At The King's Command (29 page)

Garnet buttons
.

“Alexei?” she asked.

He brushed his knuckle under her chin. “I had always imagined you would be agreeable to look at,” he said, his cultured Russian a song in her ears. “I never dared to dream you would be so beautiful, and yet you are.”

His words made her shiver. She could not take her eyes off those buttons.

“You received my messages!”

He slashed a dark brow up at her. “Messages?”

“All of them,” she said, suspicion rising like bile in her throat. “I sent one button with each message to your family, knowing they would pay in gold for my token.”

He took her arm, seemingly with gentleness, but Juliana could feel the secret bite of his strong fingers grasping her just above the elbow.

“You must have gotten the first one four years ago or more. Alexei, why did you wait so long to find me?” she asked.

Still he did not answer, did not stop walking until he reached the dais where the king waited.

Juliana could scarcely think for the confusion in her mind. Whirling, swirling thoughts, crystallizing and then disappearing like snowflakes on the water.

“My good and loyal ambassador from all the Russias,” Henry said expansively. “You don’t know how glad I am to receive you.” His speech was florid with diplomatic niceties; Juliana recognized the high flattery from her girlhood, when she and her brothers used to hide beneath the marble stairs at Novgorod and listen to their father and the other boyars.

The sudden memory of Boris and Misha made her eyes burn. She forced herself to listen to the conversation.

“Prince Ivan is a boy child, only eight years of age,” Alexei was saying in his heavy, slow English. “His dear mother, the princess Elena, died earlier this year. But one day he will be strong. A prince for all the Russias. My father is his chief adviser.”

The Shuiskys used to be a minor family. How had they risen to such power in just five years? Suspicions crowded into Juliana’s mind.

“Your reunion with Lady Juliana is a most happy occasion,” the king said, and with the relish of a gifted bard, he told the court a tale of young lovers torn asunder by tragedy, separated by leagues and years, and finally and joyfully reunited in the presence of a powerful and benevolent king.

Except I feel no joy
, she thought.

“Lord Privy Seal assures me your marriage is bound to form a matchless dynasty,” the king concluded.

“Marriage!” The word burst on a wave of disbelief from Juliana. “But—”

“I assure you, the wishes of your father, the great boyar Gregor Romanov, will be honored at last.”

“But—”

“And in the interest of cementing our new trade agreements with the Russias,” Henry blithely continued, “the nuptials will take place here at my court, with full honors.”

Juliana could not believe her ears. Nausea pushed bile up to the back of her throat. If Alexei had not been holding her arm in a death grip, she would have slid to the floor. Vaguely she became aware of a commotion behind her: a voice raised in harsh protest, gasps of outrage, and finally the clink and whir of spurs as heavy footsteps strode toward the dais.

The king’s face hardened until he looked like a graven image. “I did not hear you announced, Wimberleigh,” he drawled in a bored voice.

Juliana wrenched free of Alexei and whirled to face Stephen. “Oliver,” she whispered, sick with dread.

“Recovered,” he said simply. With icy hatred in his eyes, he looked at her, then at Alexei and finally he bowed to the king.

“Forgive me, sire,” he said in a voice that was anything but apologetic. “I’ve come to fetch my wife.”

“Wife,” Alexei said in Russian, speaking through clenched teeth. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Excellent timing,” Henry said, seeming to find a perverse satisfaction in the situation. “We were just discussing your predicament, Wimberleigh. It seems Lady
Juliana has been betrothed to Lord Alexei for many years.”

An ironic smile curved Stephen’s mouth. “Most interesting. But surely the betrothal ended when, at your royal edict, the lady wedded me.”

Outside, the winter wind shrieked through the courtyard. Juliana looked from her husband to the man her father had chosen for her so long ago. Stephen’s tawny good looks, enhanced by redness from the cold, contrasted sharply with Alexei’s dark, lean handsomeness. Like day and night they were, one golden, one dark, both pinning her where she stood with their fierce, possessive stares.

“A marriage entered into so blithely is easily ended.” Henry drummed his fingers on his chest. “Now. Will it be an annulment, or divorce?”

“Neither,” Stephen snapped. “We were wed in the eyes of the state and the church and—” He stopped himself. Juliana knew he was remembering their gypsy wedding. “The union is as strong and inviolable as a bond of blood.” His hand, clad in a rough leather gauntlet, tightened around her wrist.

King Henry’s grin was deceptively casual. “Are you saying, my dear lord of Wimberleigh, that I lack the authority to declare a marriage null and void?”

The silence was heavy and filled with the words the king did not need to say. He had defied the pope in order to dissolve a twenty-year marriage to Catherine of Aragon. A man who could fly in the face of hundreds of years of tradition need not justify himself to a minor noble.

Henry gave his stomach a satisfied pat and beamed at Alexei. “He who has been wronged shall find restitution in our court. You may marry Lady Juliana as soon as arrangements are made.”

Stephen lunged toward the dais. “Your Grace, I—”

The razor tip of a blade at his throat stopped him cold. A woman screamed and fainted in a rustle of skirts. Juliana felt the color drain from her face.

Stephen did not flinch as a filament of blood scored his neck. For a moment, no one even breathed.

Then, with frosty calm, Stephen placed one gloved thumb on the wickedly curved tip of the blade, moved it aside, and stared impassively at Alexei. Juliana recognized the fire in Stephen’s eyes. He was spoiling for a fight.

“By God’s body, that was rude of you, sir,” he said.

Alexei’s nostrils flared. “In my country, one does not challenge one’s sovereign.”

Stephen’s smile was as thin as a sickle. “Nor do we in England. However.” Without taking his eyes off Alexei, he bit down on his middle finger and tugged at his glove. “We do,” he said, removing the glove one finger at a time, “challenge foreign, wife-stealing upstarts.”

The gauntlet sailed through the air and struck Alexei on the chest, right atop the garnet buttons. Then the glove hit the floor with a gentle slap.

Alexei’s eyes blazed with rage. He lifted his booted foot and ground his heel down on the gauntlet. “You are a fool, my lord.”

“Do I take that as an acceptance?”

“Immediately.”

“No!” Juliana snapped, covering her fear with anger. “My fate will not be decided by fools on the field of combat.” She felt someone—a gentleman pensioner—grasp her arm to hold her back.

The king lifted his hand. “Peace, madam. Let us have done with the sport.”

With a regal wave, he set the game in motion. Courti
ers fled to the inner courtyard where the swordplay would take place. Manly cheers went up from Alexei’s entourage.

Juliana wrenched away from the pensioner and latched onto Stephen’s arm. “Do not do this,” she whispered. A shiver of foreboding caused her fingers to tremble. For no good reason save the sick foreboding in her heart, she did not trust Alexei.

Stephen stared at her for a long moment. Something flickered in his stone-blue eyes. Confusion. Pain. Yearning. He had all but cast her bodily out of his life and yet—

“Don’t worry, madam,” he said crisply, his face expressionless. “I might humiliate your precious Alexei, but I won’t kill him. If I did that,” he muttered, striding away, “I might have to keep you.”

The short days of deep winter reminded Laszlo of the old country, when the sun would hide after only a few hours of daylight. The waning light, combined with Russian voices in the tavern, peeled away the years.

Fixing a genial smile on his face and eyeing his drinking companions with secret scorn, Laszlo went to work. He was barred from the palace by gypsy-hating officials, so carousing with Alexei Shuisky’s entourage was the only way he could keep watch over Juliana.

And what easy Gajo louts they were, surrendering information with the eagerness of overaged brides on their wedding night.

Over the first round of ale, Laszlo learned that the four members of Alexei Shuisky’s entourage had been members of a forced labor party on a Baltic trading ship.

“What kind of man lets another man force him to work?” Laszlo mumbled into his cup as he drained it.

He had his answer by the third round of ale, and the
answer made him nervous. Feigning admiration, he grinned through his beard. “Convicts, you say? Convicted of what, gentlemen?”

The Russians laughed and nudged each other.

Laszlo called for more ale. “Ah, I am just a stupid gypsy. It is beyond my grasp why a great ambassador should surround himself with convicts.”

His companions’ laugher crescendoed. “Stupid as an Englishman, is he not, Dmitri?” one of them said. “Lord Alexei has everyone from the king down believing he’s the ambassador.”

Though Laszlo’s every instinct told him to flee, he forced himself to paste on an idiotic grin. “You mean Alexei Shuisky is not the ambassador from Muscovy?”

Dmitri picked up the flagon and peered, disappointed, into the emptiness. “Dead,” he muttered. “Didn’t even reach the gates of the Kremlin.”

As the laughter of murderers rang to the timbers, Laszlo told them he needed to piss, and excused himself from the table.

Striking steel clanged and echoed in the snow-covered courtyard. Juliana stood watching with her hands pressed protectively against her middle. She ignored the activity around her: men tossing back cups of hot wine, courtiers placing bets on the outcome of the duel. She was only vaguely aware of a commotion at the gate between the inner and outer yards.

Her rapt attention was fixed on the two men who were trying to kill each other. With all her might, she tried to summon the fierce gypsy she had become during the five years of hardship. Juliana of the gypsies would have flung herself between them, screamed at them to stop. But she was
different now. Nauseated, light-headed, confused. Her spirit seemed made of thin crystal sheltering the tiny life inside her. She felt that if she moved, she would shatter into pieces.

“You stupid, stupid fools,” she whispered, her breath puffing in the icy air.

The combatants were both winded and panting. Alexei wielded his rapier in one hand and a short stabbing dagger in the other. He fought with the cool, taut skill of a seasoned warrior. Stephen used his sword and poniard with equal skill but a good deal more passion. He took risks, lunging recklessly and feinting back only inches from the Russian’s razor-sharp blade.

The king called for refreshments and remarked expansively on the skill of the fighting men. Laughing with glee, he sat in the royal litter, a snow king with a red face and a hunger for blood sport.

Juliana wished Laszlo were here or at least near. She stood alone and shivering, apart from the loud-mouthed nobles. When the daylight waned, bearers brought torches and set them in sconces along the walls. The orange glow gave the snow-clad yard a look of eerie familiarity.

And that, more than anything, caused fear to rise in her chest. She moaned softly and swayed. The day had been long and eventful. She was pregnant. She was tired.

Stephen and Alexei were killing each other.

She could not forget the look on Stephen’s face when she had touched him. It was clear to her that he believed she had fled to meet Alexei.

She flinched as the Russian’s blade lopped off Stephen’s sleeve. With his left leg boldly leading, Stephen slashed back. Alexei’s dagger stabbed at the basket hilt of his opponent’s sword.

She started forward, but a strong hand held her back.
She turned to see Jonathan Youngblood, who looked grim and travel weary. “He’s holding his own,” said Jonathan. “Don’t humiliate him any more than you already have.”

“I? Humiliate Stephen de Lacey?”

“You intercepted a royal summons and came racing to court to be with your Russian lover. In the eyes of most, that is something of an embarrassment.”

“I had no idea Alexei would be here,” she protested. “I’d had no contact with him in five years. He—”

“By God’s body!” Jonathan scowled at the distant, towering gatehouse. “That’s Kit coming in the gate.”

For a moment Juliana looked away from the swordsmen. An amazing sight greeted her.

Good God in heaven, they had all come. They resembled a troupe of traveling players, some in gypsy wagons, others on horseback. She saw Kit riding in the lead like a captain of the vanguard with Pavlo running at the stirrup. Then came Rodion on horseback with Jillie on pillion behind him, and even from a distance Juliana could see her bossy maid giving directions, pointing ahead while her mouth worked ceaselessly.