Susan Wiggs - At The Queen's Summons

The lust for blood was universal, Pippa decided. But perhaps not. Despite his savage-looking face and flowing black hair, the man had an air of reckless splendor that fascinated her. She took a deep breath. “Actually, sir, I am a strolling player. But I have a nobleman’s warrant,” she finished triumphantly.

“Have you, then?” His Lordship winked at the constable.

“Oh, aye, sir, upon my word.” She hated it when gentlemen got into a playful mood. Their idea of play usually involved mutilating defenseless people or animals.

“And who might this patron be?”

“Why, Robert Dudley himself, the Earl of Leicester.” Pippa threw back her shoulders proudly. How clever of her to think of the queen’s perpetual favorite. She nudged the constable in the ribs, none too gently. “He’s the queen’s lover, you know, so you’d best not irritate me.”

A few of her listeners’ mouths dropped open. The nobleman’s face drained to a sick gray hue; then hot color surged to his cheeks and jowls.

The constable gripped Pippa by the ear. “You lose, rodent.” With a flourish, he indicated the haughty man. “That is the Earl of Leicester, and I don’t believe he’s ever seen you before.”

“If I had, I would certainly remember,” said Leicester.

She swallowed hard. “Can I change my mind?”

“Please do,” Leicester invited.

“My patron is actually Lord Shelbourne.” She eyed the men dubiously. “Er, he is still among the living, is he not?”

“Oh, indeed.”

Pippa breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, then. He is my patron. Now I had best be go—”

“Not so fast.” The grip on her ear tightened. Tears burned her nose and eyes. “He is locked up in the Tower, his lands forfeit and his title attainted.”

Pippa gasped. Her mouth formed an O.

“I know,” said Leicester. “Oops.”

For the first time, her aplomb flagged. Usually she was nimble enough of wit and fleet enough of foot to get out of these scrapes. The thought of the stocks loomed large in her mind. This time, she was nailed indeed.

She decided to try a last ditch effort to gain a patron. Who? Lord Burghley? No, he was too old and humorless. Walsingham? No, not with his Puritan leanings. The queen herself, then. By the time Pippa’s claim could be verified, she would be long gone.

Then she spied the tall stranger looming at the back of the throng. Though he was most certainly foreign, he watched her with an interest that might even be colored by sympathy. Perhaps he spoke no English.

“Actually,” she said, “he is my patron.” She pointed in the direction of the foreigner. Be Dutch, she prayed silently. Or Swiss. Or drunk. Or stupid. Just play along.

The earl and the constable swung around, craning their necks to see. They did not have far to crane. The stranger stood like an oak tree amid low weeds, head and shoulders taller, oddly placid as the usual St. Paul’s crowd surged and seethed and whispered around him.

Pippa craned, too, getting her first close look at him. Their gazes locked. She, who had experienced practically everything in her uncounted years, felt a jolt of something so new and profound that she simply had no name for the feeling.

His eyes were a glittering, sapphire blue, but it was not the color or the startling face from which the eyes stared that mattered. A mysterious force dwelt behind the eyes, or in their depths. Awareness flew between Pippa and the stranger; she felt it enter her, dive into her depths like sunlight breaking through shadow.

Old Mab, the woman who had raised Pippa, would have called it magic.

Old Mab would have been right, for once.

The earl cupped his hands around his mouth. “You, sir!”

The foreigner pressed a very large hand to his much larger chest and raised a questioning black brow.

“Aye, sir,” called the earl. “This elvish female claims she is performing under your warrant. Is that so, sir?”

The crowd waited. The earl and the constable waited. When they looked away from her, Pippa clasped her hands and looked pleadingly at the stranger. Her ear was going numb in the pinch of the constable.

Pleading looks were her specialty. She had practiced them for years, using her large, pale eyes to prize coppers and crusts from passing strangers.

The foreigner raised a hand. Into the alleyway behind him flooded a troop of—Pippa was not certain what they were.

They moved about in a great mob like soldiers, but instead of tunics these men wore horrible gray animal hides, wolfskins by the look of them. They carried battleaxes with long handles. Some had shaved heads; others wore their hair loose and wild, tumbling over their brows.

Everyone moved aside when they entered the yard. Pippa did not blame the Londoners for shrinking in fear. She would have shrunk herself, but for the iron grip of the constable.

“Is that what the colleen said, then?” He strode forward. He spoke English, damn him. He had a very strange accent, but it was English.

He was huge. As a rule, Pippa liked big men. Big men and big dogs. They seemed to have less need to swagger and boast and be cruel than small ones. This man actually had a slight swagger, but she realized it was his way of squeezing a path through the crowd.

His hair was black. It gleamed in the morning light with shards of indigo and violet, flowing over his shoulders. A slim ebony strand was ornamented with a strap of rawhide and beads.

Pippa chided herself for being fascinated by a tall man with sapphire eyes. She should be taking the opportunity to run for cover rather than gawking like a Bedlamite at the foreigner. At the very least, she should be cooking up a lie to explain how, without his knowledge, she had come to be under his protection.

He reached the steps in front of the door, where she stood between the constable and Leicester. His flame-blue eyes glared at the constable until the man relinquished his grasp on Pippa’s ear.

Sighing with relief, she rubbed the abused, throbbing ear.

“I am Aidan,” the stranger said, “the O Donoghue Mór.”

A Moor! Immediately Pippa fell to her knees and snatched the hem of his deep blue mantle, bringing the dusty silk to her lips. The fabric felt heavy and rich, smooth as water and as exotic as the man himself.

“Do you not remember, Your Preeminence?” she cried, knowing important men adored honorary titles. “How you ever so tenderly extended your warrant of protection to my poor, downtrodden self so that I’d not starve?” As she rambled on, she found a most interesting bone-handled knife tucked into the cuff of his tall boot. Unable to resist, she stole it, her movements so fluid and furtive that no one saw her conceal it in her own boot.

Her gaze traveled upward over a strong leg. The sight set off a curious tingling. Strapped to his thigh was a shortsword as sharp and dangerous looking as the man himself.

“You said you did not wish me to suffer the tortures of Clink Prison, nor did you want my pitiful weight forever on your delicate conscience, making you terrified to burn in hell for eternity because you let a defenseless woman fall victim to—”

“Yes,” said the Moor.

She dropped his hem and stared up at him. “What?” she asked stupidly.

“Yes indeed, I remember, Mistress…er—”

“Trueheart,” she supplied helpfully, plucking a favorite name from the arsenal of her imagination. “Pippa Trueheart.”

The Moor faced Leicester. The smaller man gaped up at him. “There you are, then,” said the black-haired lord. “Mistress Pippa Trueheart is performing under my warrant.”

With a huge bear paw of a hand, he took her arm and brought her to her feet. “I do confess the little baggage is unmanageable at times and did slip away for today’s performance. From now on I shall keep her in closer tow.”