Susan Wiggs - At The King's Command

He slid his gaze slowly over her. She sat astride, her patched skirts hiked up and billowing over the saddlebow. Long bare legs and dusty feet clung expertly to the horse’s sides.

“Believe me,” Stephen assured her, “I have higher standards for the women I bed.” His fury at the king honed an edge of cruelty to his words. “You seem better suited to certain other domestic tasks.”

She glared at him with loathing hot in her eyes. “I will not do your Gajo washing, nor work in your Gajo fields.” With her strange dog trotting at her horse’s stirrup, she rode stone-faced, looking disturbingly like a scatterling from a siege. When they stopped at wayside inns along the way, she ate and drank mechanically. At night she lay unmoving on a pallet. The dog never left her side, and while she slept he remained vigilant, lifting his black lip and growling if Stephen even so much as blinked at Juliana.

Kit, understandably discomfited by the tension, kept up a constant, mindless chatter as they trudged through the terraced green west country: King Henry had sent aides abroad in search of a new royal bride. At the royal court of France, people drank from cups that, when drained, revealed a man and woman in flagrante delicto. Sebastian Cabot, the mariner, had sent a savage from New Spain to London, and the creature was on display at the Bear Garden.

By the time the broad fields, scored by stone fences and thorny hedgerows, yielded to the ancient bounds of Lynacre, Stephen’s shoulders ached with strain.

He glanced back and caught a familiar sight. Juliana had ridden too near the roadside hedgerow, and the hem of her skirt had snagged on the spiny bush. She yanked at it, and a piece tore off.

He knew her to be an excellent rider. Yet throughout the journey she had been careless with her person, leaving bits of thread or fabric or a few strands of her unkempt hair in the hedgerows.

She was clearly up to mischief and would bear watching.

“Ride ahead and announce us, Kit,” Stephen said to his squire. “Let the kitchen know we’ve not eaten since breakfast, and tell Nance Harbutt the baroness will require a bath.”

Kit kicked his mount into a canter and rode off, a plume of dust filling his wake. Stephen started off again—slowly, knowing with dread certainty that he was bringing havoc into his well-ordered world.

A lark in the hedge trilled, then fell silent. Only the soft thud of the horses’ hooves and the creak of saddle leather punctuated the heavy stillness.

Moments later the gypsy’s dog snarled and bounded across a field, a white streak flowing over the ancient barrows and undulating downs.

“Where’s he off to?” Stephen muttered.

“He heard something.” Juliana cocked her head. “Other dogs—I hear them now.”

Stephen scanned the horizon, looking past the clumps of bright, blossoming furze and stands of thorn and holly to the chalk heights in the distance. When he spied the rider, he cursed under his breath. “Of all the people to encounter…”

Juliana followed his glare. “Who is it?”

“My nearest neighbor, and the loudest gossip in Wiltshire.”

“You are afraid of gossip, my lord?”

Juliana watched Pavlo set upon the lurchers that accompanied the rider. The baying and yelping startled a flock of rooks from a stand of ash trees. The birds rose like a storm cloud, darkening the sky before wheeling off over the chalk hills.

Somewhat pleased that Pavlo had broken the monotony of the journey and the strain of their silence, Juliana clapped her hands, then cupped them around her mouth and called a command in Russian. Pavlo came bounding back, his narrow head held high, his feathery tail waving like a victor’s banner.

While the lurchers ran for their lives, the rider cantered down a sheep walk that joined the road through a break in the hedge. He pulled his horse up short and glared at the huge dog. “The blighted beast should be garroted,” he grumbled.

“He’d probably fight back, Algernon,” said Lord Wimberleigh.

“God’s holy teeth.” The young man peered past Stephen and stared at Juliana. While he studied her tattered clothes and matted hair, she stared back, taking in the fine cut of his doublet and riding cloak, the slimness of his gloved hands on the reins. Beneath a velvet cap, a wealth of golden curls framed his narrow, comely face. “What the devil have you got there, Wimberleigh?”

“A very large mistake,” said Stephen de Lacey, “but one I fear I am saddled with until I make some arrangements.”

Saddled with! As if she were a mare with the botch, to be foisted on some unsuspecting gudgeon at a horse fair. Juliana’s esteem for Lord Wimberleigh, never particularly high, slipped another notch.

“Marry, I forgot my manners,” he went on in that blithe, sarcastic way of his. “Algernon, this lady calls herself Juliana Romanov. Juliana, this is Algernon Basset, earl of Havelock.”

The jaunty young man flashed her a smile. He removed his cap, the long feather fluttering as he held it against his chest. “Charmed, Lady Error,” he said with a merry laugh.

Juliana felt a small spark of recognition. Havelock was a man of humor, breeding and manners. He would not have been out of place in her father’s elite circle of friends. Havelock was very unlike Stephen de Lacey, the brooding man who had, on a cavalier impulse that he clearly regretted, married her.

She gave the earl a cautious smile. “Enchantée, my lord.”

Algernon’s pale eyebrows lifted. Juliana was not certain what surprised him—her accent, her voice…or her smile. “And what brings you to our district?”

Juliana sent him the sly trickster’s grin she had learned from Rodion’s younger sister, Catriona. “Marriage, my lord.”

“Ah. You look to wed a sheepman, perhaps, or one of the dyers from the village?”

Though Juliana would have enjoyed cozening him awhile, Wimberleigh gave an impatient grunt. “She’s married to me, Algernon, and the tale is long in the telling, so I—”

“To you?” Algernon’s eyes bugged out. Juliana imagined she heard a clanking sound as his jaw dropped. “To you?”

“By order of the king,” Stephen explained, his voice tight, as if each word were wrung from him. “And Algernon, I’d appreciate it most highly if you could silence yourself—”

“Silence myself? Not for a third ball, Wimberleigh,” Havelock said, grinning broadly and resting a hand on his codpiece. “A Tower warden couldn’t muzzle me.” With a guffaw of sheer delight, he jammed on his hat, spurred his mount, and galloped back the way he had come.

Wimberleigh squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. He uttered a strange word that probably referred to some disgusting body function.

During the remainder of the journey, Juliana fought to remain calm and rational. She was a nobleman’s wife. His charming disposition notwithstanding, she might turn her new status to advantage. Her role as a baroness might help her bring her family’s murderers to justice.

Regrets rattled in a small, hollowed-out place inside her. She was to have married Alexei Shuisky. Her memories of the young boyar had been gilded by yearning dreams, and in her mind he had grown more handsome and engaging with the passage of time. How happy they would have been, living at one of the splendid Shuisky estates, raising their children amid beauty and splendor.

Juliana scowled at Stephen de Lacey, who sat his horse like a commoner, his broad shoulders clad in the simplest of garments, his golden hair overlong and in need of trimming. He had ruined any chance she might have had at a future in Novgorod.

Unless…Insidious as the wind through the hood of a caravan, an idea took hold. The king of England himself had claimed the power to end a marriage. It had been all the talk when Juliana first arrived in England. King Henry had put his Spanish wife on the shelf in order to wed a dark-eyed court lady. Even the gypsies had been impressed by his boldness.