Owen nodded pleasantly. “It does indeed please me. Sally, is it?”
“Yes, sir.” The girl blushed as if she were an innocent and had not been a whore for the last six months. Privately she thought she had never had such an attractive customer.
Owen passed the next half hour sipping his wine and listening to the girl’s playing, which, if not technically perfect, showed a delicacy of feeling. His face gave no sign of his tension as he waited for Bryanston’s return.
He had barely a half hour to wait before the earl appeared in the doorway, the brothel keeper at his side. He blinked at the room, his prominent gut pushing against his doublet, his face mottled with drink and exertion.
Owen rose to his feet and motioned to the girl that she should leave. He extended his hand as Miles weaved a somewhat uncertain way towards him.
“Don’t know I’ve had the pleasure, sir,” the earl said thickly. “Can’t think what you want with me.”
“Why, we are well met, indeed, my lord. Chevalier d’Arcy at your service.” Owen gestured to the opposite settle. “Will you join me in a cup of our hostess’s very palatable burgundy? I have been so hoping to make your further acquaintance.”
“Oh,” Miles said stupidly, wondering what this elegant figure could want with him. “Can’t think what I can do for you, sir. Never seen you before.”
Owen turned a dazzling smile on him and said with his soft lilting voice, “Forgive me, I should have made myself known when I attended your reception for Princess Mary.”
“Oh . . . oh, yes, of course.” Miles wondered if he had committed some social solecism by not recognizing this man who had been a guest in his house. He hastened to make amends. “I didn’t recognize you, Chevalier.” He gave a lascivious and distinctly lopsided leer. “Had something else on my mind, don’t you know.”
“No reason why you should recognize me,” Owen murmured soothingly. “We have not had the advantage of a formal introduction.” He smiled. “I tend not to stand out in a crowd.”
Miles, once he looked closely at his new companion, wasn’t at all sure of the truth of this. It seemed to him that once met, the chevalier would be hard to forget.
Owen sat down. He stretched his long legs sideways and propped his boots on the andirons. Miles took the place opposite him.
“Will you take wine, my dear sir?” Owen reached for the flagon that reposed on a small table beside the settle.
“Yes . . . yes . . . thank you, sir, most good of you.” Miles leaned forward eagerly for the cup that Owen had filled. He took the scent of the wine, his head bobbing in his enthusiasm. “Oh, yes, very good . . . very good indeed.”
Owen sipped his wine. “Forgive my bluntness, Lord Bryanston, but I have always felt it wise to come to the point quickly.”
Miles hauled his nose from his cup and regarded his companion blearily. “Yes?”
“Your sister-in-law, Lady Pen Bryanston.” Owen wriggled his toes in his boots, smiling pleasantly.
Miles’s expression became a curious mixture of befuddlement and sudden attention. “What of her?” he demanded.
“I find her interesting.”
Miles stared at him. “Why?”
“Is it so unlikely?” Owen inquired, one eyebrow lifted. “Your brother, for instance . . .”
“Philip . . . she trapped Philip. She wanted the title,” Miles declared, but his eyes slid sideways before he reached for the flagon and refilled his cup.
Owen shrugged. “That’s a history that doesn’t concern me, my friend. I find myself interested in the widow.”
Miles peered at him, all greedy suspicion. “She has nothing from the estate. Not even her dowry. That was held in trust for her son. No one can touch it now, since the child died. Not even Lady Kendal can bend that law to her will. ’Twas her own daughter’s choice. And with the child dead, the money’s lost to her.”
Miles drained his cup and smacked his lips. His host without prompting refilled the vessel.
“Can’t think why you’d find her interesting. In fact,” Miles continued confidentially between long sips, “can hardly bear to be in the same room with her, myself. Thinks she’s too good for the rest of us.” He upended his cup and peered into it in search of a drop that might have evaded him. “Powerful good, this. Keeps out the cold.”
“Indeed.” Owen proffered the flagon again. “So your family didn’t approve of your brother’s choice for wife?”
Miles’s glazed eyes blinked once or twice and he leaned closer. “She wasn’t my mother’s choice,” he said significantly. “Too fond of her own way to suit my mother. But it was a love match and the king and Princess Mary both promoted it, so what could my mother do? Had to smile on it. But by the mass how she hated it!”
“That must have made sharing a house rather difficult,” Owen remarked neutrally.
“Oh, you should have seen the fur fly!” Miles picked up the flagon again and shook it. He drained the last of its contents into his cup, seemingly unconcerned that his companion had not once refilled his own.
Owen gestured to the ever-watchful Sally, who swept the empty flagon from the table, with a resigned expression allowing Miles to paw her haunches as she passed.
Owen leaned back against the settle, cradling his still-full cup between his hands. “Lady Pen strikes me as of mild temperament,” he observed.
“Oh, you don’t know her, Chevalier. Sly as an asp, she is. She got under my mother’s skin. With just one look. She and Philip. They ignored her, see. Can’t stand being ignored, my mother.” Miles held out his cup to Sally, who now stood at his elbow with a full flagon.
His words were slurred, his eyes ever more unfocused. He shook his head. “Ignore my mother at your peril. They found that out.”
“How so?” Owen sipped from his cup; his dark gaze seemed casual as it rested on his companion’s suffused countenance.
A crafty look crossed Miles’s little brown eyes. He tapped the side of his nose. “Word to the wise,” he declared. “Word to the wise.” He gave a sinister little smile. “Cross my mother at your peril. They certainly found that out.” His expression managed to combine smugness with malice.
“So you’d advise me not to pursue the widow?” Owen asked.
“Wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole,” Miles declared with an unexpected surge of energy. “Not quite right in the head, either, you know.” He dropped his head again and mumbled, “Mother wouldn’t like it either.”
Owen’s expression remained impassive. He wanted to put his hands around Miles Bryanston’s thick neck and squeeze. He could almost feel the pulse of the carotid artery under his fingers.
Just what was this doltish lump of scum hinting at?
He could get the truth out of him in minutes under the right circumstances. But that pleasure, and it would be a pleasure, would have to wait.
He observed blandly, “I’m grateful for the advice. I assume Lady Pen returned to her own family after your brother’s death?”
“Oh, no.” Miles shook his head emphatically. A mouse skittered across the floor at his feet and he kicked out at it automatically. “Mother wouldn’t have that.” He looked down at the stunned mouse and raised a heavy boot to stamp on it.
Owen, without knowing why, swept the mouse under the settle and out of harm’s way with a swift sideways movement of his foot. He had no time for mice himself, but found he couldn’t sit there and watch Bryanston stamp it to death.
Miles appeared to accept the disappearance of his intended victim without surprise. He continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Pen was pregnant, see. Caused quite a ruckus. Mother said the child was a Bryanston and had to be born under the Bryanston roof but the Kendals insisted that Lady Guinevere be present at the delivery. Mother didn’t want them there. She knows how tricky they are.”
Miles nodded significantly. “She knew they would probably try to whisk Pen away and it made her mad as fire. Child was heir to the earldom after all.” He drank again, coughed, spluttered, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But it was all taken care of in the end.”
Owen’s eyelids flickered almost imperceptibly. “How so?”
“Pen went into labor a month early, before the Kendals could arrive. Mother had the managing of it.”
Managing of what? Premature labor or just the delivery?
Owen’s expression remained bland. “And the child died?”
Miles looked up abruptly, his gaze seemed to focus. “Aye. What of it?” he demanded with sudden aggression.
“Nothing. It’s hardly an unusual occurrence,” Owen said.
“Aye, it died,” Miles stated. “Stillborn. Known fact. Everyone knows it.” He peered at Owen, his eyes narrowing. He said slyly, “Pen ever talk about it to you?”
Owen shook his head. His fingers twitched as if with a life of their own. But he said, “Only in passing.”
Miles continued to regard him with the same sly look. He wagged a finger. “Well, if she does, don’t you listen to a word she says. Got some bee in her bonnet. Don’t want to encourage it. Even her family don’t like her to talk about it. Told you she wasn’t quite right in the head.”
“I’m most grateful for your advice, Lord Bryanston. I might have made a very serious mistake.”
“That you might have done,” Miles mumbled. “Wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole. You remember that, Chevalier. Word to the wise.” Miles slumped back against the settle and closed his eyes. Within seconds, deep snores rumbled from between his slack lips.
Owen removed the cup from his loose grasp before it fell to the floor. He regarded the slumbering drunk for a minute with an expression of savage contempt, then he stood up and brushed down his hose with a fastidious flick. His eyes met those of the mouse, which, now returned to its senses, had stuck its nose out from under the settle. Its whiskers twitched.
“I should go back to your hole before your luck runs out,” Owen said. “Either the cat will get you or the maid’s broom.” The mouse seemed to consider this, then it shot out and scuttled for a hole in the wainscot.
Owen drew his cloak around him as he walked back briskly to the palace of Westminster, where his horse was stabled. Pen was expecting him at the banquet that would begin the Twelfth Night festivities and he would make better time by road than by water.
He had not seen Pen since the king had summoned the princess and her household to Greenwich Palace for the New Year and Twelfth Night celebrations. He told himself that by now she would have some information for him. But that was not the chief reason that he put spur to his horse.
Eight
Princess Mary examined her reflection in the long glass in her bedchamber at Greenwich Palace. “Do you think the ruby breast jewel or the emerald, Pen?”
“The ruby, madam,” Pen said without hesitation.
Mary held the ruby pendant against her gown of ice-blue satin. The red jewel sparkled against the pale satin and accentuated the gold undersleeves and underskirt of the gown.
“How right you are,” Mary said. “You have excellent taste, Pen. So like your mother’s.”
Pen smiled and helped the princess fasten the pendant. “Pippa’s taste is rather different,” she observed.
“Yes, but she knows what suits her,” Mary responded. She adjusted the jeweled band of her headdress with a critical frown. Her gaze caught Pen’s in the glass and her frown deepened.
“You seem distracted these days, Pen. Do you not find Christmas revels at Greenwich to your taste?” There was more than a touch of irony in her voice. The princess herself had resented her brother’s command that she remove from Baynard’s Castle to Greenwich Palace.
Pen could not admit the real reason for her distraction: that at every moment she was on tenterhooks waiting for the princess to tell her something that she would be compelled to pass on to the French agent if she was to fulfill her side of the devil’s bargain.
She chose a partial truth. “I would have liked to be closer to my family, madam,” she said. Unlike Greenwich Palace, Baynard’s Castle was but a short distance from the Kendals’ London home in Holborn.
“My brother takes no such considerations into account,” Mary said with a sigh. “Although I’m sure my lord Northumberland had a hand in the decision to summon me here.”
“I’m sure,” Pen agreed.
Mary turned from the mirror, worry etched on her countenance. “In truth, Pen, I am in constant fear while we remain here. I haven’t been permitted to visit the king, my brother, for two weeks. I have no way of telling if his condition has deteriorated. There’s no knowing what’s being plotted.”
Absently it seemed she ran her rosary through her fingers. “But I know full well, Pen, that the Privy Council have no wish to see me succeed my brother. I am terrified Northumberland and the council will make some attempt to secure my person and confine me in the Tower on some pretext. If I am dead, I can hardly be queen,” she added with a sardonic lift of an eyebrow.
“ ’Tis said that the king’s to attend the banquet tonight, madam, although not the revels afterwards.”
Mary shook her head. “I doubt we shall see him. They would keep him from me. I feel like a mouse waiting for the cat to spring.”
She sighed again, playing with the rings on her fingers, then she looked up and said decisively, “I have decided to take to my bed. To buy myself some time. I have been told that the king will not permit me to return home to Woodham Walter and I’ve been given no date when I might leave here.”
Her voice hardened as she added, “The duke merely smiles and cracks his fingers and murmurs platitudes whenever I seek information.”
Pen was silent. She wanted to scream at the princess not to confide in her. She was no longer her friend, her trustworthy confidante. But she kept silent.
Mary continued inexorably with her confidence. “Only you and my physician will know that I am in truth perfectly well. I would not have any of my other ladies aware of the fiction. The duke will not molest me while I remain secluded under a physician’s care, and my brother might be sufficiently concerned to grant me an interview. If I can once manage to talk with him without the duke’s intervention, I’m certain I can secure his permission to leave.”
Pen nodded. Mary had suffered ill health since puberty, and one particular ailment that could lay her low with fever for many months at a time, particularly in the winter. On occasion they had despaired of her life. Such a deception now would certainly buy her time and might indeed induce the king to grant her an interview.
“If the London people know of your illness, madam, it will be even harder for the duke to make a move against you while you’re here.”
Mary smiled her approval. “That is good thinking, Pen. The people do love me. They will rally to me at my brother’s death. We must make sure the news of my illness is broadcast.”
“If you’re taken ill very suddenly, in public . . .” Pen suggested.
“This evening . . . during the banquet . . . under many eyes,” the princess said, thoughtfully now. “The news will soon spread. You will watch for my signal. . . . What shall it be now? Oh, I will drop my fan to the table, like so.” She illustrated with the delicately painted Italian fan she carried.
“When you see the signal you’ll come to me immediately, express concern . . . you will know what to say, you have such quick wits.”
The quick wits of a betrayer.
Pen inclined her head in acknowledgment.
“Then I will insist that the revels continue in my absence and leave the banquet. You’ll escort me to my chamber, and then report to the duke and the council that I have my old infirmity and must remain under the physician’s care in the seclusion of my own bedchamber. That will do, I believe?”
“I believe it will, madam.”
Mary looked at her closely. “Are
you
quite well, Pen? You’re very pale.”
“Oh, I’m just a little tired,” Pen said. “Like you, madam, I don’t rest easy at night in this place.”
Mary nodded, satisfied. She went to the prie-dieu at the end of her bed. “My mind is more at ease now that I have made a plan, and I know I can trust in your help. You may leave me; I must attend to my devotions.” She knelt and took up her prayer book.
Pen left, closing the door quietly. The antechamber beyond the princess’s bedchamber was a long narrow room, chilly despite the fire and the light of many candles. The other ladies who attended the princess were busy with their own dressing for the evening and a pleasant buzz of conversation rose in the drafty air as they helped one another to tighten laces, curl fringes, adjust headdresses.
“Has the princess need of anything, Pen?” Lady Matilda Harlow leaned into the mirror, plucking distressfully at a pimple on her nose.
“She’s at her prayers,” Pen answered. “She’ll ring when she’s finished.”
“Pen, what can I do about this spot?” Matilda wailed softly. “It’s as big as a house!”
“Hot water and witch hazel,” Pen advised, trying to brighten her tone. Her position as the princess’s closest confidante drew little resentment from the twelve ladies who attended Mary; indeed they looked to her for advice much as her own sister did, even though she was younger than some of them.
She sat down and took up her embroidery frame, hoping that the occupation would still the turmoil in her brain. Owen would be at the banquet this evening, and afterwards the doors would be thrown open to even the lowliest hangers-on at the king’s court for the Twelfth Night revels. The king himself would not attend the wild party. He considered the night when the Lord of Misrule held sway to be a pagan rite, not suitable for good Christian folk.
Somehow, while she was treating Owen with the flirtatious ease that formed part of their deception, she would have to tell him of her conversation with Mary. He would want to know of the princess’s fears and the true nature of her illness.
Her scalp crawled and her fingers slipped. The needle jabbed her fingertip and blood smeared the delicate linen she was embroidering.
She sucked her finger, cursing under her breath. Blood was the very devil to get out. She was working on a cap for the infant daughter of one of Pippa’s friends, a young woman so happy in motherhood, so adoring of her first child.
Pen set down the embroidery frame. Her scalp no longer crawled and her heart was once more cold and determined. She would do what had to be done. She would believe that the French meant Mary no harm. They wanted information in order to plan a quick response to whatever situation developed after the king’s death. As long as she didn’t betray the princess to Northumberland’s spies, then the bargain was harmless.
But supposing it would suit the French to disclose Mary’s plans to Northumberland?
Her head began to ache. Everyone was devious, no one trustworthy. Except her own family. She yearned to discuss her bargain with them, but she couldn’t. In this she was as alone as she had been during the long grim hours of her labor and its dreadful aftermath.
She had made a devil’s bargain with Owen d’Arcy and she would keep it.
Leaning sideways, Pen rang a handbell for a maid, and when the woman appeared she gave her the soiled cap. “Try what you can to get the blood off this. I pricked my finger.”
“Yes, indeed, my lady.” The maid took the stained linen but she looked a trifle surprised. Small children pricked their fingers as they sewed, not the sophisticated ladies of the court.
Mary’s door opened and the princess entered the antechamber. She looked serene, as she always did after her prayers. “Well, my ladies, are we all assembled?”
The women gathered around her in their pearl-strewn brocades, their embroidered velvets, their furred overgowns. She had a word for each one, an appreciative comment on their dress, a personal inquiry here, a general remark there. These women were her bulwark against the machinations of her enemies and she knew how to ensure their loyalty.
“I’ll summon the heralds, madam.” Pen went to the door that opened onto the corridor. Two heralds, trumpets in hand, pennants unfurled, awaited their orders to sound the arrival of Princess Mary in the great banqueting hall below.
The trumpets sounded as the heralds preceded the party. The Tudor Rose flew on the pennants. Mary and her ladies followed. At the foot of the staircase the heralds waited on either side as the princess and her party descended, walked between them to a renewed tucket, and were received by the Dukes of Northumberland and Suffolk.
Pen saw Mary’s rigid response to the oiled smiles of the Privy Council as she was escorted to her place at the high table beside her brother’s high-backed chair with the Lion of England embossed in gold on the scarlet canopy above.
Pen took her own place just below the high table. She was neither royalty nor married to a man of political influence and so had no claim to a place of honor on the dais. But she was seated close enough to Mary to see and respond when she gave the signal.
She glanced around the hall at her fellow guests. It was a relief that Robin was not present at the table, although he would come later, escorting Pippa to the revels that would follow the feast. It distressed Pen dreadfully to find that she no longer looked forward to seeing him. The knowledge of her deception made her awkward and distant with him, and she knew he continued to look with disfavor upon her apparent flirtation with Owen d’Arcy, although he no longer discussed it with her.
“Lady Bryanston . . . may I take my seat?”
At the soft courteous tones, Pen turned without surprise to greet the chevalier. She had known that he would engineer a place at her side. She gave him a smile as bright and brittle as the ice-covered puddles in the courtyard beyond the long windows.
“Pray be seated, Chevalier. It has been too long since we last met.”
“Far too long,” he replied, swinging a leg over the long bench with an adroit management of his sword that reminded Pen of the night he had saved her life.
It was not a reminder she relished.
“You have been well, I trust.” He arranged himself on the bench beside her with the same deft twitch of cloak and black velvet sleeve, turned back to reveal a pearly gray lining. “You look well, if I may say so.”
The melodic lilt to his voice, the warmth of the smile in his eyes was almost too much to withstand. But she would not let him see that. With a faint responding smile, she turned her attention to the high table, where heralds stood at either side of the king’s chair, waiting to signal his arrival.
Owen swallowed a sigh of discouragement and refused to be disheartened. Ever since they had struck their bargain, he had steadfastly ignored Pen’s coldness, the falseness of her smile as she played the game. And she played it impeccably, he had to admit. But in all other respects she would not give an inch. He knew she was as affected as he by the powerful tug of their mutual attraction, by the strange current of sensual energy that connected them, and he knew she was resisting him purely through willpower.
She had a damnably strong will!
Conversation faltered as the wait continued. Great wheels of wax candles flared above the long tables, servants stood ready with flagons of wine and mead. Butlers had knives at the ready before the carving tables. The smell of roasting meat was rich in the stuffy air. And still there was no tucket of trumpets to herald the king’s entrance.
Pen glanced up at Mary, who sat pale but composed, her brother’s empty chair on one side of her, the Duchess of Suffolk on the other. The duchess bent to say something to the princess, an expression of sympathetic attention on her sallow, angular countenance. Mary nodded at her cousin’s remark with an air of indifference.
The duchess offered a thin smile to the company at large and sharply pinched her dreaming daughter who sat beside her. Jane came out of her reverie with a little gasp, rubbing her forearm, a blush of pain and mortification coloring her pale face.
“I wonder what could be keeping His Highness,” Owen murmured.
“Perhaps he’s mislaid his britches,” Pen returned with a sardonic snap, although she maintained her public smile.
“Oh, so sharp you could cut,” Owen said, with a note of appreciation. He stretched his long legs beneath the damask-covered table and appeared to take his ease. “I own I would like my glass filled, but in that absence, let me tell you what I have been doing this evening.”
Pen turned her head and couldn’t help the spark of eagerness that lit her eyes. “You have discovered something?”
“Well, more a confirmation than anything definite.” He watched the light die.
“Confirmation of what?”
“Some mischief surrounded your son’s birth.”
“I told you that. You didn’t believe me?” she accused.
“I am careful about what I believe,” he replied. “I didn’t
not
believe you, but before I embark on a mission, I like to satisfy myself that the cause is good.”