Susan Wiggs - At The Queen's Summons

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.