Libertine in the Tudor Court
One Night in Paradise
A Most Unseemly Summer
Juliet Landon

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JULIET LANDON lives in an ancient country village in the north of England with her retired scientist husband. Her keen interest in embroidery, art and history, together with a fertile imagination, make writing historical novels a favourite occupation. She finds the research particularly exciting, especially the early medieval period and the fascinating laws concerning women in particular and their struggle for survival in a man’s world.

One Night in Paradise

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Author’s Note

Chapter One

23 June 1575, Richmond, Surrey

A dorna Pickering’s ability to stay calm in the face of adversity was put severely to the test the day that Queen Elizabeth went hawking. They were in the park at Richmond and Adorna was noticed not so much for her superb horsemanship but for her graceful fall backwards into the River Thames and for her pretence that it was nothing, really. Though Adorna managed to impress the Queen, there was one who refused to be impressed in quite the same sympathetic manner.

It had all begun so well, the midsummer sun promising a windless day perfect for hawking, one of Her Majesty’s favourite sports in which she always indulged when staying at her palace in Richmond. The park was extensive, well stocked with deer and water-birds, and a select gathering of the Queen’s favourite courtiers made a brilliant splash of colour behind her, quietly vying with each other to show off their finery, their horses, and their popularity.

As the daughter of the Queen’s Master of the Revels Office, Adorna’s presence in such company was not only accepted but encouraged. Living at Richmond so close to the royal palace had many compensations, as her newly appointed father had only recently pointed out.

Adorna had already attracted smiles and admiring glances, her striking beauty and pale gold hair reflecting the similar pale gold of her new mare in the blue-patterned harness given to her last week for her twentieth birthday. By her side rode Master Peter Fowler, another member of the royal household, a young man on the upward current who privately believed that his future would be enhanced by his association with someone slightly above his station. Not that he was oblivious to Adorna’s physical attributes, but Peter was more ambitious than moonstruck, and his appearance by her side this morning was no coincidence.

In a sea of jewel colours, tossing plumes and a speckle of spaniels weaving between hooves, the company waited while the Queen and her Master Falconer cast their falcons up into the sky while down below the beaters flushed ducks from the river, putting them to flight. But, being on the edge of the gathering and not far from the river bank, Adorna’s flighty young mare took exception to wings whizzing overhead, squawking loudly. The mare bunched and staggered backwards, quivering with fright, and it was with some difficulty that Adorna controlled her and stopped her barging into nearby horses whose riders were looking skywards. Then, thinking that she was over that semi-crisis, she gave her attention to the falcons, which, in bringing down the ducks, dropped two of them into the river in a flurry of white feathers.

Everyone’s attention was now engaged in seeing who would be first to retrieve the flapping quarry for Her Majesty, none of them noticing how Adorna’s mare, still restive, had decided to join the retrieving party of her own free will against all her rider’s attempts to stop her. Moving backwards instead of forwards despite all that Adorna could do, the mare was beating a determined staccato with her hind hooves into the water around her. Men called, others laughed, including the Queen, some used their swords as fishing hooks, one lad plunged in bodily to earn the Queen’s favour, but no one—not even Peter—noticed how Adorna and her pale golden mare were now wallowing, hock deep, into the current.

She yelled to him, ‘Peter! Help me!’ but his attention was on the ducks like everyone else’s, and Adorna was obliged to use her whip to impel the horse forward as the water covered her feet, the hem of her long gown swirling wetly around one knee. But she had left it too late; the whip hit the water instead of the horse, which still refused to respond to her commands. Help came unexpectedly in the form of a large man and horse who plunged into the water ahead of her, grabbing unceremoniously at the mare’s bridle only seconds before the current swept over the saddle.

Concerned only with getting on to the bank as a team, she paid no attention to the man’s appearance except to note that his horse was very large and that he himself was powerful enough to drag the reins out of her hands and over the mare’s head and to haul the creature almost bodily through the muddy water on to dry firm ground.

Well away from the applauding crowd, Adorna found her voice. ‘Thank you, oh, thank you,’ she said, clutching at the pommel of the saddle as the mare lurched forward. ‘Thank heaven somebody noticed at last.’

Her thanks were misinterpreted. ‘If you think that’s the most effective way to be noticed, mistress, think again,’ the man snapped, devoid of any sympathy. ‘The applause you hear is for Her Majesty, not for your antics. Leave the retrieving to the hounds in future.’

It was not Adorna’s way to be speechless for long, but that piece of calculated rudeness was breathtaking. What was more, the man’s dismounting was far quicker than hers and, well before she could reply, she was being hoisted out of the saddle by two strong arms and set down upon the ground with the hem of her wet skirts and underclothes sticking nastily to her legs. His hands were painfully efficient.

‘I was referring, sir, to my predicament,’ she snapped back, shaking off his supporting hand. ‘If I’d planned on being noticed, as you appear to think, I’d not have chosen to back into the river before the Queen’s entire court, believe me. Nor was I in the race to retrieve a duck. Now, can I rid you of any more delusions before you go?’ Still not looking at him, she shook the full skirt of her pale blue gown, catching a glimpse of Peter out of the corner of her eye. He was dismounting. Kneeling. ‘Peter,’ she said, ‘get up off…oh!’ Her rescuer was doing the same.

The crowd had parted and, as Adorna sank into a deep wet curtsy, the Queen rode forward on a beautiful dapple grey. ‘Geldings make better mounts on these occasions, mistress, so I’m told,’ the Queen said. ‘Your mount is a beauty, but a little unmannerly perhaps?’ The embodiment of graciousness, the Queen exuded a sympathy for Adorna’s plight that came as a welcome change from the rescuer’s brusqueness.

Yet Adorna could not allow the chance to pass. She stayed in her curtsy, sending a haughty glance towards the man before making her reply. ‘Your Majesty is most kind. My mare is still young, though one would have to struggle to find a similarly good excuse for others’ unmannerliness.’ There was no mistaking the butt of her remark, the man in question glowering at her as if she were a troublesome sparrowhawk on his wrist, while the Queen and her Court’s laughter tinkled around them like splinters of breaking ice.

But Adorna’s glance had given her the information that she had already suspected, by his imperious manner and cultured voice—he was a self-opinionated wit-monger, albeit an extremely good-looking one, whose imposing stature was exactly the kind the Queen liked to have around her. Ill-featured people were anathema to her, especially men. He was dark-eyed and boldfaced with a square clean-shaven jaw, his head now bared to show thick dark waves brushed back off his forehead, a dent showing where his blue velvet bonnet had recently sat. His shoulders were broad enough to take her insult and, as the Queen signalled them to rise, Adorna saw that his legs were long and muscular, outlined in tight canions up to the top of his thighs to where his paned trunk-hose fitted. His deep blue velvet complemented her paler version perfectly, but that appeared to be their only point of compatibility.

The Queen was still amused. ‘There now, Sir Nicholas,’ she said. ‘Apparently it is not so much what one does as the manner in which one does it. I shall expect more from you when I have the misfortune to fall into the river.’

Sir Nicholas had the grace to laugh as he bowed to her. ‘Divine Majesty,’ he said, ‘I believe the Lady Moon will fall into the river before you do.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ She accepted the compliment and turned again to Adorna. ‘Mistress Pickering, there are few women who could look as well as you after such a fright. I hope you’ll not leave us.’

Adorna knew a command when she heard one. ‘I thank Your Majesty. I ask nothing more than to stay.’

‘Then stay close, mistress, and let my lord of Leicester’s man teach your pretty mare a thing or two about obedience. Sir Nicholas, tend the lady.’

Sir Nicholas bowed again as the Queen moved away to yet another scattering of applause at her graciousness, but Adorna had no intention of being tended by this uncivil creature, whatever the Queen’s wishes. She turned to Peter Fowler, but the voice at her back held her attention.

‘Mistress Pickering. Sir Thomas’s daughter. Well, well.’

Adorna spoke over her shoulder. ‘And you are one of the Master of Horse’s men, I take it, which would explain why you are more polite to horses than to their riders. What a good thing the same cannot be said of your master.’ It was well known that the handsome earl, Her Majesty’s Master of Horse, was desperately in love with the Queen.

‘My master, lady, has not yet had to drag Her Majesty out of the river in front of her courtiers. It’s not your pretty mare that needs a lesson in manners so much as its rider needing lessons in control.’ By this time the golden mare was eating something sweet from Sir Nicholas’s hand, as docile as a lamb. ‘Believe it or not, that is what Her Grace was telling you.’

Furiously, she rounded on him as Peter and two of her friends came to her aid, wringing the water from the hem of her gown. ‘Rubbish! There is no one in the world who speaks more candidly than the Queen. If that’s what she’d meant she’d have said so. Her Grace commands me to stay close and that is what I must do. I have thanked you for your assistance, Sir Nicholas, but now you are relieved of all further responsibility towards me, despite what Her Grace desires. Go and practise your courtesies on your horses.’

‘Mistress!’ Peter Fowler’s alarm warned her that her own courtesy was fraying around the edges. ‘This gentleman is Sir Nicholas Rayne, Deputy to Her Majesty’s Master of Horse.’

Before she could find another cutting retort, Sir Nicholas made a bow to Peter, smiling. ‘And you, Master Fowler, are the gentleman with the longest title in Her Majesty’s service. Gentleman Controller of All and Every Her Highness’s Works. Did I get it right?’ He was already laughing.

‘To the letter,’ said Peter. ‘In other words, Head of Security.’

But Adorna was not prepared for any signs of amity. She thanked her two friends and turned to Peter for assistance in remounting, though by now he was diverted by laughter and forestalled by Sir Nicholas who, in one stride, caught her round the waist and hoisted her into the saddle as if she were no more than a child.

For a brief moment, her view of the world turned sideways as her head came into contact with his neck and shoulder, her cheek feeling the softly curling pleats of the tiny white ruff that sat high above the blue doublet. She caught a whiff of musk from his skin and felt the firmness of his hands under her shoulders, and then the world was righted and she was looking down into his face, into two dark unsmiling eyes that held hers, boldly, for a fraction longer than was necessary. Confused by what she saw, she blinked, took the reins from him and waited as he and Peter unstuck the clinging fabric from her legs and arranged it in damp folds around her.

The Queen’s party had begun to move away.

‘Thank you, Sir Nicholas,’ she said, coldly, to the top of his blue velvet bonnet, watching the white and gold plumes lift and settle again. ‘I think you should go now.’

He made no reply to that. Instead, he took his own horse from a groom and vaulted into the saddle in one leap, reining the horse over expertly to walk on her other side, his nod to Peter cutting across her stony face.

By the time they reached the wide open fields well away from the river, Adorna’s composure was settling into an act which convinced those about her that she was comfortable. This was far from the truth, but showed the level of pretence of which she was capable. The wetness from her beautiful pale blue gown had now seeped up to her saddle, warm, sticky, and chafing her thighs: her golden mare’s hindquarters were caked with mud and the shining bells on her harness were clattering instead of tinkling. Far worse than any of that was the disturbing presence of the one who had saved her from a complete soaking, whose inscrutable expression gave her no inkling of his real reason for staying nearby, whether because he wanted to or because he had been commanded to. The pressure of his hands could still be felt, but she would not let him know, even by a sneaking exploration, that he had had the slightest effect.

As the Queen had commanded, Sir Nicholas drew her nearer to the centre of things than she had been before, which did even less for Adorna’s comfort. Having changed her peregrine falcon for a rare white gerfalcon, the Queen held it, hooded, on her wrist as a distant heron flew away upwards, ringing into the sky. The gerfalcon was released to pursue it, to climb even higher and then to stoop and dive, bringing the lovely thing down to the retrieving greyhounds whose speed prevented any injury to the precious raptor. Again, there was applause, then the announcement that they would have the picnic.

At this point, Adorna sidled invisibly back to her friends on the edge of the party, accepting whatever morsels of food were brought and passed around by the young pages. She made an effort to dismiss the incident of the river and to make herself affable to Peter, but her eyes had a will of their own, straying disobediently towards the tall well-built figure in deep blue braided with gold whose laughter was bold and teasingly directed towards a group of the Queen’s ladies.

Dressed entirely in white, the young Maids of Honour made a perfect foil for the Queen’s russet-and-gold that suited her so well. Like Adorna herself, she wore a high-crowned hat with a curl of feathers on the brim, a man’s-type doublet that buttoned up to the neck, and a full skirt. But whereas Adorna’s outfit was relatively modest in its decoration, the Queen had spared no effort to load herself with braids, chains and rings, frogging across her breast overlaid by pendants, and jewels winking from every surface, even from her neck-ruff of finest white lace.

Adorna’s gown had begun to dry by now and they would soon be away again on a search for herons and cranes, perhaps larks for those with smaller raptors. She went to where the mare was tied to a tree, her muzzle dripping with water from a bucket. ‘Your legs all right, my beauty?’ she whispered, taking a look at the mud-covered rear end. ‘We nearly came to grief, you and I, didn’t we, eh? Are you going to calm down this afternoon, then?’

‘That will depend,’ a voice said behind her, ‘on her rider more than anything else.’

Refusing to be drawn into another confrontation, Adorna clenched her teeth and slid one hand over the mare’s muddy rump, preparing to examine her legs. Sir Nicholas managed the gesture with far more confidence than she, overtaking her hand with his own as he came to stand before her, continuing the examination with all the assurance of a horseman. His hands were strong and brown with flecks of fine dark hair on the backs, his nails clean and workmanlike, and Adorna watched in reluctant admiration how his fingertips pressed and probed almost tenderly. She drew her eyes upwards to his face as he stood, and found that he was already regarding her in some amusement, knowing that the progress of his hands had been marked with an interest of a not altogether objective nature. Against her will, she found that her eyes were locked with his.

‘Well?’ he said, softly. ‘She’s still sound after her dunk in the river, and there’s nothing wrong with her temperament that a little gentle schooling won’t cure. Show her who’s master, though.’ As he spoke, his hands caressed the mare’s satin flanks, which twitched against the sensation, and Adorna knew that his words had as much to do with herself as they did with the mare. ‘She’s a classy creature,’ he said, ‘but not for amateurs.’ On his last phrase, his eyes left hers and rested directly on Peter Fowler who was just out of earshot, returning to her in time to see a flush of angry pink suffuse her cheeks.

If he wanted to believe that Peter was her lover, even though he was not, she was content for him to do so, for it would afford her some protection, his innuendo being impossible to misunderstand. She was as angry at her own uncontrollable shiver of excitement as at his blatant attempt to flirt with her after his earlier hostility, and the stinging rebuke came out like a rapier.

‘Don’t concern yourself with my mare’s requirements, sir,’ she said sharply. ‘Nor with mine. We have both managed well enough without your advice so far, so don’t think that your one act of bravado makes you indispensable to us. I think you should go back to your master and make yourself really useful. I bid you good day.’

She would have walked away on the last word, but his arm came across her, resting on the mare’s saddle, and she found herself imprisoned between him and the horse. ‘Ah, no, mistress,’ he said, without raising his voice. ‘That’s the third time you’ve ordered me to go, I believe. There are only a limited number of those who may give me orders, and you will never be one of them. What’s more, when the Queen commands me to tend a lady, I will tend her until she gives me leave to stop. If you dislike the idea so, then I suggest you make your objections known to her. Now, mistress, make ready to mount.’ And without the slightest warning other than that, he swooped and lifted her into his arms.

She should, of course, have been prepared for this, for he had already shown himself to be a man of immediate action. But strangely enough, she found that she was temporarily immobilised by his overpowering closeness, his refusal to be commanded, his boldness. Now his face was alarmingly close to hers and, instead of tossing her into the saddle as he had before, he was holding her deliberately tightly in his arms, preventing her from struggling.

‘You are a stranger, sir,’ she whispered, ‘and you are insulting me. My father will hear of this.’ Yet, as she spoke the words, she knew full well that her father would not hear of it from her lips and that, if this stranger was indeed insulting her, it was making her heart race in the most extraordinary manner that mixed fear with anticipation and a helplessness that made her feel guilty with pleasure. Or was it anger? Any other man, she thought, might have been expected to react with some concern at that threat, her father being Sir Thomas Pickering, Master of the Revels and therefore this man’s superior.

His expression showed no such disquiet. ‘No, mistress,’ he said. ‘I think not.’

She could feel his breath upon her face as he spoke, and she knew that he was allowing her to feel his nearness in the same way that an unbroken horse must be given time to get used to a man’s closeness, his restraint. His unsmiling mouth was firm and well proportioned and his nose, straight and smooth, led her examining eyes to his own that sparkled beneath high-angled brows, unflinching eyes of brown jasper, dark-lashed and suggesting to her an age of about thirty, by the experience written within them.

‘Let me go, I say. Please!’

As he moved to tip her upwards into the saddle, she saw a brief smile cross his face, which had disappeared by the time she looked again. He tapped her riding whip with one finger. ‘That’s for show, not for use,’ he said, severely. ‘Stallions need it, mares don’t.’

Adorna felt safe enough from that height to pretend unconcern. ‘Fillies?’ she said. ‘And geldings?’

The brief smile reappeared and vanished again as he recognised the return of her courage. ‘Remind me to tell you of the first some time. Of geldings I know little that would be of any use to you.’ And once again, she knew that neither of them was talking of horses.

The afternoon passed in a daze, though the only one to remark on her unusual quietness was Master Peter Fowler, who said, quite on the wrong tack, ‘Did that wetting upset you, mistress? It’s a pity you were not allowed to go home and change. You could have been back before Her Majesty noticed.’

That much was true, her home being a mere half-mile away over on the other side of the palace, a convenient place for Sir Thomas and Lady Marion to live when the Queen was at Richmond, and only one of several dotted about the home counties near the other royal residences. Life at court was a great temptation and Lady Marion, Adorna’s lovely mother, had no intention of leaving her handsome husband to the attentions of other women with whom he was obliged to come into contact. As Master of Revels, he probably saw more of them than the average household official, being responsible for the special costumes and theatrical effects needed for Her Majesty’s entertainment, an element of court life of great importance to balance the weightier matters of state.

Sir Thomas had expected to have Adorna’s assistance that day, but then had come Master Fowler’s request to take her to the Queen’s falconry picnic in the park, and he had not the heart to refuse. All the same, Master Fowler had better not harbour any fancy ideas involving Adorna: she could do far better for herself with her looks and connections.

Adorna’s looks were indeed something of which her parents were proud: pale blonde hair and startlingly beautiful features, large grey-blue eyes with sweeping lashes and a full mouth that, as far as her parents knew, had never been tasted by a man. Boys, perhaps, at Christmas, but never a man. Needless to say, there had been plenty of interest, so much so that Sir Thomas and Lady Marion had been criticised by family for being too lenient with her fastidiousness. At twenty years old, the elders said, it was time she was a wife and mother; let her put her high-faluting ideas aside and marry the richest of them, as other women did.

Fortunately for Adorna, her parents had so far ignored this advice, for they knew better than most how the Queen’s Court was a notorious hotbed of intrigue, liaisons, broken hearts and broken marriages, deceptions and dismissals. Adorna herself was not one of the Queen’s inner circle of courtiers nor had the Queen ever insisted on her regular appearance there, being sympathetic to the Pickerings’ views that lovely young women were often targets of men’s attractions for all the wrong reasons. Her Majesty had had enough problems in the past with her six young Maids of Honour, some of them losing their honour so quickly that it reflected badly on her, as their moral guardian.

Even so, Her Majesty was well aware of Adorna Pickering’s existence and, because she liked Sir Thomas and his wife, she encouraged their talented family to attend her functions. It worked both ways; while the Queen surrounded herself with beautiful and talented people, Adorna’s presence went some way towards advertising her father’s success as a new office-holder. Even though still part of the Great Wardrobe under Sir John Fortescue, his position carried with it a certain responsibility, one of which was to be seen in the best company.

To have access to Court without actually being sucked into the vortex of it was, Adorna believed, a very pleasant place to be, especially as her home was so conveniently near, with her father always at hand for protection if danger came a mite too close. On more than one occasion, he had been a very efficient tool to use against a too-persistent trespass, and running for cover became Adorna’s foolproof defence against over-attentive men, young or old, who would like to have taken more than was on offer. Though guests came and went constantly to her home at Sheen House next door to the palace, there were at least a dozen places in the fashionably meandering building where Adorna could remain out of touch until danger had passed.

True to form, she sought refuge with her father in the Revels Office for, despite Sir Nicholas’s refusal to be put off by the mention of him, she could think of no reason why the younger man would venture there to find her. There was still time left in the day to see how her father had proceeded without her, nor was it far for her and her maid to pass from Sheen House down what had lately become known as Paradise Road and through the gate in the wall of the palace garden.

To Sir Thomas’s annoyance, the Revels Office had no separate buildings of its own and was therefore obliged to share limited space with the Great Wardrobe where some of the Queen’s clothes were stored, others being in London itself. Consequently, tailors and furriers, embroiderers, carpenters and painters, shoemakers and artificers all worked side by side with never enough room to manoeuvre. Adorna’s creative talents were often put to good use in the Revels Office where men with flair and drawing ability were always in demand to design sets, special effects and costumes for the many Court entertainments.

Today, she had found a relatively private corner in which to examine some of the sumptuous and fantastic creations being prepared for a masque at the palace at the end of the week. She had helped to design the costumes and choose the materials and jewels, also to construct the elaborate head-dresses and wigs, for all the Court ladies taking part must have abundant blonde hair. She lifted one of the masks and held it above a flimsy gown of pale sea-green fringed with golden tassels, holding her head to one side to judge its effect.

‘Try it on,’ her father said. ‘That’s the best way to see.’

‘That won’t help me much, will it, Father?’

‘Perhaps not, but it’ll help me.’ He grinned and, to please him, she took up the mask and the robe stuck all over with silver and gold stars and went into a corner screened off from the rest of the busy room. Maybelle, her maid, went with her to help, though Adorna was wearing no farthingale or whalebone bodice to complicate matters. In a few moments she emerged to confront her father, but found to her surprise that he was not now alone but in the company of Sir John Fortescue and another officer of the revels who assisted her father.

This was not what Adorna had intended, for she was not wearing the correct undergarments, nor was the pale green robe with stars even finished, and it was only the papier mâché mask of a Water Maiden covering her face that hid her sudden blush of embarrassment as she held the edges of the fabric together across her bosom. And there was only one sleeve; her other arm was bare.

Before she could retreat, they had seen the half-dressed sea nymph and immediately began an assessment of its cost multiplied by eight, the amount of white-gold sarcenet with Venice gold fringe and the indented kirtles with plaits of silver lawn trailing from the waist. Not to mention the masks, head-dresses, shoes, stockings, tridents and other accessories, multiplied by eight.

‘Put the head-dress on, my dear,’ Sir Thomas said. ‘Which one is it? This one?’ He picked up a conch-shell creation covered in silver and draped with dagged green tissue to resemble seaweed and passed it to Maybelle.

‘Er…no, Father, if you please,’ Adorna protested.

But she was overruled by the three of them, and the thing was placed on her head, pushing down the mask in the process and making it difficult for her to see through the eyeholes. She must alter that before they were used. She heard murmurs of approval. ‘I must go,’ she mumbled into the claustrophobic space around her mouth. ‘Excuse me, if you please.’

Blindly, she turned and was caught by a hand on her arm before bumping into the person who had been standing silently at her back, someone whose familiar voice made her tear quickly at the mask, lifting it and tangling it with her loose hair and the head-dress in an effort to see where she was. The fabric across her front gaped as she let go of it and was snatched together again by Maybelle’s quick hand, but not before Adorna had seen the direction of the man’s eyes and the unconcealed interest in them.

‘Not a good day for water nymphs,’ Sir Nicholas whispered, letting go of her arm and stepping back to allow her to pass.

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.

‘Yes,’ Hester whispered. She looked around her at the white plasterwork and the warm tapestried walls. ‘It’s cool and quiet here. I remember how I liked it before, long ago.’

‘Well,’ Lady Marion said, leading her towards the carved oak staircase, ‘a lot’s happened since then, and now you’re a woman of independent means, free to do whatever you wish. You’re our guest for as long as you choose to stay.’

There was no corresponding flash of delight at hearing her new status described. On the contrary, the very idea of having to make her own decisions was apparently not something she looked forward to with any relish. Sir William Pickering, Sir Thomas’s cousin, had died at the beginning of the year, leaving his fortune and his house in London to Hester.

‘Did you bring your maid with you?’ said Adorna. ‘If not, you shall share Maybelle with me. She knows how to dress hair in the latest fashions. Come, shall we find your room? The men will bring your baggage up.’

Cousin Hester’s mourning-garb was only to be expected, in the circumstances, though neither the hostess nor her daughter would have allowed themselves to look quite so dowdy as their guest had the same thing happened to them. While they were not particularly in the forefront of fashion as those at Court were, neither were they ten years behind it as Hester was. Her figure could only be guessed at, concealed beneath a loose-bodied gown closed from neck to hem with fur-edged ties, puffed shoulder-sleeves and tight bead-covered under-sleeves. The hair to which Maybelle may or may not have access was almost completely hidden beneath a black french hood that hung well down at the back, though the bit of hair that showed at the front was brownish and looked, Maybelle thought, as if it needed a washing before it would reveal its true colour.

After her father’s reproach the day before, Adorna now exercised all her charity towards her half-cousin, knowing little of the background of experience which had kept Hester inside her protective shell. For a woman of her age, she was impossibly tongue-tied and, for an heiress, she was going to find it difficult to protect herself from fortune-seeking men of whom there were countless hereabouts. Adorna managed it by virtue of her closeness to her parents; Hester would not manage it at all without some help. Yet on their guest list for Saturday, Adorna and her mother had already paired off this pathetic young lady with Sir Nicholas Rayne who might, for all they knew, be one of those sharks from whom she would need protection. On the other hand, they might suit each other perfectly. Strangely, the idea had lost its appeal for Adorna.

Having helped to unpack Hester’s rather inadequate belongings and a very limited range of clothes, Adorna conducted her on a tour of the house, which she believed would make her feel more at home. Inside, there was much of it that Hester remembered, but outside, the large formal garden had been restructured into a series of smaller ones bounded by tall hedges, walls, trellises and stone balustrades, walkways, steps and spreading trees. The banqueting house was also new to her.

Adorna opened the double doors to reveal a marble-floored garden-room with windows on all eight of its sides. The ceiling was prettily plastered with clouds and cherubs bearing fruit, and the panels between the windows were painted to represent views of the garden beyond. In the centre of the floor was a round marble table supported by grimacing cherubs.

‘For the banquets,’ Adorna said, ‘the suckets and marchpanes. I’m making them ready in the stillroom. We’ll come out here after the last course and nibble while the servants clear the hall ready for the entertainment.’

‘Tonight?’

‘No, tomorrow. About thirty guests are coming to dinner. Didn’t Mother tell you?’

The colour drained from Hester’s face. ‘Guests? Oh, dear.’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Perhaps I should stay in my room. I’m in mourning, you must remember.’

‘Hester, dear…’ Adorna drew her down to a stone bench fixed to the wall ‘…being in mourning doesn’t mean you have to avoid people. It’s nearly seven months since Sir William died, and how often did you see him in your twenty-one years?’

‘Two…three times. I don’t recall.’

‘So, you can still wear black for a full year, if you wish, but Sir William would not have wanted you to hide away for so long, would he? After all, he was a man who lived life to the full, I believe.’

She supposed Hester to know at least as much as she did about Sir William Pickering, who had once believed himself to be in the running for the Queen’s hand in the days before the Earl of Leicester. She had shown him every favour and he had exploited that favour to the full, making himself extremely unpopular while he was about it. But the Queen did not marry him and he had retired from Court, permanently unmarried but not chaste.

‘Did your aunt never tell you about her brother?’ Adorna said. ‘By all accounts your father was a remarkable man. In the Queen’s Secret Service, a scholar, a fine handsome man. Women adored him, and he must have loved your mother and you very much to have wanted you to inherit his entire wealth. He doesn’t sound to me like the kind of man who would want his daughter to hide herself away when she has the chance to meet people. My mother and father will be here, remember. We’ll take care of you.’

Hester, who had been gazing at her hands until now, sighed and stared out of the window. ‘Yes…but…’

‘But what?’

‘Well, you’re so used to it. You know what to say, and you’re so beautiful, and fashionable…and…’

‘Nonsense! Some of the most fashionable ladies are not beauties, and some beauties are dowdy. Everyone has at least one good feature, and you have several, Hester.’

‘I do?’

‘Of course you do. The secret is to make the most of them. Would you like me to help? I can, if you’ll allow it. Maybelle and I can do your hair, and we can find something a little prettier to wear?’

‘In black?’

‘In black, but more flattering. Yes?’

At last a smile hovered and broke through. ‘All right. And will you tell me what to say, too?’

‘Ah, now that,’ Adorna said, ‘may take a little longer, but I can certainly try. The first thing to do is to smile.’

By the time Sir Thomas returned to Sheen House in mid-afternoon, the transformation had begun and the outmoded mousy young lady who had been greeted by Lady Pickering was not quite the same one who curtsied gracefully to the master of the house, though the effort of it robbed her of words. Between them, Adorna and Maybelle had worked wonders. The hair had now been washed, burnished and arranged into a small jewelled cap that sat on the back of her head like a ripe hazelnut. Hester’s straggly eyebrows had been plucked to form two slim arches, and her faint eyelashes had been darkened with a mixture of soot and saliva, which seemed to work very well. Even those few measures had been enough to convert an ordinary face into a most comely one, but Hester’s greatest assets were her teeth. Once she began to show their dazzling whiteness, there was no reason why she should not smile more often, Adorna told her.

Under the loose gown, she was found to be as shapely as most other young women, if somewhat gauche, not knowing what to do with her hands. Or her head, for that matter. But when she tried on Adorna’s black taffeta half-gown with the slashed sleeves and the blackwork partlet, then the new Hester began to emerge.

Teaching her how to move with confidence did not produce such instant results, for there were years of awkwardness and tensions to remove, nervous habits and self-conscious fumblings to eradicate which could not even be mentioned for fear of making them worse. So Adorna advised her to listen rather than to talk. ‘It’s easy enough,’ she said. ‘Men will talk about themselves until the moon turns blue and then some more. You’ll only have to nod and they’ll never notice you haven’t said a word. You can’t fail. They’re all the same. Just smile at them, and they’ll do the rest.’

Hester did not recognise the cynicism, never having found a pressing need to express herself on any particular subject, so the advice was well within her capabilities. She had noticed the palace wall beyond the Pickerings’ garden and wanted to know if that was where Sir Thomas worked.

‘No,’ Adorna told her, ‘my father’s offices and workrooms are round the back, not far from the tennis court and bowling alley. That wall is the Queen’s Gardens. Would you like to see?’ She had noted Hester’s interest in their own.

Predictably, the response was muted. ‘Well…er, might we not be intruding?’

Adorna laughed. ‘Meet somebody? Well, probably the odd courtier or two, or the gardener. Come, let’s show off the new Hester.’ The new Hester followed, dutifully.

The palace itself dominated a large area of the riverside, spreading backwards and upwards in a profusion of towers and turrets that pierced the sky with golden weather-vanes, shining domes, flags and chimneys. The colours of brick and stone mingled joyfully with flashing panes of glass that caught the sun, and the patterns that adorned every surface of the façade never failed to enchant Adorna. But Hester’s eyes were too busy searching for any sign of life to enjoy them. On a rainy day, Adorna told her, one could still walk round the magnificent garden beneath the covered walkway that enclosed all four sides, but Hester was still unsettled. ‘What’s that shouting?’ she whispered, nervously.

‘The tennis court, over there at the back. Shall we go and see?’

‘Er…there’ll be people.’

‘They’ll be far too busy watching the players to see us.’ Adorna took her arm and drew her gently onwards towards the sound of people and the curious pinging noise that became a hard clattering the nearer they walked.

The tennis court was a roofed building like the one at Hampton Court Palace that the Queen’s father had had built. They entered through an arched doorway into a dim passage where suddenly the clatter and men’s cries became sharper, and Adorna felt the resistance of Hester’s arm as she drew back, already fearing what she might see. Although Adorna could sympathise with her cousin’s dilemma, she saw no point in balking at the first hurdle. She placed Hester in front of her and steered her forwards, smiling to herself at each reluctant step.

The light came from windows high up on the two longest sides; the walls built up high had galleries running along them under sloping roofs upon which the hard balls bounced noisily before hitting the paved floor in the centre. A net stretched across the court, visibly sagging in the middle while four men, stripped down to doublets and hose, whacked at the ball with short-handled racquets. The two women sidled into the gallery where men and women leaned over the barrier to watch the play with shouts of, ‘Well done, sir!’ echoing eerily, laughing at the men’s protests, their shouts of jubilation.

They found a space behind the barrier, Adorna nodding silent greetings to a few familiar faces, feeling Hester flinch occasionally as the ball hit the wooden roof overhead and rolled down again. It was only when she gave her full attention to the players that Adorna realized she was within an arm’s length of Sir Nicholas Rayne whose aggressive strokes at the leather ball were causing the marker to call out scores in his favour, though she could not begin to fathom out why.

Almost imperceptibly, she drew back, wishing she had not come, yet fascinated by his strength and agility, his amazing reach that scooped the ball up from the most impossible places, his quickness and accuracy. At one point, as the players changed ends, Sir Nicholas was one of those who pulled off their doublets, undoing the points of their white linen shirts. Rolling up their sleeves, they showed muscular forearms, at which Hester was obviously disturbed. ‘Should we go, Adorna?’ she whispered.

The name was caught inside a moment of silence, and Sir Nicholas turned, stared, and deliberately came to the barrier where they stood. He rested his hands just beyond Adorna’s. ‘The Mistresses Pickering. Welcome to Richmond, mistress,’ he said to Hester. His appraisal, Adorna thought, must have been practised on many a likely-looking horse, though thankfully Hester would not realise it.

But his narrow-eyed survey of Adorna was of a more challenging variety, and his personal greeting to her was no more than, ‘Enjoy the game, mistress,’ which she was quite sure did not mean what Hester thought it meant.

She was given no time to find a reply, for he walked quickly away, swinging his racquet, while she was torn between making a quick and dignified exit or staying, hoping to put him off.

It was Hester’s astonishing response to the greeting, predictably delayed by nervousness, that decided the course of action. ‘Thank you, Sir Nicholas,’ she said to his retreating back.

‘What?’ Adorna whispered, staring at her guest. ‘You know him?’

Hester nodded. ‘Uncle Samuel and Aunt Sarah often invited him to Bishops Standing before he left to join the Earl of Leicester’s household. I’ve not seen him for a year or more. He’s always so polite, but I never know what to say to him.’

For someone who didn’t know what to say, that was the most Hester had said since her arrival. Which, Adorna thought, meant either that Sir Nicholas was the cause of some interest within the timid little heart or that her own efforts were already bearing fruit. Unlikely, after such a short time. ‘Did he visit often?’ she probed, watching him.

‘Quite often. He and Uncle Samuel used to play chess together, and hunted, and talked about horses.’

Adorna was silenced, overtaken by the combined thudding in her chest and the crash of the ball against the wall. Had he pretended not to know Cousin Hester? Or had he simply not pretended anything? I look forward to meeting Cousin Hester. Is she…? Of course, it had not occurred to her to discover any previous acquaintance. So what had been the true purpose of his visit to Sir William Pickering’s sister’s home? Chess? Horses? ‘Is his home near them?’ she whispered.

Hester’s reply came with an expression that suggested Adorna ought to have known the answer to that. ‘His father is Lord Elyot,’ she said. ‘He owns Bishops Standing.’

The astonishment showing so clearly in Adorna’s lovely eyes was caught at that moment by the player at the far end of the court whose mind was not entirely on the game. His keen eyes levelled at hers like a hunter stalking a doe, while his partner yelled at him to attend.

‘Chase two!’ the marker called.

‘No. Chase one!’ Sir Nicholas said to himself as he sent the ball crashing across the court. The next time he had chance to look, the two Pickering ladies had disappeared.

The full impact of what was happening to her began to take effect at the end of that day, by which time Adorna was too confused to sleep. She and Hester had strolled back to Sheen House, diverting their steps through the friary paradise especially to examine the overgrown roses, the heavily budding lilies, the rue and lady’s bedstraw that symbolised the Virgin Mary to whom the garden had probably been dedicated. It was a magical place where, even now, the outlines of the beds could still be seen, providing Hester with a topic for suppertime when Lady Marion asked them where they’d been. It saved Adorna herself from having to reply, her mind being far away on another journey.

As the summer evening drew to a close, she made an excuse to be alone, to walk along the raised pathways to the banqueting house to see that the doors and windows were closed. There was a moon, silvering the pathways and the orchard below, outlining the derelict friary and staring through the glassless east window, lighting the high palace wall. She stared out across the paradise where she had walked earlier, frowning as she caught a movement beyond the shadows. A man passed through the garden door from the palace, leaving it slightly ajar, picking his way carefully across the space to stand under a gnarled pear tree, his broad shoulders well inside the low branches. There was no mistaking the shape of him, the long legs, the easy movement, the carriage of his head. Sir Nicholas Rayne. She was quite sure of it.

He had waited no more than two minutes when another figure came through the door, a woman, looking about her hesitantly. Sir Nicholas made no move to show himself, no rush to greet her or sudden urge to embrace. The woman searched awhile and then saw him, but still there was no laughter stifled by kisses but only a slow advance and the joining of hands indicating, Adorna thought, either a first meeting or a last one. The two stood together talking, his head bent to hers, her hand occasionally touching his chest, her finger once upon his mouth, briefly. The watcher in the banqueting house placed a hand upon her own breast to still the thumping inside, to quell the first awful, sour, bitter, agonising pangs of jealousy so foreign to her that she did not recognise them as such. She thought it might be guilt, or something akin to it, telling herself that the man and his woman mattered nothing to her. Less than nothing.

Do you have a lady, Sir Nicholas?

No, sir. Not yet.

What was this, then? An attempt to acquire one, or to get rid of one? He was a flirt. He was already welcomed by Hester’s foster-parents, no doubt as a potential suitor for their niece. There was surely no other good reason for them to encourage his visits, for they had no other family. What did it matter to her, anyway?

The couple was moving apart. The lady was preparing to leave, stretching the last touch of their hands to breaking point. She was weeping. Quickly, he took a stride towards her, reaching out for her shoulders and pulling her with some force towards his bending head. His kiss was short and not gentle, ending with a quick release and a faint cry from her that reached Adorna, wrenching at her heart. She clung to the wall, watching as the woman picked up her skirts and ran to the door, leaving it open behind her.

Sick and dizzy from the impact of a kiss that had not been for her, Adorna stood rooted to the spot, staring at the back of the man she had tried to keep away with her coldness, willing him to turn and come to her here, in the soft shadowy night. He did not move.

A call came to her from the house, her father’s call, loud and unmistakably for her. ‘Adorna! Come in now! It’s getting late, Adorna!’

She must answer, or he’d come looking for her. ‘Yes, Father.’

As she knew he would, Sir Nicholas turned towards the high wall behind him where the banqueting house was built into one corner. She could not leave without him seeing, and her loose blonde hair would show him her exact location. Reluctantly, she closed the double doors with a snap and locked them noisily behind her, tossing her bright hair into the moonlight. If she must reveal herself, then she would do it with aplomb. She did not look below her as she went to meet her father. ‘Coming!’ she called, merrily.

The reflection in the polished brass mirror kept up a steady and silent conversation with the blue-grey eyes, and the candle flame bent in the light breeze from the window, barely shedding any light on the messages of confusion and soul-searching that refused to untangle. What had now become clear to Adorna, after her reaction to the secret tryst in the garden, was that she had blundered in the wrong direction by her attempts to make Hester more attractive. Even to herself, she could hardly pretend that she had done it for Hester’s own sake alone, for at the back of her mind had been the possibility that a young and personable lady with a fortune would surely be of more interest to the man who had behaved with such familiarity towards herself. Then, it had seemed imperative that a way be found to get rid of him or to keep him at a more manageable distance, at least.

But now there had developed within her deepest self a reluctance to exclude this man quite as forcibly as she had been doing, especially now that there seemed to be a real chance of him seeing Hester in a new light. Her foster-parents apparently approved of him, and doubtless Hester herself was impressed by his connections. Another more relaxed and enticing meeting between the two might just be enough to do the trick, and she herself would have helped to bring it about.

Yet she could not like the man. He was too aggressively male, too experienced for her, probably promiscuous, too presumptuous. And rude. And what was he doing speaking so pertly to her when there was another woman, in spite of his denials? No doubt he had a long line of mistresses somewhere, all of whom he would deny whenever it suited him. Yes, let him make an offer for Hester, since she had come into her fortune. A man like him would appreciate more wealth, rather than the Master of Revels’ daughter.

She lifted the sleeve of her chemise to look once more for the imprint of his fingers on her upper arms. There they were, like a row of shadowy blackberry stains. She caressed them, wondering which part of her he had seen yesterday that the other three men had not. Slowly, she slipped her chemise down to her waist and stood, holding herself sideways to the mirror and raising her arms to enclose him, feeling his imaginary grip upon her shoulders, the hard dizzying kiss upon her mouth. How would it feel? Something deep inside her belly began to quiver and melt.

Guiltily, she folded her arms across herself and tiptoed over the creaky floorboards to her bed where she stretched, aching, seeing him again in the moonlit paradise as he turned to look. No, this could not be what they called falling in love; this was confusing and painful; there was nothing in it to make her happy. In the darkness behind her wide-open eyes she watched him at tennis, saw his appraisal of Hester’s new image, saw his hands on her mare’s flanks, his control of his own great mount. His bold words and stare had stirred her to anger and excitement as no other man had done. But no, of course, this was not love. How could it be? She was right; this was not the man for her. Let Hester take the field.

Chapter Three

T his resolution, nursed by Adorna until she fell asleep, had vanished completely by the time she woke, which meant that the whole argument had to be reconstructed from the beginning in order to establish any reason why Sir Nicholas should have been on her mind in the first place. Which was difficult, in the light of day.

Another disturbing development was that, overnight, Hester had apparently discovered how to smile. Adorna suspected that she must have been practising in front of the mirror, but this newest enchantment showed itself first at breakfast and was then rehearsed at intervals throughout the day so that, by the time the two of them had put the finishing touches to an array of subtleties for the banquet, Adorna was forced to the conclusion that Hester was happy. There was surely no other explanation for it.

Not that Adorna had any objections, as such, to Hester being happy, only a reservation that the reason behind it must mean only one thing. Sir Nicholas. After a year or more, Hester was happy to make contact again.

Even Lady Marion noticed it. ‘She’ll dazzle the men with that smile,’ she said to Adorna. ‘They’ll be writing sonnets to it before the week’s out.’

Adorna stood back to look at the effects of the trailing ivy interlaced with roses hanging in swags across the oak panelling of the great hall. ‘She’s learning more quickly than I thought,’ she said with her head on one side. ‘Is that level with the others?’

‘More or less. I think she ought to have her own maid though, dearest. Perhaps I’ll suggest finding one for her. If she’s going to improve as fast as that, we can’t let her choose one who doesn’t know a farthingale from a martingale, can we?’

Visions of Hester wearing a strap from her chin to her waist to keep her head down caused an undignified halt to the proceedings that lightened Adorna’s heart, if only temporarily. Her mother’s relief at having an extra male guest to partner Hester had grown to far greater heights once she discovered that the two were already acquainted and from then on, no instruction was too detailed to make sure that Hester and Sir Nicholas were to be regarded as a pair. From which it was obvious to Adorna that her father had made very little of the man’s visit to the workshop two days ago. Knowing her parents’ tendency to see potential suitors even before they appeared, Adorna was very relieved by this.

Although they had never regarded Master Peter Fowler as a serious contender for Adorna’s hand, Peter himself did, being one of the first to arrive for the dinner party, bringing a gift for his hostess in the shape of a tiny silver padlock and key. A symbol, he told her, of his protection for her most precious jewel.

Smiling courteously, Adorna said nothing to contradict this, for it was precisely this aspect of Peter’s company that had singled him out from other young men. He was tall and well made, personable, correct, agreeable and utterly dependable, as his job demanded. Protection was not only his profession but also the reason for his attraction, for if Adorna could not be safe with Peter, then who could she be safe with? Naturally, his lapse at the Queen’s hawking party in Richmond Park had been unusual, but Adorna did not blame him for that. Brown-eyed and curly-haired, he offered her a brown satin-clad arm while expertly assessing the security of the pale pink bodice that skimmed the swell of her breasts with a hint of white lace to half-conceal the deepest cleft. A lace pie-frill ruff clung enticingly to her throat.

She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm. ‘Peter,’ she said, ‘I want you to meet our house guest. She’s appallingly shy. Will you talk to her?’

Hester curtsied with lowered eyes while Peter, bowing to the shy black-clad figure, thought the contrast to Adorna could hardly have been greater. Even in black, the dowdiness had been replaced by a beguiling vulnerability to which Peter instantly responded, for Hester’s nut-brown hair under a jewelled velvet band had suffered hours of Maybelle’s ministrations and now, framing her face in a heart-shaped roll, suited her perfectly.

Peter’s response to Adorna’s introduction was even more immediate. ‘Sir William Pickering’s daughter?’ He beamed. ‘Why, mistress, I have admired your late father’s exploits since I was so high—’ he held a hand level with his waist ‘—and I even met him, once. Come, will you speak of him to me?’ His large fingers closed warmly over the trembling ones and Hester was obliged to abandon Adorna’s advice concerning smiles and nods in order to talk of a father she had hardly known. It was good practice, but not exactly what Lady Marion had had in mind.

Sir Thomas’s musicians were by now in full swing high up in the gallery at the far end of the hall. Below them, the guests entered from a porch at one side, adding another layer of sound that rose in waves of laughter and drifted away into the great oaken rafters. Even while she chatted, Adorna could identify the booming stage-voice of Master Burbage, their actor friend, followed by the reed-pipe squeak of Master Thomas Tallis whose wife Joan held him up by one elbow as a stool was placed beneath him. Yet, though she was soon surrounded by friends and acquaintances, Adorna felt the effect of someone’s eyes on the back of her head that pulled her slowly round and drew her away like a netted fish.

Although Sir Nicholas was part of a newly arrived group, he took no part in their conversation but aimed his narrowed eyes towards Adorna, meeting hers as she turned, throwing out a challenge for her to come and welcome him. To refuse would have been too discourteous.

She lifted the golden pomander that swung on a chain at her waist and went forward, unable to withdraw her eyes from his though, even as they met, there was not the smile of welcome she had given to others.

‘Your lady mother bade me welcome,’ he said, softly.

‘Of course,’ said Adorna. ‘She would see no reason to do otherwise.’ Her heart beat loudly under her straight pink bodice, making her breathless.

‘And you, mistress? Do you see a reason to do otherwise?’

‘I see several reasons, sir, but don’t concern yourself with them. It cannot be the first time a woman has taken an aversion to you. But then, perhaps it is.’

He glanced around him as if to find an example, but saw Hester instead. ‘Ah, Cousin Hester. Was it your doing that transformed the lady, or had it already begun? Quite remarkable. She’s learning to speak, too, I see. Well, well.’

Coming from another, she might have smiled at this sarcasm, but a mixture of pride and protection quelled it. ‘I was not aware,’ she said, ‘that you and she knew each other. She tells me that you found the hunting good at Bishops Standing.’

‘Is that all she told you?’

His blunt question made her pause, not knowing how to learn more without betraying her interest. Mercifully, she was prevented from saying anything by the Yeoman of the Ewery’s arrival, whose invitation to dip their fingers into the silver bowl of scented water signalled an end to most conversations. She dried hers on the linen towel and handed it to Sir Nicholas. ‘I am expected to take you to her,’ she said. ‘Will you come, sir?’

‘Gladly,’ he said, smiling. ‘I can hardly wait.’

For some reason, she would have preferred a token show of reluctance, but now there was just time, before the procession to the table, to present Sir Nicholas to Mistress Hester Pickering and to watch like a hawk as his eyes smiled into hers and quickly roamed, approving or amused, over the new image. By this time, the effect of conversation and the warmth of the hall had brought a most becoming flush to Hester’s cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes and, though she kept the latter modestly lowered, the newly darkened lashes made alluring crescents upon her skin. This show of mutual pleasure left no doubt in Adorna’s mind that Lady Marion would be delighted to see how her plan was falling into place so neatly.

Peter took Adorna’s arm to steer her to one side, noting the direction of her interest. ‘I thought you said she was shy,’ he said.

Adorna looked puzzled. ‘Did she tell you of her father, then?’

‘Only a little. She talked of Sir Nicholas, mostly.’

Once again, the conversation was curtailed by the ceremonial observed by every noble household at meal-times, the waiting, the seating, the ritual carving and presenting, by which time there were obligatory gasps of delight at the array of dishes, their colours, variety and decoration. Lady Marion had, for this event, brought out the best silver dishes, bowls and ewers, the great salts, the best spoons and knives, the finest monogrammed linen. On the two-tiered court-cupboard stood the best Venetian glasses, while an army of liveried servers attended diligently to every guest’s needs.

Adorna tried to avoid looking at Hester and Sir Nicholas, but her curiosity got the better of her, her sneaking looks between mouthfuls and words feeding her snippets of information as to Hester’s responsiveness to Sir Nicholas’s attentions. His attention was required from other quarters, too, for the table of over thirty guests was merry and light-hearted, and Sir Nicholas was an excellent conversationalist. Adorna would have been blind not to see how the women, young and old, glowed when he spoke to them, prompting her to recall his uncivil manner as he had hauled her out of the river, his familiarity afterwards, even when he had discovered whose daughter she was.

With renewed assiduity she turned all her attention towards the other end of the table and to her partner, taking what pleasure she could from the safe predictability of Peter’s good manners and to the chatter of her friends, all the while straining to single out the deep cultured voice of Sir Nicholas Rayne. At the end of two courses, they were led into the garden where the double doors of the banqueting house had been thrown open to receive the slow trickle of guests. Here was laid out an astonishing selection of tiny sweet-meats on silver trays, candied fruits, chunks of orange marmalade, sweet wafers and gingerbreads, march-pane and sugar-paste dainties covered with gold leaf. Jellies and syllabubs were served in tiny glasses, and biscuits were placed on wooden roundels, each guest nibbling, exclaiming, and moving outside to admire the formal flower-beds, the view over the friary orchard and the river in the distance.

Purposely, Adorna kept some distance between herself and Sir Nicholas while she spoke to many of the guests, laughing at their jokes and listening to their opinions, never straying far from Peter’s side. From there, she could signal to Sir Nicholas that she had no wish for his company. Her mother, however, had already begun to waver on this point.

She whispered in Adorna’s ear, ‘You didn’t tell me!’

‘Tell you what, Mother?’ Acting total innocence came quite easily to her.

‘That he was so handsome. And distinguished. If I’d understood that he was my lord of Leicester’s deputy, I’d have had him instead of Master Fowler partner you. Is Sir Nicholas the one who helped you out of the river?’

Adorna’s eyes strayed once more to the midnight-blue taffeta doublet, velvet breeches and black silk hose, to his elegant bearing, to the gold buckles and jewels on his swordbelt and scabbard. His hand rested on one hip while with the other he held up his wooden roundel, reversed, from which he read the poem painted on the rim.

‘Lord Elyot’s eldest son,’ her mother continued, ‘I think, dearest, that you ought to be making yourself a little more agreeable to Sir Nicholas. He’s going to be wasted on Cousin Hester.’

‘I’d much rather he played the part you invited him for,’ Adorna replied. ‘Though I think Hester’s wasted on him.’

But Lady Marion was only half-listening. ‘Don’t be difficult, dear. Come along!’ she called to Sir Nicholas’s group. ‘You must sing your roundelays, you know. I think you should be the one to start them off, Sir Nicholas, if you please. Show them how it should be done.’

The idea of having guests to sing for their suppers was not a new one, each one expecting to contribute to the others’ entertainment in some way either by singing or by playing an instrument. At thirteen, Adorna’s youngest brother Adrian usually had to be held back forcibly from being the first to perform, but this time he added his voice to his mother’s. Although Sir Nicholas’s roundelay was short, he made it last longer by singing it several times over to a simple tune of his own devising.

And so my love protesting came, but yet I made her mine.

His voice was true and vibrant, but Adorna refused to watch him perform, not wishing to see who he looked at while he sang. Yet as soon as the applause died down and another guest followed, a whispered comment at her back closed her ears to everything except the exchange of riveting gossip.

‘Pity he doesn’t make them his for longer than three months,’ a man’s voice said, half-laughing. ‘He goes through ’em faster than his master.’

‘Hah! Is that how long the last one was?’

‘Lady Celia. Traverson’s lass. Handsome woman, too, but ditched after three months. Penelope Mount-joy afore that and heaven knows how many afore her. He has ’em queueing up for him.’

‘But he’s only been in his post for a year or so.’

The voice chuckled. ‘Trying out the new mares.’

‘They’re happy to assist, eh?’

‘Aye, but not so happy to be left, apparently. Still, if he’s after old Pickering’s heiress, he’ll probably not find any protesting there.’

The two men joined in the applause though they had not listened to the song, but Adorna’s blood ran cold as she sidled away to the back of the crowd to avoid an invitation to sing, shivering with unease at the sickening words. Even among men it seemed that Sir Nicholas’s reputation as a rake was chuckled over, envied, plotted and predicted, his victims pitied. From the corner of her eye, she identified one of the gossips as her father’s colleague, the Master of the Queen’s Jewels, the other as a superior linen-draper who held a royal warrant.

Ditched after three months? Trying out the new mares? It was as she had suspected; the man had been amusing himself, teasing her to make her respond to him, despite her obvious antagonism. Then he would blithely go on to the next before choosing how, when and where to include Cousin Hester in his schemes, sure that she would defer to his convenience more than any other. For the hundredth time, she heard the woman’s sob echo through the evening, saw again her last slow touch, her hurried departure into oblivion. Her heart ached for the woman’s pain and for Hester, too, who would have no experience of how to deal with a man’s inconstancy, being unused to dalliance and light-hearted love affairs. Hester would not recognise insincerity if it was branded on a man’s forehead.

That much was true, though at that precise moment Hester was having no problems with her own brand of innocence or with other people’s kindness, whether the latter was sincerely meant or not. Dear Adorna and Lady Marion had identified her deficiencies, which were many, and had offered her every assistance to overcome them, and it would be both churlish and unnecessary to deprive them of the pleasure of success. Moreover, the pleasure was not all theirs. She practised her smile once more on a young gentleman who offered her a heart-shaped biscuit and saw how his eyes lit up with pleasure, as Sir Nicholas’s had done.

What a pity Aunt Sarah had not made her aware of such delights, but then, her foster parents were much older than Adorna’s and had had neither the time, experience nor patience to be plunged into parenthood with a ready-made child. They had provided her with an elderly nurse and tutor, shelter and food, a good education and firm discipline and, if she wanted company, there were always the horses. Uncle Samuel was a passionate horse-breeder: Aunt Sarah was not passionate about anything. Passion, she had once told Hester, was a shocking waste of energy.

Hester was satisfied, almost pleased, that Sir Nicholas had noticed the changes enough to compliment her. He had always been most kind, and it was quite obvious that Lady Marion had asked him here especially to put her at her ease. The least she could do in return was to remember what they had told her about smiling, listening and keeping her hands still.

She glanced across the long shadows that now striped the lawn, seeing Adorna talking animatedly to a group of men, her expressions so graceful, her hands and head articulate, her back curving and set firmly against Sir Nicholas from whom she had made no attempt to conceal her indifference. They had scarcely spoken to each other at the tennis court, nor had Adorna joined the ladies who surrounded him, but Hester supposed that the gentlemanly Master Fowler was Adorna’s special friend and that she preferred his company to anyone’s. Which Hester could well understand, though for their sakes she would make herself most agreeable to Sir Nicholas since that was clearly what they wished.

Her aunt and uncle had, naturally, warned her that once she was on her own, there would be fortune-hunters, but her mind was at rest as far as Sir Nicholas was concerned, he having a fortune of his own. Apart from that, if he had ever entertained thoughts along those lines, he had had plenty of chances during the six years or more he had been visiting Uncle Samuel.

The guests were beginning to move back into the house again, Adorna firmly linked to Master Fowler. To Hester a dear gentleman offered his arm, which she daintily laid her hand upon, smiling at him, picking up her skirts over the grass and thinking how much easier this was than she had once believed.

In the great hall, the tables and benches had been cleared to leave a space for the entertainments, and here Hester was happy to watch as sheets of music were handed to those guests who were prepared to perform on viol, flute and lute. Nothing could have been lovelier than when Adorna played a beautiful melody by William Byrd on the virginals, for she was able to sing at the same time in a voice so sweet that the guests were spellbound, making Hester appreciate even more how much she herself had to learn.

There was dancing, too, which had never been Hester’s strongest point, so she remained at one side in the company of yet another gentleman who talked non-stop about his fishing visits to Scotland when she would rather have listened to the music. She did, however, notice how Adorna kept her eyes lowered whenever she went forward to take Sir Nicholas’s hand, and how he looked at her without the smile that he had bestowed upon herself, which seemed to indicate that he was as little interested in Adorna as she appeared to be in him.

Then there was the play, written by seventeen-year-old Seton, Adorna’s brother. He had persuaded some of his friends from the theatre company known as Leicester’s Men to join him in this short and extremely funny performance, made all the funnier because it was entirely unrehearsed. Master Burbage, their leading actor, kept it all together somehow, but even he could not keep his face straight when Adrian, who had begged on his knees for a part, began to ad lib most dangerously, throwing the other characters off track. It brought the house down, the evening to a close, and Hester to the conclusion that, if it got no worse than this, she might begin to get used to dinner parties.

As duty demanded, Adorna stood with the rest of her family to bid each of the guests farewell, promising Master Burbage that she would rectify one glaring omission by attending one of the Leicester’s Men’s performances at their London venue before long. With a quick squeeze of her mother’s hand, she slipped away from the family group, along the passageway leading to the back of the house and out into the walled herb-garden. Here she waited until the calls of farewell had begun to fade. This was another of her refuges, used on this occasion as an escape from Peter who had earlier left her in no doubt that tonight a formal kiss on the knuckles would not be enough. Without seeking to argue about it, Adorna was convinced that anything more than that would be too much. It was better, she had whispered to her mother, if she disappeared and explained tomorrow, if need be. Lady Marion had had experience at making excuses.

It was almost dark, but still she could just see the brick pathway leading through the garden door on to the lawn where the guests had strolled earlier. There was the walkway that led to the banqueting house in the corner, the fountain still tinkling. Distant bursts of laughter and chatter still floated through the open windows, shapes moving in and out of soft candlelight.

Keeping to the shadows, she entered the small room with a feeling of relief that the evening was over, that she had escaped Peter’s personal leave-taking and that the act she had kept up all evening could now be dropped. The banqueting-house floor was still littered with crumbs in the light of a single candle that the servants had left burning, and a heap of wooden roundels, painted side uppermost, lay discarded on the table, their rhymes sung and forgotten. Holding them towards the candle flame, she went through the stack one by one until she found the one she wanted, peering to make out the words and touching them with the tips of her fingers.

‘And so my love protesting came,’ she whispered, reading as she turned it.

‘But yet I made her mine,’ came the reply from the doorway.

She half-leapt in fright, clutching the plate to her bodice and whirling to face him, angered by the intrusion. ‘I came here…’ she began, ready to resume the act. But the lines had already faded from memory, and she could only glare, defensively.

‘I know why you came here.’ Sir Nicholas closed the door quietly behind him. ‘You came here to escape Master Fowler’s attentions, in the first place. Isn’t that so? Poor Adorna. Saddling yourself all evening with him to keep yourself out of my way. Was it worth it, then?’

‘It worked well enough until now, sir!’ she snapped.

‘Tch, tch!’ He shook his handsome head, smiling with his eyes. His hair and the deep blue of his clothes blended into the shadowy room, but could not conceal the width of his shoulders or the deep swell of his chest. Though he made no move towards her, Adorna found his presence disconcerting after a whole evening of trying to avoid him. He held out a hand for the plate. ‘May I?’ he said.

Evading his eyes, she placed it back on the pile. ‘A silly jingle,’ she said. ‘Quite meaningless. I must not be seen with you here alone, Sir Nicholas. We have nothing to say to each other, and my father will—’

Before she could say what her father would do, he had stepped forward a pace and nipped the candle flame with his fingers, plunging the room into darkness except for the lambent glow from a rising moon. At the same time, Adorna’s neat sidesteps towards the door was anticipated by the intimidating bulk of his body. ‘Then we must make sure,’ he said, ‘that we are not seen here alone, mistress. But I cannot agree that we have nothing to say to each other when you said so little to me earlier in the evening. Do you not recall the moments when you could have spoken but chose not to? Shall we reconstruct the dance to ease the flow of conversation?’ In the darkness, he held out his hand.

She had noticed his graceful dancing, but this was a game she did not intend to play, nor was she by any means ready to fall into his flirtatious trap, as she was sure many others had done. Far from queueing up for his attentions, she wanted nothing to do with him, especially after what she had heard that evening. It was time someone taught him a lesson.

Taking up the act where she had left off, she let out an exaggerated sigh and turned away from him to stare out of the same window where, two nights ago, she had watched him kiss a woman in the friary paradise. ‘Sir Nicholas, I have had a busy day and I have little inclination to wake all Richmond with my screams. But I am prepared to do so if it’s the only way to get out of here. Now, please will you go and make your courtesies to my parents and leave me in peace? Others may find your ways diverting, but I don’t.’

In one step, he came to stand close behind her with his knees enveloped in her wide bell-shaped skirts. ‘For one so unmoved by my diverting ways, mistress, you send out some strangely contradicting signals,’ he said, his voice suddenly devoid of his former playfulness. ‘You came in here to seek my—’

‘I did not come in here to seek anything!’ she snarled at him over her shoulder. ‘The poem was one that caught my eye.’

‘I see.’ He allowed the explanation to go unchallenged. ‘So perhaps you came here to remind yourself of something you saw out there. Eh?’

‘I saw noth—’ She bit her words off, remembering that he had seen her. She started again. ‘What I caught the merest glimpse of, Sir Nicholas, in no way concerned me. If you choose to tell my father that you have no lady, that’s entirely your own affair. I care not if you have a different lady for each day of the week. All I ask is that you don’t ever consider me to be one of them.’

‘You may be a marginally better actor than your brothers, Adorna, but I still say that your signals are in a tangle. Shall I tell you why?’

Again, she made a move towards the door, but her skirts hampered her and this time his arm came across her to form a solid barrier. She willed herself to maintain an indifference that had nothing to do with the facts, to make her voice obey her head instead of her heart. It was not easy.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t. If you find my signals conflicting, then you are obviously not reading them correctly, sir. Master Fowler finds them easy enough to understand, and so do other men. When I keep out of their way it means that I do not want their company. Now, what part of that message do you not understand? Shall I put it in French for you? Or Latin?’

Even in the darkness, she could feel the changes that crossed his face, his silence verifying that she had scored at last, checked his cocksureness. For once, he was nonplussed. But it did not last long. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’ he whispered. ‘Do you flee from all men on sight, just for the fun of the ride?’

His temporary unsureness gave her courage. ‘What I do with all men is none of your business, Sir Nicholas. But one thing I will tell you is that any man who compares me to a horse, however delicately, may as well take himself off to the other side of the Christendom. And if you’ve finally understood that I mean what I say, then I shall sleep better at nights. Now, return to your long line of amours, sir. They’ll be awaiting you.’

‘When I’m ready. I find it interesting that you feel able to indulge in equine double-talk when you are looking down at the top of my bonnet, but it’s a different matter when your feet are level with mine, isn’t it? Now, that can mean only one thing.’

His arm still held her back against the wall, but his closeness spelt a dangerous determination, and her act of indifference began to falter as his warmth reached her face and the bare skin below her ruff. She gulped, moistening her mouth.

‘You are obviously about to tell me,’ she whispered, ‘though you must have performed this jaded ritual so many times before.’ She turned her head to one side. ‘Tell me, if you must, and then allow me to go in. I’m getting chilled here.’

It was a blunder she could hardly have bettered, but in one way it prepared her as nothing else would for what he might do. Although there was a part of her that wanted him with a desperate longing, she had never anticipated yielding to a man in the middle of an argument about the exact meaning of her signals. If she herself didn’t know what they meant for certain, how could he, for all his experience? No, this was not the way she wanted to be wooed, not like his other easy conquests; small talk, gropings in the dark, a kiss and a fall like ripened fruit into his lap. She was not like the others.

Before he could take hold of her, she had knocked his hands sideways and rammed one elbow into his doublet, swinging herself away into the darkened room to find the table as a barrier. Caught by the side of her hand, the pile of wooden roundels clattered onto the floor, halting her long enough for Sir Nicholas to reach her again with a soft laugh and an infuriating gentling tone that she was sure he used on restive horses. ‘Steady…steady, my beauty. You’re new to this, aren’t you, eh? I knew it. Scared as a new fill—’

Her hand found its target with a terrifying crack on the side of his head that shocked Adorna far more than him. Never in her life had she done such a thing before, nor had she ever needed to. The success of her assault, however, gave her no real advantage except to reinforce her anger and fear, which Sir Nicholas was already aware of. Even in the dark, he was able to catch both her wrists and pull them to his chest, holding her firmly to him, panicking her by his closeness and by her own unusual helplessness. This was not how she wanted to be wooed, either. She had never thought that fighting might be a part of it.

To fight and twist away was one thing, but a whalebone corset beneath the pink fabric of her bodice was quite another and, though she might have screamed, the breath was not in place before he spoke without a trace of the facetiousness she had dreaded.

‘Adorna…hush now. You’ve got it wrong. Listen to me.’

‘I don’t want to…be here… Let me go!’

‘I cannot let you go.’

‘Words…words!’ she hissed. ‘I’ll not be your latest conquest!’

‘Adorna, what is all this about my conquests, my long line of amours? What is it that you’ve heard? Give me a chance to refute it. I’ll not deny that I enjoy women’s company, but it’s not the way you think.’

‘I don’t think anything!’ She pushed at him, angrily.

‘Yes, you do, or you’d not be so fierce. I’m not trying to force you into a relationship. Did you think I was?’

‘Then what are you doing with my wrists in your hands, sir?’

‘Persuading you to listen to me, for you’ll not listen any other way. There, I’ve released you, see. Now, you can do whatever you wish with your hands while I tell you how lovely you are.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ she yelped. ‘Tell me that my hair is like the moon’s rays, my mouth is like a rosebud, my eyes are like—’

‘Adorna!’

‘Like two faded periwinkles, my nose…oh…whatever the best noses are like nowadays, but spare me the rest, I beg you. I’ve had all that and more, and you can have nothing to add that I’ve not already—’

Apparently there was something that he could add that, so far, no one else had ever succeeded in doing, something that stopped the flow of scorn as effectively as a gag. She tried to talk through it, but he was no amateur like the one he had identified at the Queen’s picnic, and his was not the kind of kiss that pushed and hoped for the best. Knowing that she would try to avoid him, he caught her head and turned it sideways on to his chest, wedging her there while he cut off the scolding words with a sweet tenderness that dried up her thoughts, too. This, he was telling her, was more potent than words, beyond argument, and totally beyond her experience.

Her hands, now freed, could have torn at him but lay unhelpfully upon his doublet instead, feeling nothing. She had sometimes wondered how a woman was supposed to return a man’s kiss when he was doing all that needed to be done, and now she stopped thinking altogether for, after the first startling invasion of his mouth on hers, her mind closed as effectively as her eyes, and she was swept away into the deepest, darkest, most overpowering sensation she could ever have imagined. And she had imagined, often.

Drunk with the new experience, her mind was slow to adjust and, when he paused, just touching her lips with his, her pretences had deserted her. Without any prompting, her hands knew what to do, reaching up through the darkness to touch his face and to find their own way over his ears and hair that parted under her fingers. Shadows of shattered conscience warned her of some former conflict, some contradiction, but it was too dark to identify them before they fled, and his lips returned to take what, this time, she was yielding up without protest. He was tender, carefully disturbing the surface of her desire until a moan began to rise in her throat.

Then he released her, easing her upright and supporting her in his arms while her head drooped, almost touching his chin. ‘You were saying?’ he whispered, eventually.

She shook her head, saying nothing, thinking nothing.

‘Then will you listen to me awhile?’

‘Another time,’ she whispered. ‘Please? Another time? My father…the servants will be here soon to…’ she peered about her and disengaged herself from his arms ‘…to clear up, to lock the doors.’ Unsteadily, she stepped aside, hearing a loud crack from beneath her skirts. ‘Oh, no!’

Sir Nicholas bent to lift her foot and to retrieve two halves of a roundel, placing them on the table. ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘Adorna, just one thing before I take you back.’ He took her hand and held it against his chest. ‘Whatever you’ve been hearing of me, and you know how people gossip at Court, don’t allow it to prejudice you against me. If there is no scandal, people will invent it. It’s gossip, Adorna.’

There was nothing she could reply to that except to remove her hand and hope that her cheeks and lips would be cooled by the night air before she entered the house. The last remaining guests were departing as they appeared together, though one who lingered was, to Adorna’s consternation, Master Peter Fowler. He came to greet them with some eagerness, his expression as he looked from one to the other showing that he recognised what Adorna had hoped to conceal.

‘Peter,’ she said, reading his face.

‘There you are!’ Peter said, breezily. ‘Sir Nicholas, I was hoping to catch you, sir.’

‘Me? Whatever for?’

‘I’ve been across to the palace just now. The keys, you know. Bedtime.’ He smiled apologetically. The handing over of the keys of Her Majesty’s chamber at bedtime was a ritual he could not evade. ‘And I’ve been given two messages for you. You’re a popular man, sir.’ His expression, Adorna thought, held a glint of sheer mischief as he came to her side, ready to lead her away. ‘One from his lordship’s man to say that he’d be glad if you’d take a look at the bay stallion again before you retire.’

‘Certainly. And the other?’

‘Oh, from Lady Celia Traverson’s maid. It appears her mistress was expecting you to visit her this evening in the east tower room, sir. Seemed a bit upset. I said I’d see you got the message.’ He glanced again at Adorna with a suggestion of triumph in his merry eyes. ‘Wonderful evening,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, taking the arm he offered. ‘Wonderful.’

As if to verify the effect of Peter’s ill-timed messages, she met the eyes of her former companion as he made her a formal bow and saw the anger that washed briefly across them, drooping the lids with a stifled frown. Their glances agreed that there was no explanation that he could offer to which she would want to listen, and that Adorna’s former hostility, far from being lessened, had now increased. Her coldness turned to a relentless freeze. She did not need to ask who Lady Celia Traverson was, having heard the same name that evening in connection with his last love affair. Nor was there any doubt in her mind that Lady Celia was the woman he had met in the friary paradise while she had watched, yearning for such a kiss. And now, her first kiss had turned bitter upon her lips.

Chapter Four

S ir Nicholas straightened, dropping the stallion’s hoof gently into the deep straw. He patted the sleek brown rump and looked across at his noble employer over the top of it. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘It was the same last night. He’s sound enough, sir.’ He leaned back against the stall.

The Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s favourite and the handsomest man at Court, some said, leaned against the other side of the stall and folded his arms across his wide chest. ‘Samuel Manning certainly taught you a thing or two, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘You believe it was the mare, then?’

Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘Almost certainly, sir. They can do a fair amount of damage when they’re new to it, as you know.’

‘Then we shall have to make sure he’s well padded next time, eh?’

The laughter was mutually rueful. The earl looked pointedly at the reddened skin along the left side of Sir Nicholas’s eyebrow, unable to conceal his interest. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that you need some padding, too. I’ll not believe it. Was that the problem?’

A hand went up to comfort the tender place. ‘Nothing to speak of, sir,’ Sir Nicholas smiled. ‘A misunderstanding.’

‘Not Lady Celia, surely?’ the earl said gently. He was as tall as Sir Nicholas and, even with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his graceful bearing and proud head showed him to be a man of considerable importance. He crossed his long elegant legs, well muscled and encased in brown leather thigh-boots.

‘Lord, no, sir.’ He sighed, taking hold of the stallion’s tail and slipping his hand down its silky length. ‘No, Lady Celia departs from Portsmouth today. She and her mother and sister will embark as soon as they get a fair wind, and she’s distraught, naturally.’

‘At leaving England, or you?’

‘Both, sir. Nor does she like the idea of marrying her Spanish duke.’

‘Mmm…I heard about that. Her Majesty’s not keen on the connection, but Lord Traverson is adamant about it. Says it’s too good an opportunity to miss.’

‘He would, being of a Roman Catholic family. We ended our relationship weeks ago, but she asked me to meet her, for a last goodbye. Except that it wasn’t the last, of course.’

‘Hah! Never is, man. They say a last goodbye at least three times; I could have told you that. Recriminations, then?’

‘Oh, no, sir. No bad feeling. Just a sadness. Our parting was mutual, but I’d not have wanted her to go all that way, just the same. We were friends.’

‘Sad,’ the earl said. ‘So who’s the unwilling one?’

‘Sir Thomas Pickering’s daughter, sir.’

‘Ah! The Palomino!’ A slow grin spread across his face. ‘The one you hauled out of the river the other day? Well, you’ll not get that one eating out of your hand so easily. Nor will you be the first to try.’

Nicholas was, however, reasonably sure that he had been the first to succeed in areas where others had failed. ‘No, sir. That’s what I heard, but I think now’s the time for some schooling.’ He grinned back at the earl. ‘I also think I’m in for a rough ride.’

Studying the stallion’s beautiful hindquarters, the earl leaned forward and rested his arms across the broad satin back. ‘Then you may be glad of a word of advice, my friend.’

‘Sir?’

‘Keep her guessing. You’ll get nowhere with a woman if you’re too predictable. They can second-guess you every time. And don’t be too kind too soon. Fillies like that one need to know who’s master from the start.’ To his surprise, he saw that his deputy’s chest was heaving with laughter. ‘You don’t believe me?’ he said.

‘Certainly I believe you, sir, but maybe I should tell you what this was for.’ He placed a palm upon his temple.

‘I was hoping you would.’

‘For talking to her as if she were a horse.’

Their laughter made the stallion look round, his muzzle caught by the earl’s hand. ‘So then you began to praise her beauty, I suppose?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact…’

‘Lost your wits of a sudden, man? Tch! You know better than that.’

‘I do now, sir. But I shall have to move fast if I’m to make any headway. There’s Her Majesty’s progress to your castle at Kenilworth in a few days, and young Fowler has got a foothold already.’

‘Argh! She’ll not be serious about him, man. He’s only for show. Nor would her father consider him. Anyway…’ his voice brightened ‘…she can come up to Kenilworth with Sir Thomas, if you wish. Would that help?’

‘Indeed it would, sir, I thank you.’

The earl smacked the stallion’s back and ran a hand down its tail, fanning it like tissue. ‘I’ll see she gets a royal command, then. You need to keep your hands on the reins and stay firmly in control at this stage. As for young Fowler, if he’d been attending to his business, he’d not have let her slip into the river in the first place, would he? Think on it, man. Now, let’s go and take a look at those new Irish geldings. They’re supposed to be fast-goers, too.’

There was probably no other man of Nicholas’s acquaintance from whom he would have accepted advice on such a delicate issue, never having been the kind of man to discuss his love life with others, as many did. But Lord Leicester was as experienced with women as he was with horses, though his stormy relationship with the Queen had been one of the most talked-about since her accession seventeen years ago. At forty-two, they were both as enamoured as ever, though hardly a month passed without some complication arising to set her snarling at him like a wildcat. The earl’s invitation to the Queen to make a royal progress to his magnificent castle at Kenilworth was, as Sir Nicholas knew, a last major attempt to remain permanently high in her favour after so many serious indiscretions, though if the Queen had known what Nicholas knew about his master’s extra-marital activities, she would probably have decided on a progress in the opposite direction instead. His lordship had a huge capacity for intrigue and a magnetism that few women could resist, a combination which seemed to Nicholas like a recipe for disaster.

Had he been faint-hearted, Nicholas might have viewed his own predicament in the same light, last night’s ending being as close as one comes to disaster, thanks to the help of a certain Master Fowler who knew exactly what he was doing. Although he had never before encountered the same relentless resistance in a woman as in Mistress Adorna Pickering, his experience told him that she was certainly not as immune to him as she pretended to be and that her act last evening had been impossible for her to maintain until the end. Then, she had lost it in his kiss, after which he discovered what she had been trying to conceal, even from herself. She wanted him.

With that satisfying knowledge firmly in place, he mused over his master’s advice about the tight rein and decided that a little variation on that theme would not come amiss. She had eaten out of his hand once; she would do it again. Eventually.

Adorna would not at that moment have agreed with this theory if she had known of it. Having wept with anger and other unidentifiable emotions, she had slept badly, waking up to the same reflection of how little regard men paid to the truth in order to win a woman. The truth, she told herself, would have been easier to deal with. At least it would not have left the same sour taste in her mouth as his pathetic lies had done, especially after…no…she would not think about that. But she did. What did it matter, anyway, except that she had given her first kiss to a man to whom it would mean very little except yet another trophy?

Lady Marion could not help but notice her daughter’s swollen eyelids and pink nose. ‘A cold?’ she said, looking doubtfully sideways. ‘Come here, child. I know a tearful daughter when I see one. What is it?’ She took Adorna’s hand and led her back to the cushioned stool she had just vacated. ‘You’ve had no breakfast, and it’s no good saying it’s nothing. It’s men, isn’t it?’

Adorna nodded.

‘Ah! Well, if it’s any comfort, love, there’s probably not a woman in the whole world who hasn’t wept over a man, one way or another. Which one, Sir Nicholas?’ She didn’t wait for a reply, having guessed it already. ‘Yes, well, I admit I got it wrong about having him partner Hester when it’s obvious he’s more interested in you. We can’t tell her so now, of course; that would do her confidence no good at all. But we can soon put it right. I’ll get your father to invite him—’

‘No, Mother!’ Adorna objected. ‘Please, I don’t want him to. I don’t like the man. I prefer Peter.’

‘Don’t like him, love? What is there not to like? I thought he was perfectly charming.’ She scrutinised her daughter’s face for signs, and found them. ‘Ah, I see. So he kissed you.’ Her eyes strayed through the sunlit window where the wobble of green glass distorted the banqueting house grotesquely. ‘So that’s how my best wooden roundels found their way on to the floor. We thought a fox must have got in.’

Adorna laid a hand over her mother’s puffed pink sleeve. ‘I’m sorry about that, Mother. It was my fault, I shall have to find a better hiding place next time.’

Lady Marion’s hand enclosed hers in sympathy, but not too much. ‘Well, you know, love, I’m not so sure that hiding is the answer any more. It served well enough while you were a lass, but your father and I think it’s about time—’

‘Oh, Mother! Not you, too!’

‘Listen to me, love. A determined man is not going to be put off because he can’t find you. And what are you going to do when he does find you alone, as he did last night? You cannot blame him for getting the wrong idea.’

‘Yes, I can, Mother. He should learn to take no for an answer.’

‘Did you mean no?’

Coming from her mother, the question was a surprise, and Adorna didn’t know how to answer it.

Since the calamity was not quite as serious as she had expected, Lady Marion saw no need to hide her smile. ‘One day,’ she chuckled, ‘you will see how unreasonable that is. Since when did a man ever take no for an answer? I’m glad your father didn’t.’

‘Didn’t he?’

‘Lord, no, child. Four times he asked me to marry him. I only said no just to see how long he’d keep on, but it was me who cracked, not him. Did Sir Nicholas ask you to…?’

‘To marry him?’ Dramatically, Adorna’s voice was loaded with scorn. ‘No, of course not. Men like him are not looking for marriage. He has a reputation to uphold.’

Slowly, her mother stood up as Hester entered the sunny parlour. ‘If that’s so,’ she said, ‘then I think, my child, that you could easily put an end to it. And what’s more…’ she lowered her voice for Adorna alone ‘…he might have it in mind to put an end to yours.’ She smiled at Hester.

‘My…?’ Adorna’s eyebrows squirmed, but Hester was close, having no thoughts about an intrusion on a private moment, and the intriguing subject of Adorna’s reputation had to be shelved until Maybelle was obliged to continue it in the privacy of the bedchamber.

‘Your reputation, mistress?’ Maybelle said, giving the full pink skirt a shake. ‘Well, everyone has some kind of—’

‘Oh, don’t hedge, Belle. Just tell me what you’ve heard.’

Maybelle sat on the carved pine linen-chest, deflating the pink silk like a balloon upon her knees. ‘Well, you know what the Court ladies’ maids are like.’

‘And?’ She waited for Maybelle to verify what she herself had already heard.

‘And, yes, they say that you’re hard to catch. But,’ she added hastily, ‘it could be much worse. Better than being easy to catch, isn’t it?’

Adorna had no ready answer to that as she pondered yet again on the apparent ease of her capture by a known master of the art and then, to crown it all, on her capture by default by the one she had been trying to avoid. There was no comparison, Peter’s amateurish goodnight peck being nothing like the earlier sensuous experience from which she had not, at the time, recovered. In that moment, as Maybelle watched for her seemingly artless observation to filter through, the question itself seemed to crystallise Adorna’s dilemma more quickly than all her nightly cogitations. She did want to be caught. She wanted, more than anything in the world, to be crushed against him and to feel his hard arm across her back, his lips touching hers, making her taste his and forget how to protest. And so my love protesting came…

‘Yes,’ she said, finally. ‘I suppose so.’ With one finger, she traced the sinuously entwined frond embroidered on her coverlet.

Maybelle, aged eighteen, prettily dark-eyed and as sharp as a knife, placed the pink bundle to one side and came to sit next to her mistress on the bed. ‘You suppose so?’ she whispered with her neatly coiffed head on one side. ‘Look, if you’ve discovered he has something you want, you can still have it and give him a run for his money at the same time. Why not slow down a bit and let him think he’s caught up with you? Then, when you’ve had enough of him, you sprint off again. You’re good at putting on a show when you need to, mistress. You can act your way through that, easy. You take what you want and then you can go back to Master Fowler. He’ll always be there to help you out.’

‘But that would be, well, asking for a different kind of reputation, wouldn’t it?’

‘Who’d notice? He’d hardly be likely to brag about the fact that you’d dropped him before he could do the same to you, would he? Bad for his image.’

The conversation had rested there, with just enough of an idea to keep Adorna’s thoughts occupied all that day while employing herself in her father’s Revels Office with Hester who, they discovered, was more than content to assist with the embroidery. Before supper, they rode together across Richmond Park with friends, Hester surprising them once again by her excellent horsemanship.

Like words that turn up on a daily basis after an absence of years, Sir Nicholas and some of the men from the Royal Mews were seen in the distance studying the paces of some large greys. Although her party watched them awhile, Adorna trotted off smartly in the opposite direction as soon as Sir Nicholas approached. It was, she told herself, too soon for unrehearsed pleasantries.

She was still unrehearsed when she was presented with another chance on the following day while keeping her promise to Master Burbage, principal actor with Leicester’s Men, the ones who had caused such merriment at the dinner party.

For almost a year, Adorna’s brother Seton had been one of their members, chiefly as a writer of plays, at which he excelled, and more recently as an actor, at which he did not. It was one thing to cavort about at home when all of them were equally inept, but it was quite another to perform professionally when all of them except him were very good.

At seventeen, Seton Pickering was so remarkably like his elder sister that some said, in private, that he ought to have been born a girl. They had the same colouring, the same classic features, the same willowy grace, but Seton’s ability to write plays had brought him, through family friendships, to the attention of James Burbage, who instantly recruited young Seton to write for his company under the patronage of the great Earl of Leicester, no less.

Unfortunately for Seton, the unknown side-effects of his acceptance concerned the company’s constant shortage of suitable young men to play the female roles, a tradition that for reasons of modesty were never allowed to women themselves. So, as one who knew the whole cast’s lines by heart and who had a head start when it came to disguising as a woman, poor Seton was exploited in a direction he would have preferred not to go, having no wish to perform the way his younger brother did. At thirteen-and-a-half, Adrian was rarely not performing.

Adorna’s decision to visit the specially built playhouse at the sign of the Red Lion at Whitechapel did not meet with Seton’s immediate approval, in spite of her promise to Master Burbage. ‘You won’t like it,’ he told her, pettishly. ‘It’s noisy. Hester won’t like it, either.’

‘But it’s you we want to see,’ Adorna said. ‘And Master Fowler will be there to see to our safety. I know you’ll be good.’

‘I won’t,’ he grumbled. ‘I never am.’ All the same, he gave her a hug and a watery smile.

They made the journey on horseback from Richmond to the city, and it was two hours after noon when they were eventually allowed into the building with the eager crowds paying their shillings for seats in an upper gallery supported by scaffolding. Hester, already uncomfortable, was unsure about the wisdom of the whole venture, but Peter’s protective instincts were already alert, for this kind of place was well known to swarm with pickpockets. He shepherded them into a shady corner and did his best to divert Hester’s attention from the press of bodies.

‘Look down there,’ he shouted, pointing to the stage. ‘If we’d paid more we’d have been allowed to sit on the stage itself, as those gallants are doing. I hope they don’t stop the performance.’ The clamour made any attempt at conversation quite impossible, and it was Hester’s nudge that made Adorna turn to where she was looking, not at the stage but to the gallery at one side of it.

A group of fashionably dressed people had just entered and were arranging themselves along the benches, laughing and chattering with excitement, one of whom Hester had already recognised. The sunlight fell on him as he waited to be seated, dressed elegantly in dark green and red, his small white ruff open at the neck to accentuate the strong angle of his jaw. Sir Nicholas Rayne.

Holding her breath, Adorna pulled herself back from the edge of the gallery wondering why, of all times and places, they would be obliged to sit within sight of each other to remind her of a moment she was trying to forget. The trumpets sounded for the start of the play, the audience turned to face the stage, but Adorna was sure that, if she could hear the beating of her heart, then surely everyone else could. She would not, could not look at him.

‘He waved,’ Hester said as the din settled.

‘Did he?’ said Adorna. Indirectly, she had scrutinised every one of his companions, two other men and three young, pretty and vivacious women whose chatter was unaffected by the arrival of the first actor. But then, nor were others until at least five minutes had passed by which time the words could be heard. All the way through, there was a continuous upstaging from the rowdy group of young gallants who had paid well to sit on stools within reach of the actors, and when Seton made his entrance as a lovely young woman, their loud comments would have made a sailor blush.

Adorna’s glance across at Sir Nicholas’s group showed that some of them thought it was hilarious while she squirmed for her brother’s predicament, having to suffer that kind of thing each day in a different role. Though his acting was not quite as bad as he had told her it was, it became clear to her, knowing him as she did, that this sensitive young man was enjoying the performance even less than she was. She applauded loudly and enthusiastically at each of his speeches, ceasing to care whether Sir Nicholas was watching her or not, determined to make Seton aware of her support.

As the actors took their bows, Adorna shouted to Peter that she was going backstage to find her brother. ‘I know where the horses are,’ she called to him in the pandemonium. ‘You take Hester and wait for me. I’ll be all right. I can look after myself.’

‘No, don’t go!’ Peter yelled back. ‘You’ll be trampled to death.’

‘Don’t be dramatic.’ She smiled, squeezing Hester’s arm. ‘I must have a word with Seton. See you outside.’ Slipping past them, she climbed over the bench and found her way at last into the dark shaky stairway that led her in the direction of the stage, elbowing her way against the crowds. To her consternation, she came face to face with those in Sir Nicholas’s group who, although not known to her personally, had been aware of her presence in the gallery. She smiled and squeezed past, seeing Sir Nicholas’s concerned expression over their heads, fortunately too far away to make contact.

His eyes followed her, disapproving. ‘Mistress Pickering,’ he called.

But Adorna pressed forward, ignoring him, finding herself in a shabby wooden passageway where actors, their faces grotesque with thick sweating paint, squeezed past her on their way to curtained cubicles. She peeped into two before she found Seton.

Beneath the pale pink face-paint, the ridiculously red cheeks and painted lips, Seton was beaded with sweat. His eyes were wide and sad, his fair lashes blackened, his head still covered by a massive blonde wig that fell in luxurious curls over his lace ruff. From a distance he had looked convincing; now, he looked absurd. His sweat had made dark stains under each arm and the two bulges on his chest had been trussed until they almost met his chin. The jug of ale in his hand shook uncontrollably.

Miserably, he placed it on the small littered table. ‘Dorna!’ he said, croaking. ‘I saw you.’

They fell into each other’s arms, swaying in mutual comfort, Adorna as pained to see her brother in this state as he was to be seen. He had not wanted it. His malformed shape reeked of sheep’s wool, and she could not tell whether his shaking was for relief, distress, or laughter. ‘Shh!’ she crooned. ‘You were very good.’ Then, hearing the inadequate words, she added, ‘Well done, love. Even Master Burbage didn’t know his lines as well as you.’

‘I should do,’ he said. ‘I wrote them.’

‘By far the best play I’ve ever seen. Wonderful story.’

‘Thank you…thank you, love.’ He turned them both to the sheet of polished brass on the wall that served as a mirror. ‘Look, Dorna. Look at us both.’

Still clinging, they saw two sisters, identical in so many respects that they might have been twins.

‘Well!’ Adorna smiled at his reflection. ‘Shall I call you sister now?’

Seton broke away, eager to be rid of the stifling disguise. ‘Not for the world,’ he said. ‘As soon as my voice breaks, I’ll do this no more. I’m counting the days.’

‘It won’t be long, love. It’s going already.’

‘You heard the squeaks?’ He gave a rasp of laughter. ‘Yes, I know. I shan’t be able to keep it up in that register much longer, thank heaven. It hurts with the strain.’ Seton’s voice had been late to change, though there had been those, Master Burbage, for instance, who hoped it never would. Such things were by no means unusual. ‘Here, help me off with this thing.’ He put a hand to his forehead to peel away the wig.

But before Adorna could comply, the curtain rattled to one side to reveal an unknown figure who stood swaying on the threshold, his face bloated and purple with drink, his eyes swivelling from one female figure to the other. ‘Eh?’ he said, thickly. ‘Two…two of you?’ He swept a hand over his face. ‘Can’t be. I’m seeing things again.’ He kept hold of the curtain for support while he fell into the cubicle with an outstretched hand ready to grab at Adorna’s bodice.

She lashed out, yanking at the man’s hair as he came within range while Seton, in the confined space, picked up the jug of ale to hit him over the head. The curtain and its flimsy pole came down with a splintering crash as the intruder was yanked firmly backwards by a dark green arm across his throat and, above the mesh of curtain and limbs, Adorna identified the green-and-red-paned breeches of Sir Nicholas. Standing astride the prostrate drunkard, his eyes switched from brother to sister and back again, his expression less than sympathetic.

‘Congratulations on your performance, Master Pickering. Are you hurt, mistress?’ he said to Adorna.

There had not been time for any injury except to her composure, which had suffered even before her meeting with Seton. ‘No, I’m not hurt, I thank you,’ she said. Curious faces had appeared behind Sir Nicholas, and a pair of stage-hands came to drag the man away by his feet, still parcelled. The curtain rail lay smashed across the passageway. ‘Who was he, Seton?’ she asked.

‘The usual kind of backstage caller with his congratulations. It’s quite a common occurrence, love.’

‘You mean they come here to…?’

Seton smiled and pulled off his wig, making himself look, in one swift movement, utterly bizarre. ‘Yes, all part of the business. You have to get the wig off first. That usually stops ’em.’ He took Adorna’s hand. ‘Now you must go. Let Sir Nicholas take you home. He appears to be more security-conscious than your Master Fowler. Sir…’ he turned to Sir Nicholas ‘…we were glad to have your assistance. I thank you. Could you see my sister safely home, please? She should never have been allowed to come backstage on her own.’ His voice wavered over an octave.

‘Your sister didn’t come here alone, Master Pickering. I was waiting at the other end of the passage for her. And you may rest assured, I intend to see that she gets home safely.’

On that issue, there seemed no more for Adorna to say except to hug Seton once again and assure him that she would give good reports of the play to their parents. Outside, however, in the emptying space of the shadowy theatre, she began her objections, suddenly realising how impossible it would be to follow Maybelle’s advice at a time like this. ‘Sir Nicholas,’ she said, slowing down, ‘I came with Master Fowler and Cousin Hester and our servants. We shall be quite safe enough, I assure you. I thank you, but—’

‘No need to thank me, mistress,’ he said, coldly formal with his use of her title. ‘You will be going home with Master Fowler, as you came. But I told your brother I would give you my personal protection, and that is what you’ll get, whether you want it or not.’

She stopped in her tracks. ‘You came here, sir, with your own friends and I came with mine. I prefer not to join you.’

Unmoved, he stopped ahead of her with a loud sigh, only half-turning to explain as if to a difficult child. ‘You are not joining me,’ he said, wearily. ‘I’m joining you. My friends have gone home. They are Londoners. Now, can we proceed? The horses will be getting restive and your cousin Hester will be worrying, I expect.’ Whether about Adorna or the horses he did not specify.

She could not explain why she preferred Peter’s company to his, nor why she felt embarrassed that he had seen her brother at less than his best and unable to shield her from harm, the way he had done. The afternoon had not lived up to her expectations, and her heart bled for Seton, whose discomforts had been far more acute than any of theirs.

Rather like the play itself, the journey home was long, uncomfortably hot, and tense with an act which, as far as some of the characters were concerned, made them relieved to reach the end. Whether she would admit it to herself or not, she had been further nettled by this latest display of Sir Nicholas in the company of women, though the thought no more than skirted the labyrinth of her mind that there was no good reason why he should not be at a playhouse with friends of either sex. New to jealousy, she still did not recognise its insidious tentacles.

Just as bad was the small howling voice of reason that reminded her, at every glance, of the prejudice he had pleaded with her not to hold. A dozen times on that journey from London to Richmond, she watched him and listened to his deep voice as he talked easily with both Peter and Hester, and she wondered whether this unpredictable return to his original abruptness signalled an end to his efforts to win her interest and, if it did, then why had he followed her when she went to see Seton? She recalled her father’s persistence, his four times of asking, and wondered how her mother’s nerves had stood up to the uncertainty.

On reflection, it could only have been by design that, as they entered the courtyard of Sheen House in the early evening, Sir Nicholas manoeuvred his horse near enough to hers for him to be the one to lift her down from the saddle, leaving Peter to assist Hester. As her feet touched the ground, she would have removed her hands from his shoulders as quickly as she could, but he caught them tightly and held her back, unsmiling.

After miles of contemplation, Adorna would have pulled away, angrily, her hurts being multiple and confused and not to be easily soothed. Certainly not in the temporary shelter of her horse in a crowded courtyard. But she was surprised enough to wait as he touched both her knuckles with his lips, sending her at the same time the quickest whispered message she had ever heard. ‘At bedtime. In the banqueting house.’ Then he released her, turning away so fast that she might even have imagined it.

Her first reaction was of an overwhelming relief that, like her father, he had not given up too soon. Hard on its heels came the heady thrill of fear and promise; already she could feel his arms, his mouth on hers. Then, what if she refused to meet him, to show him once and for all that she had no intention of being added to his list, whether at the bottom or the top? How that would teach him a lesson more swiftly than Maybelle’s version, though it would leave her longing for something she had tasted and would never taste again? Was she experienced enough to deal with that?

As she had half-expected, Peter and Sir Nicholas were both invited to supper and, since it was already an hour later than suppertime, they readily accepted. Hester, exhausted by the three-day effort of being sociable, left the conversation to the others and retired to her bed soon after the meal. Adorna, however, was compelled by the circumstances and by her own confusion to maintain a pretence of indifference towards Sir Nicholas, which, she believed, would give him no hope that she would accept his invitation. At times she came close to being sure that she would never do so, for that would be to walk into his trap like a drugged hare. Her resolution veered by the hour.

Peter and Sir Nicholas took their leave of the Pickerings together, the duties of Her Majesty’s Chamber coming before pleasure and, whether for friendship or to make sure of the competition, Sir Nicholas rode with him back to the palace, presumably to return later, unseen.

‘I do wish you would try to unbend to Sir Nicholas a little, Adorna,’ Sir Thomas said as they watched the guests depart. ‘He’s a most pleasing and competent chap. Knows his job, too, by all accounts.’

‘You’ve been making enquiries, Father?’

‘Yes,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘Of course I have. He’s Lord Elyot’s son and he’s gleaned most of his horse skills from Samuel Manning, Hester’s uncle. Good connections.’

‘And what about his connections with Lord Traverson, Father? Do you know anything of those?’

‘Traverson? No, nothing at all. All I know about Traverson, the old fool, is that he’s sent his eldest daughter off to Spain to marry some duke or other. That’s as near to being a royal as he’ll ever get, for all his efforts. What do you know about him, then?’

‘Nothing at all, except that he’s one of the Roman Catholics that Her Majesty objects to.’

‘So that’s why he’s sent his wife and daughters off to Spain, I expect, to get them to safety. No Protestant would risk the Queen’s anger by taking the daughters on, her views being what they are, and nor would Traverson allow it, either. So much for religious tolerance. Come on in, love. Time for bed. You’ve had a busy day.’

‘Yes, Father. I’ll go and lock up the banqueting house.’

‘Eh?’ he frowned. ‘Lock up the—?’

His arm was caught, quite firmly, by his wife’s hand; she pulled him back and closed his mouth at the same time.

Chapter Five

R eciting her opening lines, Adorna opened the door and went inside, sure in the pit of her stomach that this was not a sensible thing to do, and certainly not the way to show a man how consistently unaffected she could be. It was not so much that a well-bred young woman would not have done this kind of thing; she would, there being few enough places where one could be private, let alone with a lover. Every nook and cranny had to be made use of. But having acted the hard-to-get with such force, this would seem to him like a remarkably sudden capitulation after so little effort on his part. Even her mother had put up more resistance than this, apparently.

On the other hand, the invitation may have been no more than a cruel jest. The thought sent shivers of fear across her like an icy draught.

The place had been swept and tidied with the sun’s warmth still locked inside, the first deep shadows of night clothing the painted walls and blackening the windows. She waited, straining her ears towards every sound, picking up the distant hoot of an owl and wondering vaguely how she could be at such odds with herself that she could do the exact opposite of what she had planned to do. Could she be in love against her will? Was that what love did?

From the palace courtyard a clock chimed the hour, then the half-hour. She sat, stood, and sat again, starting at every sound, watching the lights go down in the house, one by one. Another hour chimed. Numb with anger and cold, she closed the doors behind her, quietly, this time. One last look towards the wall where the door led from the paradise into the palace garden, then she picked up her skirts and went into the house with a painful knot burning in her throat, knowing that this must be the snub she had predicted, though not quite so soon. That, and the coolness since his appearance at the theatre, would be his way of teaching her that it was he who had the upper hand.

There was one thing, however, that this fiasco had taught her; that she would never be caught like this again, that it had mercifully prevented her from continuing from where they left off and that, in effect, she had had a narrow escape. She should be thankful. This time, she would not weep or admit that her pride had taken a fall. She could act, as Maybelle had reminded her. Let them see how well she could perform.

Yet in her dark bed, the act was abandoned and the mask of nonchalance removed, and she gave way to the surge of uncontrollable longing that his kisses had awakened in her. After that, she fumed with anger at the man’s arrogance, his sureness that she would come willingly to his hand. Never again. Never! She would die rather than become one of his discarded lovers.

The timing of it could not have been better even if Dr John Dee, the Queen’s astrologer, had looked into his scrying-glass and forecast the best day for forgetting, this being the day of the masque in the royal palace for which she and her father’s men had put in weeks of preparation. To have every prop ready on time, they would have to work nonstop.

Hester went with Adorna to the Revels Office, insisting that, although neither of them would be taking part in the masque, she could assist with the embroidery. ‘Is this the bodice?’ she whispered to Adorna, her eyes widening at a mere handful of tissue. ‘This bit here?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’ Adorna smiled. ‘Many of the Court ladies show their breasts nowadays at this kind of event. This is modest compared to some.’

‘You designed it?’

‘Yes, four like this and four with a silk lining. This one’s for Lady Mary Allsop. She likes to be seen.’

‘But you can see through it!’ Hester didn’t know whether to laugh or to appear shocked. ‘What does Her Majesty say to this?’

‘Her Majesty is very careful not to let anyone outshine her,’ Adorna whispered, laughing. ‘She bares almost as much herself, occasionally.’

Only a few days ago, the idea of Cousin Hester sewing spangles on semi-transparent masque-costumes for ladies of the Court would have been unthinkable. But there she was, beavering away with her shining brown head bent over a heap of sparkling sea-green sarcenet at five shillings the yard, actually enjoying the experience. Even the apparent contradiction of women taking part in a masque while not being allowed to act on stage had been accepted by Hester without question. Adorna had also noticed how the men made any small excuse to attract Hester’s attention and how she was now able to speak to an occasional stranger without blushing. Cousin Hester was taking them all by surprise.

Sir Thomas smiled at his daughter, lifting an eyebrow knowingly.

By evening his smiles had become strained as he supervised the magnificent costumes being packed into crates for their short journey across several courtyards to the Royal Apartments at the front of the palace, along corridors, up stairs, through antechambers and into a far-too-small tiring-chamber. As the one who knew how the costumes were to be fitted, Adorna went with them to assist the tiring-women amidst a jostle of bodies, clothes, maids, yapping pets, crates and wig-stands.

‘Here’s the wig-box, Belle,’ Adorna called above the din. ‘Keep that safe, for heaven’s sake.’ The wigs were precious golden affairs of long silken tresses weighing over two pounds each, obligatory for female masquers.

She checked her lists, ticking off each item as it was passed to the wearer’s maid, waiting with suppressed impatience for the inevitable late arrival. ‘Where’s Lady Mary?’ she asked one of the ladies.

The woman wriggled out of her whalebone bodice with some regret. ‘Don’t know how I’ll stay together now,’ she giggled, happy with her pun. ‘Lady Mary? She wasn’t feeling well earlier, mistress. Anne!’ she called to the back of the room. ‘Anne! Where’s Mary?’

‘Which Mary?’ came the muffled reply.

‘Mary Allsop!’

‘Not coming. Indisposed.’

Adorna’s heart sank. ‘What?’ she said. ‘She can’t—’

‘Indisposed my foot,’ the courtier simpered. ‘I expect she’s chickened out at the last minute.’ She glanced at the costume Adorna held.

‘As usual,’ someone else chimed in.

‘But we can’t have seven,’ Adorna said. ‘There have to be eight Water Maidens in four pairs. There are eight men expecting to partner you.’

The courtier held her breasts while her maid pulled a silky kirtle upwards to cover her nakedness, fastening it at the waist. ‘This is like wearing a cobweb,’ she grinned. ‘Well then, Mistress Pickering, you’ll have to take her part. You’ll fit that thing better than anyone, I imagine.’

Adorna was not going to imagine any such thing. ‘Er…no. Look, one of your maids can do it. Now, who is the nearest in height to…?’

There was a sudden surge of protest as Adorna’s suggestion was rejected out of hand. ‘Oh, no! Not a maid. No, mistress.’

‘The masquers must be from noble families.’

‘Or Her Majesty would be insulted, in her own Court.’

‘Adorna, come on, you can do it.’

‘Yes, you’re the obvious stand-in, and you won’t need to wear the wig, either. Come on, mistress.’

‘I cannot. I’ve never worn…well…no, I can’t!’ Even as she refused she knew the battle to be lost, that there had to be eight and that she would have to take the place of the inconsiderate absconder. At the same time, she could still remember what pleasure she had derived from designing each costume which, although slightly different in colour, style and decoration, had made up the eight Water Maidens. She had imagined herself wearing each costume, floating in a semi-transparent froth that swirled like water a few daring inches above the ankle. She had tried some of them on when only herself and Maybelle had seen, sure that no one would ever see as much of her as they would of the Queen’s ladies.

The masks had been adjusted to hide the wearers’ identities from all but the most astute observer. No one would know it was her except, perhaps, by her hair.

‘Wear the wig,’ said Maybelle, ‘then they’ll not know till later that you’re not Lady Mary.’

But Adorna knew how unbearably hot the wigs were. ‘Not if I can avoid it,’ she said. ‘I’ll risk my own hair. I’m only one of eight, after all.’

‘Then you’ll do it?’

‘I think I’ll have to, Belle. But…oh, no!’

‘What?’

‘This is the one with the…oh, lord! What would Cousin Hester say?’

‘She’s not going to know unless someone tells her. It’s what Sir Nicholas will say that’s more interesting,’ she said, cheekily. ‘Think of that, mistress. This’ll show him what he’s missed better than anything could.’

‘I had thought of that, Belle.’

‘Well then, step out of this lot. Stand still and let me undo you.’ She spoke with a mouthful of pins as she detached the sleeves, bodice and skirts while Adorna still ticked off her list and handed out silver kid slippers, silk stockings, tridents and masks to the ladies’ maids.

There was only the smallest mirror available for her to see the effect of her disguise as it was assembled, piece by piece, upon her slender figure. But both maid and mistress noticed the women’s admiration as the silver-blue tissue was girdled beneath her breasts, neither fully exposing nor hiding the perfect roundness that strained against the fabric at each movement. Others were more daringly exposed, but not one was more beautiful than Adorna, so Maybelle told her as she placed the silver mask over her face and teased the pale hair over her shoulders.

‘There now,’ Maybelle said, placing the papier-mâché conch-shell on Adorna’s head. ‘It’ll take ’em a while to recognise you in that.’ Not for a moment did she believe her words, for there was dancing to be got through before the masquers could be revealed, and Adorna’s shimmering pale gold waves were far lovelier than the wigs.

‘So this,’ Adorna muttered, ‘is what Seton means by stage fright.’

With the last checks in place and the head-dresses imposing an unnatural silence upon the eight Water Maidens, they waited for the trumpet-call to herald the entry of the masquers. Then the door was opened, assailing them at once with a blaze of light and jewels, colourful and glittering clothes, eager faces and the dying hum of laughter. Blinkered by the small openings in the masks, they saw little except the immediate foreground, but now Adorna realised how this hid their blushes as well as so many leering eyes that strained to examine every detail.

Surrounded by her favourite courtiers, tall and handsome men, the Queen was seated on a large cushioned chair at the far end of the imposingly decorated chamber that glowed warmly with tapestries from ceiling to floor. The latter, clear of rushes, had been polished for dancing and now reflected the colours like a lake through which the eight glamorous masquers glided in pairs, each pair led by a semi-naked child torch-bearer with wings.

One child, mounted on a wheeled seahorse, asked the Queen to approve of the masque, but Adorna’s eyes had rarely been so busy in trying to seek out, without moving her head, someone she recognised. Her father would be otherwise engaged with the props behind the scenes, the organisation and mechanics of the clouds, the little Water Droplets, the noise of the thunder and the giant sun’s face that smiled and winked. While she paraded and danced a graceful pavane she could not help wondering what he would say when he knew.

The doubt about his approval nagged at her, blunting the pleasure of seeing Sir Nicholas’s reaction to what she intended to deny him. The pleasure waned even further as she became quite certain that Sir Nicholas was not present. Some of the other masquers were having no such qualms, for they had already made some minor adjustments to reveal more than had originally been intended, but it was after the pavane that a shriek and a sudden parting of the crowd indicated that there had been an invasion of sorts. A group of tall silver-clad men, glittering in satin-beaded doublets and silver-paned breeches, strode fiercely through the open door, yelling and whirling white fishing-nets about their half-masked heads.

‘Ho-ho!’ they called. ‘What treasures do these fair Water Maidens bring? Yield them up, Maidens! Yield up, we say!’

This was the part of the masque about which Adorna had been kept in the dark, being concerned only with the women’s department, but now she recognised at a glance both the Earl of Leicester and Sir Christopher Hatton by the shape and colour of their beards. They threw their nets about with gusto, making the women guests yelp with excitement, but it was the Water Maidens who had to be netted, and it was they who fled furthest.

There were some, naturally, who did not make it too difficult for the fabulously dressed Fishermen with the white ostrich-plumed caps, but Adorna was not one of them, suspecting that Sir Nicholas was probably a Fisherman with his sights on one of the others. This was her perfect chance to be netted by someone else, to let him see, as Maybelle had said, what he was missing.

‘Here, my lady,’ she laughed, removing her conch-shell head-piece and handing it to a courtier old enough to be her mother. ‘You could be netted, if you wish it.’

Willingly, the lady held it above her head, drawing the Fishermen’s attention while Adorna skipped aside to find one of the eight who looked least like Sir Nicholas, a ploy that misfired when, as she dodged Sir Christopher’s net, she whirled round to find that the man she had hoped to evade had spotted her. His wide shoulders, proud bearing and dark hair could not be concealed by the silver half-mask any more than she was by her complete one.

Across the long room they surveyed each other, one with legs apart, menacing and determined, the other equally adamant that any man would be preferable to this one, at this moment. She slipped away to where guests shoaled like fish, but it was too late to mingle with them before his net flew through the air towards her.

She threw up a hand to ward it off, catching it and hurling it aside scornfully, feeling a surge of triumph as she planted both feet firmly on it, glaring at the Fisherman. The guests, unused to anything but a token show of resistance, roared their approval of her clever ruse and turned to watch what would happen next while, at the far end of the room, the Queen’s head appeared above all the others to see what was going on.

Ready to sprint off again at the first hint of approach, Adorna was not prepared for the sudden shift under her feet as Sir Nicholas yanked hard at the net, pulling it on the slippery floor to unbalance her and bring her down on to her side with a sharp slap. Then, laughing softly, he hauled his net back and shook it out unhurriedly, his voice challenging and strong. ‘Come on, Water Maiden!’ he called. ‘You should be as used to this performance as I am by now. Come, let’s have a look at your bounty, eh?’

The men yelled and clapped, but Adorna’s expression was well hidden behind her mask, though her voice betrayed enough to suggest that this was not all an act. ‘I’m a cloud, Sir Fisherman! A mist. A waterfall. I have no fish, no bounty. You’ll get nothing from me. Go and seek your bounty elsewhere.’ Quickly, she scrambled to her feet, vexed that her flimsy bodice had not been designed for this kind of activity and that her legs, usually concealed, were now perfectly outlined for all to see. Hoping once more to hide in the arms of the guests, she turned towards them. But they were far too occupied in cheering her bravado and in ogling her charms to move aside and, before she could think of an alternative, the net came swinging towards her once more to fall neatly over her head and shoulders.

A roar of approval went up in the crowded room, the men calling for Sir Nicholas, the women calling for Adorna to do something. But it was obvious who would win with the net tightening about her, pinning her arms helplessly to her sides and, unlike the others who had been carefully drawn towards their captors, she was hauled unceremoniously across the floor to the slow clap of the guests, totally unable to resist the strength of his arms.

‘Now, my beauty,’ Sir Nicholas said loudly as she drew nearer, ‘are you going to reward my efforts? What’s it to be this time?’

In the Queen’s presence, her answer would have been totally inappropriate. His taunts infuriated her, as did the guests’ enjoyment, nor did the concealing comfort of her mask last long when he pulled her close and lifted it to reveal her flushed and angry face.

‘Mistress Adorna Pickering,’ he laughed. ‘I would have recognised your…er…face anywhere.’ His eyes were not on her face. Then, as if she had indeed been a netted mermaid, he picked her up in his arms and brought her head slowly up to his and, before his lips met hers in this public and humiliating display of mastery, she saw the gleam of exultation in his eyes, the white flash of his teeth.

‘No!’ she whispered, angrily struggling against his wicked grip. ‘You are making it look as if I am…we are…’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am, aren’t I?’

Even here, in the worst of circumstances, when his kiss was the very last thing she wanted, there was a moment when she became deaf to the yells of approval and heard only the way her heart danced to a rhythm of its own. He kissed her through the net as if no one else had been there, as if the reward he took was no paltry thing but worth all the discernment he could give to it, and it was only when the kiss ended that her other senses returned, with her anger. By then, it mattered nothing to anyone except herself, for the crowd were dispersing and making ready for the dance, still laughing at the rough diversion, both men and women envying the two masquers.

The Earl of Leicester slapped Sir Nicholas on the back as Adorna was carried to one side, his lazy and open examination of her dishevelled attire adding to her chagrin by his unconcealed approval of the contest. ‘I see what you mean, man,’ he murmured into his ear. ‘Time for some lungeing then, eh?’

‘Put me down!’ Adorna snarled, hating them. ‘How dare you manhandle me in this way before Her Majesty, sir?’

He placed her upright within the shadowy window-recess that opened immediately on to the River Thames, admitting the night air that helped to cool her flushed face and neck.

‘Her Majesty is as much amused as everyone else.’

‘Except me!’

‘And you cannot go before she does. That would be a breach of etiquette. Besides,’ he said, easing the net away from the tangle of fringes and stars, ‘the masquers have to dance together first.’

She tried to step away, but he pulled her back and held her against the wall while he untangled her hair. ‘Stand still,’ he said, ‘or I’ll have to hobble you.’

‘Don’t dare to speak to me as if—’

His kiss was meant to be a gag and, in that, it was more effective than even he had expected, given Adorna’s fury. He did not allow her to recover herself, but seemed intent on keeping a firm hold on the authority he had won. ‘As if you were a filly?’ he said, holding her eyes and beating them down with the unflinching brown jasper of his own. ‘You believed that a box on my ears would bring me up short, did you, lass? Well then, just recall that day you sat up there so safely in your saddle and asked me about fillies, and I said I’d tell you someday. Ah, I see you remember that. Well, I’m telling you now, Mistress Adorna Pickering, and we’ll take it in easy stages, shall we?’ He removed his mask at last. ‘The introductions are over. Your education begins here. Now, the musicians are starting up again, the galliard, and you must dance with your captor.’ He stood back to release her, holding out his hand.

She shook with outrage, more than ever aware that, for all her plans, this was going disastrously wrong. She would not give him the satisfaction of her immediate obedience; instead, a myriad of schemes fought for the right to make her as difficult, rebellious, intransigent and downright impossible as any woman had ever been or could ever be, just to show the arrogant savage what he was up against. Seething with vexation at her own lack of opportunity, she ignored his hand just long enough to see a slight movement of his body, a warning that she had better give in.

Haughtily, she placed her hand in his and felt his warm fingers close over hers. She had never seen him look so handsome. Or so dangerous. ‘My captor only for this dance, Sir Fisherman,’ she said, darkly. ‘A net is not the best means of catching water, you know. You’ll have to do better than that before you start your self-imposed role as tutor.’

‘Oh, I will, Maiden. I will,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll do much better than that, believe me. I won’t even need half a chance.’

‘Not a ghost of a chance.’ She allowed herself to be led into the formation for a galliard, though her mind was churning over the fact that so far he had offered no explanation or apology for last night, not even a reference to it. Which showed him to be both heartless and mannerless, a man to whom Hester was more than welcome, if she wanted him. From now on, she vowed to herself, she would not only place Hester in his path, she would hurl her bodily into it, whether she wanted him or not.

He was, as she had seen before, an excellent dancer, and more than once during the lively galliard, she felt the Queen’s scrutiny as she received whispered information into one diamond-weighted ear. As a partner, he could not have been bettered; graceful, sure of his movements, strong and athletic, and during those brief moments of physical contact, she could almost believe that their animosity was a thing of fiction. He would not let her go, but kept hold of her for the next dance, and she was too close to Her Majesty to make a fuss.

The coranto, with its leaps and little running steps, was one in which the Queen herself was an expert, an even more intricate measure than the gay galliard. Here the man could vary the steps at will, taking his partner with him as long as she concentrated. Adorna came close to containing her anger in the heat of the exercise, particularly when he held her above him with his hands around her waist, both of them in complete unison, at one with the rhythm, the steps, the lifts, as if they had rehearsed together. None of which should have been possible between two people so incompatible on every other level.

For the sake of good manners, not to mention the Queen’s presence, she was obliged to swallow further biting comments with the dainty tid-bits he offered her from the banquet prepared in the chamber next door, though it was she who drank liberally of the wine being offered. More than once he reminded her that it was undiluted, that the Queen herself always took water with it, but the impulse to gainsay him at every opportunity had now taken on the dimensions of a crusade against his tyranny, and she took far more of the wine than she needed to quench her thirst, just to thwart him. He need not treat her like a schoolboy. Education, indeed!

It was at the informal banquet that she saw Master Peter Fowler from the opposite side of the chamber. She could have sworn he had not been there earlier, but then his duties could have been the reason for that. All the same, she was relieved that he had not seen the undignified duel between herself and Sir Nicholas, though it appeared to be the presence of the latter at her side that prevented Peter from coming to speak to her. She smiled at him, but her smile was acknowledged only by a bleak expression of discontent that slid from her to Sir Nicholas and back again. She made a move to go to him, but found that the firm hand on her waist was manoeuvring her round to speak to other guests, as if on purpose to deflect her interest, and she knew then that the rivalry between the two had begun in earnest with neither her consent nor approval. It looked as if Peter had been warned off and that he had accepted the instruction, being in no position to do otherwise. She made a note to herself to reverse the situation as quickly as possible, but when she next looked, Peter was nowhere to be seen.

More than once, in the hours that followed, the idea of seeking her father’s protection came and went. It had always been a useful gambit, always successful. But for once, and for a medley of strange and disturbing reasons, she was glad that her father had not been present, the same reasons telling her that, this time, it would be best for her to handle the problem alone.

‘You’ve had enough,’ Sir Nicholas said, in a low voice, returning the full glass to the server.

Adorna tossed her pale hair over her head and reached out to retrieve the wine from the man’s hand, downing it at one go before he could move away. She handed him the empty glass with a smile. ‘I think I’m the best judge of that, Sir Shiffer…shiff…Fisherman,’ she said. ‘Or had you intended to instruct me on what to eat and drink, too?’

His reply was lost as the room fell silent, the ladies sinking into billowing clouds of lace, feathers, silk and jewels, the men to their knees like dwarves in a rainbowed forest. The Queen was leaving. She halted in front of Adorna.

‘But for you, Mistress Pickering,’ she said, ‘one of our Fishermen would have had an empty net. We have you to thank for stepping into Lady Mary’s shoes. That was courageous, as it turned out. You are not hurt, I hope?’

Adorna looked at the forty-two-year-old face, still remarkably handsome and shining with intelligence through piercing topaz eyes. ‘Your Majesty is most gracious,’ she said. ‘I’m not in the least hurt, I thank you, though I do seem to be perpetually wet these days.’

The Queen’s laugh was merry and tinkling. ‘But I notice that you made it a little more difficult for Sir Nicholas to haul you up, this time. Was that because you do not care for the mode of capture or because you do not care to be netted by Sir Nicholas?’

‘I am not yet ready, Your Grace, for any man to capture me.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’ The Queen nodded. ‘Then we are of the same mind on that score, mistress. I agree that we should not make it too easy for them.’ She walked on, smiling until the doors closed quietly behind her.

Sir Nicholas placed a hand on the small of her back, continuing from where he had left off. ‘No,’ he replied to her facetious question. ‘Anyone who can converse so clearly with the Sovereign after as much neat wine as you’ve had needs no instructions from me. Even if it was nonsense.’

‘It was not nonsense, sir, it was…’

‘Yes, it was. You are ready for a man.’

‘Now who’s talking nonsense? You know as much about that, sir, as you know about fishing. Nothing at all. I bid you goodnight.’ She kissed several friends on the way to the door, as was usual, but Sir Nicholas was not one of them. Indeed, she was relieved to find herself at last in the peace of the tiring-room where only Maybelle and a handsome young man were having a quiet conversation in a dimly lit corner. The clothes were all in order, and her own garments had been laid out ready for her. The young man bowed courteously and left. ‘Is he waiting for you, Belle?’ Adorna asked.

‘Yes, mistress.’

‘Then just help me out of this thing and into my kirtle and chemise. If I throw that cloak around me I’ll not look any different in the dark. Get your young man to go home with you and take my other things at the same time. I’ll slip through the palace garden as soon as I’ve gathered my wits together.’

‘Didn’t you enjoy it, then, after all? Lift your arms.’

‘Slip it downwards, Belle. No, I didn’t. And my head’s reeling. I need to sit still a moment.’

‘Too much wine?’

‘Too much everything.’ Her tongue’s usual agility had begun to fail her, suddenly. ‘Hurry up. No, leave my loos and shippers.’

‘Stockings and slippers?’

‘Tha’s what I said. Now, get me into my…there, that’ll do.’

‘But you can’t go home only half-dressed.’

‘’Course I can. Who’s to see me? There, you go and take these with you.’ She bundled the heavy skirt, bodice and stays, sleeves and ruff into the maid’s arms. ‘Don’t be late back, Belle. Who is he?’

‘His name is David, only he says it Daveed. He’s French.’

‘One of the French mission to the Queen?’

‘Yes, mistress. You be all right alone? You sure?’

‘Better than I’ve been all evening, Belle. Go.’

Alone, she pulled her cloak closer around her shoulders, sitting down suddenly on a clothes-chest as the room swayed dangerously. Fresh air was what she needed, and sleep.

The door opened, disturbing the beginning of a dream. Her heart sent drumming beats into her throat, but she was immediately defensive. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Advice on how to dress?’

‘Come,’ said Sir Nicholas, holding the door. ‘I’ll see you home.’

‘Why? You think I may have an assignation with Faster Mowler? Fowler. If so, you may well be correct.’

‘There is no assignation and you should be in bed.’

‘Whose?’

‘Can you walk, or shall I carry you?’

She stood up, hearing her words take on a boisterous life of their own. ‘Neither, I thank you. I can carry myself home.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you can. Sooner or later.’ He lifted her heavy hand and pulled gently, and Adorna saw a flicker of surprise as her cloak fell open to show that her full overgown was missing.

Wearily, she pulled the cloak back into place, snapping at his helping hand. ‘No more than you’ve seen already, and no different from all the others.’ Walking without legs was something new to her, although she placed the experience together with all the others of that unforgettable evening. The shock of the cool night air reeled like gunpowder through her head, making her clutch at the door-frame as they passed from the Queen’s Apartments into the covered walkway surrounding the royal garden.

She felt his arm go around her, supporting, and the events of the evening fell about like skittles in her mind while her body responded in the only way it knew how, instinctively and uncontrolled. Blindly, she turned to him, reaching up with her hands to search him in the darkness, understanding the reason for his hesitation but knowing that here she could taunt him and take his response in private without the act she had been forced to adopt before the Court. Here, she could fight him with knives unsheathed and be damned to the consequences.

Holding his head only a whisper away from hers, she whipped him with her scorn, oblivious to the danger. ‘So what was all that about the lungeing-rein, Sir Nicholas? You think you can school every filly, do you? Well, sir, I believe you might have bitten off more than you can chew this time, because I don’t stand around waiting for—’

His hesitation was shorter than she had predicted before his mouth closed over hers, the scathing words she had just delivered wiped from her memory in a ravenous avalanche of kisses that buried them for ever. She was never able to recall what she had said to provoke him, only that it might have seemed that he was waiting for just such a provocation.

The loss of her words was nothing to her gains in other respects for, despite her taunts that she was equal to his experience, she had no idea what she was talking about except kisses and mild caresses of the kind she and her gossip-friends had giggled over. Going to bed with a man, according to their information, was what some unmarried women did, but exactly what this entailed was still something of a mystery, and the sex acts they had witnessed between animals could surely bear little relation to humans.

But now her body burst into flame at his touch, urging her to press herself against him while revelling in the hard restraint of his arm across her back, the width of his shoulders, all those details she had unwillingly watched this evening while hating his strength, his mastery, his arrogance.

In the enclosing darkness, she was only dimly aware of being lifted into his arms and laid upon the pine bench that lined the walls, their cloaks beneath them. His weight lay half over her, his legs heavy upon her own sending new shockwaves upwards through her body as the imprint of every contour made its way through the soft linen of her kirtle. His mouth came again to hold hers captive while his hand moved carefully over her embroidered chemise, coming to rest, at last, over her breast.

‘No!’ She pulled her head aside, breaking his kiss and expecting the amazing sensation to stop. ‘No,’ she gasped, when it did not.

His lips stayed in contact with hers, just short of a kiss, just close enough for her to expect it at any moment. ‘Steady…steady,’ he whispered. ‘It’s all right…steady!’ Moving his hand over the full roundness, he kept her lips waiting and her awareness flitting between hand and mouth. Then, as she stilled, he slipped his hand beneath the fabric while claiming her mouth just as a gasp filled her lungs, ready to protest again. The shock turned to a moan of ecstasy and the hand that had grabbed at his wrist slackened its hold, allowing him to explore, softly, slowly, tenderly raking her nipple as his lips nibbled hers. She gave a cry, unaware of its precise meaning. ‘That’s good,’ he whispered. ‘Very good. Now, what else are you going to teach me, eh? About this…?’

Her breathing quailed under his hand that plotted the next unfamiliar warm voyage across the skin of her ribs and stomach, sliding over her hips and making her cry out again with the unbearable suspense of it. ‘No,’ she whispered, meaning yes. Reaching up with her free arm, she slipped her fingers into his hair and pulled his head down to meet hers, her words and needs no longer in unison. His dizzying kiss made her moan with desire, but she heard it only from a distance, like the denials she had voiced since their first meeting, fading at his command.

‘More?’ he said. ‘This is but the beginning.’ His lips moved downwards on a different course over her neck and breast, straying across to her other side to torment her nipple with his tongue and teeth, taking her hand and holding it firmly away as she writhed and arched, pinning her down. ‘Now, my beauty,’ he said, kissing the taut skin, ‘is there something else you wanted to show me? What was it you had in mind, back there, that I haven’t a ghost of a chance of getting? Eh?’ His deep voice vibrated across her lips.

But a slow and exquisite ache that began somewhere in her thighs had now centred in a mysterious place, telling her that things were happening that she could never have dreamed of, that she had started something of which she had never been in control from the start, that he had the power to mould her with his touch. As to what she had meant by her riposte, her mind was a blank as she shook with the impact of her own body’s responses. She was silent and trembling as his teasing hand made a slow and inexorable progress over her breast and stomach, reaching down until it came to rest on the soft mound between her legs. By which time he had claimed her lips once more with a kiss that was intended to make protests difficult, but not impossible.

However, he was more aware than Adorna that some kind of protest was necessary, for although he intended that she should remember this first chastening lesson, there would be far better times and places to continue it when her senses would be clear instead of dulled by wine. Her contrariness had served his purpose well, but she would blame herself as much as him for this memorable episode before she would be tempted to return for more.

‘Well?’ he said, caressing. ‘Have you remembered?’ When she made no answer, he understood that she was already on the verge of surrender and so, to provoke her, he tightened his grip on her wrist and shifted his weight.

‘No…no! Please…don’t!’ Her voice shook itself into a whisper, full of the premonition that, whatever his next move was to be, it was up to her to make him understand that no matter whether this was what he did with other women, he could not do it with her. She could not have said why, having no experience to go on, but the certainty was there.

Instantly, he withdrew his hand, gently pulling her clothes back into their proper place. ‘Shh…shh…all right. I’ve stopped. That’s enough for now, I think.’ Carefully, he swung himself away, easing her upright to rest in his arms until her trembling was under control.

Even in her fuddled and confused state, she could not have denied that the capitulation already begun in the banqueting house was now well under way in the Queen’s garden. But though her fear of being added to his conquests remained as great as ever, he had shown her with appalling ease how close she had come to ignoring every one of her objections. The thought was terrifying.

‘Let me go home,’ she whispered, shakily. ‘You have taken advantage of me, sir.’ She stood, clinging to one of the wooden pillars for support.

He came to stand behind her, his hands beneath her cloak covering her breasts and pulling her back to him, possessively. ‘Oh, no,’ he said into her ear. ‘Oh, no, sweet maid. That I did not, and you know it. If I had truly taken advantage of you, I could have plied you with more wine instead of telling you to stop. I could have taken you into any one of a dozen dark rooms. I could still have you stark naked and on your back right now, if that’s what—’

‘No!’ she panted. ‘That you will never do! Now release me.’ For all its apparent fervour, her plea lacked momentum under his persuasive hands that cleverly drew her mind from resentment towards the breathtaking response of her body. Still tingling from his attentions, she had no will to protest as his wandering hands reinforced his first lesson.

‘You started this, my beauty, and now you’re in it up to your pretty little hocks again, aren’t you. And no guardians to run to.’

‘Master Fowler will…be my…’ Her mouth was taken over by his kiss.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘run to your Gentleman Controller as often as you wish, but he’ll never have control of you as I shall. You can stop playing your game of run-and-hide now, Adorna. It’s time to face reality.’ He caught her wrist and swung her round to face him, taking a fistful of her golden hair to tilt her face under his. ‘I want you and I shall have you. Fume and fight as much as you like; your opposition will make my winning and your losing all the sweeter.’

‘Fine words,’ she snarled, ‘from one who makes a secret assignation with no intention of keeping it. If that’s the reality you intend me to face, sir, I’ll stick with my so-called games a while longer, I thank you.’

‘So that’s niggling at you, is it? Well, if I’d thought you’d have accepted my explanation any earlier, I’d have given it to you, though there’s hardly been a good moment for apologies, has there? I was foaling a mare. A first foal. Premature.’

‘And you could not have sent a message?’

His voice softened with an invisible smile. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I could have. I could have sent your Master Fowler. He was with me in the courtyard when the stable-lad came to tell me that the mare had started. I could have asked him to go to the banqueting house where you’d be waiting for me and tell you not to. Should I have done that, do you think?’

The idea was absurd, she realised that now. He could not have sent anyone with such a message. ‘I was not waiting for you,’ she said, angrily pulling at his grip on her wrist. ‘I went in.’

‘Ah, I see.’ He smiled, releasing her. ‘Then there is no real harm done after all, is there? And no apology needed. Now, anything else before I take you home?’

‘Yes, there is. Have you warned him to stay away from me?’

‘Who? Master Fowler?’ His smile grew into a soft laugh. ‘No, mistress. I do not warn men off. I don’t need to. Our Gentleman Controller will get the message soon enough without any extra help from me. I think you’ve already seen that tonight.’

‘And I think, sir, that the less I remember of this night the happier I shall be. I choose my own friends and I shall choose my own lovers when I’m ready. And you will not be among them. Master Fowler would never have behaved as you have.’

‘In which case, Mistress Adorna Pickering,’ he said, pulling her to him once more, ‘you would not have behaved the way you just have, would you? And that would have been a pity.’ Like his first kiss, he gentled her lips with his own, reminding her of how she had responded to him and luring her into another betrayal of her slumbering protests. It also made her aware that this theory, though probably sound, was way beyond her understanding at that moment and had better be analysed on the morrow.

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