Jane Feather - The Emerald Swan

Her chances of catching the monkey were so remote as to be laughable, Gareth reflected, but Chip had clearly achieved his object in drawing her away from his mistress.

"My thanks, milord." The girl slithered out from his cloak, giving him a relieved smile. "I have no desire to be caught by Mama Gertrude at the moment. She's the sweetest person in the world, but she's absolutely determined I shall become her son's partner in the end. Luke is a dear, but he's quite daft at everything but managing Fred. I couldn't possibly marry him, let alone share an act with him."

"I'm delighted to be of assistance," Gareth murmured dryly, none the wiser for her explanation. Neither could he understand why he'd found the proximity of such a dab of a creature so unnervingly sensual, but the skin of his back was still humming like a tuning fork.

Miranda looked around. The crowd were growing restless and the musicians and jugglers, taking their cue, bowed themselves off to be replaced by a rather witless-looking youth in a multicolored doublet, accompanied by a frisky terrier.

"That's Luke and Fred," Miranda informed the owner of the convenient cloak. "You see, it's a very good act and he can get Fred to do anything. Watch him jump through the ring of fire… But poor Luke doesn't have a brain in his head. I know it's not my destiny to marry him and be his partner."

Gareth glanced from the young man's vacuous expression to the girl's bright eyes shining with lively intelligence and saw her point.

"I must go and find Chip. Mama Gertrude won't be able to catch him, but he might get up to mischief." The girl gave him a cheerful wave and dived into the crowd, her orange skirt a glow of color until she disappeared from view.

Gareth felt slightly bemused but he found himself smiling nevertheless. He glanced back at the stage to where the boy on his stool gazed disconsolately into the audience after his departed dance partner. The child looked as bereft as if he'd been left alone in the dark.

The woman she'd called Mama Gertrude was pushing her way back through the crowd, her expression grimly disgruntled. She was muttering to herself. "That girl… Like a firefly she is with her darting about. Here one minute and gone the next. What's wrong with my Luke, I ask you?" She looked directly at Gareth on this fierce question. "A good, hard worker, he is. A fine-looking boy. What's wrong with him? Any normal girl would be glad of such a mate."

She glared at Gareth as if he were somehow responsible for Miranda's ingratitude. Then with a shrug and another mutter she sailed away on a cloud of puce, her enormous bosom jutting like the prow of a ship above the swaying circle of her farthingale.

Luke had just finished his act and was bowing to the crowd, the terrier strutting on his hind legs along the edge of the stage, but the audience was already moving away.

Gertrude was galvanized. She jumped onto the stage with extraordinary agility for one so cumbersome. "You haven't sent the cap around!" she bellowed. "Daft as a brush, you are, Luke. Get down there and get your fee." She belabored the hapless youth with the knob of her stick. "Standing there bowing and cavorting while the crowd goes away! You don't see Miranda doing that, you dolt!"

The lad jumped off the stage and began weaving his way through the departing crowd, his cap outstretched, an expression of eager supplication on his face as he begged for coins, his little dog trotting at his heels. But he'd missed the moment and most of his audience shoved past him, ignoring his cap and his pleas. Gareth dropped a shilling into the cap and the young man's jaw dropped.

"Thank you, milord," he stammered. "Thank you kindly, milord."

"Where do you come from?" Gareth gestured to the stage, already being dismantled by a pair of laborers.

"France, milord." Luke stood awkwardly, his eyes on his rapidly disappearing income. He was clearly torn between the need to pursue any last groats that might be forthcoming from the crowd and the obligation to answer the questions of the noble lord who had rewarded his act with such largesse. "We're catching the afternoon tide for Calais," he volunteered.

The earl of Harcourt nodded in dismissal and Luke dived after the retreating audience. The earl idly watched the dismantling process for a few more minutes, then turned back to the town nestling at the foot of the sheer white cliffs rising from the English Channel.

He had landed from France himself at dawn after a gale-blown crossing and had decided to stay overnight in Dover and start out for his house on the Strand just outside the city walls of London the next morning.

His decision had more to do with his reluctance to reenter the maelstrom of his sister's frenetic battles with the recalcitrant Maude than anything else. In truth, he'd enjoyed the elemental battle with the storm, working beside the frantic sailors, who'd welcomed another pair of hands in their struggles to keep the frail craft afloat. He suspected that the sailors had been much more afraid than he had been, but then mariners were a more than usually superstitious breed who lived in perpetual dread of a watery grave.

Gareth slipped a hand inside his doublet of richly embroidered silver silk, his fingers encountering the little velvet pouch containing the bracelet, Henry's gift to a prospective bride. The parchment in its waxed envelope lay against his breast and he traced the raised seal of King Henry IV of France beneath his fingers. Henry of Navarre was king of France only in name and birthright at present. French Catholics would not willingly accept a Huguenot monarch, but once he had succeeded in subduing his recalcitrant subjects, he would rule an immense territory infinitely more powerful than his native land. King of Navarre was a mere bagatelle beside king of France.

And beneath that royal seal of France lay the road back to the power and lands once enjoyed by the Harcourt family.

It was a road of such dizzying splendor that not even Imogen, Gareth's power-hungry sister, would have dared to contemplate it.

A sardonic smile touched Gareth's fine mouth as he imagined how Imogen would react to the proposition he carried in his breast. Since Charlotte's death, very little outside his own pursuits had roused Gareth from his lethargic indifference to the wider world, but this golden stroke of fortune had set his juices running, reviving the old political hungers that had once enriched his daily life.

But first he would have to secure the agreement of his ward-not something that could ever be taken for granted.

When he'd yielded to his sister's demands and sailed for France, he had carried a much more modest proposition than the one he now held. It was a proposition to the king's advisor and close confidant, the duke of Roissy, suggesting that the duke take Maude, daughter of the duke d'Albard, and second cousin to the earl of Harcourt, as his bride. But events had taken an unexpected turn.

Gareth turned back to the water again and gazed out toward the barrier wall that protected the harbor from the encroaching waters of the Channel. It was a beautiful, peaceful spot well deserving of its name- Paradise Harbor. Quite unlike the grim cacophonous turmoil of King Henry's besieging camp beneath the walls of Paris…

Gareth had entered Henry's camp on a filthy April evening, with a driving rain more suited to winter than spring. He had traveled alone, knowing he would draw less attention to himself without a retinue of servants. The entire countryside was in an uproar as their unwanted king laid siege to Paris and the city's inhabitants battled with famine even as they refused to admit and acknowledge a sovereign they considered a heretic usurper.

Lord Harcourt's lack of attendants and visible badges of his rank and identity had caused difficulties with the master-at-arms, but finally he had been admitted to the sprawling camp resembling a tented city. For two hours, he had kicked his heels in the antechamber to the king's tent as officers, couriers, servants, had hurried through into the king's presence, barely glancing at the tall man in his dark, rain-sodden cloak and muddied boots, swinging his arms and pacing the trodden-down grass of the enclosed area in an effort to keep warm.