Susan Wiggs - At The King's Command

“Aye, ’tis not my place to ponder the whys and wherefores of your new wedded state. Lord above knows, my poor old mind is too feeble to grasp how you got in such a fix.” She clasped her work-reddened hands. “Now that you’ve seen to the bathing, my lord, the gypsy needs a set of clothes. As to her savage ways, we’ll see about them later.”

“Is she truly strange, Nance?” Stephen asked, trying hard not to relive the tempest in the millstream. “Sometimes I glimpse something in her manner, hear a note in her speech, and I wonder.”

“She’s a gypsy, my lord, and everyone knows gypsies are great imitators.” The goodwife sniffed and poked her broad red nose into the air. “Much like a monkey I once saw. ’Twas a mariner at Bristol, see, and he…”

His attention fading, Stephen nodded vaguely and planted his chin in his hand. It struck him that he had not entered this room in eight years. The chamber, with its adjoining music suite and solar, wardrobes and close-rooms, had been Meg’s domain.

Though hastily aired and dusted for the new baroness, the room still bore Meg’s indelible imprint—the fussy scalloped bed draperies of fading pink damask, the blank-eyed poppet propped on the window seat, the mirrored candle holder Stephen himself had designed. And on a slim-legged table lay a bone hairbrush, its back etched with a scene of the Virgin guarded by a unicorn.

Fearful of the emotion building inside him, he scowled at the floor. And spied, half-hidden by the fringe of the counterpane, a bright bit of string. Distracted by the out-of-place object, he stood and crossed the room to pick it up. “What is this?”

Nance caught her breath. “Milady was playing at Jacob’s ladder the very night—”

Stephen turned toward Nance. His icy glare stopped her cold.

Nance’s hand fluttered at her bosom. “Ah, the sweet-ling. Ever the child, she was.”

The memory stung like salt on the wound of Stephen’s guilt. He thought of his vagabond bride invading this room, sleeping in Meg’s bed, handling Meg’s things.

Like a weed, Juliana would blight the perfectly ordered chamber.

I’m sorry, Meg. Sorry for everything. The regrets poured like quicklime through him.

“…burn the clothes, of course,” Old Nance was saying, having slipped back into her matter-of-fact manner.

Stephen shook his head, drawing his mind from painful remembrances. He stalked back and forth in front of the windows. “What’s that you say?”

“The gypsy, my lord. Her clothes are no doubt infested with vermin. ’Tis best they are burnt.”

“Aye, but then she’ll have nothing to—oh.” Stephen pressed his fist on the window embrasure. “She is of a size with Meg.”

“Not quite so plump as your first wife, my lord, but I could take a tuck or two in some of the gowns. Er, that is, if you don’t mind—”

“I don’t.” He slammed the door on his memories.

“And about a lady’s maid, my lord—”

“She doesn’t need a maid, but a warden.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Nance said. “While you was occupied with your wife, I sent to the village for Jillie Egan, the dyer’s daughter.”

“Jillie Egan?” Stephen aimed a mocking scowl at Nance. “Oh, you are naughty, dear lady. The Egan girl’s the size of a bullock, and has a stubborn will to match.”

Nance winked broadly. “She’ll not tolerate any stomaching from the gypsy.”

Stephen strode to the door. “Do as you see fit. I’ve a pressing engagement elsewhere.”

Nance Harbutt nodded in complete understanding. “My lord, what will you tell your new wife about—”

“Nothing at all,” he cut in, his voice as sharp as a knife. “Not a blessed, solitary thing.”

“I trow that particular shade of blue is called woad,” said a faintly amused voice.

“Eek!” Juliana nearly came out of her numb, chilled skin. She spun away from the polished steel mirror to face the intruder. “Dear Lord,” she whispered in rapid Russian, “my jailer is a giantess.”

Her gaze traveled from the boatlike feet clad in sturdy clogs to the ruddy face framed by coarse yellow hair. The distance was at least a score of hands—the height of a grown plow horse.

“I don’t speak Egyptian, milady.” The giantess placed her pawlike hands on her hips and leaned forward, peering frankly at Juliana. “I assumed you was trying to decide what shade of blue your lips turned from the cold bath. I’d say woad, from the mustard leaf.”

“Woad,” Juliana repeated stupidly, shaping her lips around the difficult w.

“Aye, I knows me colors. Me da is a dyer. Blue as a titbird’s throat you are, milady.”

Clutching a robe around her shivering form, Juliana blinked in astonishment. The fact was, she had turned blue from the icy bath in the churning, spring-fed millstream. After the heartless dunking Stephen had subjected her to, she had slogged back to the house, cursing him in a patois of English, Romany, and Russian. When the ogress arrived, Juliana had been staring into the mirror and wondering if her coloring would ever return to normal.

“Who are you?” She managed to force the question past her chattering teeth.

“Jillie Egan.” The woman bobbed an awkward curtsy. “I’m to be your new lady’s maid.”

A lady’s maid. Juliana closed her eyes for a moment and surrendered to memories she usually kept locked away. As a girl, she had been attended by no fewer than four maids—all of them pretty as daisies, impeccably groomed, and nearly as accomplished as their young mistress.

“Milady?” The ogress interrupted her thoughts. “’Tis nigh time for you to be getting to supper.”

Jillie led Juliana close to the hearth fire and unwound the linen toweling from her hair. The damp locks reeked of strong herbs Stephen had used to kill the lice. Jillie untied the shapeless robe, replacing it with a long, fine shift. The sheer fabric was gossamer to Juliana’s skin, so deliciously different from the coarse homespun of her gypsy garb.

“Belonged to the first baroness, this did,” Jillie commented, shaking out the scalloped hem of the shift.

“Lord Wimberleigh’s mother?” Juliana inquired.

“Heavens, no. That one turned up her noble toes a score of years ago. Lord Wimberleigh’s first wife.”

Juliana caught her breath. It had never occurred to her that Stephen de Lacey had been married before. A wife. Stephen was a widower. Suddenly the thought colored everything she knew about him: the hooded sadness deep in his eyes, his bitter resentment of Juliana, his long, brooding silences and searing moments of high temper.

“Where are my own clothes?” she demanded.

“Nance said they was dirty past washing, crawling with vermin and such. She had them burned.”

“No!” The shout broke from Juliana on a wave of panic. “I must find them. I need my—”

“Bauble, milady?” Jillie handed over the brooch. “I spied it pinned inside the waist of your skirt.”

Juliana went weak with relief; then hope began to warm her blood. The ogress might be someone she could trust. Perhaps the only one she could trust until…She thought of the vurma trail she had left during her journey to Wiltshire, the bits of thread and fabric she had left to mark her way. Hurry, Laszlo.

Praying her guardian would rescue her from her own foolishness, she closed her fingers around the brooch. “Thank you.” In spite of herself she was beginning to like the big bossy maid. As her tension and suspicion relaxed, she decided to give up her gypsy disguise. Her plan to exhort King Henry for help had failed, but perhaps here she’d find help from Stephen de Lacey. How far would he go, she wondered, and how much would he risk to be rid of her?