At The King's Command

Wimberleigh pressed his palms against the railed border of the garden. He stood quietly for a moment, seeming to study the razor-clipped hedges. “He possesses both passion and whimsy. He grew up the second son, nearly forgotten by his father. Then his elder brother’s death launched Henry into the succession, and he seized power as if he feared someone would snatch it away. When a man of such qualities also happens to be king and pope alike, it can make him unspeakably cruel.”

“Why does he take pleasure in tormenting you?”

A bitter smile tightened Wimberleigh’s lips, and she knew she would get no honest answer to her question. “Your complaint surprises me. The king saved you from death.”

“I would have fought my way free,” she declared.

“For what?” His voice had a taunting edge. “So you could return to the gypsies, who would make you a serving wench and a whore for the rest of your days?”

“And you, my lord?” Juliana shot back. “What will you make of me?”

Stephen de Lacey stepped closer, his large shape filling the twilit path. She stood her ground, though instinct warned her to flee. There was danger here, close to her, just a whisper away.

“My dear slattern,” he said gently, in the voice of a lover, “I have just made you a baroness.”

His mockery cut at her pride. “And for that you expect gratitude, yes?”

“’Tis better than hanging as a horse thief.”

“So is having one’s nostrils slit, but that does not mean I relish the reprieve. Why did you save me? Clearly you like me not.”

Dark laughter stirred his broad shoulders. He leaned close, his breath warm upon her cheek. “Your powers of observation are keen, my gypsy.”

“You have not answered my question. You seem to be a man fond of his independence, yet you jumped like a trained spaniel when the king gave his orders. Why, my lord? I sense King Henry has a lance aimed at your heart.”

His chin came up sharply, and she heard his breath catch. “Do not amuse yourself with idle speculation. My affairs are hardly your concern.”

Resentment and frustration built inside her. She was supposed to be on her way to a horse fair now, planning her first audience with the king, who would help her win back her birthright. “It is my affair since you just took me as your wife.”

“In name only,” he snapped. “Or did you truly think I would take this marriage seriously?” With frigid disdain, he glanced at her from head to toe. “That I would honor vows wrung from me at the whim of King Henry?”

Juliana thanked God he did not mean to treat her as a true wife. She decided in that instant to stay in the tattered, lice-ridden guise of a gypsy wench, for it obviously disgusted him.

Still, a perverse sense of injured pride darkened her spirits. “I am free to go, yes?” she inquired. She fought an urge to clutch at the neckline of her blouse, to hide from him. “Well?”

“Not yet. I’ll take you to Wiltshire. Once the king tires of his trick, we’ll get an annulment and you can go back to—to fortune-telling or pocket picking or whatever it is that you do when you’re not off thieving horses.”

Juliana gritted her teeth. “I happen to do a good number of things. Some of them are quite clever. Tarrying in Wilthouse—”

“Wiltshire, my tenderling. ’Tis a few days’ ride west of here.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Tarrying in Wiltshire was not part of—”

“Of what?”

She could not tell anyone, especially this stranger, of her secret schemes. “My plan,” she stated simply.

He bowed from the waist. “I regret the inconvenience, then. Perhaps you’d be more pleased had I left you swinging from the gibbet.”

She hated him for being right. Though she did not want to acknowledge the truth, he was as much a victim of the king’s wrath as she.

A sigh of resignation gusted from her. Darkness now filled the knot garden, and the first stars of evening pricked the sky. “What about tonight?”

“I managed to dissuade the master of revels from leading the bedding ceremony.”

“What is the bedding ceremony?”

“We would have been escorted to bed by a group of drunken revelers and…never mind. You may stay alone in my chamber. My squire and I will take the anteroom. Be ready to ride out at first light.” He turned to leave.

“My lord.” Juliana lightly touched his sleeve. The fine lawn fabric covered a hard, masculine warmth, and the sensation startled her.

Apparently it startled him, as well. His eyes widened, and a look of revulsion broke over his shadowed face.

Searingly aware of how long it had been since she had bathed, Juliana snatched her hand away. “I am sorry.”

“What were you going to say?”

“I…forget.” But as he showed her to the chamber where she was to sleep, she acknowledged the lie. She was going to thank him for saving her from the noose. For glaring the courtiers into silence when they would have made high sport of her. For speaking his vows loudly over the titters of the ladies.

But his look of disgust when she had touched him drove any sense of gratitude from her.

It was her wedding night, and save for the company of a large white windhound, she lay alone. More alone than she had ever been before.

As if the king had commanded it, the next day dawned clear and brilliant, the weather a sharp contrast to Stephen’s gloomy mood. He should have let the gypsy girl flee on his horse, should have forfeited the wager to King Henry. Capria was precious to him, but not nearly so precious as his freedom.

Instead, he had foolishly allowed himself to be captivated by the horse thief’s wide eyes, so clear and disarming in contrast to the dirt on her face, the tangles in her hair.

Gypsy eyes, he told himself. As false and full of lies as her Romany soul.

“Ah, Kit,” Stephen said, sitting on a heavy box chair and holding his head, “say it was all a bad dream. Say I’m not truly shackled by God’s law to a wild, half-mad gypsy.”

Kit Youngblood’s mouth quirked in a curve that suspiciously resembled a stifled grin. He held out Stephen’s plain frieze jerkin. “It was no dream, my lord. The king waived the banns and called for a clerk. You are well and truly married to the strange girl.”

Stephen lifted his head, rubbed his hands over his stubbled cheeks, then pushed his arms into the jerkin. “Must you always be so blunt?”

“My lord,” Kit said, lacing Stephen’s sleeve to the armhole of the jerkin, “why did you not simply refuse?”

Stephen did not answer, for not even Kit knew the truth—that if he had dared to cross the king once more…

“She would have been hanged,” Stephen said brusquely. “We shall collect my gypsy baggage and get ourselves home. Then I’ll find a way out of this mess. Where is the wench, anyway?”

Juliana was already mounted and ready to ride when Stephen came out to the park beside the river Thames.

“My blushing bride,” he muttered under his breath. She sat frozen upon a gray gelding, her cheeks still smudged with dirt, her eyes wide and wary with pain and uncertainty.

The look brought on a flash of remembrance. A few years earlier, Stephen had come upon a poacher’s trap. The sharp-toothed iron jaws were clamped around the foreleg of a young doe. The dying creature had gazed up at him, that same look in its eyes, begging for a quick death.

Stephen had slit its throat.