At The Queen's Summons

Her hand wavered a little as she brought it up to touch her hair, which now curled softly around her glowing face. “The best he could?” she attempted. Then she dropped her air of trembling uncertainty. “You are trying to change the subject. Are you or are you not a father-murderer?”

He planted his hands on his hips. “That depends on whom you ask.”

She mimicked his aggressive stance, looking for all the world like a fierce pixie. “I’m asking you.”

“And I’ve answered you.”

“But it was the wrong answer,” she said, so vehemently that he expected her to stomp her foot. Something—the washing, the grooming—had made her glow as if a host of fairies had showered her with a magical mist. “I demand an explanation.”

“I feel no need to explain myself to a stranger,” he said, dismayed by the intensity of his attraction to her.

“We are not strangers, Your Loftiness,” she said with heavy irony. “Wasn’t it just this morning that you undressed me and then dressed me like the most intimate of handmaids?”

He winced at the reminder. Beneath her elfin daintiness lay a soft, womanly body that he craved with a power that was both undeniable and inappropriate. Shed of her beggar’s garb, she had become the sort of woman for whom men swore to win honors, slay dragons, cheerfully lay down their lives. And he was in no position to do any of those things.

“Some would say,” he admitted darkly, “that the death of Ronan O Donoghue was an accident.” From the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of lightning through the mullioned windows on the east side of the hall.

“What do you say?” Pippa asked.

“I say it is none of your affair. And if you persist in talking about it, I might have to do something permanent to you.”

She sniffed, clearly recognizing the idleness of his threat. He was not accustomed to females who were unafraid of him. “If I had a father, I’d cherish him.”

“You do have a father. The war hero, remember?”

She blinked. “Oh. Him. Yes, of course.”

Aidan slammed a fist on the stone mantel and regarded the Lumley shield hanging above as if it were a higher authority. “What am I going to do with you?” The wind hurled gusts against the windows, and he swung around to glower at her.

“‘Do’ with me?” She glanced back over her shoulder at the door. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to be alone with him. She wouldn’t be the first.

“You can’t stay here forever,” he stated. “I didn’t ask to be your protector.” The twist of guilt in his gut startled him. He was not used to making cruel statements to defenseless women.

She did not look surprised. Instead, she dropped one shoulder and regarded him warily. She resembled a dog so used to being kicked that it came as a surprise when it was not kicked.

Her rounded chin came up. “I never asked to stay forever. I can go back to Dove and Mortlock. We have plans to gain the patronage of…of the Holy Roman Emperor.”

He remembered her disreputable companions from St. Paul’s—the portly and greasy Dove and the cadaverous Mortlock. “They must be mad with worry over you.”

“Those two?” She snorted and idly picked up the iron poker, stabbing at the log in the hearth. Sparks flew upward on a sweep of air, then disappeared. “They only worry about losing me because they need me to cry up a crowd. Their specialty is cutting purses.”

“I won’t let you go back to them,” Aidan heard himself say. “I’ll find you a—” he thought for a moment “—a situation with a gentlewoman—”

That made her snort again, this time with bitter laughter. “Oh, for that I should be well and truly suited.” She slammed the poker back into its stand. “It has long been my aim in life to empty some lady’s slops and pour wine for her.” The hem of her skirts twitched in agitation as she pantomimed the menial work.

“It’s a damned sight better than wandering the streets.” Irritated, he walked to the table and sloshed wine into a cup. The lightning flashed again, stark and cold in the April night.

“Oh, do tell, my lord.” She stalked across the room, slapped her palms on the table, leaned over and glared into his face. “Listen. I am an entertainer. I am good at it.”

So he had noticed. She could mimic any accent, highborn or low, copy any movement with fluid grace, change character from one moment to the next like an actor trying on different masks.

“I didn’t ask you to drag me out of St. Paul’s and into your life,” she stated.

“I don’t remember any objections from you when I saved you from having your ears nailed to the stocks.” He tasted the wine, a sweet sack favored by the English nobility. He missed his nightly draft of poteen. Pippa was enough to make him crave two drafts of the powerful liquor.

“I was hungry. But that doesn’t mean I’ve surrendered my life to you. I can get another position in a nobleman’s household just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

She was so close, he could see the dimple that winked in her left cheek. She smelled of soap and sun-dried laundry, and now that her hair was fixed, it shone like spun gold in the glow from the hearth.

He took another sip of wine. Then, very gently, he set down the cup and reached across to touch a wispy curl that drifted across her cheek. “How can it be enough to simply survive?” he asked softly. “Do you never dream of doing more than that?”

“Damn you,” she said, echoing his words to her. She shoved away from the table and turned her back on him. There was a heartbreaking pride in the stiff way she held herself, the set of her shoulders and the haughty tilt of her head. “Goodbye, Your Worship. Thank you for our brief association. We shan’t be seeing each other again.”

“Pippa, wait—”

In a sweep of skirts and injured dignity, she strode out of the hall, disappearing into the gloom of the cloister that bordered the herbiary. Aidan could not explain it, but the sight of her walking away from him caused a painful squeeze of guilt and regret in his chest.

He swore under his breath and finished his wine, then paced the room. He had more pressing matters to ponder than the fate of a saucy street performer. Clan wars and English aggression were tearing his district apart. The settlement he had negotiated last year was shaky at best. A sad matter, that, since he had paid such a dear price for the settlement. He had bought peace at the cost of his heart.

The thought caused his mind to jolt back to Pippa. The ungrateful little female. Let her storm off to her chamber and sulk until she came to her senses.

It occurred to him then that she was the sort not to sulk, but to act. She had survived—and thrived—by doing just that.

A jagged spear of lightning split the sky just as a terrible thought occurred to him. Hurling the pewter wine cup to the floor, he dashed out of the house and into the cloister of Crutched Friars, running down the arcade to her door, jerking it open.

Empty. He passed through the refectory and emerged onto the street. He had been right. He saw Pippa in the distance, hurrying down the broad, tree-lined road leading to Woodroffe Lane and the eerie, lawless area around Tower Hill. A gathering wind stirred the bobbing heads of chestnut trees. Clouds rolled and tumbled, blackening the sky, and when he breathed in, he caught the heavy taste and scent of rain and the faint, sizzling tang of close lightning.

She walked faster still, half running.

Turn back, he called to her silently, trying to will her to do his bidding. Turn back and look at me.

Instead, she lifted her skirts and began to run. As she passed the communal well of Hart Street, lightning struck.

From where Aidan stood, it looked as if the very hand of God had cleaved the heavens and sent a bolt of fire down to bury itself in the breast of London. A crash of thunder seemed to shake the ground. The clouds burst open like a ripe fruit, and it began to rain.

For an Irishman, Aidan was not very superstitious, but thunder and lightning were a clear sign from a powerful source. He should not have let her go.

Without a second thought, he plunged into the howling storm, racing between the rows of wildly bending chestnut trees. The rain pelted him in huge, cold drops, and lightning speared down through the clouds once more.

He dragged a hand across his rain-stung eyes and squinted through the sodden twilight. Already the ditch down the middle of the street ran like a small, flooding river, carrying off the effluvia of London households.

People scurried for cover here and there, but the darkness had swallowed Pippa. He shouted her name. The storm drowned his voice. With a curse, he began a methodical search of each side alley and path he encountered, working south toward the river, turning westward toward St. Paul’s each time he saw a way through.

The storm gathered force, belting him in the face, tearing at his clothes. Mud spattered him to the thighs, but he ignored it.

He went farther west, turning into each alley, calling her name. The rain blinded him, the wind buffeted him, the mud sucked at his feet.

At a particularly grim-looking street, the wind tore down a painted sign of a blue devil and hurled it to the ground. It struck a slanting cellar door, then fell sideways onto a pile of wood chippings.