One Night in Paradise

Summoning all her dignity, Adorna quickly snatched at a length of red tissue from the nearest tabletop and held it up to hide herself from the man’s gaze. ‘This is the Revels Office,’ she snapped, ‘not a sideshow.’

Amused, Sir Nicholas merely looked across at her father and Sir John.

Sir Thomas explained. ‘It’s all right, my dear. Sir Nicholas comes from the Master of Horse. He needs to know about our luggage for the progress to Kenilworth. Don’t send the poor man away before he’s fulfilled his mission, will you? Or I’ll have his lordship to answer to.’

Fuming, Adorna swept past him and returned to the screen, her face burning with annoyance that the man had once again seen her at a disadvantage. That he had seen her at all, damn him!

‘It’s all right, mistress,’ Maybelle whispered. ‘He didn’t see anything.’

‘Damn him!’ Adorna repeated, pushing her hair away. ‘Here, Belle. Tie my hair up into that net. There, that’s better.’ Her second emergence from the corner screen was, in a way, as theatrical as the first had been, for now she was not only reclothed in her simple day gown of russet linen but, covering the entire top of her body in an extravagant swathe of glittering red was the tissue she had snatched from the table. It trailed over one shoulder and on to the floor behind her, blending with the russet of her gown and contrasting brilliantly with the gold net caul into which her hair had hurriedly been bundled.

Astounded by the transformation as much as by the sheer impact of her beauty, the four men’s conversation dwindled to a stop as she approached, her head held high, and it was her father who spoke, at last. ‘Quick change, nymph!’ he laughed.

Sir Nicholas was more specific. ‘Water into fire,’ he murmured.

Sir John cleared his throat. ‘Ahem! Yes…well, your designs for the masque appear to be well in hand, Sir Thomas. I trust you’ll not leak any of this, Sir Nicholas. The masque theme must be kept secret until its performance.’ The Master of the Great Wardrobe looked at the younger man sternly from beneath handsome greying eyebrows.

‘I quite understand, sir. No word of the masque will be got from me, I assure you. My lord the Earl of Leicester is planning several for Her Majesty’s progress to Kenilworth, and he’s just as concerned about secrecy.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘you need to know how many waggons and carts we need for the Wardrobe, don’t you? Well, why not come and join us for a late dinner on Wednesday? Lady Marion and I are celebrating my appointment with some friends. These two gentlemen will be there, too. Do you have a lady, Sir Nicholas?’

‘No, sir. Not yet.’ He smiled at their grins, and Adorna was aware that, had she not been there, more might have been said on that subject. But her father had blundered by inviting him to their home, which meant that both her places of refuge were now no longer safe from his intrusion.

Sir Thomas was clearly expecting his daughter’s approval of the invitation. He looked at her, eyebrows raised. ‘Adorna?’ he said.

The expression in her eyes, though fleeting, said it all. ‘No lady yet, Sir Nicholas? Perfect. Cousin Hester will be with us by tomorrow and Mother was wondering what to do about a partner for her. Now the problem is solved.’

Sir Nicholas bowed gracefully. ‘Thank you, mistress. I look forward to meeting Cousin Hester. Is she…?’

‘Yes, the late Sir William Pickering’s daughter. The heiress.’ That should turn your neat little head, she thought. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen?’

Moving away from the group at the same time, Sir Nicholas was not inclined to let her go so easily, but strode alongside her, weaving his way in and out of the workers at the tables. By some miracle, he reached the door before her.

She glared at him. ‘I do not need lifting on to my horse, sir, I thank you. I left it at home.’

‘You’re walking? In this?’ He indicated the trail of billowing red stuff.

‘As long as you are gawping at me, yes. In this.’

‘And if I stop…er…gawping?’ He gave an impish smile.

She sighed, gustily, and glanced across at her father’s group. ‘Go back to your business, sir, if you please, and leave me to mine. You are in the wrong department.’

‘I’ll get used to it,’ he said softly, ‘and so will you, mistress.’

‘No, sir, I think not. See how you fare with Cousin Hester.’

‘And will Cousin Hester be in Water or in Fire?’

‘In mourning,’ she said, sweetly. ‘Good day to you, sir.’

Chapter Two

T o her father’s question of why she had been so ill-disposed towards Sir Nicholas Rayne that afternoon, Adorna had no convincing reply except that she didn’t much care for the man.

Sir Thomas agreed that the excuse was a poor one. ‘I hope I’m not as short with those I don’t much care for, my lass, or I’d not hold on to my office for too long. Is there more to it than that?’ He was a shrewd man, tall and elegant with white hair and beard and a reputation for fairness that made him keep friends with all factions.

‘No, Father. No more than that.’

‘He’s a well set-up fellow. The earl speaks highly of him.’

‘Yes, Father. I expect Cousin Hester will like him well enough, too.’

‘Then perhaps by that time you could pretend to, for everyone’s sake.’

‘Yes, Father. I’m sorry.’

‘He has more about him than Master Fowler, for all his long title.’

‘Oh, Father!’

‘Well, you’re twenty now, Adorna, and you can’t be chasing them off for ever, you know. There are several who—’

‘No…no, Father, I beg you will do no such thing. I shall know the man I want when I see him, and Peter will serve quite well until then.’

‘Really? Well then, you’d better start looking a bit harder because it’s time your mother and I were grandparents. Perhaps you’re being a bit too pernickety, my dear, eh?’ He touched her chin gently with one fingertip.

‘Yes, Father. I expect I probably am.’

Pernickety was perhaps not the word Adorna would have applied to her thoughts on men and marriage, though she might have agreed that they were somewhat idealised. Having never been in love, she had relied so far on the descriptions given her by friends and those gleaned from romantic tales of King Arthur and Greek mythology. Not the most reliable of sources, but all there were available. Consequently, she believed she would recognise it when it happened, that she would know the man when he appeared. Obnoxious, arrogant and presumptuous men were not on her list of requirements. For all that, she could not have said why, if he were so very unsuitable, Sir Nicholas Rayne was continually on her mind, or why his face and form were before her in the minutest detail.

To her amusement, she had heard in the usual roundabout manner that she was regarded by some men as being hard to get, not only because of her efficient safety nets, but mainly because she had never yet been prepared to bind herself to any man’s exclusive friendship for more than a few weeks. There were men and women among her friends whom she had known as a child, some of whom were parents by now, but she and a few others enjoyed their state of relative freedom too much to let go of it. In the same way, she supposed, that the Queen enjoyed hers. While others involved themselves deeply in the serious business of mate-finding and binding, she was happy to indulge in men’s admiration from a distance, sometimes playing one off against the other, but committing herself to none. It was a harmless and delicious game to play in which she took control, rather like the plays her brother wrote where actors acted out a story and then removed the disguise and went home to sleep soundly.

She found her father’s sudden concern irritating. It suggested to her that he might cease to be as helpful to her as he had been in the past. It also suggested that he had recognised in Sir Nicholas Rayne a man he might be prepared to consider as son-in-law if she didn’t make it absolutely clear that he was not the man she was looking for. Exactly who she was looking for would be harder to explain, for while she and her female friends accepted their own conquettish ways as being perfectly normal, none of them felt that fickleness in a man was desirable. A man must be constant, adoring and lover-like, and none of those commendable traits could be ascribed to Sir Nicholas Rayne, Deputy Master of Horse. Let him stick to his horses and she would stick to her ideals.

Sheen House was the most convenient of the Pickerings’ houses, the nearest to Sir Thomas’s place of work when the Queen was in residence. It was also Adorna’s favourite, situated to one side of the old friary built by the Queen’s grandfather when he rebuilt the old palace of Sheen, which had been destroyed by fire. Sheen Palace in its new form was then renamed Richmond after the earldom in North Yorkshire that had been Henry VII’s favourite home. The palace was massively built on the edge of the River Thames, its gardens enclosing the friary which had its own private garden, known as the paradise, at the eastern end. Since the dissolution of the monasteries almost forty years previously, the friary had been left to disintegrate, its stone reused, its beautiful paradise overgrown, now used by the palace guests for walking in private. The road that led past Sheen House, past the old friary and down the southern wall of the palace garden to the river, had now become Paradise Road. Most of the friary land was visible from the garden of Sir Thomas Pickering’s house, providing what appeared to be an extension of their own, the friary orchard and vineyard being used by the palace gardeners. The rest of Richmond’s houses spread along the riverbank to the south, most of them timber-framed set amidst spacious gardens and orchards, free from the noise and foul air of London Town.

Sheen House, however, was built of soft pink brick like the palace itself, originally in the shape of an E for Elizabeth. Sir Thomas’s latest addition to the buildings was a banqueting house in the garden, built especially for Lady Marion’s entertaining, and it was here on the next day that the call reached Adorna and Maybelle that Cousin Hester had arrived. The small octagonal room was situated in one corner approached by a paved walkway above the fountain-garden, far enough from the house for them to remove their aprons and fling them on to the steps before greeting their guest.

They had fully expected to see some change in Cousin Hester, having last seen her as a mere child of ten on one of her father’s rare visits to Sheen House. Hester’s father had never been married, not even to Hester’s mother, an unknown lady of the Court who had allowed her daughter to be brought up by one of Sir William’s married sisters. Consequently, the astonishment felt by both women at the sight of each other was in Adorna’s case cleverly concealed, and in Hester’s case not so.

‘Oh!’ she whispered. ‘Oh…I…er…Mistress Adorna?’ Hester looked from Adorna to Maybelle and back again. Although a year older than her cousin, she was still painfully shy, twisting her black kid gloves together like a dish-clout, her eyes wide and fearful.

Bemused, Lady Marion laid a motherly arm across her guest’s shoulders. ‘Call her Adorna,’ she whispered, kindly. ‘And for all you’re Sir Thomas’s cousin rather than our children’s, you must call us all by our Christian names, you know. Sir Thomas and Seton and Adrian will be in later.’

That announcement did not provoke the delighted anticipation it was intended to, for the young lady looked as if she might have preferred to make a bolt for it rather than meet men and boys.

Adorna took pity on her, smiling with hands outstretched. The wringing hands did not respond. ‘Welcome, Cousin Hester. You must be tired after your journey from St Andrews-Underhill.’ There was no real reason why she should have been, for her new home was only a stone’s throw from St Paul’s in the centre of London.