At the Queen's Summons

by Susan Wiggs

  He lowered himself to the foot of the bed and sat very quietly and thoughtfully. How could he be so indifferent upon learning he was the answer to a magical prophecy? What a fool he must think her. Then he asked, “What changed your mind?”

  “The kiss.” Jesu, she had not been so truthful in one conversation since she had first come to London. Aidan O Donoghue coaxed honesty from her; it was some power he possessed, one that made it safe to speak her mind and even her heart, if she dared.

  He seemed to go rigid, though he did not move.

  Idiot, Pippa chided herself. By now he probably could not wait to get rid of her. Surely he would drag her to Bedlam, collecting his fee for turning in a madwoman. He would not be the first to rid himself of a smitten girl in such a manner. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she explained, forcing out a laugh. “It was just a kiss, not a blood oath or some such nonsense. Verily, Your Magnitude, we should forget all about this.”

  “I’m Irish,” he cut in softly, his musical lilt more pronounced than ever. “An Irishman does not take a kiss lightly.”

  “Oh.” She stared at his firelit, mystical face and held her breath. It took all her willpower not to fling herself at him, ask him to toss up her skirts and do whatever it was a man did beneath a woman’s skirts.

  “Pippa?”

  “Yes?”

  “The story. Before you came to London, where did you live? What did you do?”

  The simple questions drew vivid images from the well of her memories. She closed her eyes and traced her way back over the long, oft interrupted journey to London. She lost count of the strolling troupes she had belonged to. Always she was greeted first with skepticism; then, after a display of jests and juggling, she was welcomed. She never stayed long. Usually she slipped away in the night, more often than not leaving a half-conscious man on the ground, clutching a shattered jaw or broken nose, cursing her to high heaven or the belly of hell.

  “Pippa?” Aidan prompted again.

  She opened her eyes. Each time she looked at him, he grew more beautiful. Perhaps she was under some enchantment. Simply looking at him increased his appeal and weakened her will to resist him.

  Almost wistfully, she touched her bobbed hair. I want to be like you, she thought. Beautiful and beloved, the sort of person others wish to embrace, not put in the pillory. The yearning felt like an aching knot in her chest, stunning in its power. Against her will, Aidan O Donoghue was awakening her to feelings she had spent a lifetime running from.

  “I traveled slowly to London,” she said, “jesting and juggling along the way. There were times I went hungry, or slept in the cold, but I didn’t really mind. You see, I had always wanted to go to London.”

  “To seek your family.”

  How had he guessed? It was part of the magic of him, she decided. “Yes. I knew it was next to impossible, but sometimes—” She broke off and looked away in embarrassment at her own candor.

  “Go on,” he whispered. “What were you going to say?”

  “Just that, sometimes the heart asks for the impossible.”

  He reached across the bed, lifted her chin with a finger and winked at her. “And sometimes the heart gets it.”

  She sent him a bashful smile. “Mab would agree with you.”

  “Mab?”

  “The woman who reared me. She lived in Humberside, along the Hornsy Strand. It was a land that belonged to no one, so she simply settled there. That’s how she told it. Mab was simple, but she was all I had.”

  “How did you come to live with her?”

  “She found me.” A dull sense of resignation weighted Pippa, for she had always hated the truth about herself. “According to her, I lay upon the strand, clinging to a herring keg. A large lurcher or hound was with me. I was tiny, Mab said, two or three, no more.” Like a lightning bolt, memory pierced her, and she winced with the force of it. Remember. The command shimmered through her mind.

  “Colleen?” Aidan asked. “Are you all right?”

  She clasped her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the insistent swish of panic.

  “No!” she shouted. “Please! I don’t remember anymore!”

  With a furious Irish exclamation, Aidan O Donoghue, Lord of Castleross, took her in his arms and let her bathe his shoulder in bitter tears.

  “Act as if nothing’s amiss,” Donal Og hissed. He, Iago and Aidan were in the stableyard of Crutched Friars the next day. Aidan had grooms to look after his horse, but currying the huge mare was a task he enjoyed, particularly in the early morning when no one was about.

  Iago looked miserable in the bright chill of early morn. He detested cold weather. He made impossible claims about the climate of his homeland, insisting that it never snowed in the Caribbean, never froze, and that the sea was warm enough to swim in.

  Absently patting Grania’s strong neck, Aidan studied his cousin and Iago. What a formidable pair they made, one dark, one fair, both as large and imposing as cliff rocks.

  “Nothing is amiss,” Aidan said, leaning down to pick up a currying brush. Then he saw what Donal Og had clutched in his hand. “Is it?”

  Donal Og glanced to and fro. The stableyard was empty. A brake of rangy bushes separated the area from the kitchen garden of the main house and the glassworks of Crutched Friars. Through gaps in the bushes, Lumley House and its gardens appeared serene, the well-sweep and stalks of herbs adorned with drops of last night’s rain that sparkled in the rising sun.

  “Read for yourself.” Donal Og shoved a paper at Aidan. “But for God’s sake, don’t react too strongly. Walsingham’s spies are everywhere.”

  Aidan glanced back over his shoulder at the house. “Faith, I hope not.”

  Donal Og and Iago exchanged a glance. Their faces split into huge grins. “It is about time, amigo,” Iago said.

  Aidan’s ears felt hot with foolish defensiveness. “It’s not what you think. Sure and I’d hoped for better understanding from the two of you.”

  The manly grins subsided. “As you wish, coz,” Donal Og said. “Far be it from such as us to suspect yourself of swiving your wee guest.”

  “Ahhh.” A sweet female voice trilled in the distance. All three of them peered through the tall hedge at the house. Slamming open the double doors to the upper hall, Pippa emerged into the sunlight.

  The parchment crinkled in Aidan’s clenched hand. Aside from that, no one made a sound. They stood still, as if a sudden frost had frozen them. She stood on the top step, clad only in her shift. Clearly she thought she’d find no one in the private garden so early. She inhaled deeply, as if tasting the crisp morning air, cleansed by the rain.

  Her hair was sleep tousled, soft and golden in the early light. Although Aidan had kissed her only once, he remembered vividly the rose-petal softness of her lips. Her eyes were faintly bruised by shadows from last night’s tears.

  As spellbinding as her remarkable face was her body. The thin shift, with the sun shimmering through, revealed high, upturned breasts, womanly hips, a tiny waist and long legs, shaded at the top by dark mystery.

  She held a basin in her arms and shifted the vessel to perch on her hip. She descended the steps while three pairs of awestruck eyes, peering avidly through the stableyard hedge, watched her.

  At the bottom of the steps, she stopped to shake back a tumble of golden curls. Then she bent forward over the well to draw the water. The thin fabric of the shift whispered over a backside so lush and shapely that Aidan’s mouth went dry.

  “Ay, mujer,” whispered Iago. “Would that I had such a bedmate.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Aidan managed to repeat in a low, strained voice.

  “No,” said Donal Og with rueful envy, his jaw unhinging as Pippa straightened. Some of the water dampened the front of her shift, so that her flesh shone pearly pink through the white lawn fabric. She paused to pluck the top of a daffodil and tuck it behind her ear. “No doubt,” Donal Og continued, “it is a hundred times better than we think.”

/>   Aidan grabbed him by the front of his tunic. “I’ll see you do penance for six weeks if you don’t quit staring.”

  Oblivious, Pippa slipped back into the house. Iago made a great show of wiping his brow while Donal Og paced the yard, limping as if in discomfort. The horse made a loud, rude sound.

  “The urchin turned out to be a beauty, Aidan,” he said. “I would never have looked twice at her, but you looked once and found a true jewel.”

  “I wasn’t looking for treasure, cousin,” Aidan said. “The lass was caught up in a riot and in danger of being thrown into prison. I merely—”

  “Hush.” Donal Og held up a hand. “You needn’t explain, coz. We’re happy for you. Sure it wasn’t healthy for you to be living like a monk, pretending you were not troubled by a man’s needs. It is not as if you and Felicity ever—”

  “Cease your infernal blather,” Aidan snapped, pierced to the core by the merest thought of Felicity. His grip on the parchment tightened. Perhaps the letter from Revelin of Innisfallen contained good news. Perhaps the bishop had granted the annulment. Oh, please God, yes.

  “Don’t speak of Felicity again. And by God, if you so much as insinuate that Pippa and I are lovers, I’ll turn blood ties into a blood bath.”

  “You didn’t bed her?” Iago demanded, horrified.

  “No. She ran off at the height of the storm and I brought her back here. She seems to have a particular fear of storms.”

  “You,” said Iago, aiming a finger at Aidan’s chest, “are either a sick man or a saint. She has the body of a goddess. She adores you. Take her, Aidan. I am certain she’s had offers from lesser men than an Irish chieftain. She will thank you for it.”

  Aidan swore and stalked over to a stone hitch post. Propping his hip on it, he unfurled the parchment and began to read.

  The letter from Revelin of Innisfallen was in Irish. Aye, there it was, news regarding the marriage Aidan had made in hell and desperation. But that hardly mattered, considering the rest. Each word stabbed into him like a shard of ice. When he finished reading, he looked up at Donal Og and Iago.

  “Who brought this?”

  “A sailor on a flax boat from Cork. He can’t read.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Aye.”

  Aidan tore the parchment into three equal portions. “Good appetite, my friends,” he said wryly. “I pray the words do not poison you.”

  “Tell me what I am eating,” said Iago, chewing on the paper with a pained expression.

  Aidan grimaced as he swallowed his portion. “An insurrection,” he said.

  By the time Aidan went back to Pippa’s chamber, she had dressed herself. Her skirt and bodice had been laced correctly this time.

  She sat at the thick-legged oaken table in the center of the room, and she did not look up when he entered. Several objects lay before her on the table. The morning sun streamed over her in great, slanting bars. The light glinted in her hair and gilded her smooth, pearly skin. The daffodil she had picked adorned her curls more perfectly than a comb of solid gold.

  Aidan felt a twist of sentiment deep in his gut. Just when he had thought he’d conquered and killed all tenderness within himself, he found a girl who reawakened his heart.

  Devil take her. She looked like the soul of virtue and innocence, an angel in an idealized portrait with her sun-drenched face and halo of hair, the lean purity of her profile, the fullness of her lips as she pursed them in concentration.

  “Sit down, Your Serenity,” she said softly, still not looking up. “I’ve decided to tell you more because…”

  “Because why?” Willingly shoving aside the news from Ireland, he approached the table and lowered himself to the bench beside her.

  “Because you care.”

  “I shouldn’t—”

  “Yet you do,” she insisted. “You do in spite of yourself.”

  He did not deny it, but crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. “What is all this?”

  “My things.” She patted the limp, dusty bag she had worn tied to her waist the first day they had met. “It is uncanny how little one actually needs in order to survive. All I ever had fits in this bag. Each object has a special meaning to me, a special significance. If it does not, I get rid of it.”

  She rummaged with her hand in the bag and drew out a seashell, placing it on the table between them. It was shiny from much handling, bleached white on the outside while the inner curve was tinted with pearly shades of pink in graduated intensity.

  “I don’t remember ever actually finding this. Mab always said I was a great one for discovering things washed up on shore, and from the time I was very small, I would bring her the most marvelous objects. Apples to juggle, a pessary of wild herbs. One time I found the skull of a deer.”

  She took out a twist of hair, sharply contrasting black and white secured with a bit of string.

  “I hope that’s not poor Mab,” Aidan commented.

  She laughed. “Ah, please, Your Magnificence. I am not so bloodthirsty as that.” She stroked the lock. “This is from the dog I was with when Mab found me. Mab swore the beast saved me from drowning. He was half drowned himself, but he revived and lived with us. She said I told her his name was Paul.”

  She propped her chin in her cupped hand and gazed at the whitewashed wall by the window, where the morning sun created colored ribbons of light on the plastered surface. “The dog died four years after Mab found us. I barely remember him, except—” She stopped and frowned.

  “Except what?” asked Aidan.

  “During storms at night, I would creep over to his pallet and sleep.” She showed him a few more of her treasures—a page from a book she could not read. He saw that it was from an illegal pamphlet criticizing the queen’s plans to marry the Duke of Alençon. “I like the picture,” Pippa said simply, and showed him a few other objects: a ball of sealing wax and a tiny brass bell—“I nicked it from the Gypsy wagon”—flint and steel, a spoon.

  It was, Aidan realized with a twinge of pity, the flotsam and jetsam of a hard life lived on the run.

  And then, almost timidly, she displayed things recently collected: his horn-handled knife, which he hadn’t the heart to reclaim; an ale weight from Nag’s Head Tavern.

  She looked him straight in the eye with a devotion that bordered discomfitingly on worship. “I have saved a memento of each day with you,” she told him.

  A tightness banded across his chest. He cleared his throat. “Indeed. Have you naught else to show me?”

  She took her time putting all her treasures back in the bag. She worked so slowly and so deliberately that he felt an urge to help her, to speed her up.

  The message he had received still burned in his mind. He had a potential disaster awaiting him in Ireland, and here he sat, reminiscing with a confused, possibly deluded girl.

  The letter had come all the way from Kerry, first by horseman to Cork and then by ship. Revelin, the gentle scholar of Innisfallen, had sounded the alarm about a band of outlaws roving across Kerry, pillaging at will, robbing even fellow Irish, inciting idle men to rise against their oppressors. Revelin reported that the band had reached Killarney town and gathered around the residence of Fortitude Browne, recently appointed constable of the district. And a hated Englishman.

  Revelin was not certain, but he suggested the outlaws would try to take hostages, perhaps Fortitude’s fat, sniveling nephew, Valentine.

  Aidan crushed his hands together as a feeling of powerlessness swept over him. He could do nothing from here in London. Queen Elizabeth had summoned him to force him to submit to her and then to regrant his lands to him. Just to show her might, she had kept him waiting. He battled the urge to storm out of London without even a by-your-leave. But that would be suicide—both for him and for his people. Elizabeth’s armies in Ireland were the instruments of her wrath.

  Just as Felicity had been.

  He would write back to Revelin, of course, but beyond that, he could only pr
ay that cooler heads prevailed and the reckless brigands dispersed.

  “I must show you one more thing,” Pippa said, snapping him out of his reverie.

  He looked into her soft eyes and for no particular reason felt a lifting sensation inside him.

  Something about her touched him. She reminded him of the hardscrabbling people of his district and their stubborn struggle against English rule. Her determination was as stout as that of his father, who had died rather than submit to the English. And yes—Pippa reminded him of Felicity Browne—before the cold English beauty had shown her true colors.

  “Very well,” he said, trying to clear his mind of the potential disaster seething back in Ireland. “Show me one more thing.”

  She took a deep breath, then released it slowly as she placed her fisted hand on the table. With a deliberate movement she turned her hand over to reveal a sizable yet rather ugly object of gold.

  “It’s mine,” she declared.

  “I never said it wasn’t.”

  “I was worried you might. See?” She set it down. “It looks odd now, but it wasn’t always. It was pinned to my frock when Mab found me.” She angled it toward him. “It’s got a hollow interior, as if something once fit inside. The outside used to have twelve matched pearls around a huge ruby in the middle. Mab said this pin, and the finely made frock I wore, are proof that I came from the nobility. What think you, my lord? Am I of noble stock?”

  He studied her, the elfin features, the wide, fragile eyes, the expressive mouth. “I think you were made by fairies.”

  She laughed and continued her tale. “Each year, Mab sold one of the pearls. After she died, I tried to sell the ruby, but I was accused of stealing it and I had to run for my life.”

  She spoke matter-of-factly, even with an edge of wry humor, but that did not banish the image in his mind of a hungry, frightened young girl escaping the law.

  “So now all I have left is this.” She turned it over and pointed to some etchings on the back beneath the pin. “I’m quite certain I know what these symbols mean.”