Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 8

  “And your father dead, not long ago. The new earl too, soon after?”

  “Aye, that was James, my eldest brother. He was returning from Edinburgh with his wife and their wee lad. Set upon by bandits on the road, God assoil him.”

  She bowed her head beneath the familiar weight of guilt. James had never loved her, and her good-sister Caitlin had actively loathed her. But she ought to feel more grief for their passing.

  “’Tis how I came to inherit, ye see? All three of my brothers dead without issue, and me the last Norwood.”

  Dudley made sympathetic noises and bowed elegantly over her hand, his warm mouth lingering. “Such a lovely lady should never have to endure such sorrow. I trust my small divertissements have afforded you some modest enjoyment?”

  From the direction of the throne, she sensed the Queen’s sharp eyes, gray as thunderclouds, upon them—surveillance of which Dudley would be well aware.

  Of course, a coming man like Lord Robert, dashing and popular in the best circles, would have no reason to lavish attention on a shy dormouse like Linnet, save to rouse his Queen’s jealousy.

  Discreetly, she eased her hand from his possession. “Every family has its tragedies, aye? But it eases my grief to revisit the places she must have seen that golden summer. Even such trifles as which rooms were hers, who were her friends and affinity, these things bring comfort, ye see? May I appeal to yer clerk for a peek at yer father’s records?”

  Imploring, she held her breath and gazed at him.

  She’d already beseeched the Queen’s secretary, Sir William Cecil, to search the court archives. But Cecil was a committed Protestant, unsympathetic to any entreaty from a half-Scottish countess with Catholic leanings. Her inquiries in that direction had cost her modest purse dearly, to little effect.

  Thus far, she’d learned only enough to confirm that wherever Henry Tudor and his court had gone that summer, so had Catriona Norwood.

  Perhaps her imploring eyes were more effective than she’d thought. Or else her uncomfortably low bodice was working its magick, or the scandalous abandon with which she’d flung herself into Lord Zamiel’s arms had given the wrong impression of her virtue.

  Dudley took a step closer and recaptured her hand. His hooded gaze lingered on her lips.

  “I’ll instruct my clerk to facilitate your inquiries. We’re friends now, are we not?”

  His intimate tone brought her to tingling alert. He was standing too close for a gentleman, and she didn’t believe for one moment that her shy, bookish charms had drawn him.

  Skinny as a beanpole and plain as porridge...

  Past Dudley’s hawk-like visage, she glimpsed a flash of white and gold as the colorful company parted. Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, glided into view, stepping lightly as a deer, her bell-shaped skirts of samite swaying as she danced. On the flaming masses of her hair perched a dazzling coronet of gold and silver, which she carried lofty as a king stag with antlers—as though she’d been born to wear it and not merely inherited the thing a few weeks past.

  Graceful as a zephyr the Queen skimmed across the floor, pale and slender, so utterly in command that the world seemed to pause around her.

  Again, the insidious thought whispered through her that Elizabeth Tudor was more than mortal. Her skin gleamed like polished alabaster. Silver fire poured from her quicksilver eyes, nearly bright enough to illuminate the space around her.

  How could Linnet be the only one to see it? Elizabeth glowed like the Faerie Queene herself, like that fatal beauty from Linnet’s fever dreams.

  Whenever she beheld the Protestant Queen, she felt herself sinking back into that dreamlike daze that had lost her to the mortal world. The thought of meeting her sovereign face-to-face, as she shortly must, filled her with vague unease.

  Still, she fought against these hallucinatory images and the sudden flares of panic that accompanied them, all symptoms of madness. If she acknowledged them, she might as well return to her cell at Glencross Abbey.

  She’d dreamed of a Faerie princess descended from Arthur of Camelot—one of her own childhood stories breathed into life. She’d fancied her protector was a fallen angel.

  Uriel, Flame of God.

  Nay, she wished not to be reminded of those fever dreams now.

  Ensnared in the gossamer web of her lost years, she’d forgotten Lord Robert Dudley. Now as he drew her subtly closer, she knew he too had seen Elizabeth. His lean swarthy face was hard with jealousy. He’d drawn Linnet into the magnetic orbit of his charm to counter the Queen’s attention to another man.

  And what a man he was.

  Lord Zamiel of Briah danced like a stalking predator. His gauntleted hands swept the Queen across the floor with a casual authority that left Linnet breathless. When he turned, his black cape flared like a cloud of ink, like the mane of raven hair swirling around his shoulders. His fine-chiseled features were delicate and hard, his smile diamond bright, and madcap mischief gleamed in his eyes.

  Uncanny fair enough to make her want to weep, and cover her stricken eyes.

  Yet even as he handed the Queen across the floor, passing within a finger’s length of his fellow dancers, he was careful not to touch them. In his heavy gauntlets, he wasn’t even touching the Queen, his fingertips barely brushing hers as he whirled her through the measures.

  In the very midst of a crowd, Zamiel of Briah stood heartbreakingly alone. Somehow, his solitude made her heart ache.

  “Come, my lady.” Dudley’s murmur in her ear could have come from another planet. She’d forgotten him utterly. “Will you dance?”

  Normally her dancing skills were naught to be flaunted, not when her father had thundered it was brazen to dance, and claimed only whores danced in public. Now, as Dudley bent intimately to her ear and a courteous demurral hovered on her lips, Lord Zamiel’s head turned unerringly—as though she’d spoken his name—to find her.

  For a heartbeat, his eyes darkened to indigo. Beneath the music and the chattering court, she fancied she heard the growl of thunder.

  Then a dark brow winged up as his head inclined in a mocking bow. Every iota of her spirit rose up to meet that taunting challenge. Her head snapped up, blood sparking in her veins.

  Voice ringing, she declared, “Aye, Lord Robert, I’ll dance with ye gladly.”

  Spine straight, she took his extended hand and swept into the dance.

  The music unrolled like a carpet beneath her feet, and she followed where it led. She glimpsed the Queen’s swift assessing glance as Elizabeth Tudor blazed past them like a comet, laughing into her partner’s face. Lord Zamiel emerged from the colorful tapestry of whirling figures, lean and deadly as death, his movements precise as swordplay.

  Yet even as he handed the Queen through a complicated figure lightly as a sparrow launches into flight, his dark head turned to track Linnet. For a heartbeat, his flashing gaiety seemed to fracture. His exquisite features turned brooding and intent.

  Then his mobile mouth curved in a smile. She thought he whispered her name as Dudley whisked her away.

  Staring after Zamiel, she missed a step. Lord Robert corrected her course with a small, impatient grimace.

  “Watch my eyes, not his, if it please you,” he said shortly, clearly unaccustomed to such inattention from the fortunate women he graced with his favor. “Do you know the measures?”

  “I beg yer pardon,” she murmured. “I was wondering about our Lord Indolence. I know so few folk at court. Do ye know ought of him, my lord?”

  Elegantly he squired her through a turn, eyes lidded with displeasure. “Before tonight, I’d never heard of the fellow. After he appeared on my stage, however, I made certain inquiries.”

  “Oh?” At a loss to explain her fascination, she strove to convey only polite interest. “Don’t keep me in suspense, aye? Where does he hail from?”

  “Just returned from exile in the Netherlands. Or so he’s put about.” Dudley shrugged. “Another good Protestant who fled Spanish Philip and the I
nquisition. That should put him squarely in the circle of Sir William Cecil, the Queen’s Secretary. Oddly, Cecil claims to know naught of him.”

  Her brows lifted. William Cecil was a bloodhound, never more so than when he caught the whiff of subterfuge, as she had cause to know. If her instincts were correct, the Queen’s Secretary was fanning the flames of rumor regarding her own uncertain history.

  “He had to come from somewhere, aye? He can’t have sprung up like a Faerie from a crack in the floor. Does he have rooms at court?”

  She blushed a little, asking that question, as though there were something unseemly about her interest in his living arrangements. In truth, she was merely making conversation. She had no interest beyond the ordinary in Lord Zamiel of Briah.

  “He’s acquired a mansion on the Strand—one of the best in town.” Dudley looked as though he begrudged the man every brick of it. “Money’s no obstacle for him, says Cecil. Since he turned up in London, Zamiel of Briah has splashed coin around every stew, tavern, gaming hell and fleshpot on the south shore. He’s buying prime horseflesh, snapping up paintings and objets d’art to dress up his new lodging, running up accounts with the tailors and gambling as though his pockets are bottomless.”

  Linnet snuck a glance over her shoulder, where Lord Zamiel still romped across the floor with the laughing Queen. To her eyes, the pair seemed to blaze with light. Yet they were different, too, somehow. As the cape swirled around his shoulders, her vision blurred. For a heartbeat, she glimpsed a mighty black-winged figure, with stars burning in his eyes.

  She blinked, and the image was gone.

  “Oh, aye? How did he come by this fortune?”

  “God knows.” Dudley, too, was watching his new rival, gauging Elizabeth’s enjoyment of his company with cool, assessing eyes. “The title’s new, and not English. Seems to be Hebrew, of all things, ‘the place the angels dwell.’ And it seems our precocious young lordling has already acquired quite a reputation with the ladies.”

  Inexplicably, her chest tightened. Surely she wasn’t fool enough to feel disappointment, to learn he flattered and flirted with other women as effortlessly as he did with her? She scarcely knew him well enough for jealousy.

  Chin lifted, she forced a shrug. “So he’s a lecher. What of it? Half the men at this court are the same sort.”

  “Present company excluded, you’re supposed to say.” Dudley laughed, though his eyes never left the Queen, who appeared to be enjoying a lively banter with her companion. “He’s a libertine and a wastrel, says our Cecil. Seen in every whorehouse in Bankside and Westminster, including a few that cater to, shall we say, unusual tastes?”

  Intrigued, Linnet gazed up at him. “What sort of unusual tastes?”

  “Lady Norwood! I’m shocked by your interest,” he murmured. “Suffice it to say Lord Zamiel of Briah has been a byword of debauchery since he arrived in London. I’d advise you to keep clear of him if you value your reputation. A rakehell like that will ruin any lady he’s seen with.”

  She couldn’t help but acknowledge the truth of that advice, motivated by spite though she knew it to be. Perversely, she found herself chafing to challenge it.

  She was stayed from that folly by the very man Dudley had quoted so freely—Sir William Cecil, the Queen’s Secretary. To her surprise, the slight, dark-garbed figure caught her gaze and beckoned.

  With a murmured excuse, she stepped away from Dudley and hurried toward him. Flutters of alarm and excitement danced in her belly, for a summons from William Cecil was no ordinary occurrence. Moreover, their previous interview had given her little cause to anticipate a friendship between them.

  Gaze lowered, she sank into a deep curtsey. “Sir William?”

  “Lady Norwood.” The man’s voice was wintry. She glanced up to assess his temper. A thin, ascetic man of some forty years, with the pale face and soft hands of a scholar, he surveyed her without affection.

  “I’m bidden to bring you to the Queen’s Majesty, if I might induce you to part with Lord Robert’s delightful company.”

  His voice was exceedingly dry as he glanced toward Dudley, who sketched a wry salute. Linnet suspected William Cecil distrusted the dashing gallant who’d acquired such a powerful influence over the young Queen. But that mattered little to her, set against the butterflies now spiraling through her belly at the prospect of her royal audience—a prospect she both welcomed and dreaded.

  “I’m honored, Sir William.” Discreetly she smoothed disobedient ringlets into place beneath her hood.

  “You are indeed.” Coldly courteous, he offered his arm, leaving Linnet no choice but to swallow her unease and take it.

  The man made no secret of his suspicions regarding her presence at court. She was a half-Scottish Papist descended from the royal Stuarts, a lightning rod for the court’s disaffected Catholics. Already he surveyed her with thinly veiled dislike.

  “Tell me, Lady Norwood, have you received word lately from your traveling friends in Paris?”

  “My...traveling friends?” she echoed carefully. “Whom do ye speak of?”

  Beneath his spade-shaped beard, Cecil’s jaw tightened. “I speak of your bosom companion, Rhiannon le Fay, the so-called princess of the Summer Lands. And her husband Lord Beltran Nemesto, the former Inquisitor they call God’s Vengeance.”

  As the Secretary spoke, distaste etching every syllable, each name struck her like a blow to the face. She would have taken oath she’d never heard those names, yet somehow she was gasping for air, as though their impact drove the very breath from her lungs.

  She gripped his arm for purchase, sweat-damp fingers leaving marks on his somber grosgrain doublet.

  “You recall them now, I see?” Cecil glanced down at her white-knuckled grip.

  With difficulty, she loosened her hold. “Nay, I—ye must be mistaken. I’ve been, well, in a convent...”

  Nothing less than dire extremity would drive her to mention her incarceration, even obliquely. But the room was blurring around her. She feared she would swoon, though she’d never been the swooning sort.

  Difficult to run for your life, she’d learned, when you swooned at your tormentor’s feet.

  “I’m well aware of your whereabouts these two years past,” the Secretary said coolly. “As well as your circumstances for two years before that.”

  Running wild in the forest with leaves in your hair, he didn’t need to say.

  Desperately she swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “I was ill, aye, but I’ve greatly improved. In any wise, the Glencross lands are so remote. I know almost no one here in London.”

  “So that’s how you wish to play this?” He shot her a narrow look that encompassed both Linnet and the discreet circumference of empty space around them, as the Queen’s court pretended not to notice the strained exchange. “You know naught of the Faerie Queene, I suppose, nor a knight named Ansgar who liberated you from your...convent...when the last Earl of Glencross met his bloody end.”

  Sweet Jesus, it was getting worse, the world spinning around her like a child’s bright-painted top. Overcome by vertigo, she released his arm and groped blindly for the oak-paneled wall. Breathless with gratitude to find it, she placed its solid support at her back and leaned against it until the world stopped spinning.

  When she opened her eyes, Cecil was standing before her with a cup of steaming hippocras. Thankfully she seized the hot spiced wine and drank deep, the tart sweetness flooding her mouth, aware all the while of the Secretary’s assessing gaze.

  Slowly she sipped, giving herself time to think. If she thought of the Summer Lands or those names he’d mentioned, she would be ill again, giving rise to another unsavory crop of rumors. They’d say she was with child, no doubt, and then she’d never find a husband for Glencross.

  She lowered the cup and offered the Secretary a wan smile. “Ye must forgive me these hysterics, aye? I’m still in mourning for my brother James and his wee tender lad. And the wicked rogues who murdered them ru
nning wild as wolves over the Scottish moor—or so I surmise, for they were never brought to justice, aye? Ye’ll understand if I can’t speak of it.”

  All of which was mostly true, except that she could have spoken of James and Caitlin and young Ian. It was the other she couldn’t bear. Those names...

  Cecil surveyed her, sharp eyes no doubt cataloging the sheen of perspiration on her brow, the pulse fluttering at her throat, the general air of malaise she didn’t need to feign.

  “Very well, madam,” he said at last, begrudging. “I’ll say no more of the matter for now. But be warned—the Queen herself has taken an interest in your confederates. If you think to put her off with your swoons and vapors, I wish you good fortune. She has little patience for womanly wiles that are not her own.”

  With that caution ringing like a tocsin in her ear, Sir William Cecil brought her to face the Queen of England.

  Chapter Five

  Elizabeth Tudor commanded the canopied throne as though she’d owned it all her life. To behold her, none would guess she’d been declared a bastard at the age of three, her mother beheaded for treason and witchcraft. None would guess that Elizabeth herself had nearly lost her head when her sister Mary took the throne.

  Now there she sat, the Protestant Queen of England, pale as a moonbeam in gold and samite, quicksilver eyes sparkling as she parried in flawless French with some dashing monsieur whose sky-blue doublet blazed with the fleur de lis of their neighbor across the Channel.

  Patiently Linnet waited to be acknowledged. She was accustomed to waiting, after all. If only her blasted coiffure had survived the night’s adventures, instead of tumbling free down her neck in its usual rebellious manner.

  “Stop fidgeting with your hair,” a familiar voice murmured in her ear. “You ought to let it tumble free in a glorious riot of mahogany fire.”

  The warmth of his breath set her tingling. She would have known anywhere that silk-smooth voice with its exotic accent, the sweet smoke of New World tobacco that made her senses swim.

  “So ye’re a poet as well, are ye, Lord Zamiel?” She tilted her head back to study him and the breath snared in her throat.