“Signorina Isabella?” Kate remembered the woman who was singing for Queen Catherine, her bright red hair, her eyes that seemed to see everything.
“Aye. I am learning some of the Italian techniques to take to our plays in England. You must meet with these actors more—they are fascinating.”
“Rob, I think . . .” Before she could say anything else, Rob quickly kissed her hand and whirled away into the crowd of tritons. “We must be careful of everyone here,” she whispered. Dizzy, Kate made her way with the rest of the partygoers into the pavilions. They all lined up to make their bows to Queen Catherine and slipped past her into yet another room of the fairy world.
The domed ceiling high above their heads was painted with goddesses in white and red, with swans flying among them, touched with sparkling edges of gold leaf. The stone walls between the golden glass windows were hung with tapestries whose matching gold threads caught the torchlight and sparkled. At the far end, a red velvet-draped dais waited with gilded chairs and footstools.
A cluster of shepherdesses dressed in clouds of pink-and-white silk with beribboned crooks danced in the center of the room to a lively tune of tambours and flutes. Just as on the water, Kate could see no source for the music; it seemed to ring out as if by magic. Shepherds passed around trays of silver goblets to laughing courtiers in brocades and velvets, the air warm after the cold night beyond, the rich scents of jasmine and rose lulling them closer to the festivities.
She glimpsed Amelia nearby, giggling with two of Queen Mary’s ladies. The last time Kate saw her she had been tearful, but now her cheeks were bright red, her usually perfectly dressed hair escaping from its pearl pins as she waved her hands and her laughter grew louder. She seemed to forget she held a goblet, for some of the wine spilled scarlet droplets onto her pale brocade sleeve.
Amelia laughed and wiped at the wine with the silver fur muff she held on her other arm. A diamond brooch nestled in the fur sparkled, and Kate noticed it was a lion—a badge of the Guise family. She glanced across the room and caught a glimpse of Monsieur d’Emours looking like a god himself in white and gold. He seemed to be looking at Amelia, watching her laugh, but he quickly vanished into the crowd.
She felt a touch on her arm and turned to find Celeste Renard standing behind her. Celeste’s bright hair was bound up with a chain of bloodred rubies, but her gown was a somber dove gray, and her smile was smaller than usual.
“It seems our friend Mademoiselle Wrightsman has been much enjoying Queen Catherine’s fine wine of Burgundy,” Celeste said.
Kate nodded cautiously, unsure about Celeste. She and Amelia had always appeared to be good friends, but friendship here at Fontainebleau, like so many other things, was illusory. “I am sure it cannot be an easy thing for her to encounter Monsieur d’Emours at every turn.”
“So you have heard of their famous amour and the duel that ended it?” Celeste said. A page in Queen Catherine’s blue-and-gold livery passed by with a tray laden with more silver and gold goblets, and Celeste took two.
She handed one to Kate, and Kate automatically took a sip. It was indeed a very delicious wine, rich, complex, but beneath lay a heavy taste of spice. Over the braided silver rim, she caught a glimpse of Queen Catherine’s perfumer and astrologer, Signor Ruggieri, across the room with Monsieur d’Emours and other Guise retainers.
“Has not everyone heard of the duel?” Kate said. “It seems to be a very romantic tale.”
“Romantic?” Celeste said with a scoffing laugh. “Monsieur d’Emours is only in love with his own estates, his position. They say he cannot maintain his château. If the Guise fall here at court, so will he. It was folly to bring such scandalous attention on himself now.”
Kate studied Monsieur d’Emours. He listened to the other men but said nothing himself, giving away nothing by the marble expression on his handsome face. She glanced back to the laughing Amelia, who had turned away from her former lover and held out her hand to Toby instead. “Then surely he must have some passion for her, to have behaved so?”
Celeste shrugged. “The d’Emours name is an old one, filled with a history of courtiers who have behaved far worse. Perhaps he thought that would protect him. But times have changed greatly in France.”
“Then what of the other man in the duel?” Kate asked.
“Monsieur Mamou?” Celeste said. “He went back to his own estate in the Languedoc and has not been seen at court since, which is probably most sensible of him. He is kin to Montmorency, the Guises’ great rival, and it is surely best to see which way the wind is blowing before he returns. He danced with Amelia a few times and seemed to admire her, of course. Most men do. But to lose his senses in such a way? Very odd. Everyone knows the limits of how far a courtly flirtation can go.”
Did they? From what Kate had seen, both at Fontainebleau and in England, courtly flirtations flamed into destructive passions much too often. “Then why a duel, if neither man cared so very much for Mistress Wrightsman?”
Celeste gave a small catlike smile. “That, chère Mademoiselle Haywood, is certainly the question. I have heard that perhaps Monsieur Mamou, far from pursuing Amelia, had been casting aspersions on Jacques’s family. A d’Emours would not stand for any scandal on his name.”
“Scandal? What sort of scandal?”
Celeste gave an elaborate shrug. “I do not know. His mother was most pious, they say, but his father something of a rogue. Not that such a thing is very unusual.”
A sudden blast of horns filled the domed chamber, echoing off the stone walls. It was unlike anything Kate had heard before. The shepherdesses melted away, and a procession of Lord James Stewart’s Scots attendants appeared, led by two pipers.
Queen Mary followed on her brother’s arm. She wore white again, a filmy silk with sheer sleeves trimmed with dark fur, and beamed with pleasure at the music. In her sunlike presence, it seemed as if Fontainebleau could not be a dark place, not filled with shadows that changed with every passing moment. Queen Mary seemed to trail laughter in her wake, even in the midst of her mourning.
Yet Kate had seen many times that light could conceal even more than could darkness.
She stopped near one of the half-open windows and peered outside at the cold night beyond. Most of the partygoers were inside watching the dancing now, but a few people moved through the flickering torchlight outside, their laughter a faint echo on the wind.
But one of those people was not laughing. Kate glimpsed Amelia’s golden hair and pale satin gown. She stood facing a taller man, her hands curled into fists. She seemed to shout something, words Kate couldn’t catch. Amelia tried to turn and leave, but the man caught her arm and spun her back to face him.
Kate saw that it was Monsieur d’Emours, his expression blank and tight. He did not seem as angry as Amelia did, but he did not let her go. Kate started to go to her just as Amelia jerked her arm free and laughed up into his face.
Before Kate could do anything, Amelia vanished into the night, leaving d’Emours to stare after her. Their argument had been brief yet obviously intense. A burst of pipe music caught her attention, and when she looked back outside, d’Emours too had vanished.
• • •
“What do you think of France, then, Kate?” Rob asked as they strolled across the marble terrace that looked out over the night-dark gardens. The party had ended an hour before, but Kate found she didn’t yet want to retire, and Rob felt the same.
She studied the view before them. Many of the lanterns strung through the trees to light the way to the pavilion had gone out and most of the revelers had escaped the cold night to find their own firesides, but there still seemed to be a sort of magic hovering over the gardens, like a mist caught on the branches, a trace of laughter fading into the sky.
“There is certainly great beauty here,” she said. “So much art and music, I am dizzy with it all! Fontainebleau itself is love
ly beyond compare. Yet I do prefer England.”
“Why is that?” Rob asked. “Because of Queen Elizabeth?”
“Because of the queen, of course. And other English things.” She thought of the queens here at Fontainebleau. Queen Mary, with her beauty and charm, her feminine delicacy, the way she seemed to want only to laugh and work at her embroidery and shied away from authority. And Queen Catherine, the very opposite, so strong and sure. They were certainly potential formidable foes for Queen Elizabeth, depending on which way the French winds blew.
Yet could they not be formidable allies, a bulwark against the cold ambitions of men like the Guise?
That vision she sometimes had of a comfortable London hearth with Anthony, a life with no queens and no Guise-like families, shimmered. She pushed it away. “Also,” she added, “because France seems so very old. Tired, mayhap. England seems new.”
“New?” Rob said with a laugh. “A country that has been there for centuries?”
Kate laughed, too. “So it has. But so very much has changed with the Tudors, with Queen Elizabeth. There is a new freedom, yes?”
“And Queen Mary? She is also of Tudor blood. Do you think she could bring such a newness to Scotland, if she returned?”
“Queen Mary is charming indeed. I have never been to Scotland, but they say it is rather a rough place. I can’t imagine she would find much of France there.”
“I am sure she would find gallants eager to serve her wherever she went, even to the wilds of Scotland,” Rob said, a wry tone to his voice.
Surprised, Kate glanced up at him. “Do you still not like Queen Mary, Rob?” That was most strange—Rob always liked ladies, especially pretty ones.
He smiled down at her, but it looked too much, too theatrical. “I like her as well as any man here. She is, as you say, charming, and most beautiful. But as a queen . . .”
“Mistress Haywood! Thank the stars—there you are. I need your help.”
She turned to see Lady Barnett rushing toward them, closely followed by Celeste Renard and two maidservants. Lady Barnett looked as if she had been preparing to retire, for her hair was loose, her silver satin sleeves removed and a knitted shawl wrapped around her shoulders, slipping away even as Brigit ran after her, trying to fix it. Her eyes were wide and frantic.
“Oh, Mistress Haywood, Master Cartman! I am so glad to have found you,” Lady Barnett cried. “Have you seen Amelia?”
“Mistress Wrightsman?” Kate said, trying to remember the party and the last time she had seen Amelia, which had been during the dancing. “Nay, not since just after the party.”
Lady Barnett glanced back at Celeste. Mademoiselle Renard was still dressed in her fine purple silk gown, her hair caught up in its ruby bandeau, not a strand out of place.
“Has she not returned to your rooms at all, Lady Barnett?” Rob asked gently.
Lady Barnett shook her head. “She returned to the château with me, but then she said she had left her fur muff at the pavilion and went to retrieve it.”
“I offered to go with her,” Celeste said. “But she said she would not keep me from my bed, that it would only take her a moment to fetch it herself, as she knew where it was.”
“Yet that was long ago!” Lady Barnett wailed. “And no one has seen her. Henry is playing cards with Sir Nicholas, and I dare not disturb him. He would just say she is being frivolous and flighty again.”
Kate exchanged a worried look with Rob. Amelia might seem frivolous, true, but Kate knew that truly she was not. Also, she had been arguing with the chilly Monsieur d’Emours.
“Shall we go see if she is at the pavilion, Lady Barnett?” Rob asked.
“Oh, would you?” Lady Barnett said with a relieved sigh. “Celeste and I will search with some of Queen Mary’s ladies—she has many friends there—and Brigit can ask the servants.”
“Of course, Lady Barnett,” Kate said, giving her a reassuring smile, even though she herself felt distinctly uneasy. It was true that Amelia had many friends—and Fontainebleau was a vast place. She surely had just gone off to play cards or to hear some music or to chase a lady-in-waiting’s dog around the gardens.
She followed Rob down the steps and into the jardin anglais that led to the pond. It was silent and dark, lit by only a few of the more stubborn lanterns in the trees.
They said nothing as they made their way along the pathway to the pavilion. The night had grown colder, every small noise louder in the frost, the bare tree branches clicking in the wind. At the edge of the pond the abandoned boats bobbed at their moorings, their festive wreaths wilting and ribbons trailing in the water. There was no one there at all.
Yet there was still a light glowing in one of the pavilion windows, flickering on the water.
“Should we go look in there?” Rob said. “If she has a rendezvous with someone . . .”
“With a suitor, you mean?”
Rob gave a wry laugh. “I am sure they would not wish to be interrupted.”
Kate nodded. Amelia’s romantic life was indeed complicated, but her behavior the past few days had been puzzling. One moment so merry and laughing; the next fearful, sad. “She should know her aunt is looking for her, at least, before Lady Barnett alarms more people in the household. They have been through such scandal before. I do think . . .”
Her attention was suddenly caught by a pale flash against the dark shore of the pond, the water lapping against the reeds. She hurried over to examine it, and found it was Amelia’s silver fox-fur muff.
Shivering with a new foreboding, she knelt down and turned it over, half fearing she’d spot blood marring the beautiful fur, but it was only water staining the fine edges. Surely Amelia had dropped it in the confusion of leaving the boats and then became distracted when she came back to look for it.
Then Kate noticed something else. There was a tear where the diamond brooch of the Guise badge had been. The shimmering jewels were gone now.
She stood and studied the pavilion across the water. “Perhaps we should look for Amelia there.”
Rob gave a grim nod. He untied the nearest boat and helped Kate climb onto its narrow seat, its soft cushions now gone. He pushed them away from the shore, and for a moment there was only the sound of the oars cutting through the waters.
Kate studied the scene around them, so different now than it had been at the party, so empty and haunted. She and Rob seemed all alone in the dark, cold world, even though a palace full of people was just beyond the trees. Kate slid closer to his reassuring warmth on the narrow seat, and he reached out to give her hand a small squeeze.
Her breath caught in her throat, almost choking her, when she saw something pale break the shadowy ripples of the water. “Rob, over there!”
He rowed toward it in silence. Kate leaned over the edge of the boat and gave a choked cry as she realized it was exactly as she feared.
Reaching out, she grabbed a handful of Amelia Wrightsman’s white brocade skirt, now buoyant with trapped air. It was what had kept her afloat, facedown in the dark waves. She tried to drag Amelia closer, but she was too heavy, and Kate herself almost toppled into the pond.
“Help me,” she sobbed, half hoping this was just a nightmare, even as she knew it was much too real.
“Nay, my love, let me,” Rob said softly. “You steady the oars, and don’t look.”
Kate nodded, trying to hold back her tears. They would help no one now, and she had to keep a cool head. As he leaned over the side of the boat, she held the oars and studied the shore. There was no one there at all, no clue as to how Amelia had ended up where she was.
Kate glanced back as Rob pulled the body from the pond and laid it gently in the bottom of the boat. Water flooded Kate’s boots and the hem of her skirt. Before Rob covered Amelia with his cloak, Kate glimpsed her face. It was as white as ice in the moonlight, her lilac-hued lips parted and her e
yes wide-open, staring at the night sky. Her hair was loose and tangled with leaves, matted with dried blood at the back, and her fine gown was torn away from the shoulder.
There was that perfect stillness, that utter absence, that Kate remembered all too well from seeing death before. She remembered Amelia laughing and dancing, her frantic, frivolous energy only a few hours before.
And the tears when she warned Kate against trusting love.
Swallowing back the bitter rush of tears, Kate looked away, back toward the pavilion. The light flickered in the window and a shadow passed in front of it before it suddenly went out.
“I think there is someone there!” she cried.
Rob took back the oars and quickly steered them toward the small island. By the time they ran into the pavilion, they found it completely empty, aside from the smear of a dark stain on the marble steps. Yet there was still one torch lit in its iron wall sconce, flickering from the wind that rushed through an open window. The tapestries stirred, and dried leaves brushed across the bare floor.
Kate ran to peer out the open window, yet she could see nothing outside except the empty water and the waning moonlight. It was as if Amelia had already become a ghost.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“How could this have happened to Amelia? Everyone admires her! She never hurt anyone at all,” Lady Barnett wailed. She sat huddled by the fire in the Barnetts’ small sitting room. It had been only about an hour since Rob had carried Amelia’s body back to the palace, but a large pile of crumpled handkerchiefs lay in Lady Barnett’s lap. Her face, free of the fashionable cosmetics she usually wore, looked worn and lined with grief, her eyes wide with shock.
Mistress Berry, who stood at Lady Barnett’s shoulder with a bottle of smelling salts, handed her another square of linen. “I am quite sure it was an accident, Jane. Amelia had consumed a great deal of wine tonight. She probably tripped and hit her head and then fell into the water.”
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