At The King's Command

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.”

Three

“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?

“Jillie,” she said speculatively, “can you do hair?”

The maid grinned. “Like I were born to it, milady. By the time I’ve done, your new husband won’t know you.”

“Well, Wimberleigh,” said Jonathan Youngblood. “Don’t keep me on tenterhooks like a side of pork. What’s she like?”

Stephen squeezed his eyes shut, silently cursed Havelock’s wagging tongue then opened his eyes to glare at his best friend. Jonathan sat easily in a carved box chair at the opposite end of the trestle table. Older than Stephen by a decade, he bore the scars of the Scots wars and the ample girth of good living. His bristly gray hair stuck out in spikes around a florid face, and he dressed like a ploughman, for he was never one to bow to fashion. A knight of the old order, Jonathan Youngblood had no use for the perfumed, posturing gentlemen who now dominated the court.

His warm brown eyes were the kindest Stephen had ever known. Blessed with an even dozen sons, Jonathan had sent Kit to live with Stephen, thinking the lad would fill the void of Stephen’s childlessness.

If he only knew the truth…Stephen batted the thought away. “I ought to give you no preparation at all,” he declared.

“Just a hint, then. Otherwise I shall spend the evening gaping like a visitor to Bedlam.”

Stephen sighed and took a sip of malmsey from his pewter goblet, then set the cup down. The metallic clank echoed through the cavernous dining hall, with its tapestry hangings and the hammer-beam ceiling arching like giant ribs high above. The table was laid with fine plate and crockery for a sumptuous meal. Spiked on wrought-silver holders were beeswax tapers, their flames bending gently from the breeze through the tall, slender windows.

Great princes, learned scholars and dour clergymen had dined at this table, Stephen reflected. But never a half-wild vagabond. No doubt she had the manners of a sow.

Blowing out a sigh, he decided to tell Jonathan the truth. “Her name is Juliana, and she claims to be from the kingdom of Muscovy or Rus. No doubt ’tis a fiction she invented. She has been traveling with a band of gypsies.”

Jonathan’s eyes widened. “I had heard the king saddled you with a foreign wench, but I thought ’twas another of Havelock’s embellishments. Or a jest of the king.”