At The King's Command (22 page)

Juliana tucked the coverlet over him. “Do you truly think it was my fault? He fought me when I touched him.”

“He’s a prickly little thing. Hard to say what set him off.” They sat in the tidy kitchen, sipping small ale while Dame Kristine talked. For the past seven years, Oliver had lived here, visited nightly by his father and on occasion by an eminent physician. The lad had been bled, leeched, purged, dosed and bathed in every concoction imaginable, but none of the treatments seemed to stop the attacks.

Stephen gave him toys and books and amusements—mechanical soldiers, a skin horse that made a whinnying sound, a model castle with a working catapult, a puppet
theatre and a variety of games. The lad lived in a fairyland with every magical gift Stephen could bestow upon him.

And yet Juliana was struck by the conviction that Stephen withheld the one thing the boy needed most—a father’s love.

Jillie practically had to wrestle her into submission to keep her still long enough to dress her for supper.

“Now, that’s a rare shade,” the maid said, touching Juliana’s cheek. “I’ve no label for it, but were I to give it a name, I’d not be far wrong to call it choler. What’s amiss, my lady?”

Juliana patted her coif. “I must speak to his lordship about a matter. And it is impertinent of you to ask.”

Jillie mumbled something under her breath.

“What did you say?”

In clumsy Romany, Jillie said, “Everyone doth something know which you have yet to learn.” Grinning, she reverted to English. “Now, if you’ll not be needing me again, milady…”

Juliana could not help smiling. She squeezed her maid’s hand. “Go on with you, Jillie.” After she had left, Juliana’s smile lingered. Jillie Egan had never ventured farther than the village of Chippenham. But Rodion, it seemed, was bringing the world to her.

She recalled Stephen’s warning about allowing Jillie to dally with a man who might break her heart. Indeed. As if her husband were an expert on the vagaries of romance.

“Ah, Stephen,” she whispered to the empty room, “’tis you who have much to learn.”

She squared her shoulders and went to find him.

S
tephen had been unable to concentrate all day. In his routine meetings with his steward and reeve, he had been vague and unfocused, barely attending to the details of management that usually fascinated him. Even his latest contraption—a pulley to open the main gate unattended—failed to hold his attention.

A persistent dread had taken up lodging in him, and he could think of nothing save the reason why.

Juliana had found out about Oliver.

Against his will, Stephen remembered the day King Henry had revealed that he knew the secret.

“It comes to me that you’ve been hiding something, my lord,” King Henry had said, his voice ringing to the rafters of the Presence Chamber.

With his insides knotting, Stephen had knelt before the gold-canopied throne and waited for the king to continue.

Henry waved a jeweled hand to banish his courtiers from the dais. He dropped his voice low and said, “Why did you not tell me that Meg’s son still lives?”

Stephen had yearned to deny it, to tell the king he was mistaken. But the look on Henry’s face—stern, all-knowing,
and just at the edge of royal fury—convinced him that it was time for the truth to emerge.

“I…The lad is sickly. The physicians do not expect him to survive.”
Oliver, Jesu, Oliver, forgive me
.

Henry had been silent for a few moments; then a look of cruelty hardened his black eyes. “Meg’s son. And is he your son, as well, my lord of Wimberleigh?”

The question seared Stephen like a glowing brand. He longed to spring up and throttle his sovereign king. Instead, he held Henry’s attention with an unwavering stare.

“The boy is mine, sire.”

“Ah. And yet you gave it out that the child had perished when Meg died birthing him.”

Stephen nodded, full of the old familiar feelings of shame. “I…it seemed simpler that way, sire. There was little chance that he would live. Even when he did, he was always so sickly that I feared each day would be his last.”

Henry’s thick fingers had drummed on the figured wooden arm of his chair. “Indeed. And now, my lord?”

“Oliver is deathly ill.” He narrowed his eyes and hoped to hide the glint of defiance. “His condition is the same…as Dickon’s was.”

“Dickon. Named for the usurper, Richard of the house of York.” Henry’s fingers fell still. “My lord, you’ll doubt this, but I truly am sorry for what befell your elder son.”

“You’re right, sire. I do doubt it.”

“Marry, I thought you might. Still, I did not summon you here to reopen that old wound, but to discuss your other boy. Oliver, is that his name?”

Stephen nodded. He burned to know who had told the king.

“Oliver is the son of one of my most powerful barons,” Henry said, stroking his red beard. “He should not be
exempt from royal service. If other nobles found out, they, too, would demand special treatment.”

“Sire, it is not beneath me to beg for mercy,” Stephen had said.

“Beg for what?”

A light, feminine voice hauled him from the dark depths of memory. He leaped to his feet as Juliana stepped into the room.

“Madam,” he said icily, furious that he had spoken his remembered words aloud.

She closed the door behind her. She looked, he could not help but notice, particularly comely in a peacock-colored skirt and matching bodice. Her hair was swept into a gold net to reveal the length and delicacy of her neck. “We must do something about Oliver.”

“You are not to speak of him.” Stephen measured his words, aware that to betray too much emotion would give her even more power over him. “Not to me,” he continued, “not to your gypsy friends and most especially not to anyone at Lynacre.”

Three brisk steps forward brought her to the edge of the table. “He is your son, my lord, and my stepson. I intend to speak of him anytime I wish.”

He stood and grasped her shoulders, wrenching an exclamation of surprise from her. “I forbid it.”

Rather than shrink from him as he expected her to do, she leaned closer still, so that their noses nearly touched. “Why?” she demanded.

“Because the world isn’t safe for a boy like Oliver.” The black violence of rage swirled like a storm inside him. With an explosive motion of his arms, Stephen thrust her back.

She stumbled, then regained her balance. He could not
believe he had handled her so savagely. He felt the urge to apologize, yet she seemed unperturbed. Calm, even.

“Stephen. I want to understand. What do you mean, the world is not safe for him?”

“Life is hard enough for a strong, hale lad. If people knew about Oliver, there would be…expectations.”

“What sort of expectations?”

“He’d be required to go to court. It’s bad enough that the king knows. If Cromwell ever found out, he’d goad Henry into summoning Oliver.”

“That seems quite an honor. Court—”

“—is what killed his brother, you meddlesome harpy. I told you that. Dickon was smaller than the other boys. They played cruel tricks on him, teased him about his weakness. If Dickon ever felt the honor of serving at court, it was crushed by petty rivalries that would challenge even a healthy boy.”

Stephen turned sharply away, pounding his fist on the window embrasure and staring furiously at the rolling landscape beyond. Far in the distance, Kit and a gypsy girl in a red skirt rode bareback across the fells. There were moments when he hated Jonathan Youngblood’s son, hated the boy’s high good health, his easy, athletic grace. Yet at the same time he thanked God for Kit, who was living proof of the sweetness of life.

He heard Juliana walk closer to him and felt a jolt of surprise. He had expected her to depart. In tears. Why shouldn’t she, after the insult he had flung at her?

Instead, she touched him. At first Stephen was too startled to react. Her warm hands found the small of his back and traveled upward slowly, tenderly, until they found the knots of tension in his shoulders. Her caress was compelling, her hands deft and sure. She knew the
soothing power of a human touch on aching flesh. Knew the strange bond that formed when two creatures united in mutual need, one hurting, the other healing.

“Stop,” he said in a low, outraged whisper.

“No.”

“Juliana…”

“Turn and look at me, Stephen. Turn and tell me you want me to go away.”

He swung around, and her hands migrated to the tops of his shoulders and the sides of his neck. His tongue felt thick, and he forgot what she wanted him to say.

“I command you to forget Oliver. Leave him to those who have cared for him all these years. He’s
dying
, Juliana.”

“We are all dying, Stephen. No one has ever escaped this world with his mortal life.”

He had no ready answer for that. He found himself caught in the depths of her eyes. How green they were—not a hard emerald or jade but soft and luminous like new leaves with the sun glowing behind them.

“Stephen?”

He blinked, realizing he had been staring into her eyes as if deep within her dwelt a place he yearned to go. Only with great effort did he summon the words that would distance him from her once again.

“The matter of my son is closed, Juliana. He is to remain as he is, and you are to forget you ever saw him.”

“Forget I have a stepson?” The simplicity of her question rendered Stephen’s command ridiculous.

He raked a hand through his hair. “What I mean is, leave him be. Let him have peace, Juliana.”

“My lord, I can’t claim to know a great deal about little boys. But I do know that they do not crave peace.”

Her words awakened memories in Stephen—of Oliver’s
first toothless smile, his first wobbly steps, his first words. But the milestones were slain by the darker remembrances: the episodes of wheezing that left the lad exhausted and weak, the fevers that raged for days and nights. The illness was like a demon, lurking in the shadows and then springing out to fling Stephen into black, impenetrable despair.

“I know what is best for my son,” he said through gritted teeth. “You are not to interfere with him.”

“He lives like a hermit.”

“He has everything a boy could want and more,” Stephen snapped. “A garden. A houseful of playthings. A caring, attentive and learned servant.”

“And a father?” Juliana asked in a voice so soft Stephen thought he had heard wrong. “Does he have a father?”

“Of course he has a father!” The words exploded from him, causing her to jump back. “I go to him every evening and sometimes during the day, as well. Were I like most men, I’d foster him out to some other family and see him only once a twelvemonth.”

“If you were like most fathers,” she shot back, “you would touch him, hold him close instead of keeping him hidden away!” She poked a small finger at his shoulder. “How long has it been, my lord, since you took that child in your arms, kissed him and told him that you love him?”

The words lashed at Stephen.
Never
. The truth gave a razor edge to the sting. How could he show a rough-and-tumble affection for Oliver? The boy was too fragile, too excitable. He could die during one of his attacks.

“I won’t be judged by you,” Stephen said furiously. “This illness could take him at any moment. It will claim him all the sooner if you persist in meddling with him.”

“He is sick. I know that. But he is also a boy. He wants
desperately to be treated like a boy. To be loved—not with lavish and expensive gifts, but with your heart. Let me love him if you will not.”

Her soft plea scourged him like a knotted whip. “Madam,” he said, whispering to keep himself in control, “if you knew how close I am to throttling you, you would be diving for cover on the instant.”

She threw back her shoulders and tipped up her chin. “How can you keep him at a distance—your own flesh and blood, the child of the woman you love beyond the grave?”

Stephen was taken aback. He wondered where she had gotten that notion. Then he remembered the day Juliana had found him at the shrine. Good God, could she truly think he went there out of love? In truth, he went to the shrine because he knew no way to remedy a
failed
love.

The grief of losing his wife and elder son had never healed. Sometimes he bore it; other times he would hear the furious roar of a storm and only belatedly realize it was the tempest inside him. A part of him had been torn away. Oliver was the only intact portion of the past, and Stephen was terrified of the day the pattern would be altered by the lad’s passing.

“I treat my son like a prince,” he said.

“You treat him like he is on his deathbed! He spends every day waiting to die! Each day he lives should be a gift, Stephen. Why can you not understand? He is alive now. Every life is precious. Every hour, every minute, every breath Oliver takes. Each day should be a celebration, not a vigil. Not endless hours waiting for death to come.” Her accent became more pronounced and her breathing quickened. How could she care so compassionately for a boy she did not even know?

“You speak a pretty case, Juliana,” Stephen said harshly.
“However, your pleas impress me not. I know my son. Oliver is simply too fragile to celebrate life, whatever that means. Unbridled revelries would only hasten his death.”

Vivid color shot to her cheeks. She stood on tiptoe, her small fists gripping the front of his jerkin. “The way you entomb your son in that hideaway, my lord, he already
is
dead.”

Juliana Romanov de Lacey lived a double life. With her husband she was distant yet decorous, as a proper lady in a loveless marriage should be. She accepted his interdict against acknowledging the existence of Oliver.

Yet each day, she defied Stephen in thought and in deed. Flouting the dictates of her husband, she wended her way through the maze and visited Oliver.

At first they simply talked, for he was as wary and skittish as an untamed colt.

“Your father must not know I come to see you,” she had said on her first visit, only minutes after her hurtful argument with Stephen. “Dame Kristine agrees with me.”

She did not mention what it had cost her to extract that agreement. For the rest of her days, she would owe indulgences to the Roman church.

Oliver had glared at her through narrowed eyes. “I might tell him.”

“That would be a pity.” She heaved a great sigh. “I was going to bring Pavlo to meet you—”

“Who is Pavlo?” Oliver had asked, struggling to appear uninterested.

Juliana had eyed him mysteriously. “The strongest, swiftest and bravest friend in all the world. But I needn’t say more, since you’re going to tell your papa—”

“I never said I’d tell.”

Juliana had hidden a smile of satisfaction. The promise of meeting Pavlo had been enough to buy Oliver’s complicity.

On her next visit, she found the lad as usual, lying in his darkened room, a painted chessboard on his knees and a scowl of ill humor on his pale face. A bowl of gruel sat untouched on a tray beside the bed. Dame Kristine dozed in the box chair in the next room.