And Less Than Kind Read online

  It was, of course, impossible to arrange everything perfectly on half a day's notice, particularly when the incoming servants considered themselves superior (because they had accompanied their employers) to those left behind. Fortunately Dunstan settled quarrels and assigned duties before open feuding that could affect the comfort of Elizabeth and her ladies could begin.

  Sir Edward was also busy, sending trusted guards to inspect all the rooms, the stables, and the outbuildings. Several relatives of the resident servants were routed out and sent away. Ordinarily such hangers on were not disturbed—they were useful for errands and odd jobs and only cost a penny when employed rather than a regular salary—but Sir Edward was wary because of what he still believed were attempts on Elizabeth, not Mary. Finally, he set a guard and arranged for men to rotate on that duty.

  Elizabeth did not trouble herself with the problems of arrival. Warm from riding, she wrapped her fur-lined cloak tightly around her, settled her new sable hood on her head, and announced that she would walk in the garden with Lord Denno.

  Mary's ladies gaped and groaned; everyone was sore and tired from being shaken and banged in the travel wagon. No one wanted to walk in a cold, dead garden, and Elizabeth's long-time maids of honor made no move to follow her, merely dropping curtsies before holding out their hands to the leaping fire. Kat spoke, but she only warned Elizabeth to take care not to get chilled. Elizabeth Marberry, looking around at the women clustered near the fire, rose crookedly to her feet and reached for her cloak.

  "Where are you going, Elizabeth?" Kat asked.

  "Does not Lady Elizabeth need an attendant?"

  Kat laughed. "Not in this weather, in her own house, with Sir Edward's guards posted and . . . I think that was Gerrit who was following her when she went out the door or perhaps it was Shaylor. I assure you that either of the men would fling himself between Lady Elizabeth and any danger—as would Lord Denno, who is a skilled swordsman."

  Elizabeth Marberry was equally sure of that; she was not worried about Lady Elizabeth's safety. "But . . . But . . ."

  She stared around at the women, casually rubbing their bruises, resettling their garments, and murmuring to each other. They would not care if Lady Elizabeth met with rebels or planned to overthrow her sister. They would be blind and deaf to her treason, as would the guard. But Marberry had been tasked with preventing such acts. She did not dare even hint of her real purpose to these women, who all seemed to think the sun rose and set at the order of their lady and that was the way things should be.

  "But why?" she finally got out. "Why should Lady Elizabeth go walk in a freezing garden in the middle of the winter?"

  Kat raised her eyebrows. "To quarrel with Lord Denno, of course. She has been spoiling for a good fight with him for weeks."

  Elizabeth Marberry shook her head in disbelief and angry helplessness. Her one comfort was that because they had left Court so suddenly it was unlikely Elizabeth could already have arranged to meet with any anti-Catholic faction.

  "But do you not think that is a strange thing to do?" Eleanor Gage asked anxiously.

  Kat laughed again. "Not for Lady Elizabeth. She and Lord Denno have been walking in winter gardens and arguing about what to plant where since Lady Elizabeth was eight years old."

  "Aren't you cold?" Denoriel asked Elizabeth anxiously. "The sun is setting. We are sure to arouse suspicions coming out here alone like this."

  "We won't stay long. Kat will tell them that we are arguing about what to plant. Lady Alana disappeared as soon as I had leave to go, and I didn't know whether she had spoken to you."

  "No. She didn't even go home. I think she went off to Cymry."

  "I'm sorry," Elizabeth sighed. "I knew she was longing to go, but I was so frightened I couldn't let her leave me. She was my one comfort."

  "She understood."

  "Oh, Denno, it was horrible." Elizabeth swayed closer so that her shoulder touched Denoriel's arm. She could feel the tension in him as he resisted the impulse to hug her. Gerrit, behind them, could not hear what they said, but he could see them. She sighed again. "Everything I did was wrong and made Mary angrier. And I know that Gardiner was urging Mary to send me to the Tower."

  "I do not think he will be successful. Rhoslyn has convinced Mary that worse will befall her if she harms you. That, of course, is a double-edged sword, in that it increases Mary's fear of you, but there is a limit to what Rhoslyn can do."

  "I know." Elizabeth's voice was thin and hard. "I am Ann Boleyn's daughter and a heretic, too, no matter how many Masses I attend."

  Denoriel chuckled. "Well, you are."

  "The worst kind," Elizabeth said, finding a small smile. "I do not care what rite is used to worship God, and I do not believe God cares either." She shook her head, dismissing that hopeless topic. "Really why I came out was to warn you that the whole household has been seeded with Mary's and Gardiner's spies. You will not be able to be at home as you were in Hatfield."

  "That is not exactly a surprise. I will set my Gate in your dressing room, behind your gowns and be ready with the Don't-see-me. Do you want me to listen and see if I can determine which of the women are spies?"

  "No, no. Mary is not very subtle." Elizabeth laughed. "She simply presented me with two ladies as if I would not guess they were urged upon me to spy. I wonder if she expected me to reject them? Mary herself might have done so. She is devastatingly honest." She laughed softly again. "One I have already subverted, but the other, Elizabeth Marberry, does not like me at all."

  "I could listen to the servants, I suppose, but there are so many of them."

  Elizabeth winkled a hand out of her cloak and took Denoriel's for a moment. "No, that would take too much power. You would be drained. Anyway Sir Edward, Dunstan, and Blanche have mostly discovered which of the new servants and armsmen are spying."

  "Dismiss them?"

  "I daren't do that." Elizabeth shivered. "Da said I must seem ignorant. Then the spies will actually work to my benefit as they can testify I had no commerce with Mary's enemies."

  "Unless they lie, but the accusation of servants without real proof, especially servants that can be proven spies, will not move the Council against you. Anyway with Roslyn beside her it is not Mary I fear. Harry says it is Gardiner and Renard who are the worst danger. You must write nothing, except letters to Mary if you like."

  Suddenly Elizabeth's eyes filled with tears. "How I miss Edward! I did so enjoy writing to him and having his answers. Mary does not care about books or my lessons."

  "I am sorry, my love, but we could not save him and I think he would not have been happy, where Harry is happy."

  "That is true, and Edward had changed. He loved me, I know, but he was growing as rigid in his way as Mary is in hers. I am sure he signed that 'devise' of Northumberland's willingly because he felt a woman should not rule. Too bad we could not take him and show him your queen."

  Denoriel laughed. "That would have cured him. Come, love, you are shivering. We have been out long enough. I will be careful when I come for you."

  Elizabeth breathed a long sigh of relief and hoped for pleasure and caught Denoriel's hand again. "I cannot wait," she breathed and then as they turned to go back to the house and would pass Gerrit, she said sharply, "I do not see why I should not have an arbor with milliflora roses near enough to be seen from the windows of the chamber in which we dine."

  "Because," Denoriel replied, not loudly but clearly enough for Gerrit to hear, "the roses need sun, and if you place the arbor there, the house will throw a shadow over it for most of the day."

  They passed the guardsman, who grinned and shook his head as he fell in behind them. He had heard similar arguments for at least twelve years. Soon the question rose about whether a rose arbor was suitable elsewhere in the garden. Denoriel spoke of the delicacy of roses, of their falling prey to all sorts of blights; Elizabeth shrugged the problem away. It was for her gardeners to worry about. She admired the flowers and the scent of roses.

/>   The discussion had passed on to what mixture of flowers should be in the knot garden by the time Gerrit opened the doors and servants removed outerwear. Elizabeth and Denoriel reached the parlor where her ladies waited. Nyle opened the door and Elizabeth went in, her voice raised in defense of primroses. Denoriel spoke less loudly, but he stubbornly claimed primroses grew too tall and had a limited period of blossoming.

  Eleanor Gage and Elizabeth Marberry drew sharp breaths of surprise over Lord Denno's tone, but as she rose to greet Lady Elizabeth, Dorothy Stafford, far from showing surprise, said her mother had developed a kind of primrose that grew low to the ground. Denoriel said he had heard of it, but also heard the flowers were small. Kat agreed that the flowers were small, but had been told that the colors were very intense. The discussion became quite general until Elizabeth seated herself and gestured for a stool to be brought for Lord Denno.

  "Sit, sit," she said to him with a brilliant smile. "I will leave the flowers as they are this spring. Dorothy will bring me some of her mother's primroses when they come into bloom and then I will decide. You will stay and have an evening meal with us, will you not, Lord Denno?"

  Gage and Marberry were surprised again, but a single glance around showed that none of the others regarded Elizabeth's invitation as in any way unusual. And when Gage repeated her question about Lord Denno riding back to London at night, he laughed and confirmed Dorothy Stafford's and Alice Finch's assumptions that he had a lodge close by.

  Everything else said about Lord Denno also seemed true. Food was served and he made teasing conversation with Kat and the other women, who knew him well. He and Elizabeth had several short differences of opinion, during which he answered the high-born lady with complete freedom. He was not at all subservient yet there was nothing in his manner that anyone, even Elizabeth Marberry, could take as too familiar. So, indeed, would an old friend who had dandled a young lady on his knee speak.

  They talked about everything. Elizabeth's progress in her lessons in mathematics and navigation produced some hearty laughter that neither Gage nor Marberry understood. Whether she would keep up her Greek—Lord Denno commented on the differences between the classical language and that of the traders in modern Greece with whom he dealt. And Alice Finch, who often tread innocently where others feared to go, asked if Lady Elizabeth was now considering learning Spanish, since she was already fluent in French and Italian.

  Lord Denno prevented the awkward pause that would have followed Alice's question by nodding briskly. "Since you already know French and Italian, you will find Spanish very easy," he said, apparently ignorant of or indifferent to any special implication in Alice's remark. "They have most excellent wines and I have done some trading and visited the country."

  "Have you?" Eleanor Gage asked eagerly. "Oh, Lord Denno, do tell us what it is like. The queen will likely marry Prince Philip of Spain. Do you know anything about him?"

  "Only the most common talk of the country, that he is a most estimable person but rather grave and reserved. As to the country, there is a great deal to be told and perhaps I will save that for another day. If Lady Elizabeth will give me leave, I think I should go now and come back tomorrow? With all the trinkets I have gathered up for her and her ladies, which are lying in my lodge."

  A burst of expectation and thanks and pleas to Lady Elizabeth to invite Lord Denno for the next day broke out. Kat silenced the maids of honor and Elizabeth held out her hand to Lord Denno who rose to his feet as she gave the requested invitation and he accepted it.

  "Then I will see you again very soon, my lord," Elizabeth said, smiling brilliantly at him as he bowed over her hand.

  "Very soon," he replied.

  Chapter 19

  It was Elizabeth Marberry that Elizabeth invited to sleep in her chamber that night. Marberry was the most suspicious, the most likely to intrude into Elizabeth's bedchamber in the middle of the night. Blanche could send Elizabeth's own ladies away, but she had been told not to interfere with Mary's spies. Thus, it was Marberry who was in a bespelled sleep when Elizabeth tumbled her bedclothes into a heap that might conceal a slender body to a glance from the dressing room door.

  She was in a light and laughing humor when she huddled a night robe about her and came into her dressing room. Tonight there was no need for a greedy gobbling of love and freedom as there had been the night before she went to meet Mary, newly proclaimed queen. Elizabeth was looking forward with eagerness and joy to her coming pleasure, but without desperation. She was sure she would have months to enjoy her lover and her dream world where palace windows that could not exist showed living, changing landscapes that were not there. Invisible servants served food and cared for well-furnished rooms, colored flames leapt endlessly over crystal logs, and magnificent clothing grew with her so that favorite gowns fitted her year after year.

  There was a cushioned stool waiting. Blanche had carried it in with the excuse that much of her work was done in the dressing room and it was more comfortable for her to sit. No one, not even Kat, criticized anything Blanche did; she had been nurse and maid and now was keeper of Lady Elizabeth's jewels.

  "Don't wait up," Elizabeth said, kissing Blanche's cheek before she sat down. "Probably Lord Denno will bring me home very late."

  "Just make sure it is not so late that Mistress Ashley comes looking for you or that you are so worn out the ladies will notice."

  "No, I—"

  There was a soft sound that Blanche obviously could not hear. Elizabeth spun around to see Denoriel coming past a group of gowns. With a soft cry, she rushed forward and threw herself into his arms. He embraced her so tightly that her ribs creaked and she was not aware at all of the steps he took backward or the falling in pitch blackness that usually marked a passage through a Gate.

  Loud cheers together with the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet made Elizabeth aware that they had arrived, but clearly not at Logres Gate where she had expected to arrive.

  "Damn," Denoriel said in her ear. "Fur Hold."

  Elizabeth gasped. "Oh dear," she murmured. "It's my fault. I have been thinking of Fur Hold, wanting to make merry here all the while I was preparing for bed, but I didn't intend to arrive before I was dressed or we . . . I'm afraid the Gate must have taken us where I was thinking."

  "A very nice entry," a creaky voice a little to the left and ahead of them said. "But you'll have to do more than simply embrace now that you're on the stage."

  "Of course," Denoriel agreed, releasing Elizabeth and turning to face the speaker. "Lady Elizabeth will dance, but my lute got left behind. I must borrow one."

  Dance? Elizabeth was frozen with panic for a moment. In my night rail? With my hair flying loose? But the binding fear did not hold her for more than a moment. Her eyes took in the bright blue sky with its painted white clouds, the round, petalled sun, which winked down at her and waved its petals, the audience of creatures that no one but the incurably insane could imagine; only these were not creatures of terror. They were all waving something or other in greeting—whatever would wave, arms, tentacles, wings, tails, fuzzy spots on their bellies, long hairs—and cheering with delight. Of course she would dance for them.

  As panic receded an exuberant joy took its place. She was free to dance, free of stays and heavy brocades with stiff embroidery, free of the angry stare of an ageing woman jealous of her youth and lithe body, free of the fear of what the Spanish marriage would do to her country, her people, while she was helpless to interfere. For this night and for every coming night as long as the queen did not recall her to Court, she was free to dance in Fur Hold, free to bargain for ornaments with the skilled and clever crabs of Carcinus Maenas, free to lie and make love in her Denno's big, soft bed.

  Elizabeth waved back at her audience and swung around and around, to try the feeling of her bare feet on the polished boards of the stage; her hair made a gleaming, billowing red curtain around her and the full skirt of the night rail flared up, showing her neat ankles and full calves.
In the back row a gloriously dressed Sidhe leaned forward to look more closely. In the front row two adult kitsune grabbed with human hands to control the enthusiasm of two young ones seated between them. The little ones bounced in their seats, their fox tails waving violently and their little black ears pointed eagerly forward over their small red fox faces. Laughing, Elizabeth blew them a kiss, raised her bare arms to pull back her hair, and turned around to look for Denno.

  He was bending over a chest, watched by . . . a child's stick figure? Elizabeth laughed again. How appropriate for that creaky voice. But it was not really a stick figure. There was some depth to the impossibly thin arms and legs, a shadowy rounding beyond the sharp line that delineated a head. The round, seemingly lidless eyes moved from Denoriel to her. The mouth opened and closed as it accepted Denno's choice of a lute and invited him to sit on the chest to play. Denno bowed to it gravely. It bowed to him in return, then shifted to face Elizabeth, bowed again, and came to the edge of the stage.