At The King's Command

“Never?” The very thought made Juliana feel cramped and restless. “I’ll tell you about it someday.” She moved toward the door. “For now, we must receive our guest.”

An hour later, she stood in an airy solar and looked through oriel windows over the apple yard, enclosed by a high brick wall and white with May blossoms. Lynacre was a strange and beautiful place. She had yet to make sense of the house, with its gable-ended great and small wings, the porches, the clusters of chimneys, the crenellated parapets. The grounds provided a puzzle of their own. Thus far she had noticed at least three separate walled gardens, thick woods rearing almost menacingly to the west, and layer upon layer of soft green fells leading down to the river.

She lowered herself to the window seat, drew her knees to her chest, and rested her temple against the sun-warmed leaded glass. Aye, the estate was strange and beautiful—much like its master. The thought of him reminded her of the old Russian story of Stavr, an enchanted prince who was trapped in his forest kingdom. He could only be freed by the kiss of a princess, freely given.

“What the devil are you doing?” snapped a furious voice from the doorway.

Juliana froze. To her mortification, she discovered that she had pressed her fingers to her lips and closed her eyes, lost in the fantasy of a magic kiss. With as much dignity as she could muster, she jumped up and shook out her skirts.

Stephen stood there in the same trunk hose and jerkin he had worn the day before. A light golden stubble softened the hard lines of his cheeks and jaw. His pale hair looked mussed, as if long fingers had run through it. The disarray gave him a certain rakish charm that made her breath quicken and her cheeks grow warm.

It struck Juliana, disturbingly, that he had not yet been to bed—unless it was with one of the wenches he had so pointedly mentioned last night.

She silenced the jangle of alarm in her mind. If it was his habit to carouse each night away, that was his affair. She’d be a fool to let herself be hurt by it.

“My dear,” he said in a gravelly voice, “you’ve not answered my question.”

“A carter arrived with goods from London. I received them and sent the carter round to the kitchen for a meal. My lo—Stephen,” she corrected, boldly using his familiar name. She took an ivory whistle from a box and blew a high note. “What is this? For a shepherd, perhaps?” Before he could answer, she drew a light shroud from a dome-shaped cage to reveal a bright yellow canary perched inside. “And this…an addition to your dovecote?” She flipped through the stiff pages of a small, fat book, noting a few block-printed illustrations. “I do not read English well. Perhaps you could tell me what this says. And this—” She reached for a wooden box made of interlocking pieces.

A large male hand snatched the box away. “Are you quite finished?” Stephen demanded in a low, lethal whisper.

“These are children’s playthings,” she said, refusing to flinch. “I just wondered—”

He paced the length of the solar, his booted feet kicking up dust from the rushes. “I’ve a fondness for invention. My own, and those created by others. You need not read any further meaning into it.”

Perhaps the toys were gifts for the children of the nearby village. Perhaps Stephen de Lacey concealed a heart of gold behind a facade of stone.

Prodded by a devil of mischief, she picked up a tiny reed pipe and blew, her fingers covering the holes to vary the pitch.

“Stop that.” He stood inches away, glaring down at her.

Juliana continued to play. She would rather suffer the heat of his anger than the chill of his indifference. She picked out the first few notes of an old Russian song about a cherry tree. There was something compelling about his nearness.

“Damn it, Juliana!” He took her wrist, bringing her hand up between their bodies.

Never had she stood so close to her new husband—close enough to hear the labored rasp of his breathing and feel it warm on her cheek. Close enough to catch his scent of leather and lye. Close enough to study the faint lines that fanned out from his exquisite pale eyes.

She stood riveted, staring up at him, feeling her pulse leap wildly beneath the firm grip of his fingers. And suddenly she knew. He, too, had felt the shock, the heat, the awareness. The recognition.

Of what? she wondered crazily.

Of desire.

The answer came to her like an arrow shot out of the dark, hitting home with stinging accuracy.

“Stephen?” she whispered.

For a moment, he seemed to waver, caught up in the same unbearable tension that held her breathless. His sculpted, unsmiling mouth twitched and he bent his head, golden hair falling forward, almost brushing her brow.

Closer and closer, until a mere whisper of distance separated their hungry lips, until anticipation thundered in her blood.

And, just as suddenly, Stephen plucked the reed pipe from her hand and stepped back.

“I’ll see to the parcels,” he snapped. “You need not trouble yourself with them. And in the future, Baroness, I shall receive all goods and dispatches.”

He withdrew quickly, his footsteps ringing on the flagged floor outside, then stopping.

Juliana hurried to the solar door and peeked out.

He stood in the narrow, dim passageway, his big hands pressed against the stone wall. His head was thrown back to reveal a taut brown throat. His teeth were clenched, his eyes tightly shut. It was a posture of such anguished frustration that Juliana felt like an intruder.

She slipped back into the solar. She had learned something about her husband this morning. He wanted her. That was one secret he could not keep from her.

Faintly, through a thick blanket of sleep, the sounds came to Stephen. A cry in the dark. A ragged sob of terror and depthless despair.

His awareness weighted by the quantity of sack he had drunk the previous evening to forget the startled hurt in Juliana’s eyes, he barely acknowledged the sounds. And then, slowly, like a stalking sneak thief, realization crept over him.

The moment had come. For years, he had dreaded this night. And yet a small dark part of him had craved it. This was the end of the waiting, the uncertainty. At last, he would be free—

“No!” Denial broke from him, loud and fierce and anguished. He leaped from his bed, tearing back the covers, bare feet slapping the chilly flagged floor.

No, please God, no…With jerky movements he groped for his leather leggings, his billowy cambric shirt, and in seconds he flew out the door of his chamber and into the night-black passageway.

He expected to find Nance Harbutt, come to impart the long-dreaded tidings, but no one waited in the gloom.

Still the weeping sound that had awakened him reached out, drew him along the passageway….

To his wife’s room.

The fog of sleep and wine blew away on a cold, knife-sharp wind.

Juliana. It was his gypsy wife, with her weeping and strange mutterings, who had roused him.

Both relief and annoyance eddied through him as he stepped into her chamber.

A low, throaty growl greeted him. Her lethal weapon of a dog stood stiff-legged in the middle of the room, glaring with malevolent eyes.

Stephen glared back.

The dog looked away first and crouched down, warily letting him pass.

For a moment Stephen stood still, uncertain. Watery moonlight, faint as fairy’s breath, streamed through the open window and fell upon the imposing draped bed.

Juliana had been at Lynacre Hall only a week, yet already her presence pervaded what had once been Meg’s domain. The fragrance of lavender haunted the air; gowns and shifts made a cheerful disarray on the stools and chests; an old lute stood propped in a corner.

Stephen noticed this only in passing. He stood spellbound by the soft, terrible sounds coming from the figure on the bed.

Though she spoke in a foreign tongue, his heart constricted, for he knew the meaning well. In her sleep, she uttered the words of a soul that knew the icy black depths of despair and hopelessness, the supplication of a heart yearning to be healed.