“Not at all. I wanted to give it to you as a Twelfth Night gift, but now seems a fine time.” He took the scroll from her and kissed her hand, his lips lingering tenderly on her trembling fingers. “My father persuaded your uncle that an alliance with our family was worth him providing a generous dowry. No doubt he was also swayed by the prospect of having such a troublesome niece off his hands…”
“Do not jest with me, Robert!” she cried. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him down atop her as he laughed. “We are to marry? Truly?”
“After the new year. Here at Court, if you like, with the Queen herself as witness. With her blessing, you could never get away from me, Anne Percy. Or should I say—Lady Langley?”
It was too much. It was all she had dreamed of and more. A lifetime of passion and love with Robert. A real home and family at last. She kissed him with all the love in her heart, all the bright promise of their life together.
“You see, my darling, my one true love,” he said. “I told you we both win this game.”
Hungry for more Elizabethan romance? Read Lady Rosamund Ramsay and Anton Gustavson’s story in Amanda McCabe’s The Winter Queen, available now from Harlequin Historical.
Turn the page to read an excerpt…
The Winter Queen Excerpt
December, 1564
…it is our deepest hope that, once at Court, you will see the great folly of your actions and rejoice at your happy escape from this poor match. The Queen has done our family a great honour by accepting you as one of her maids of honour. You have a chance to redeem yourself and our family name through service to Her Grace. To discover what will truly make you happy. Do not fail her, or us.
Lady Rosamund Ramsay crumpled her father’s letter in her gloved hand, slumping back against the cushions of the swaying litter. If only she could crush his words out of her memory so easily! Crush the memory of all that had happened since those sweet, warm days of summer. Was it all just months ago? It felt like years, vast years, where she had aged far beyond her nineteen years to become an old, old woman, unsure of herself and her desires.
Rosamund shivered as she tossed the crumpled letter into her embroidered bag, curling her booted feet tighter around the warmer that had long gone cold. The coals weren’t even smoldering embers now. It made her think of Richard, and their professed feelings for each other. The kisses they had stolen in the shade of green, flowering hedges. He hadn’t even tried to see her when her parents had separated them.
And now she was being sent away from Ramsay Castle, pushed out of her home and sent away to serve the Queen. No doubt her parents were sure she would be handily distracted there, in the midst of a noisy, crowded Court, like a fussing babe handed a glittering bauble. They thought that, with Queen Elizabeth’s patronage and all the fine, new gowns they had sent with her, Rosamund would find another match. A better one, more suited to the Ramsay name and fortune. They seemed to think surely one handsome face was as good as another in a young lady’s eye.
But little did they know her. They thought her a shy little mouse. But she could be a lion when she knew what she wanted. If only she knew what that was…
Rosamund parted the curtains of the litter, peering out at the passing landscape. Her parents’ desperation to send her away was so great that they had launched her out into the world as soon as the Queen’s letter had arrived, in the very midst of winter. The world beyond the narrow, frost-rutted roadway was one of bare, skeleton-like trees stretching bony branches towards a steel-gray sky. Thankfully, it was not snowing now, but drifts of white lay along the roadside in lumpy banks.
A sharp wind whistled through the bare trees, bitterly chilling. Rosamund’s escorts—armed guards on horseback, and her maid Jane in the baggage cart—huddled silently in their cloaks. She had not heard a single word since they had stopped at an inn last night, and likely all would be silent until they at last made it to London.
London. It seemed an impossible goal. The palace at Whitehall, with its warm fireplaces, was surely just a dream, as the cozy inn had been. The only reality was this jolting, jarring road, the mud, the never-ending cold that bit through her fur-lined cloak and woollen gown as if they were tissue.
Rosamund felt the hollow sadness of loneliness as she stared out at the bleak day. She had lost her parents and home, lost Richard and the love she had thought they shared. She had no one, and was faced with making a new life for herself in a place she knew so little of. A place where she could not fail, for fear she would never be allowed home again.
She drew in a deep breath of the frosty air, feeling its bracing cold stiffen her shoulders and bear her up. She was a Ramsay, and Ramsays did not fail! They had survived the vicissitudes of five Tudor monarchs thus far, and had escaped unscathed from them all, with a title and fine estate to show for it. Surely she, Rosamund, could make her way through the Queen’s Court without getting herself into more trouble?
Perhaps Richard would soon come to her rescue, prove his love to her. They just needed a plan to persuade her parents he was a worthy match.
Rosamund leaned slightly out of the litter, peering back at the cart rumbling along behind her. Jane sat perched among the trunks and cases, and she looked distinctly grey and queasy. It had been hours since they had left the inn, and Rosamund herself felt stiff and sore, even tucked up among the fur robes and cushions. Feeling suddenly wretched and selfish, she gestured to the captain of the guard that they should stop for a moment.
Jane hurried over to help her alight. ‘Oh, my lady!’ she gasped, fussing with Rosamund’s white-wool cloak and gloves. ‘You look frozen through. This is not a fit time for humans to be out and about, and no doubt about it!’
‘It is quite all right, Jane,’ Rosamund said soothingly. ‘We will soon be in London, and surely no one can keep a warmer household or finer table than the Queen? Just think of it—roaring fires. Roasted meats, wine and sweets. Clean bedclothes and thick curtains.’
Jane sighed. ‘If we only live to see it all, my lady. Winter is a terrible thing indeed. I don’t remember ever seeing a colder one.’
Rosamund left the maid straightening the litter’s cushions and headed into the thick growth of trees at the side of the road. She told Jane she needed to use the necessary, but in truth she really needed a moment alone, a moment of quiet, to stand on solid ground and be away from the constant sway of the hated litter.
She almost regretted venturing away from the road, as her boots sank into the slushy snow-drifts and slid across frozen puddles. The trees were bare and grey, but so closely grown she soon could not see her party at all. The branches seemed to close around her like the magical thicket of a fairy tale, a new and strange world where she was alone in truth. And there were no valiant knights to ride to her rescue.
Rosamund eased back her hood, shaking her silvery-blonde hair free of its knitted caul. It fell in a heavy mantle over her shoulders, blown by the cold wind. She turned her face up to the sky, to the swirling grey clouds. Soon enough, the crowds and clamour of London would shut out this blessed silence. She would surely not even be able to hear her own thoughts there, let alone the shriek of the wind, the rattle of the naked branches.
The laughter.
The laughter? Rosamund frowned, listening intently. Had she stepped into a story indeed, a tale of fairies and forest sprites? Aye, there it was again, the unmistakable sound of laughter and voices. Human voices too, not fairies or the whine of the winter wind. Still feeling under an enchanted spell, she followed the trail of that merry, enticing sound.
She emerged from the woods into a clearing, suddenly facing a scene from another world, another life. There was a frozen pond, a rough circle of shimmering, silver ice. On its banks crackled a bonfire, snapping red-gold flames that sent plumes of fragrant smoke into the sky and reached enticing tendrils of heat toward Rosamund’s chilled cheeks.
There were people, four of them, gathered around the fire—two men and two ladies, clad in ric
h velvets and furs. They laughed and chattered in the glow of the fire, sipping goblets of wine and roasting skewers of meat in the flames. And out in the very centre of that frozen pond was another man, gliding in lazy, looping circles.
Rosamund stared in utter astonishment as he twirled in a graceful, powerful arc, his lean body, sheathed only in a black, velvet doublet and leather breeches, spinning faster and faster. He was a dark blur on that shining ice, swifter than any human eye could follow. As she watched, mesmerised, his spin slowed until he stood perfectly still, a winter god on the ice.
The day too grew still; the cold, blowing wind and scudding clouds held suspended around that one man.
‘Anton!’ one of the ladies called, clapping her gloved hands. ‘That was astounding.’
The man on the ice gave an elaborate bow before launching himself into a backward spin, a lazy meander towards the shore.
‘Aye, Anton is astounding,’ the other man, the one by the fire, said. His voice was heavy with some Slavic accent. ‘An astounding peacock who must show off his gaudy feathers for the ladies.’
The skater—Anton?—laughed as he reached the snowy banks. He sat down on a fallen log to unstrap his skates, an inky-dark lock of hair falling over his brow.
‘I believe I detect a note of envy, Johan,’ he said, his deep voice edged with the lilting music of that same strange, northern accent. He was not even out of breath after his great feats on the ice.
Johan snorted derisively. ‘Envy of your monkeyish antics on skates? I should say not!’
‘Oh, I am quite sure Anton is adroit at far more than skating,’ one of the ladies cooed. She filled a goblet with wine and took it over to Anton, her fine velvet skirts swaying. She was tall and strikingly lovely, with dark-red hair against the white of the snow. ‘Is that not so?’
‘In Stockholm a gentleman never contradicts a lady, Lady Essex,’ he said, rising from the log to take her proffered goblet, smiling at her over its gilded rim.
‘What else do they do in Stockholm?’ she asked, a flirtatious note in her voice.
Anton laughed, his head tipped back to drink deeply of the wine. As he turned towards her, Rosamund had a clear view of him and she had to admit he was handsome indeed. Not quite a peacock—he was too plainly dressed for that, and he wore no jewels but a single pearl-drop in one ear. And not the same as Richard, who had a blond, ruddy, muscular Englishness. But undeniably, exotically, handsome.
He was on the tall side, and whipcord lean, no doubt from all that spinning on the ice. His hair was black as a raven’s wing, falling around his face and over the high collar of his doublet in unruly waves. He impatiently pushed it back, revealing high, sharply carved cheekbones and dark, sparkling eyes.
Eyes that widened as they spied her standing there, staring at him like some addled peasant girl. He handed the lady his empty goblet and moved towards Rosamund, graceful and intent as a cat. Rosamund longed to run, to spin around and flee back into the woods, yet her feet seemed nailed into place. She could not dash off, could not even look away from him.
‘Well, well,’ he said, a smile touching the corner of his sensual lips. ‘Who do we have here?’
Rosamund, feeling utterly flustered and foolish, was finally able to turn around and flee, Anton’s startled laughter chasing her all the way back to the safety of her litter.
If you liked this story by Amanda McCabe, check out her other historical romances always available in eBook format:
The Winter Queen
The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor
High Seas Stowaway
Shipwrecked and Seduced
A Sinful Alliance
A Notorious Woman
For more information about Amanda and her books, visit her at:
Her website:
http://ammandamccabe.com/
Her blog:
http://riskyregencies.blogspot.com/
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/people/Amanda-McCabe/851099381
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Amandamccabe1
Enjoy more passion through the ages with the sensual Harlequin Historical UNDONE titles on sale now:
AWAKENING HIS LADY by Kathrynn Dennis
SEDUCING A STRANGER by Christine Merrill
THE CAPTAIN’S WICKED WAGER by Marguerite Kaye
THE WELSH LORD’S MISTRESS by Margaret Moore
THE WARRIOR’S FORBIDDEN VIRGIN by Michelle Willingham
AT THE DUKE’S SERVICE by Carole Mortimer
HIS SILKEN SEDUCTION by Joanna Maitland
A NIGHT FOR HER PLEASURE by Terri Brisbin
DISROBED AND DISHONORED by Louise Allen
THE UNLACING OF MISS LEIGH by Diane Gaston
A NIGHT OF WICKED DELIGHT by Joanne Rock
PLEASURED BY THE ENGLISH SPY by Bronwyn Scott
THE RAKE’S INTIMATE ENCOUNTER by Ann Lethbridge
NOTORIOUS LORD, COMPROMISED MISS by Annie Burrows
THE UNMASKING OF LADY LOVELESS by Nicola Cornick
LIBERTINE LORD, PICKPOCKET MISS by Bronwyn Scott
THE VIKING’S FORBIDDEN LOVE-SLAVE by Michelle Willingham
SHIPWRECKED AND SEDUCED by Amanda McCabe
Craving something a little longer? Find more historical romantic adventure from Harlequin Historical at www.eHarlequin.com or your local bookstore.
Interested in writing for Harlequin Historical UNDONE? Send your submission to [email protected].
Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance novel at the age of sixteen in Algebra class, an epic starring all her friends as characters! That story will never be published (and she nearly failed Algebra), but now she’s the RITA-nominated, award-winning author of many other books and novellas. She lives in Oklahoma with two cats, a Pug, and a bossy miniature Poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook. Visit her at ammandamccabe.com for Behind the Book information, contests, and upcoming releases, and at riskyregencies.blogspot.com.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4528-4
The Maid’s Lover
Copyright © 2009 by Ammanda McCabe
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