Читать книгу At The Queen's Summons - Сьюзен Виггс, Susan Wiggs - Страница 15

Aidan was watching her with those penetrating flame-blue eyes. Pippa could tell from his fierce chieftain’s glare that he would tolerate no more jests or sidestepping.

She combed her hair with both hands, raking her fingers through the damp, yellow tangles. She felt shaky, much as she did after being stricken with a fever and then getting up for the first time in days. The storm had slammed through her with terrifying force, leaving her limp.

“The problem is,” she said with bleak, quiet honesty, “I have the same answer to all of your questions.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know.” She watched him closely for a reaction, but he merely sat there at the end of the bed, waiting and watching. Firelight flared behind him, outlining his massive shoulders and the gleaming fall of his black hair.

His eyes never left her, and she wondered just what he saw. Why in heaven’s name would a grand Irish lord take an interest in her? What did he hope to gain by befriending her? She had so little to offer—a handful of tricks, a few sorry jests, a chuckle or two. Yet he seemed enraptured, infinitely patient, as he awaited her explanation.

The rush of tenderness she felt for him was frightening. Ah, she could love this man, she could draw him into her heart. But she would not. In his way, he was as remote as the moon, beautiful and unreachable. Before long he would go back to Ireland, and she would resume her existence in London.

“I don’t know who I am,” she explained, “nor where I come from, nor even where I am going. And I certainly don’t know what you’re going to do with me.” With an effort, she squared her shoulders. “Not that it’s any of your concern. I am mistress of my own fate. If and when I decide to delve into my past, it will be to find the answers for me, not you.”

“Ah, Pippa.” He got up, took a dipper of wine from a cauldron near the hearth and poured the steaming, spice-scented liquid in a cup. “Sip it slowly,” he said, handing her the drink, “and we’ll see if we can sort this out.”

Feeling cosseted, she accepted the wine and let a soothing swallow slide down her throat. Mab had been her teacher, her adviser in herbal arts and foraging, but the old woman had seen only to her most basic needs, keeping her dry and fed as if she were livestock. From Mab, Pippa had learned how to survive. And how to protect herself from being hurt.

“You do not know who you are?” he inquired, sitting again at the foot of the bed.

She hesitated, caught her lower lip with her teeth. Turmoil boiled up inside her, and her immediate reaction was to erupt with laughter and make yet another joke about being a sultan’s daughter or a Hapsburg orphan. Then, cradling the cup in her hands, she lifted her gaze to his.

She saw concern burning like a flame in his eyes, and its appeal had a magical effect on her, warming her like the wine, unfurling the secrets inside her, plunging down through her to find the words she had never before spoken to another living soul.

Slowly, she set the cup on a stool beside the bed and began to talk to him. “For as long as I can remember, I have been Pippa. Just Pippa.” The admission caught unpleasantly in her throat. She cleared it with a merry, practiced laugh. “It is a very liberating thing, my lord. Not knowing who I am frees me to be whoever I want to be. One day my parents are a duke and duchess, the next they are poor but proud crofters, the next, heroes of the Dutch revolt.”

“But all you really want,” he said softly, “is to belong somewhere. To someone.”

She blinked at him and could summon no tart remark or laughter to answer the charge. And for the first time in her life, she admitted the stark, painful truth. “Oh, God in heaven, yes. All I want to know is that someone once loved me.”

He reached across the bed and covered her hands with his. A strange, comfortable feeling rolled over her like a great wave. This man, this foreign chieftain who had all but admitted he’d killed his father, somehow made her feel safe and protected and cared for.

“Let us work back over time.” He rubbed his thumbs gently over her wrists. “Tell me how you came to be there on the steps of St. Paul’s the first day I met you.”

He spoke of their meeting as if it had been a momentous occasion. She pulled her hands away and set her jaw, stubbornly refusing to say more. The fright from the storm had lowered her defenses. She struggled to shore them up again. Why should she confess the secrets of her heart to a virtual stranger, a man she would never see again after he left London?

“Pippa,” he said, “it’s a simple enough question.”

“Why do you care?” she shot back. “What possible interest could it be to you?”

“I care because you matter to me.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Is that so hard to understand?”

“Yes,” she said.

He reached for her and then froze, his hand hovering between them for a moment before he pulled it back. He cleared his throat. “I am your patron. You perform under my warrant. And these are simple questions.”

He made her feel silly for guarding her thoughts as if they were dark secrets. She took a deep breath, trying to decide just where to begin. “Very well. Mort and Dove said eventually, all of London passes through St. Paul’s. I suppose—quite foolishly, as it happens—I hoped that one day I would look up and see a man and woman who would say, “You belong to us.’” She plucked at a loose thread in the counterpane. “Stupid, am I not? Of course, that never happened.” She gave a short laugh, tamping back an errant feeling of wistful longing. “Even if they did recognize me, why would they claim me, unwashed and dishonest, thieving from people in the churchyard?”

“I claimed you,” he reminded her.

His words lit a glow inside her that warmed her chest. She wanted to fling herself against him, to babble with gratitude, to vow to stay with him always. Only the blade-sharp memories of other moments, other partings, held her aloof and wary.

“For that I shall always thank you, my lord,” she said cordially. “You won’t be sorry. I’ll keep you royally entertained.”

“Never mind that. So you continued to perform as a strolling player, just wandering about, homeless as a Gypsy?” he asked.

A sting of memory touched her, and she caught her breath in startlement.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Something extraordinary just occurred to me. Years ago, when I first came to London town, I saw a tribe of Gypsies camped in Moor Fields outside the city. I thought they were a troupe of players, but these people dressed and spoke differently. They were like a—a family. I was drawn to them.”

Warming to her tale, she shook off the last vestiges of terror from the storm. She sat forward on the bed, draping her arms around her drawn-up knees. “Aidan, it was so exciting. There was something familiar about those people. I could almost understand their language, not the actual words, mind, but the rhythms and nuances.”

“And they welcomed you?”

She nodded. “That night, there was a dance around a great bonfire. I was taken to meet a woman called Zara—she was very old. Ancient. Some said more than fourscore years old. Her pallet had been set out so that she could watch the dancing.” Pippa closed her eyes, picturing the snowy tangle of hair, the wizened-apple face, the night-dark eyes so intense they seemed to see into tomorrow.

“They said she was ill, not expected to live, but she asked to see me. Fancy that.” Opening her eyes again, she peered at Aidan to see if he believed her or thought she was spinning yarns once more. She could not tell, for he merely watched and waited with calm interest. No one had ever listened to her with such great attention before.

“Go on,” he said.

“Do you know the first thing she said to me? She said I would meet a man who would change my life.”

He muttered something Celtic and scowled at her.

“No, it’s true, my lord, you must believe me.”

“Why should I? You’ve lied about everything else.”

His observation should not have hurt her, but it did. She pressed her knees even closer to her chest and tried to will away the ache in her heart. “Not everything, Your Loftiness.”

“Continue, then. Tell me what the witch woman said.”

“Her speech was slow, broken.” In her mind’s eye, Pippa saw it all as if it had happened yesterday—the leaping flames and the ancient face, the deep eyes and the Gypsies whispering among themselves and pointing at Pippa, who had knelt beside Zara’s pallet.

“She was babbling, I suppose, and speaking in more than one language, but I remember she told me about the man. And she also spoke of blood and vows and honor.”

“Blood, vows and honor?” he repeated.

“Yes. That part was very distinct. She spoke the three words, just like that. She was dying, my lord, but clutching my hand with a grip stronger than death itself. I hadn’t the heart to question her or show any doubt. It’s as if she thought she knew me and somehow needed me in those last moments.”

He folded his arms against his massive chest and studied her. Pippa was terrified that he would accuse her again of lying, but he gave the barest of nods. “They say those in extremis often mistake strangers for people they have known. Did the old woman say more?”

“One more thing.” Pippa hesitated. She felt it all again, the emotions that had roared through her while the stranger held her hand. A feeling of terrible hope had welled from somewhere deep inside her. “A statement I will never, ever forget. She lifted her head, using the very last of her strength to fix me with a stare. And she said, “The circle is complete.” Then, within an hour, she was dead. A few of the young Gypsies seemed suspicious of me, so I thought it prudent to leave after that. Besides, the woman’s wild talk…”

“Frightened you?” Aidan asked.

“Not frightened so much as touched something inside me. As if the words she spoke were words I should know. I tell you, it gave me much to think on.”

“I imagine it did.”

“Not that anything ever came of it,” she said, then ducked her head and lowered her voice. “Until now.”

She watched him, studied his face. Lord, but he was beautiful. Not pretty, but beautiful in the way of a crag overlooking the moors of the north, or in the majestic stance of a roebuck surveying its domain deep in a green velvet wood. It was the sort of beauty that caught at her chest and held fast, defying all efforts to dislodge a dangerous, glorious worship.

Then she noticed that one eyebrow and one corner of his mouth were tilted up in wry irony. She released her breath in an explosive sigh. “I suppose that is the price of being an outrageous and constant liar.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“When I finally tell the truth, you don’t believe me.”

“And why would you be thinking I don’t believe you?”

“That look, Your Worship. You seem torn between laughing at me and summoning the warden of Bedlam.”

The eyebrow inched up even higher. “Actually, I am torn between laughing at you and kissing you.”

“I choose the kissing,” she blurted out all in a rush.

Both of his eyebrows shot up, then lowered slowly over eyes gone soft and smoky. He gripped her hands and drew her forward so that she came up on her knees. The bedclothes pooled around her, and the thin shift whispered over her burning skin.

“I choose the kissing, too.” He lifted his hand to her face. The pad of his thumb moved slowly, tantalizingly, along the curve of her cheekbone and then downward, slipping like silk over marble, to touch her bottom lip, to rub over the fullness until she almost did not need the kiss in order to feel him.

Almost.

“Have you ever been kissed before, colleen?”

The old bluster rose up inside her. “Well, of c—”

“Pippa,” he said, pressing his thumb gently on her lips. “This would be a very bad time to lie to me.”

“Oh. Then, no, Your Immensity. I have never been kissed.” The few who had tried had had their noses rearranged by her fist, but she thought it prudent not to mention that.

“Do you know how it’s done?”

“Yes.”

“Pippa, the truth. You were doing so well.”

“I’ve seen it happen, but I don’t know how it’s done in actual practice.”

“The first thing that has to happen—”

“Yes?” Unable to believe her good fortune, she bounced up and down on her knees, setting the bed to creaking on the rope latticework that supported the mattress. “This is really too exciting, my lord—”

His thumb stopped her mouth again. “—is that you have to stop talking. And for God’s sake don’t narrate everything. This is supposed to be a gesture of affection, but you’re turning it into a farce.”

“Oh. Well, of course I didn’t mean—”

Again he hushed her, and at the same moment a log fell in the grate. The brief flare of sparks found, just for an instant, a bright home in the centers of his eyes. She moaned in sheer wanting but remembered at last not to speak.

“Ah, well done,” he whispered, and his thumb moved again, with subtle, devastating tenderness, slipping just inside her mouth and then emerging to spread moisture along her lip.

“If you like, you can close your eyes.”

She mutely shook her head. It was not every day she got a kiss from an Irish chieftain, and she was not about to miss a single instant of giddy bliss.

“Then just look up at me,” he said, surging closer to her on the bed. “Just look up, and I’ll do the rest.”

She tilted her chin up as he lowered his head. His thumb slid aside to make room for his lips, and his mouth brushed over hers, softly, sweetly, with a sensation that made raw wanting jolt to life inside her.

She made a sound, but he caught it with his mouth and pressed down gently, until their lips were truly joined. His deft fingers rubbed with tender insistence along her jawline, and his lips pushed against the seam of hers.

Open.

Here was something she had not learned from spying on couples pumping away in the alleys of Southwark or groping one another in the shadows of the pillars of St. Paul’s.

His tongue came into her, and she made a squeak of surprise and delight. Her hands drifted upward, over his chest and around behind his neck. She wanted this closeness with a staggering, overwhelming need. His mouth and tongue went deeper, and his hands smoothed down her back, fingers splaying as he pressed her closer, closer.

The quickness of his breath startled her into the realization that he, too, was moved by the intimacy. He, too, had chosen the kiss.

All her life, Pippa had been curious about every bright, shiny thing she saw, and loveplay was no different, yet wholly different. It was not a case of simple wanting, but the experience of a sudden, devastating need she did not know she had.

Tightening her arms around his neck, she thrust against him, wanting the closeness to last forever. She could feel his heartbeat against her chest, feel the life force of another person beating against her and, in an odd, spiritual way, joining with her.

He lifted his mouth from hers. A stunned expression bloomed on his face. “Ah, colleen,” he whispered urgently, “we must stop before I—”

“Before what?” She reveled in the feel of his wine-sweet breath next to her face.

“Before I want more than just a kiss.”

“Then it’s too late for me,” she admitted, “for I already want more.”

He chuckled, very low and very softly, and there was a subtle edge of anguish in his voice. “When you decide to be honest, you don’t stint, do you?”

“I suppose not. Ah, I do want you, Aidan.”

A sad-sweet smile curved his beautiful mouth. “And I want you, lass. But we must not let this go any further.”

“Why not?”

He lifted her hands away from him and rose from the bed, moving slowly as if he were in pain. “Because it’s not proper.”

Stung, she scowled. “I have never been preoccupied with what is proper.”

“I have,” he muttered, and turned away. From the cauldron, he ladled himself a cup of wine and drank it in one gulp. “I’m sorry, Pippa.”

Already he had withdrawn from her, and she shivered with the chill of rejection. “Can’t you look at me and say that?”

He turned, and still his movements seemed labored. “I said I was sorry. I took advantage of your innocence, and I should never have done that.”

“I chose the kiss.”

“So did I.”

“Then why did you stop?”

“I want you to tell me about yourself. Kissing gets in the way of clearheaded thinking.”

“So if I tell you about myself, we can go back to the kissing?”

An annoyed tic started in his jaw. “I never said that.”

“Well, can we?”

With exaggerated care, he set down his cup and walked over to the bed. Cradling her face between his hands, he gazed at her with heartbreaking regret. “No, colleen.”

“But—”

“Consider the consequences. Some of them are quite lasting.”

She swallowed. “You mean a baby.” A wistful longing rose in her. Would it be such a catastrophe, she wondered, if the O Donoghue Mór were to give her a child? A small, helpless being that belonged solely to her?

She felt his hands, so gentle upon her face, yet his expression was one of painful denial. “Why should I do as you say?” she asked, resisting the urge to hurl herself at him, to cling to him and not let go.

“Because I’m asking you to, a gradh. Please.”

She blew out a weary sigh, aware without asking that the Irish word was an endearment. “Do you know how impossible it is to say no to you?”

He smiled a little, bent and kissed the top of her head before letting her go. “Now. We were working backward from your move to London. You met a mysterious hag—”

“Gypsy woman.”

“In Ireland we would call her a woman of the sidhe.”

“She said I’d meet a man who would change my life.” Pippa leaned back against the banked pillows. She wondered if he noticed her blush-stung cheeks. “I always thought it meant I’d find my father. But I’ve changed my mind. She meant you.”

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 pray 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.”

“Oh?” He grinned at her earnest expression.

“They are Celtic runes proclaiming the wearer of this brooch to be the incarnation of Queen Maeve.”

“Indeed.”

She shrugged. “Have you a better idea?”

He angled the brooch so that the sunlight picked out every detail of the etching. He started to nod his head and gamely declare that Pippa was absolutely right, when a memory teased him.

These were no random designs, but writings in a different alphabet. Not Hebrew or Greek; he had studied those. Then why did it look so familiar?

Frowning, Aidan found parchment and stylus. While Pippa watched in fascination, he carefully copied down the symbols, then turned the page this way and that, frowning in concentration.

“Aidan?” Pippa spoke loudly. “You’re staring as if it’s the flaming bush of Moses.”

He handed back the pin. “It’s very nice, and I have no doubt you are Queen Maeve’s descendant.” Absently, he tucked away the copy he had made. “Tell me. You faced starvation many times rather than selling that piece of gold. Why did you never try to pawn or trade it?”

She clutched the pin to her chest. “I will never give this up. It is the only thing I belong to. The only thing that belongs to me. When I hold it in my hand, sometimes I can—” She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Can what?”

“Can see them.” She whispered the words.

“See them?”

“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “Aidan, I have never told this to another living soul.”

Then don’t tell me, he wanted to caution her. Don’t make me privy to your dreams, for I cannot make any of them come true.

Instead he waited, and in a moment she spoke again. “This idea has consumed me ever since Mab died. I must find them, Aidan. I want to find my family. I want to know where I came from.”

“That is only natural. But you have so few clues.”