Dark Angels (54 page)

“She didn’t invite me.”

There was nothing to say to that.

“Tell her I’m never going to forgive her.”

“I’m not going to tell her that.”

“Where is she?”

“I’m not going to tell you that.”

Alice gripped the sides of the armchair in which she sat until her fingers were white. “Why not?”

“So that you can find her and quarrel with her in the first days of her marriage? Tell me why I’d want to do that, Alice, but then answer me one better—why would you want to do it?”

“She’s made a mistake.”

“If she has, it’s over and done with. And I take umbrage at that. John Sidney is a fine man.”

“He’s a nobody, a nothing.”

“You mean he isn’t an earl or even a lowly baron like me. One day he may be. Lord Rochester’s father was a knight of the squire. It was his faithful care of the king that won his earldom. Do you think there are no more earldoms to be won? Barbara will be a great man’s lady one day.”

“She should have told me.”

“It’s your own fault that she didn’t. You’re as stubborn and arrogant as—” He stopped himself.

“As who said?”

“I am not going to quarrel with you.”

“Who said I was stubborn and arrogant?”

“I formed the opinion myself.”

“You hate me, don’t you.”

He pushed back the stool. This discussion was going in directions he refused to follow. It was always so when he quarreled with his sisters. They turned on him and stung him in places he hadn’t thought possible, like tiny, determined, completely ruthless blond bees.

“Answer me, Richard Saylor.”

He clenched his jaw. “Sometimes I don’t like you, it’s true.”

“Why not?”

“You order people around, people who care for you, as if they were minions, and you think you know what is best, always.”

“I do know what is best. Always.”

He walked away from her. If she thought he was going to put up with this, she had another thought coming.

“Richard—”

Something small, unlike her, in her voice stopped him, made him turn. Her eyes—eyes so dark that one couldn’t see the center—were moist, but no tears were falling. At the sight of a tear, he would walk away without a backward look. She held out her hand beseechingly. “Please don’t leave me. Please.”

“Don’t weep,” he said.

She met his gaze head-on, her eyes wet, but not a tear falling, he’d give her that. He pulled out a handkerchief and gave it to her. She blew her nose in it loudly. He grimaced. “The handkerchief is yours to keep.”

“I love Barbara like my own sister.”

“Then love her like a sister in this.”

Alice swallowed. He watched the taut line of her jaw.

“If I can’t?”

“Have the courtesy not to tell her so. You forget a piece in this, Alice. You forget that she loves you, too, and that your anger and disapproval hurt her greatly. And there’s a third little being in this, to be born in a few months. Barbara mustn’t be upset.”

She made a growling sound and shook her head the way a wild dog might. For some reason, that made Richard laugh. If Alice sank her teeth in you, you’d never get loose. She was worse than the pit bulls that fought the bears and bulls in Southwark across the river. “Now I have a question for you,” he said. “Is Renée in love with the king?” He watched her carefully.

“I don’t think so.”

She lied well.

He kicked a nearby stool. It flew in the air and landed with a clatter near another chair. “Then what the blazes is she doing allowing his kisses?”

“He likes to kiss the maids of honor, flirt with them.”

“Does he kiss you?”

“He has, upon occasion. He thinks her pretty. Her being French charms him.”

“Damn him.”

“Why don’t you just take her?”

“What do you mean?”

“The next time you two are alone, do more than kiss and cuddle, take it all the way.”

She shocked him. “Ravish her? You mix me with Sedley or Buckhurst.”

“I doubt very seriously it would be ravishment, now, would it?”

He didn’t answer.

“May I speak frankly?” Of course, she didn’t wait for his answer. “She’s not very bright.”

“How dare you—”

“I mean that she’s an idiot to choose him over you.”

“Does she truly choose him over me?” He wanted to throttle someone, beginning with the woman who sat before him.

“You know she loves you. I know she loves you, but it’s flattering to be admired by the king. It’s turning her head. He can be—” Alice stopped. No use to describe to Richard how King Charles could be. It would only make matters worse. “If you love her and want her for a bride, take her the very next time the kissing leads to…well, to where it leads.”

“I have this dream, she and I side by side in life, turning front to front in lovemaking, back to back in threat, protecting each other.”

“Renée isn’t a fighter, Richard.”

“She is soft and gentle, isn’t she?” His anger surprised him by changing into something almost like understanding. “I won’t stop her time of triumph with the king and court. I just don’t want to lose her to it.”

“What you described is an ideal. It’s false. You’ll break your heart on it.”

He smiled, and Alice was dazzled, as always.

“Tell Mademoiselle de Keroualle that I will call upon her this evening, and that she’d better receive me,” he told her.

“Wait. I had a thought I wanted to share with you.”

“And that would be?”

“The pages are everywhere in Whitehall. Why not let them in on the hunt for Henri Ange?”

“How could we trust that it would be kept a secret?”

“We could swear them to secrecy, make them take a vow, tell them they’re knights performing a task.”

“I think it’s too many to tell.”

“Some of them, then. I’d trust Edward with my life.”

“I’ll think on it.”

“It’s a good idea. We want a web around the queen, layers that Ange can’t penetrate.”

“He’s about to be taken.”

“You have him? Richard, that’s wonderful!”

“I nearly have him.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll present him to you with a noose around his neck.”

“He’s very clever.”

“So am I.”

No, she thought, looking at him. You’re brave and clever in your own way, but not clever in his way. I am.

C
AREFULLY
, N
EDDIE SCRAPED
the razor along the back of Ange’s skull to finish. Tufts of dark hair lay at her feet. Setting down the razor, she took a towel and dipped it in warmed water, wrung it, and gently rubbed it over his bare scalp.

He turned to her. His face startled without hair surrounding it, the dark, arching brows punctuating something in his eyes that made her afraid, and there was very little that frightened her. She stepped back, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her into his lap.

“Am I so ugly now?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Ange went to the pier glass and looked at his face. Everything he was showed. “It’s these eyebrows. Let’s shave those, too.”

“No!”

He advanced on her, and she retreated. He began to laugh. “Do I frighten you?”

He did. He really, really did. “It’s just…I feel I don’t know you now….”

She never had. He spoke charmingly in Italian. “Come to me, my pet, my sweet. No one knows anyone, you stupid little fool.”

He pulled her into his arms. A kiss or two later, and she was quiet. The kissing deepened. Her fear rushed to desire, because that was easier than feeling fear and obeying it, which was stupid of her, but there it was. Ange pulled and unlaced her gown between kisses and touches that weren’t tender, but rough, provocative, the way she liked it. Soon she was panting, willing to do whatever he wished because the lust between them was so compelling, stopping thought, hers, not his. He turned her, bent her over, and entered her, and she moaned and arched back against him. He caressed her, making her frenzied, his hand up and down on her, until she was begging, her hands all over his thighs and hers. Then he stopped moving himself but kept the hand he had on her steady.

“So if I pay you thirty guineas, will you say you’ve never seen me?”

He brought the razor up to her throat with his other hand, and he sliced in just under her ear, making it sweep deep and steady across her throat. She made a sound, and her hands jerked out to clutch his arm. Ange pushed her away, and she fell like a rag doll at his feet, blood spurting, hands and legs spasming. He washed the razor in the bowl, lathered soap, and sat at her dressing table, and shaved off his brows. The body on the floor lifted a hand, farewell, adieu, and became still.

A
LICE REMAINED IN
the Stone Gallery, staring up at a center portion of the ceiling that was one long mural of the coronation of Great Harry. Balmoral entered one end of the gallery, saw Alice, walked up to her slowly, very stiffly, and bowed. She rose from her chair and took his arm. They began to walk.

“And how are you feeling today?”

“Terrible.”

“But less terrible than yesterday?”

“I will give you that. Less terrible than yesterday.”

When they reached the end of the gallery, they turned and began to walk the other way. Every now and then, they’d stop to look at a portrait or marble statue, but neither of them spoke. The first time they’d done this, he’d been cranky and protesting, telling her that she must be bored, that she owed him nothing. She knew he was there only out of shame, that she had blackmailed him into courtesy, but now, slowly, it was changing. He seemed to accept her regard, seemed to perhaps like meeting her for this late afternoon walk as outside winter sun gleamed palely. They reached the other end of the gallery.

“Do you think we might venture into the privy garden?”

He frowned at her, ready to be annoyed. “Why?”

“I like the sun. We can see if the holly has made berries yet.”

Down a stair and they were in a hall leading to private chambers, anyone meeting them bowing. Outside, Alice turned her face upward like a flower and closed her eyes. Balmoral stared at her profile before they walked over to King Charles’s sundial. They admired its intricacy without saying a word of its dials and arrows, its blown glass balls, showing time, date, phase of the moon, and sun sign, Alice touching tiny metal nymphs that played along the perimeter. She did it every time. She loved the dancing nymphs.

“Have you been weeping?” he asked.

“I have.”

“Why, if I may be so bold?”

“A friend betrayed me.” The words were out before she could stop them, and with them fresh anger.

“What will you do?”

“Hurt her.”

“Only after you’ve reconnoitered so that there is no surprise hurt for you.”

“Is that in your memoir?”

“What do you know of my memoir?”

“It was out when I came to visit. Look, there are the hollies. If the king’s newest mistress is Catholic, what will people say?” Alice examined a holly tree innocently as she asked the question.

“It won’t be liked. It will make certain members of the Commons more difficult than they already are and feed the fringe sects that see the end of the world coming. That particular bias endangers the throne.”

Here was a moment. Easy to betray John Sidney’s conversion, to hurt Barbara. The words were in her throat. “Ought someone to tell His Majesty so?”

Balmoral smiled sourly. “If someone cared enough to and did not mind being sent to the Tower of London for impudence.”

“But you’ve always cared for this kingdom’s stability, haven’t you?” She didn’t take her eyes from the tree. “Look, there’s red there and there. Tomorrow or the next, we’ll have our first sprigs of holly.” She put her arm back through his, and silently they walked the gravel paths, Alice stopping now and again to examine a plant or break a leaf of some herb so that she might smell it, offering it to him, also, and he watched and inhaled sharp, clean fragrances, saying nothing, but to his surprise enjoying himself.

I
N ANOTHER PART
of Whitehall, on its top floor, in the king’s apartments, chambers he rarely used now that new ones facing the river were finished, Richard and Renée stood in the king’s privy gallery, having their first quarrel.

“I don’t want him kissing you.”

“It was in jest, Richard, too much wine.”

“It didn’t look like jest to me.”

Tears welled in Renée’s eyes, dropped down her cheeks, but Richard wasn’t moved. “I can offer my love, my passion, my devotion, and little more than that for now. If what I am, what I offer, isn’t enough, I want to know once and for all.”

“It’s enough. It’s more than I deserve.”