. I’ve pressing business elsewhere.”

  “Of course.” Her voice wavered. “Capitán, I—I must thank you for your—protection and good care. I am well aware my fate could have been far worse.”

  He pivoted toward her, the smooth-faced gallant once more, armored in polite indifference. “You underplay your considerable talents, condesa. Like a cat, you always land on your feet.”

  For a breath, his dark eyes locked with hers. He searched her face as though he sought to decipher some last hidden secret. She stared back at him without regard for whatever he might read there.

  Whatever calumny he thought of her, she was irreparably in love with him. If he survived the coming battle, if England herself survived his assault, perhaps she would send him a love-letter someday—years later, when it was clear she had naught to gain by it. She thought she would like to look back in her elder years and know she had found the courage to tell him.

  The Devil take the future, she thought suddenly, and my careful letter! He may be sailing to his death.

  Filled with reckless courage, she stepped forward and gripped his big hands tightly.

  “I know you can never believe me, and I do not care.” The words tumbled out before common sense could contain them. “Calyx, I—”

  “Capitán!” The hail from an incoming longboat, bobbing on the waves, swung them both toward the sea. In the prow stood Diego Domingo, gesturing feverishly.

  Frustrated, Jayne released Calyx and stepped back, the words that clamored to be spoken dying unvoiced. Calyx waved an arm in acknowledgement and called back.

  “What are you doing here, Diego? I left you in command of the Arcángel.”

  “Not anymore!” Diego shouted. The longboat, painted with the San Martin’s insignia, drew swiftly closer. “A message arrived from the flagship five minutes after you left.”

  “Si?” Impatience simmered in Calyx’s voice as he leaned to catch the mooring rope. Muscle flexed beneath his doublet as he hauled the craft toward the rocks. The moment they were close enough, Diego leaped ashore.

  Seeing alarm written across the primero’s tanned features, Jayne felt a qualm of fear that dispelled her frustration with this ill-timed interruption. Clearly Calyx too sensed it and drew Diego aside. She sidled discreetly after them.

  “You must demand an audience with Don Alonso at once,” the primero said, low and urgent. “He’s just given command of the Arcángel to Señor Nicanor.”

  “Madre de Dios. Has the man gone mad?” Calyx stared. “I won the Arcángel—captured her in battle. She’s mine. Her crew are mine. He can’t give her to someone else.”

  “Tell that to Don Alonso,” Diego said dryly. “This joint command structure is an embarazo. God knows how they’ll manage in battle. Half the ships in this Armada have split commands.”

  “That’s the don’s problem,” Calyx growled. “My crew suffer no such confusion.”

  Diego stroked his mustache. “Evidently, your holy passenger has convinced him they do. The Blade of God says rebellion is simmering on board, with fights breaking out by the hour—”

  “The whole fleet has that problem.”

  “He also reports you have suspicious characters hiding among your
crew.”

  A dart of fear pierced Jayne’s heart. Had Mordred caught sight of Uriel or Zamiel? With his gifts, he could sense their divine essence, just as she had—and Linnet was part Fae. No hiding that if she crossed his sight.

  “Of course we have suspicious characters.” Calyx snorted. “Starting with Nicanor himself.”

  “Then there’s the saboteur, amigo, and your English mistress,” Diego pressed. “Mordred returned from the flagship with signed orders! The don’s signature appears genuine.”

  Mordred. The name struck Jayne like a slap to the face. What difference could it possibly make to Mordred who captained the Arcángel?

  Something Mordred had said floated back to her.

  “How much dost thou know of thine angelic lover?”

  At the time, she’d thought his words a flippant reference to Calyx’s obsession with the subject. Could Mordred have sensed more than that?

  Whatever his purpose, the Prince of Camelot could easily have bent the force of his powerful magick upon the weak-willed don. Indeed, Mordred could have convinced Don Alonso to do far worse than relieve Calyx of his command.

  “Cristo!” Calyx swore. “This is no time for the Arcángel to acquire a new captain.”

  The two men exchanged a look fraught with meaning Jayne could not decipher.

  “Take the longboat, muchacho,” Diego murmured, “while I return to the Arcángel. I left Señor Nicanor issuing his first commands.”

  “Si, si.” Calyx shot a distracted glance toward Jayne, who tried to look innocent as she loitered about. “Let Antonio take you to the castillo, condesa, while I hunt down our good don.”

  Small good it will do you, she fretted, if Mordred has worked his magick.

  But the fate of Calyx de Zamorra was no longer her problem. He’d made that perfectly clear.

  Your Queen gave you a traitor’s name...I won’t trust a liar and an informer.

  As his flat rejection echoed through her brain, her heart ached and her belly felt hollow.

  Her liaison with Lord Calyx was irrefutably over.

  Time to shake off the good-natured Antonio, already chafing to join his fellows at the taberna, and fly like the wind for England.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jayne had despaired of ever seeing England again.

  A lifetime ago she’d bidden an agonized farewell to her homeland and everything she’d ever known. Her last glimpse of the white cliffs of Dover and the bright emerald shores had been blurred by tears.

  Her wrathful cousin had banished her for spite, and her father had not uttered a word in her defense. Even Kin, the dashing brother she adored, had turned away when she bid him a trembling farewell, his handsome face dark with anger.

  In ten years’ time, Dover had not changed. At least, not in any way evident from a mile offshore, where they moored the fast little zabra she’d hired in Corunna. While her request for a meeting sped inland to Walsingham, Jayne chafed at the delay. Her hired smugglers had slipped light as spirits around the sleeping Armada and left the Spaniards far behind. She’d coaxed and pressed and bullied the wind to fill their sails all the way to England.

  The effort had left her utterly spent.

  Perhaps it was the strain of leaving Calyx. She couldn’t shake the sense that she’d abandoned him to the unsettled state of affairs on the Arcángel. Yet if she thought with her head rather than her heart, the clever brain trained to scheme and seize her advantage, she knew that distraction had offered the perfect opportunity to slip away.

  By the time the capitán went looking for her—if he troubled to look at all—her trail would have gone cold as last night’s supper.

  Curled up in the zabra, the summer sun hot on her back, she spied a small vessel tacking toward them from the shore. Her heartbeat quickened as she scrambled to her feet. Could this, finally, be Walsingham?

  Surely, ten years later, her royal cousin’s wrath had cooled. Yet Elizabeth Tudor was not inclined to be forgiving where Robert Dudley’s infidelities were concerned.

  The skiff with its triangular lateen sail was making straight for them. Jayne slipped below to her tiny cabin and dressed for the visit. Ten minutes later, neatly attired in a respectable day gown of leaf-green linen parted over crisp white cambric, black hair coiled into a demure chignon at her nape, she braced to meet her fate.

  Her visitor waited in the dayroom, a snug chamber of Spanish oak and few comforts, crowded with table and benches where the skeleton crew took their meals. Through the long window tucked beneath the stern, afternoon sunlight gleamed against varnished wood.

  Facing away, a solitary figure stood before the glass. The light silhouetted sober black doublet, Venetian breeches and a cap of Puritan severity. Cropped black hair curled against the visitor’s neck. Her heart tripped and fluttered with nerves.

  But the long, slender body and wide shoulders belonged to a young man.

  Not Walsingham then. The Queen’s spymaster was well over fifty.

  A pang of disappointment struck inward. She’d begged Sir Francis to come in person, this faithful royal servant she’d never met. She’d hoped he would acknowledge her modest contributions on England’s behalf—undertaken at considerable personal risk.

  But the Spanish were coming. A national disaster was looming. No doubt she had been unreasonable to hope for the great man’s personal attention.

  Jayne clasped her hands demurely before her and curtseyed to the stranger.

  “God save you, sir. I trust you have been made comfortable after your journey from London.”

  The young man pivoted, sunlight slanting across fine-boned features and a neat black beard. Keen blue eyes fixed her with an intensity that was almost hunger. Such an unusual shade of blue, swirling and changeable as the sea. She would almost have called it turquoise—

  Somberly he said, “God save you, sister.”

  Her world turned on its side. A niggling sense of familiarity shattered before the sudden shock of recognition.

  “Kinley?” Blindly she groped at the table for purchase. “Sweet Jesus, is it you, brother?”

  The young man bowed gravely, so unlike the flamboyant and dashing courtier she recalled that she doubted her senses.

  “You’ve changed a great deal, sister, and much for the better.” He cast an approving eye over her modest gown. “They claim you lived a life of decadence and debauchery in Paris, but Sir Francis explained that was merely your cover. I see now he was wise in this, as in all things.”

  “Sir Francis?” Amazed, she pressed a hand to her throat, where the pulse fluttered swift against her fingers. “Kin, do you work for Walsingham now? God’s Eyes, I can scarcely credit it.”

  He frowned at the oath, but bowed his head. “I do not fault you for your astonishment. I too am greatly changed from the ne’er-do-well idler I was when you left us.”

  “Left you? I was sent away.” Her voice hardened. “The Queen sent me away for spite and jealousy, while you and Father stood by and watched.”

  “The Queen sent you away as punishment for your carnal sins.” Her brother raised an admonitory finger. “Do not forget, sister, I watched you flaunt yourself before Lord Robert for months before you lured him to your bed. In my own vanity, consumed by my court ambitions, I failed to bring your behavior to our father’s attention. If I had done, Father would have put an end to it. Matters would never have gone as far as they did.”

  He sighed, eyes shadowed with the ghost of remembered pain. “So you see, sister, I do not stint to accept my share of blame. You are but a woman, weak by nature. The Devil led you astray.”

  Jayne stared in dismay. Her joy in the unexpected reunion dissolved as her heart sank with familiar disappointment. What had she expected? she wondered bitterly. Gifford Carey and his son had never taken her part against their royal cousin. Had she expected that to change?

  “I do not recall you troubled yourself overmuch about sin in those days,” she said slowly. “Judging by your speech and manner,
I daresay I am not the only one who has changed.”

  For the first time, a genuine smile transformed her brother’s face. For a heartbeat, he was again the charming courtier she’d idolized as a child. Her heart twisted painfully.

  “It’s true that my faith has deepened,” he said simply. “Like Sir Francis himself, I have found refuge in the Puritan faith.”

  Was Walsingham to blame for this transformation? Or had some tragedy driven him to seek solace in God?

  She swallowed down her disappointment. “Has our father undergone the same conversion?”

  “His mind remains firmly fixed where it has ever been—on earthbound matters at Clover Chase, with our lands and tenants.” He hesitated. “Perhaps you will not have heard. He has lately remarried, to a wealthy widow with half a dozen children and lands that march with his. I would not call their lives overly godly, but the two seem well content.”

  Again Jayne suffered a stab of disillusionment. Her father had loved Bess Carey, her laughing mother with her black curls and heart-shaped face. He’d never been the same after her death. Apparently her mother’s memory no longer grieved him.

  Her heart clamored to shower her brother with questions about Ryder, her precious boy. Kin was his uncle. Surely he’d taken some interest in the lad?

  But nay, it was too soon for that.

  Perhaps, deep within, she feared what her brother would say. Swallowing her qualms, she settled onto the bench and gestured him courteously to join her.

  “I suppose,” she sighed, “Sir Francis did not dispatch you to exchange reminiscences and family news. Obviously he received my missive?”

  “He did.” A businesslike expression settled over Kin Carey’s features as he folded his tall frame onto the bench. “Clearly there is much you feared entrusting to paper, and wisely so. London is riddled with Spanish spies and agents, just as Spain is riddled with ours.

  “Thanks to Sir Francis’s web of agents, we know that Alexander Farnese—the Duke of Parma and Philip’s ardent ally—is massing troops in the Spanish Netherlands. We know Don Alonso, the Duque de Medina Sidonia, intends to sail across the Channel to Dunkirk and strengthen his Armada with these trained apes. If they land, they will plunder our wealth, rape our women and spill our blood in the fertile soil.”