“As indeed do I, Chevalier,” she said.
“Ah.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “So you have some information for me.”
“Maybe.” She met his gaze unsmiling. “Maybe, Chevalier. But I only give in the same measure as I receive.”
“I would not have expected otherwise. Should I begin?”
She was prevented from a response by the high note of a trumpet that heralded a messenger in the king’s livery approaching from the staircase.
He stopped behind the Duke of Northumberland’s chair and whispered something in his ear. The duke listened impassively, then waved the messenger aside. The man bowed and stepped back, standing at attention behind the duke’s chair.
Northumberland rose to his feet, his dark brooding gaze sweeping the hall. “My lords, I regret to have to inform you that His Highness says that pressing business will keep him from us this evening. The king bids us feast and be merry.” He sat back in his chair and gestured impatiently to the page at his elbow to fill his goblet.
So Mary had been right, Pen thought. The duke had shown neither surprise nor concern at the messenger’s news. He had not expected Edward’s attendance tonight. Had he kept the king away so that he would not have an opportunity to talk with his sister? Or was the king’s health so far deteriorated that he could not appear in public, so the council had to find a fiction to explain his absence?
“Interesting,” Owen commented, glancing at Pen. “Did you have the sense that the king’s pressing business was not unknown to Northumberland beforehand?”
Pen merely raised an eyebrow at this accurate reading of her thoughts. She moved her arm aside to allow a page to fill her own and the chevalier’s goblets. She waited until she had been served a portion of roast peacock before she said, “You were about to begin, Chevalier.”
Owen drank from his goblet. “I happened upon your brother-in-law this evening.”
“And?” she prompted with admirable calm.
“The baby was born prematurely, as I understand it.”
“Yes, a month early.” Pen realized that she didn’t want to go near the subject of the baby’s birth. Not even with someone who was pledged to help her. “Why is that important?”
“It would be important if premature labor was induced.” His voice was quiet, distant almost, as if he understood that he was treading on the most delicate ground.
Pen stared at him. “How could that have been?”
“If your mother-in-law wished to ensure that you gave birth before your own family arrived, there are ways she could have done so.” He signaled to the page standing behind his chair to serve him from a dish of larks’ tongues, giving Pen time to absorb this and compose herself.
“Did Miles say something to imply that his mother had done something like that?” she asked finally.
He nodded. “He was in his cups, but it seemed clear to me that that was what he was implying. Is the countess capable of such a thing?”
Pen stared down at the cooling meat on her plate. She had no appetite, indeed could not imagine ever being hungry again. “Yes,” she said. “She’s capable of anything.”
“I was wondering if she wanted the child born before your parents arrived in order to see what sex it would be. A girl would be unimportant. A boy would disinherit Miles.” Owen kept his eyes on his plate, his voice neutral.
“Dear God! How could she . . . ?” She lifted her head and looked at him, her eyes ablaze with passion. “My child . . . my son, was born alive. I
know
it.” Her clenched fist rested white-knuckled on the table.
“Then we shall find out the truth.” Owen laid a hand over hers, his fingers, warm and firm, working her fist open until her hand lay flat. “Try not to show your feelings, Pen.”
“I don’t have your mastery of deceit,” she retorted. “I came late to spying.” And yet she made no immediate attempt to pull her hand free of his. The physical connection sent a jolt through her belly, and the longer their hands remained joined the more it seemed impossible to separate them. Then abruptly she jerked her hand free and dropped it to her lap. “We have a business agreement,” she said curtly. “I see no reason to hold hands.”
He shrugged. “As you wish. However, we must at least preserve the appearance of friendliness, if not something a little more.”
Pen took up her goblet. Thoughtfully she ran a finger around its rim before giving Owen a dazzling smile. “Your company gives me so much pleasure, Chevalier.”
“I’m not sure anyone would find that convincing,” he responded aridly. “The frown has a distinctly more genuine air.” He leaned back and surveyed the tables, saying in a conversational tone, “So, you have something of interest for me?”
Her gaze darted to the high table where Northumberland and Suffolk sat. “I cannot tell you here.”
“Let me explain a little trick of the spy’s trade,” he said in the same easy tone. “A public gathering is the safest place to communicate the deepest secrets. As long as we appear to be having a perfectly ordinary conversation, no one will pay us any particular attention. Use your normal voice but keep the tone even, almost a monotone, just as I’m doing now.”
“It’s enough to put me to sleep,” Pen observed.
He gave a short laugh. “Exactly. So, try it.”
Pen played with her goblet. What Owen had just told her he suspected filled her with such cold fury that she knew she would do anything; there was nothing she would stop at to get at the truth and be avenged upon Philip’s mother.
Keeping her voice to the correct tone, which she found helped her to distance herself from what she was saying, she told him of Mary’s fears and her planned seclusion.
Owen merely nodded, crumbling a piece of bread between finger and thumb. “She’s right to suspect a threat from Northumberland.”
“She always expects such a threat,” Pen said shortly. “But her brother’s continued illness makes it more likely. And now that he hasn’t made an appearance this evening . . .” She shrugged.
Again Owen nodded, and Pen asked, “What will you do with this information?”
“Pass it on to the ambassador.”
“You will not betray it to Northumberland?” She couldn’t help the question or her anxiously belligerent tone.
He turned his head and smiled at her. “No, sweetheart. Do you still not understand that we are as interested in thwarting Northumberland’s plots as is the princess?”
The soft-spoken endearment shocked her. It was like an affirmation of some kind, as if something had happened that gave him the right to address her in the language of a lover. His eyes glowed as they rested on her taut, pale face. “There is no need for us to be so at odds,” he said.
Pen shook her head, tearing her eyes away from his. “There is every reason.”
He changed the subject. “Your family were not bidden to the king’s feast?”
“They were, but my sister Anna has been unwell and they made their excuses.”
“For Lady Pippa too?”
“Pippa will come later to the revels with Robin. She’ll share my bedchamber tonight.” This conversation was so normal, so matter-of-fact, that Pen felt her color returning, her heart slowing to a reasonable pace.
“Your sister is not seriously ill, I trust?”
“Oh, no, she has a slight cold.” Pen laughed suddenly. “According to Pippa’s letter, Anna could well have been left at home in Tilly’s charge, but Lord Hugh wouldn’t hear of it. He treats her as carefully as if she were made of glass.”
“Clearly a devoted father,” Owen said, and his voice had a sudden chill.
Pen, in the resurgence of her own pain, didn’t notice. “None more,” she returned dully. The conversation had come full circle.
She glanced up at the high table and caught Mary’s eye. The princess suddenly dropped her fan and touched her forehead with her napkin. She had no need to feign illness, Pen thought. The princess was pale as death.
Pen gave a distressed little exclamation and rose hastily to her feet. Owen, forewarned, moved to assist her. Her neighbors in some surprise rose with her. Pages moved the bench so that she could step away from the table.
She hastened to Mary’s side. “Give the princess some air. Madam, take a sip of wine.” She bent over the woman, who was now leaning against the high back of her chair, her eyes half closed.
“What is it?” demanded Northumberland even as Lady Suffolk took up the dropped fan and waved it vigorously in the princess’s white face.
“The princess is unwell, my lord duke,” Pen said. “She was complaining of the headache earlier but didn’t wish to disappoint the king by taking to her bed.”
Mary murmured, “Forgive me, my lords . . . my ladies. I must retire.”
Her other ladies crowded to the dais but Pen waved them away. “I will attend the princess alone.”
The duke, however, insisted upon giving Mary his arm and helping her from the banqueting hall, escorting her as far as her chamber door. He looked at her as she wavered in the open doorway, annoyance clear in his gaze. “I trust you will be more yourself in the morning, madam.”
“I fear the princess has one of her fevers, my lord,” Pen said smoothly. “If you would be so good as to send someone for her physician, I will help her to bed now.”
Northumberland’s eyes snaked to Pen’s open countenance. He bowed and left.
“Well done, Pen,” Mary whispered as Pen closed the door. She stood, her hand on her heart, still so pale that Pen was genuinely concerned.
“Madam, are you truly ill?”
“No, I don’t believe so, but if ’tis possible to die of fright, I could almost imagine myself at death’s door,” Mary responded, her voice growing stronger, a slight smile now touching her eyes. “But I believe we have outmaneuvered my lord Northumberland, at least for the moment. He knew my brother would not attend this evening.”
“Yes,” Pen agreed. “Let me help you to bed before the physician arrives.”
Mary’s physician was loyal and knew his part. It was one he had played before. Nothing was said to him as to the true nature of his patient’s illness and he asked no awkward questions, merely agreed that the princess was suffering from a severe fever and chills that if not cared for would inevitably go to the lungs. He suggested purging and cupping and Mary agreed to both, knowing that she would be left so weak after the treatment, her headache so severe, that if the duke had any suspicions, they would be soon laid to rest. Even her attendants would be convinced of the seriousness of her illness.
When the man had done his draconian work and left, Mary spoke feebly from the bed.
“Pen, I wish you to attend the revels and inform the duke that I will be unable to receive visitors for at least several days. Make certain that the seriousness of my condition is known to as many people as possible. Attend me in the morning.”
Pen curtsied and left the darkened chamber. From downstairs she heard the sounds of an army of servants clearing the banqueting hall of its tables and benches in preparation for the Twelfth Night madness. The strains of musicians tuning their instruments came from the gallery that surrounded the hall. The dinner guests, those not resident in the palace, would be refreshing themselves and adjusting their dress in the two long galleries set aside for them.
Would Owen be among them? Or had he left, his spy’s work done? Was he even now on his way to the ambassador with her information?
Pen went to her own bedchamber to wait for Pippa, before carrying her message to Northumberland and the rest of the court.
Nine
“Pippa, are you here already?” Pen said in surprise as she entered her bedchamber and found her sister preening in front of the mirror.
“We arrived half an hour ago.” Pippa turned in a swirl of green-and-yellow-flowered turquoise taffeta. “They said you were with the princess. Such talk there is! She fell ill at dinner?”
“Yes, one of her fevers, she’s laid very low,” Pen replied. She had to keep from her sister, from whom she rarely kept anything, a secret she had revealed to a French agent. The reflection chilled her and abruptly she turned her attention to Nutmeg, who yawned, stretched, and rolled over, offering his belly for a rub.
“This is a very ordinary mask,” Pippa said with a hint of disapproval, indicating the article in question that lay on the dresser. “Couldn’t you have found something a little more imaginative?”
She tied on her own choice, a delicate feline disguise of green velvet with embroidered black silk whiskers and slitted eyeholes. It was such a perfect match for its wearer’s swift and mercurial temperament that Pen laughed.
“It really suits you, Pippa. But I prefer something less conspicuous.” Pen tied on the simple ivory silk mask that concealed little of her countenance. The Lord of Misrule had decreed that all the guests at the revels should be masked. His word was the only law to prevail on this traditionally wild night of feasting and mockery.
“You should see Robin’s mask.” Pippa bent to the mirror and pinched her cheeks to make them rosier. “It’s a lion’s head with a full mane. I would have chosen something different for him if he’d asked my advice.”
“Robin has no interest in his appearance,” Pen said. “He probably picked the mask up somewhere and just decided it would do.”
“More than likely,” Pippa agreed.
“How’s Anna?”
“Fine, and cross as two sticks because Lord Hugh wouldn’t let her come tonight. They’re riding over in the morning, though. Mama says she hasn’t seen you for far too long.”
Pen sighed. “I know. I feel that too.” She glanced at the brass clock on the mantel. “We should probably go down.”
Pippa opened the door and stuck her head into the corridor. “The musicians are playing.” She glanced at Pen over her shoulder. “Is the Chevalier d’Arcy going to be here tonight?”
“Perhaps,” Pen returned with a convincing shrug. “He was at the banquet, but I don’t know if he intended to stay for the revels.”
“Why would anyone come to the feast and not join in the fun afterwards?” Pippa asked robustly.
“I didn’t have the chance to ask if he was staying because the princess became ill and I had to leave the table very suddenly.”
“Ah.” Pippa nodded. “If he thought you weren’t coming back, he probably
would
decide to leave.”
“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know perfectly well,” Pippa said airily. “You flirt with him enough. Let’s go down and find out if he’s there.” She linked her arm through her sister’s and bore her off.
Pen left it at that. She and Owen had tried to give the impression that they enjoyed each other’s company, so she could hardly resent it if they’d succeeded. It rankled nevertheless. It was so far from the truth.
The atmosphere in the great hall had an edge to it, the laughter louder than usual, the dancing more uninhibited. The masks gave a sense of anonymity, although identities were never really in doubt, but with the masks came a feeling of license, as if everything was permitted and for this one night consequences did not exist.
The Duke of Northumberland was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and as the sisters came down he put a foot on the last step, effectively barring their way. “Lady Bryanston.” He cast a brief glance at Pippa, acknowledging her with a bare nod that made it clear how unimportant he considered her.
“How is the princess?”
“Very feverish, my lord duke. The physician cupped her and we can only hope that she will have improved in the morning.”
Pen shook her head gravely. “I would not be honest if I said I believed that likely. The air here is damp, my lord, and the princess is very susceptible to cold. It goes quickly to her lungs. Not unlike His Highness, her brother,” she added, watching the duke’s reaction through lowered lashes.
“The king’s condition is improving,” the duke said icily. “I would have thought you, Lady Bryanston, would be better employed at the princess’s bedside than taking part in this unbridled revelry.” He gestured scornfully to the noisy scene behind him.
“I obey the princess’s orders, my lord,” Pen said with a sweet smile, and waited for him to move his foot. For some reason she was not afraid of Northumberland although she knew he was a dangerous man to anger.
The duke hesitated, then stepped aside. Pen smiled, curtsied, and swept past him, Pippa at her side.
“I detest that man,” Pippa said. “But I would not anger him, Pen.”
“If Robin is not afraid of him, I see no reason why we should be,” Pen replied.
Pippa’s attention was claimed by one of her host of admirers, and she was swept into the dance before she could respond, lost to sight in the mayhem.
Pen moved around the walls where groups were gathered, chattering, laughing, deep in gossip. She paused frequently as she made the circle, choosing her audiences for their gossipmongering or for their ability to disseminate information beyond the palace walls. To each she gave the impression that the princess was gravely ill. And all the while, her eyes searched the throng for Owen.
She didn’t want to be looking for him. She told herself that it didn’t matter whether he was there. She had done what she had to do, and it was now time for him to fulfill his side of the bargain. They didn’t need to play the game of flirtation anymore.
It was a game that Owen made the most of. He’d touch her or kiss her mouth with the casual intimacy that seemed to come so naturally to him, and she couldn’t push him away without drawing unwelcome attention.
To make matters worse, she knew that a part of her she could not control longed for that contact . . . the scent of his skin, the feel of his hands on her, the firm hard press of his body against hers.
She would conjure Philip in her mind’s eye in an effort to dispel the longing. But she seemed to have lost the sound of his voice, and even the lines of his face were growing blurred at the edges as if he was receding into a far distance. And that made her angry confusion even worse.
She would not find peace until Owen d’Arcy was out of her life, and he could not leave her life until he had helped her. And she would never find peace if she did not find the truth about her child. Once again she told herself she had made the only decision possible. The physical restlessness, the
longing,
that Owen d’Arcy engendered was a minute price to pay if she could finally put to rest her obsession.
“Ah, there you are. Why such a deep and terrible frown?”
His voice was so startling that Pen literally jumped, knocking over a stool.
“God’s bones! I don’t ordinarily have such an effect,” Owen said, righting the stool. “What’s troubling you?”
“Nothing . . . nothing at all. I have been talking to people,” she said distractedly.
“That is what one normally does on such occasions,” Owen said. “That and dance. Let us do the latter.” He took her hand and led her into the dance, sliding them both effortlessly into the stately movements of a pavane.
“So, what have you been talking to people about?”
“The princess . . . her illness . . . it seemed sensible to spread the news abroad as far as possible.”
“Very wise. I can help there. I know a publisher of one of the popular broadsheets. A word in his ear will have the news cried throughout the streets of London by tomorrow evening.”
The offer was not one to be refused just because it was not made for altruistic reasons. It would serve his own interests, although Pen was still not sure what those interests were. Any more than she was confident that they would not suddenly change, and assisting Princess Mary would no longer be their object. She contented herself with one of her bright and brittle smiles and turned gracefully in the movement of the dance.
“Why are you looking so miserable, Robin?” Pippa bounced up beside her stepbrother, who was standing morosely in a window embrasure, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his short gown of peacock-blue velvet.
“Even under your mask I can see how cross you are.”
“I’m not miserable or cross,” Robin lied. “I just wish Pen would find someone other than d’Arcy to flirt with.”
“He’s very exotic,” Pippa said. “I expect he adds a little excitement to her life. It’s been very dull for her since Philip died . . . and then the baby. . . .” Her voice faded and she bit her lip.
Robin turned to look at her, his eyes brilliantly blue in the eyeholes of his mask. The full-maned lion’s head looked incongruous atop his stocky and somewhat rumpled figure. “Is that all she’s looking for? Excitement? Pen’s not that shallow, Pippa.”
“I know.” Pippa looked out at the dancing couples. Pen’s rose-pink gown floated around her in bright contrast to Owen d’Arcy’s silver-edged black velvet. Their hands were joined, held high in the dance.
“Actually,” Pippa said slowly, “I don’t know what Pen’s up to. See how she seems to be laughing? But she’s not really amused.”
“How can you know that?” Robin followed her gaze. He could see the soft glow beneath the creamy pallor of Pen’s complexion, and her hazel eyes, their rich depths of color accentuated by the ivory mask enclosing them, picked up and held the lamplight. “She looks radiant.”
Pippa shook her head. “She’s all tied in knots. That’s why she looks flushed and her eyes are so bright. You know what she’s like when she gets upset.”
Robin looked at the couple with new eyes. “You think she’s not happy?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Pippa said slowly. “But I do know that something’s engaging her attention. There’s a sort of passion about her . . . and that’s the first time since . . . well, since. You know how it seemed that she wasn’t really here anymore? You know what I mean?”
“Aye,” Robin agreed morosely. “I know.”
“Well, it’s not like that now. For whatever reason. Something’s touched her. Either she’s angry, or she’s in love, or she’s confused. But at least she’s reacting with some emotion.”
“I
know,
” Robin repeated with vehemence. “For God’s sake, Pippa, I’m not blind.”
Pippa hesitated. She was not offended by Robin’s brusqueness. “You don’t like him?”
“No.”
Pippa looked at him curiously. “Do you know something about him?”
Robin deflected the question. “I don’t like the effect he’s had on Pen. We can’t be in the same room together anymore without arguing. Everything I say she picks holes in.”
Pippa said with customary bluntness, “You’re both wearing that shoe, Robin. You seem to look for quarrels.”
Angry denial was on the tip of Robin’s tongue, but he knew Pippa spoke the truth. He looked across to where Northumberland stood with Suffolk at the edge of the dancers.
Northumberland’s cold gaze swept the hall, settled for a moment on Jane Grey, who was dancing in lackluster fashion with his own son, Guildford Dudley. Robin suspected that a match was being made there. A match that would unite the ducal houses of Northumberland and Suffolk. It would be an impeccable match except that Jane was already contracted to Lord Hertford. There would have to be compelling reasons to break such a contract.
So what was the duke plotting? Robin no longer believed that Northumberland had the king’s best interests at heart. Robin had access to the anterooms and offices of the two great ducal houses, his presence so familiar it was barely noticed, and he’d heard and seen much that troubled him in the last weeks since the king had disappeared from public view. And if the duke was faithless, Robin considered himself released from his own vow of loyalty.
He no longer felt obliged to obey the duke’s instructions to keep Pen in the dark about d’Arcy’s French affiliations, but he couldn’t decide what to tell her, or how, or when. For all he knew, it might not even shock her. She had lived with the devious tricks and connivings of the court for years now. Probably nothing would surprise her. But if she was being used against her knowledge . . .
He looked closely at the dancing couple again.
Was she happy?
He could feel from this distance the simmering attraction between Pen and Owen d’Arcy. It wasn’t so much
simmering,
he amended grimly as he watched them in the dance, as about to boil over. Pippa was right about the passion. Pen exuded it like an aura. But she was also right that Pen did not seem happy.
Pippa glanced again at Robin and saw his fixed stare on the dancers. She left him to his reverie and went to choose a partner for herself from among the group of masked young men standing beneath the holly boughs and fat clumps of pale mistletoe that decorated the walls of the hall. They all brightened noticeably at her feline approach and the air around them suddenly crackled with competition.
Pen felt Robin’s scrutiny as she went through the motions of the dance, and it made her uncomfortable. If she could just tell him the truth, if she could just reassure him that she knew all about the chevalier . . .
She brushed against Owen as they passed in the dance and her skin contracted. Involuntarily she turned her face up to his. His black gaze seemed to devour her. He had chosen a mask of an eagle’s head, with a harsh predatory beak. His eyes were black points of light in the sockets. He was as dangerous, as fierce, as brilliant and fascinating as the bird whose mask he wore. And there were moments, like this one, when Pen felt like the shrew in the grass watching the predator circle slowly overhead, talons, wicked and grasping, ready to pounce.
Ridiculous,
she told herself. But she could not break the chain that held her gaze fast to his. And she could not ignore the ironic little voice that said that if only circumstances had been different, the shrew in this case would probably be throwing herself into those talons.
He lifted her hand and for an instant held it against his heart. He dipped his head and his lips brushed her neck behind her ear. The skin there burned and her thighs quivered as the movement of the dance turned her away from him.