At The Queen's Summons

She felt the mud slide down her backside and legs, pooling in the tops of her ancient boots. Last winter, she had stolen them from a corpse lying frozen in an alley.

“Will you eat or bathe first?” the O Donoghue asked, not unkindly.

Her stomach cramped, but she was well used to hunger pangs. The chill mud made her shiver. “A bath, I suppose, Your Reverence.”

Donal Og and Iago grinned at each other. “Your Reverence,” Iago said in his deep, musical voice.

Donal Og pointed his toe and bowed. “Your Reverence.”

Aidan ignored them. “A bath it is, then,” he said.

“I’ve never had one before.”

The O Donoghue looked at her for a long moment. His gaze burned over her, searing her face and form until she thought she might sizzle like a chicken on a spit.

“Why am I not surprised?” he asked.

She sang with a perfect, off-key joy. The room, adjoining the kitchen of Lumley House, was small and cramped and windowless, but the open door let in a flood of light. Aidan sat on the opposite side of the folding privy screen and put his hands over his ears, but her exuberant and bawdy song screeched through the barrier.

“At Steelyard store of wines there be

Your dulled minds to glad,

And handsome men that must not wed,

Except they leave their trade.

They oft shall seek for proper girls,

And some perhaps shall find—”

She broke off and called, “Do you like my song, Your Worship?”

“It’s grand,” he forced himself to say. “Simply grand.”

“I could sing you another if you wish,” she said eagerly.

“Ah, that would be a high delight indeed, I’m sure,” he said.

She took his patronage seriously. Too seriously.

“The bed it shook

As pleasure took

The carpet-knight for a ride…”

She belted the words out unblushingly. Aidan had never seen a mere bath have this sort of effect on anyone. How a wooden barrel half filled with lukewarm water could make a woman positively drunk with elation was beyond him.

She splashed and sang and every once in a while he could hear a scrubbing sound. He hoped she was availing herself of the harsh wood-ash soap.

Pippa’s singing had long since driven the Lumley maids into the yard to gossip. When he had told them to draw a bath, they had shaken their heads and muttered about Lord Lumley’s strange Irish guests.

But they had obeyed. Even in London, so many leagues from his kingdom in Kerry, he was still the O Donoghue Mór.

Except to Pippa. Despite her constant attempts to entertain him and seek his approval, she had no respect for his status. She paused in her song to draw breath or perhaps—God forbid—think up another verse.

“Are you quite finished?” Aidan asked.

“Finished? Are we pressed for time?”

“You’ll wind up pickled like a herring if you stew in there much longer.”

“Oh, very well.” He heard the slap of water sloshing against the sides of the barrel. “Where are my clothes?” she asked.

“In the kitchen. Iago will boil them. The maids found you a few things. I hung them on a peg—”

“Oooh.” She managed to infuse the exclamation with a wealth of wonder and yearning. “These are truly a gift from heaven.”

They were no gift, but the castoffs of a maid who had run off with a Venetian sailor the week before. He heard Pippa bumping around behind the screen. A few moments later, she emerged.

Haughty pride radiated from her small, straight figure. Aidan clamped his teeth down on his tongue to keep from laughing.

She had the skirt on backward and the buckram bodice upside down. Her damp hair stuck out in spikes like a crown of thorns. She was barefoot and cradling the leather slippers reverently in her hands.

Then she moved into the strands of sunlight streaming in through the kitchen door, and he saw her face for the first time devoid of soot and ashes.

It was like seeing the visage of a saint or an angel in one’s dreams. Never, ever, had Aidan seen such a face. No single feature was remarkable in and of itself, but taken as a whole, the effect was staggering.

She had a wide, clear brow, her eyebrows bold above misty eyes. The sweet curves of nose and chin framed a soft mouth, which she held pursed as if expecting a kiss. Her cheekbones were highlighted by pink-scrubbed skin. Aidan thought of the angel carved in the plaster over the altar of the church at Innisfallen. Somehow, that same lofty, otherworldly magic touched Pippa.

“The clothes,” she stated, “are magnificent.”

He allowed himself a controlled smile designed to preserve her fervent pride. “And so they are. Let me help you with some of the fastenings.”

“Ah, my silly lord, I’ve done them all up myself.”

“Indeed you have. But since you lack a proper lady’s maid to help you, I should take her part.”

“You’re very kind,” she said.

“Not always,” he replied, but she seemed oblivious of the warning edge in his voice. “Come here.”

She crossed the room without hesitation. He could not decide whether that was healthy or not. Should a young woman alone be so trusting of a strange man? Her trust was no gift, but a burden.

“First the bodice,” he said patiently, untying the haphazard knot she had made in the lacings. “I have never wondered why it mattered, but fashion demands that you wear it with the other end up.”

“Truly?” She stared down at the stiff garment in dismay. “It covered more of me upside down. When you turn it the other way, I spill out like loaves from a pan.”