Winter Blockbuster 2012 (76 page)

The long tables were pushed to the walls and laden with silver ewers of wine and platters of rare sweetmeats. Liveried footmen circulated among the laughing crowds with heavy trays loaded with full goblets.

Rob caught up two of them and handed one to Anna as he led her around the edge of the dance floor. She sipped at it and found it was a rich, honeyed punch, sweet and deceptive
in its strength. It went straight to her head and made her laugh.

‘I’ve never seen such a party before,’ she said, dodging around a brocade train.

‘There are revels aplenty in Southwark,’ Rob said.

Anna thought of Southwark—the sounds of screams of laughter and shattering glass from taverns, the shrieks of Winchester geese in the streets. ‘Aye, there is drink and noise aplenty at all times. Just not …’

‘Not as well-dressed?’ Rob said.

Anna laughed. ‘Not quite so fine, no.’

‘A rich raiment can hide so much behind its glitter,’ he said, in a low, harsh, bitter tone.

Anna looked at him, startled. What did he hide behind those words, those watchful eyes?

‘Robert! Mistress Barrett!’ Lord Edward called. ‘So you join us at last.’

Anna turned to see Edward and Elizabeth standing together near the vast fireplace, both of them garbed in exquisite blue and gold satin, like peacocks in a glorious garden. Elizabeth’s hair was smoothed back and twined with a gold halolike headdress, while sapphires sparkled around her neck and on the bodice of her gown.

‘Robert, you must save me,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Edward refuses to dance tonight, and I cannot stand still when I hear such music.’

‘Refuses to dance with such beauty?’ Rob said, bowing to Elizabeth and holding out his hand to her. ‘His foolishness is to my gain, my lady, if you will allow me to be your partner.’

Elizabeth laughed and took his hand. ‘Most gladly I will. You’re a better dancer than he is, anyway.’

Edward snorted, but Anna could see the glow of laughter in his eyes as he looked at Elizabeth. ‘Go, then, minx—abandon
me for a capering clown of a dancer. I will keep Mistress Barrett here with me, instead.’

Rob and Elizabeth hurried away, swallowed by the thick knots of revellers, and Anna was left with Lord Edward. He gave her another goblet of the delicious wine and took away her empty one.

‘What do you think of our little gathering here, Mistress Barrett?’ he asked.

‘“Little,” indeed, Lord Edward,’ Anna said. ‘I doubt there is anyone left in England outside this house tonight. You do have a great many friends.’

Edward surveyed the gathered company around him with narrowed eyes. ‘It doesn’t take much to lure anyone here to Hart Castle. A little wine, a little music. It is always useful to know people, Mistress Barrett, to hear their gossip and find out what is happening in their minds. To stay always a step ahead of them.’

Anna studied him over the silver rim of her goblet. There was a hardness about him as he watched his own party—a cool distance. He was there, a part of them, their leader even in fashion and courtly power, and yet he was so distant from it all.

Just as Robert was, when he thought no one watched him. When she felt that terrible longing to know what he hid in his heart.

‘That does not sound like friendship, my lord,’ she said.

‘True friendship is a rare thing, indeed, Mistress Barrett, as I’m sure you know,’ he answered. He looked at her and smiled, and those hard eyes softened. ‘That is why I’m glad Rob is here tonight.’

‘Is he your friend, then? Not merely your pet poet, as I hear Lord Southampton keeps?’

Edward laughed. ‘I pity anyone who would attempt to
keep Rob Alden as a pet anything, Mistress Barrett. He is as unpredictable and changeable as the lion in the Queen’s menagerie. But as a friend he is loyal and honest. Aye, I do count him as a friend. We have known each other since we were boys.’

Anna was most intrigued by his words, by this rare glimpse of Robert before she knew him. Before he was Rob Alden, idol of the London playhouses. ‘He did say he grew up in the village here.’

‘His father was the local book binder and glover, and like me Rob had no brothers near his age to make mischief with. My older brother was much older, and my younger but a babe in arms then. My parents were often gone from home to serve at Court, and I had great freedom to roam the estate and get into trouble. Rob’s father was kind to me—let me hang about in his workshop when I was bored and lonely. Rob and I became friends, running wild over the countryside.’

‘And you knew each other all these years?’

Edward shook his head. ‘Nay. When my younger brother was in leading strings my parents sent me away to be a page in Lord Burghley’s household, so I could learn courtly ways. When I returned years later, as master of Hart Castle, Rob and his family were long gone. I didn’t find him again until I saw one of his plays in London. But we still have much in common.’

A lord and a player? Anna longed to know what those commonalities could be. ‘A love of poetry?’

‘And much else,’ Edward said with a smile. ‘Such as fair ladies and wild schemes to make things right again.’

Anna laughed. ‘I think anyone who would befriend Robert would have to favour wild schemes, Lord Edward. Such is the life of the theatre.’

‘Do you enjoy wildness, then, Mistress Barrett?’

‘I certainly didn’t before,’ she said. ‘But I am coming to see the advantage of a certain variety in life.’

Rob and Elizabeth danced past them in a peacock-blue whirl, and Elizabeth waved and laughed. Edward waved back at her, watching her as if she was the only person in the whole riotous hall.

‘You’re quite right, Mistress Barrett,’ he said. ‘There is much to be said for variety in life.’

The dancers parted into two lines with the figures of the dance, and for a moment she could see down the whole length of the room. A new guest appeared in the doorway, a burly, bearded man, red-faced and trussed in a gold-and-russet doublet, with a group of men gathered behind him. They watched the merriment with glowers on their hard faces and their hands on the daggers at their waists, while the bearded man beamed.

Edward’s shoulders stiffened.

‘Who is that?’ Anna asked. ‘Is it someone without an invitation?’

As she watched him, Edward slowly relaxed and gave her a smile. ‘On the contrary, Mistress Barrett. That is my esteemed neighbour, Sir Thomas Sheldon. Perhaps you have heard of him?’

‘I have, indeed,’ Anna murmured. Thomas Sheldon was known in the environs of Southwark for being a cheat at cards and a rough customer in the brothels. Even by the lax standards of the neighbourhood he was a man no one liked to see coming.

Luckily for the White Heron he favoured Lord Weston’s Men at another theatre, and never darkened their door. But many was the time Anna had heard Mother Nan complain of him.

She studied him now with some interest. He looked like a round, red-faced elf more than a troublemaker.

‘Surely he is not your friend, Lord Edward?’ she said.

‘It’s always wise to know what one’s neighbours are about, don’t you agree, Mistress Barrett?’ he answered. ‘Especially when they have only recently come into the estate.’

Rob and Lady Elizabeth rejoined them at that moment, both of them watching the arrival of Sir Thomas and his escorts. Rob also rested his hand on the hilt of his dagger, and though he smiled and moved with a lazy grace Anna almost feared a brawl would break out there, like a scene from one of his plays.

‘My dearest Elizabeth, I should greet our new guests,’ Edward said. ‘I would not wish to appear inhospitable.’

Elizabeth grabbed his arm. ‘Not without me, Edward. I have only recently finished the refurbishment of this hall. I don’t wish to see it wrecked.’

‘Whatever do you mean? I am the soul of civilisation, my love. Nothing will happen tonight.’

Elizabeth frowned up at him. ‘What are you about, then?’

Edward kissed her cheek and gently loosened her hand from his arm. ‘I will take Rob with me to greet Sir Thomas, Elizabeth. I don’t want you subjected to his filthy nonsense. Stay here with Mistress Barrett.’

‘Edward …’ she began warningly.

‘I promise you, love. Nothing will happen.’ Edward nodded at Robert and the two of them set off across the room, threading their way through the increasingly noisy revellers. They looked as if they were entering the field of battle.

‘Aye, nothing
tonight
,’ Elizabeth muttered. She snatched up a goblet and drained the wine.

Anna felt chilly even in the overheated room, and she
rubbed at her arms as she tried to erase that heavy disquiet. ‘What is between Lord Edward and Thomas Sheldon?’

‘An old enmity,’ Elizabeth answered. She drew Anna to a quieter corner and whispered in her ear. ‘Edward’s younger brother died a few years ago—cheated of his fortune by Sheldon and then sent off to die on a ship to America. Sheldon has cheated many men of every status, but his villainy has not yet been proved to the Queen. He even tried to marry my poor niece last year—she was terrified of such a fate.’

‘How awful,’ Anna said. No woman should find herself married to a brute, as she herself had.

‘She is happily married to a man of her own choosing now, and in a strange way it was that which brought me to Edward. But Sheldon must be stopped, one way or another.’

‘You two must have great secret confidences, here in this dark corner,’ Rob said as he came up behind them.

He slipped his arm around Anna’s waist and tugged her close to him. Even though he smiled when she looked up at him, she could glimpse that familiar darkness lurking in his eyes.

Trouble and strife didn’t live only in the narrow Southwark streets. It followed them even into grand houses. Anna had the sudden urge to grab Rob’s hand and run from this place—from everything their lives held of secrets and plots and dark longings. To just—run.

But she knew running could not lead to escape.

‘Where is Edward?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘I hope you did not leave him alone with Sheldon!’

‘I’m not such a poor friend as that, Elizabeth,’ Rob answered. ‘We merely greeted Sheldon and found him and his men amenable dance partners among the ladies. Then your footman came to Edward with a question about the wine
supplies. It seems your guests are so very greedy you are in danger of running out.’

‘That is ridiculous,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Edward’s wine is enough to last a century. Where is he now?’

‘In the kitchens, I believe. And Sheldon is just there, dancing with Lady Arabella—if you dare call it dancing.’ Robert waved towards Sir Thomas, weaving an unsteady path through the patterns of another galliard. Everyone else was having such a merry time they didn’t seem to notice when he went the wrong way and ran into them.

Elizabeth departed to look for Edward and the wine, and Anna was left alone with Robert. She snuggled against his side and rested her head on his shoulder, suddenly weary of grand people and their parties and schemes. She felt as if a long, dark evening had just passed—one filled with matters she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to understand.

But she feared that when it came to Rob she had to know. Her life was wound around his now, for good or ill.

‘Would you like to dance, Anna?’ he asked quietly.

She shook her head. ‘I think I grow tired of revels.’

‘Then let us find somewhere quieter and make our own revels,’ he whispered, and kissed her forehead.

Anna couldn’t help but laugh as he took her hand and led her towards the doors. The party had grown even louder as the night went on, and Edward’s generous supply of wine flowed, and more than a few of the guests seemed intent on making their own revels. They leaned on each other as they spun through the door, and couples kissed half hidden behind tapestries and in corners. Rob led her neatly around the crowds until finally they emerged into the cool quiet of the entrance hall.

There were people there, as well, but they whispered together and seemed to see nothing else around them. Anna
followed Rob down a corridor, their path running beside closed doors and glowering portraits lit only by flickering torches set high in their wall sconces. The farther they went the greater the silence grew, until she could only hear their soft footsteps on the wooden floor, the swish of her skirts.

They ducked behind the shelter of a heavy velvet hanging into a small window embrasure, where moonlight streamed through the diamond-shaped panes of glass and broke into shards of light on the panelled wall. It was cool there, after the stuffy heat of the great hall, and Anna leaned back on the wall to finally take a breath.

Rob braced his hands to either side of her, his body pressed close to hers in their own little haven.

‘Better now?’ he asked.

‘Much. I had no idea Lord Edward was such a generous host.’

‘I think he would much prefer to just live quietly here at Hart Castle with Elizabeth and his studies.’

‘Then why does he invite the whole county
and
all of London to a ball?’ Anna thought of Sir Thomas Sheldon. ‘Even those he would prefer to keep away.’

‘He has his reasons—for now.’

‘And you take a share in those reasons?’ she asked. It was one more reminder to be cautious of Rob, that she truly knew so little of him. Not that she had heeded those cautions much of late!

Rob’s eyes glittered as he stared down at her. ‘Perhaps, I do. He is my friend.’

‘Elizabeth said you have been friends since childhood.’

‘And what else did she say?’ he asked.

‘She told me the tale of Sir Thomas and Lord Edward’s poor brother.’

‘Ah. She was talkative.’

‘Does Elizabeth also work for the Queen’s government?’ Anna asked.

Rob laughed, but she could hear no mirth in it. ‘Edward works only for himself, for his own ends—as we all do in our ways. Sometimes we use the assistance of others when it’s needful.’

‘And how are you assisting in this matter?’

‘So many questions, fairest Anna,’ he murmured, and lowered his head to kiss her ear, the curve of her neck, biting lightly at the soft skin and then blowing on it to soothe the little sting until she shivered. ‘It’s much too lovely a night to waste on questions.’