At The Queen's Summons

He heard a faint, muffled cry. With a surge of hope, he flung away the sign and the sawdust.

There she sat, knees drawn up to her chest, face tucked into the hollow between her hugging arms. Thunder crashed again, and she flinched as if struck by a whip.

“Pippa!” He touched her quaking shoulder.

She screamed and looked up at him.

Aidan’s heart lurched. Her face, battered by rain and tears, shone stark white in the storm-dulled twilight. The panic in her eyes blinded her; she showed no recognition of him. That look of mindless terror was one he had seen only once before—in the face of his father just before Ronan had died.

“Faith, Pippa, are you hurt?”

She did not respond to her name, but blurted out something he could not comprehend. A nonsense word or a phrase in a foreign tongue?

Shaken, he bent and scooped her up, holding her against his chest and bending his head to shield her from the rain as best he could. She did not resist, but clung to him as if he were a raft in a raging sea. He felt a surge of fierce protectiveness. Never had he felt so painfully alive, so determined to safeguard the small stranger in his arms.

Still she showed no sign of recognition, and did not do so while he dashed back to Lumley House. A host of demons haunted the girl who called herself Pippa Trueheart.

And Aidan O Donoghue was seized by the need to slay each and every one of them.

“Batten the hatches! Secure the helm! There’s naught to do now but run before the wind!”

The man in the striped jacket had a funny, rusty voice. He sounded cross, or maybe afraid, like Papa had been when his forehead got hot and he had to go to bed and not have any visitors.

She clung to her dog’s furry neck and looked across the smelly, dark enclosure at Nurse. But Nurse had her hands all twisted up in a string of rosy beads—the ones she hid from Mama, who was Reformed—and all Nurse could say was Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary.

Something scooped the ship up and up and up. She could feel the lifting in her belly. And then, much faster, a stronger force slapped them down.

Nurse screamed Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary…

The hound whined. His fur smelled of dog and ocean.

A cracking noise hurt her ears. She heard the whine of ropes running through pulleys and a shriek from the man in the funny coat, and suddenly she had to get out of there, out of that close, wet place where the water was filling up the floor, where her chest wouldn’t let her breathe.

She pushed the door open. The dog scrambled out first. She followed him up a slanting wooden stair. Loose barrels skittered all through the passageways and decks. She heard a great roar of water. She looked back to find Nurse, but all she saw was a hand waving, the rosy beads braided through the pale fingers. Water covered Nurse all the way to the top of her head….

“No!” Pippa sat straight up in the bed. For a moment, the room was all a pulsating blur. Slowly, it came into focus. Low-burning hearth fire. Candle flickering on the table. High, thick testers holding up the draperies.

The O Donoghue Mór sitting at the end of the bed.

She pressed her hand to her chest, hating the twitchy, air-starved feeling that sometimes seized her lungs when she took fright or breathed noxious or frozen air. Her heart was racing. Sweat bathed her face and neck.

“Bad dream?” he asked.

She shut her eyes. Like a mist driven by the wind, the images flew away, unremembered, but her sense of terror lingered. “It happens. Where am I?”

“I’ve given you a private chamber in Lumley House.”

Her eyes widened in amazement, then narrowed in suspicion. “Why?”

“I am your patron. You’ll lodge where I put you.”

She thrust up her chin. “And what do you require of me in exchange for living in the lap of luxury?”

“Why must I expect anything at all from you?”

She regarded him for a long, measuring moment. No, the O Donoghue Mór was certainly not the sort of man who had to keep unwilling females at his beck and call. Any woman in her right mind would want him. Except, of course, Pippa herself. But that did not stop her from enjoying his strikingly splendid face and form, nor did it keep her from craving—against all good sense—his warmth and closeness.

“I take it you don’t like storms,” he said.

“No, I…” It all seemed so silly now. London offered far greater perils than storms, and she had survived London for years. “Thank you, my lord. Thank you for coming after me. I should not have left in such haste.”

“True,” he said gently.

“It is not every day a man makes me question my very reason for existing.”

“Pippa, I didn’t mean it that way. I should not have questioned the choices you’ve made.”

She nodded. “People love to manage other people.” Frowning, she looked around the room, noting the wonderful bed, the crackling fire in the grate, the clear, rain-washed night air wafting through a small, open window. “I don’t remember much about the storm. Was it very bad?”

He smiled. It was a soft, unguarded smile, as if he truly meant it. “You were in a bit of a state when I found you.”

She blushed and dropped her gaze, then blushed even deeper when she discovered she wore only a shift. She clutched the bedclothes to her chest.

“I hung your things to dry by the fire,” Aidan said. “I got the shift from Lady Lumley’s clothes press.”

Pippa touched the sheer fabric of the sleeve. “I’ll hang for certain.”

“Nay. Lord and Lady Lumley are at their country estate in Wycherly. I’m to have full use of the house and all its contents.”

She sighed dreamily. “How wonderful to be treated like such an important guest.”

“Often I find it a burden, not a wonder.”

She began to remember snatches of the storm, the lightning and thunder chasing her through the streets, the rain lashing her face. And then Aidan’s strong arms and broad chest, and the sensation of speed as he rushed her back to the house. His hands had tenderly divested her of clothes and placed her in the only real bed she had ever slept in.

She had tucked her face into his strong shoulder and sobbed. Hard. He had stroked her hair, kissed it, and finally she had slept.

She looked up at him. “You’re awfully kind for a father-murderer.”

His smile wavered. “Sometimes I surprise myself.” Leaning across the bed, he touched her cheek, his fingers skimming over her blush-heated skin. “You make it easy, colleen. You make me better than I am.”

She felt such a profusion of warmth that she wondered if she had a fever. “Now what?” she whispered.

“Now, for once in your life, you’ll tell the truth, Pippa. Who are you, where did you come from and what in God’s name am I going to do with you?”

Diary of a Lady

My son Richard’s namesake is coming to London! The Reverend Richard Speed, of famous reputation, now the Bishop of Bath, will attend his nephew’s military commission. Naturally Speed will bring his wife, Natalya, who is Oliver’s dear sister and as beloved to me as blood kin.