Amanda McCabe - Christmas At The Tudor Court

‘Do you remember anything at all of your own mother?’ she asked.

‘Very little. She died when I was very young. I think I recall the way her perfume smelled, of summer roses, and her smile, which was sad and sweet. After she was gone, I fear our house was not a home at all. The buildings began crumbling, a wreck just like my father turned into.’

Alys felt a pang of sadness for him as a little boy, left alone to face a cold world. ‘I am sorry. Dunboyton might be dull and chilly, but it is never cruel. The home my mother tried to make is still here.’

‘Is it your home, Alys?’

She thought about that carefully. ‘Not the castle, no. But my memories, the people I love—that makes it home, I suppose.’

‘Will you miss it when you marry and leave?’ he said tightly.

Alys peeked up at him and found he watched her carefully, his bright eyes narrowed. ‘Of course. But thanks to my mother, I will know how to make a new home. What of you, Juan? Will you find a fine lady to marry and make a new home?’

He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Nay, I would not know how to do that. I have never known a home.’

‘But would you like to?’

He was quiet for a long moment. ‘I think I might. A home—it does sound like a fine thing.’

There was a note of sadness in his voice that made Alys’s heart ache all over again. She rested her hands on his shoulders and leaned against him, longing to bring him comfort. To bring that to herself.

Suddenly, the air between them seemed to change, growing charged as the sky was just before a lightning strike. She could hardly breathe, especially when he reached for her and drew her closer. She had never been so close to a man. How dizzying it was! All her senses tilted and whirled, and all she knew in that moment was him. The way he felt under her touch, so alive and strong and warm.

‘Alys...’ he said hoarsely.

‘I—I am here,’ she whispered.

As if in a hazy dream, far away, yet more immediate and real than anything she had ever known before, his head tilted down towards her and he kissed her.

The brush of his lips was so soft at first, like warm velvet, pressing softly once, twice, as if he expected her to run. But Alys could not have moved away from him. As she moved up to meet him, his kiss deepened. It became hotter, more urgent—the most urgent, hungry thing she had ever known.

Something deep inside her heart responded to that urgency, a rough excitement that grew and grew until she thought she would burst from it. She moaned, parting her lips to the shocking feel of his tongue seeking entrance, sliding over hers. There was only him, not the world outside, only him and that one perfect moment.

But the outside world insisted on breaking into her dream. A sound like a branch falling against the roof shocked her, making her fall back from him. She jumped to her feet, her whole body shaking. She longed to jump back into his arms, yet she knew she could not. If she did, she might never free herself again.

‘Alys, I am so very sorry...’ he said, his sea-green eyes grown dark.

‘Nay. Please don’t say you are sorry for what happened,’ she gasped. ‘I could not bear it. I just—I must go now.’

She whirled around and ran out of the dairy, hearing him call after her. She couldn’t stop, though. She hurried out of the abbey’s ruins as if the ghosts were indeed running after her. She didn’t feel the cold wind, even though she had left her shawl behind, and she could hear nothing at all but the wild beat of her heart in her ears.

She paused at the kitchen-garden wall to try to catch her breath. If her father was awake, she knew she could not let him see her in such a state. But as she studied the castle, she saw that no windows were alight, except the one in the guest chamber of the tower. The one where Sir Matthew stayed. She felt as if someone watched from behind those blank windows, someone who sought all her secrets.

Chapter Ten

He was not alone in his hiding place. John could sense it. And whoever lurked outside, it was not Alys. She would have dashed inside, her basket in her arms, and lit up the darkness with her smile.

John’s extensive training during his work with Walsingham had sharpened his sixth sense to an exceptional degree. He always knew when he was being followed, being watched. It had served him well in the palace corridors of Madrid and Paris, and the back alleys of Lisbon. Last night, when he was alone after Alys left, he felt the sharp prickle of that sense. He had tried to shrug it away, to attribute it to the darkness of the sky and Alys’s tales of ghostly monks and fairies. Now he saw how foolish shrugging it away had been.

John held the hilt of the only weapon he now had, the eating knife, lightly on his palm and stepped silently to the half-open door.

He could feel whoever it was moving closer, like the slow slide of a length of silk over his skin, barely a whisper.

Then he heard it. The merest crackle of a fallen leaf on the old, cracked flagstones. It could have merely been blown by the wind, but he knew it wasn’t. He heard another sound, the brush of wool against the wall, and he lunged out the door, his dagger raised. His other hand shot out towards a shadow looming in the darkness and caught a fistful of that woollen cloak.

The figure inside the cloak was too tall, too muscular to be petite Alys. He shoved the man against the wall, into the ray of light coming out of the door, and pressed his knife to a throat, just at the vulnerable spot beneath the chin. Before he could drive the blade home, the cloak’s hood fell back and he saw the man’s face.

It was as familiar to him as his own in its sharp, hawk-like angles, in the wry smile that curved the lips. ‘I see I taught you well enough, John,’ Sir Matthew Morgan said, his smile growing.

John drew back the blade. Shock and happiness shot through him at the sight of his godfather. It had been too long since he had seen anything familiar, had felt close to home again. Whatever home was. ‘Sir Matthew! What are you doing here?’

‘Whatever do you think I would be doing in the wilds of Ireland? Looking for you, of course.’

Looking for him? He had always known Matthew was good at his job, but perhaps now he had some second sight. Or perhaps the Queen’s astrologer, John Dee, had led him. ‘How did you find me?’

Matthew shrugged. ‘Perhaps we would be more comfortable talking inside?’

John nodded and led the way back into his little sanctuary. Matthew took it in with a flicker of a glance. ‘You have found a fine nest. I suppose the pretty Lady Alys made it so, since I remember the squalor of your Cambridge lodgings. You never had a talent for housekeeping.’

At the mention of Alys, John turned wary, his senses heightened in that prickling, warning way again. He closed the door softly behind them and leaned against it with his arms crossed. No one could be permitted to harm Alys, even his godfather, even if she was, technically speaking, a traitor to the crown. She had been moved by humanity alone to save his life and he would die to keep her from being punished for it. ‘Is that how you found me? Through her?’

‘In a way, though I must say she was remarkably careful for a lady with no experience as an intelligencer. She made sure she was followed by no servants or soldiers from the castle and gave no clue even to her father. Perhaps Walsingham could recruit her?’

John shook his head in anger. His gentle Alys, subjected to the things he had seen and done in Walsingham’s service? He regretted nothing; it had been done to protect the Queen and the peace of England. But Alys could never know those horrors. ‘Don’t you dare approach her, Sir Matthew. She may be careful, but she is also an innocent.’