Praise for the novels of
#1 New York Times bestselling author
SUSAN WIGGS

“Wiggs is one of our best observers of stories of the heart. Maybe that is because she knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.”

—Salem Statesman-Journal

“Susan Wiggs is a rare talent! Boisterous, passionate, exciting! The characters leap off the page and into your heart!”

—Literary Times

“[A] lovely, moving novel with an engaging heroine…Readers who like Nora Roberts and Susan Elizabeth Phillips will enjoy Wiggs’s latest. Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal on Just Breathe [starred review]

“Tender and heartbreaking…a beautiful novel.”

—Luanne Rice on Just Breathe

“Another excellent title [in] her already outstanding body of work.”

—Booklist on Table for Five [starred review]

“With the ease of a master, Wiggs introduces complicated, flesh-and-blood characters into her idyllic but identifiable small-town setting.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Winter Lodge [starred review, a PW Best Book of 2007]

At the Queen’s Summons
Susan Wiggs

Dedicated with love to my friend,

mentor and fellow writer,

Betty Traylor Gyenes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to:

Barbara Dawson Smith, Betty Traylor Gyenes and Joyce Bell, for providing all the generous hours of critique and support

The many members of the GEnie® Romance Exchange, an electronic bulletin board of scholars, fools, dreamers and wisewomen

The Bord Failte of County Kerry, Ireland

And the sublime Trish Jensen for her eagle-eyed proofreading skills.

Contents

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Two

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part One

Now is this golden crown like a deep well

That owes two buckets filling one another;

The emptier ever dancing in the air,

The other down, unseen and full of water;

That bucket down and full of tears am I,

Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

—William Shakespeare

Richard II (IV, i, 184)

From the Annals of Innisfallen

In accordance with ancient and honorable tradition, I, Revelin of Innisfallen, take pen in hand to relate the noble and right valiant histories of the clan O Donoghue. This task has been done by my uncle and his uncle before him, since time no man can remember.

Canons we are, of the most holy Order of St. Augustine, and by the grace of God our home is the beechwooded lake isle called Innisfallen.

Those before me filled these pages with tales of fabled heroes, mighty battles, cattle raids and perilous adventures. Now the role of the O Donoghue Mór has fallen to Aidan, and my work is to chronicle his exploits.

But—may the high King of Heaven forgive my clumsy pen—I know not where to begin. For Aidan O Donoghue is like no man I have ever known, and never has a chieftain been faced with such a challenge.

The O Donoghue Mór, known to the English as Lord of Castleross, has been summoned to London by the she-king who claims the right to rule us. I wonder, with shameful, un-Christian relish, after clapping eyes on Aidan O Donoghue and his entourage, if Her Sassenach Majesty will come to regret the summons.

—Revelin of Innisfallen

One

“How many noblemen does it take to light a candle?” asked a laughing voice.

Aidan O Donoghue lifted a hand to halt his escort. The English voice intrigued him. In the crowded London street behind him, his personal guard of a hundred gallowglass instantly stopped their purposeful march.

“How many?” someone yelled.

“Three!” came the shout from the center of St. Paul’s churchyard.

Aidan nudged his horse forward into the area around the great church. A sea of booksellers, paupers, tricksters, merchants and rogues seethed around him. He could see the speaker now, just barely, a little lightning bolt of mad energy on the church steps.

“One to call a servant to pour the sack—” she reeled in mock drunkenness “—one to beat the servant senseless, one to botch the job and one to blame it on the French.”

Her listeners hooted in derision. Then a man yelled, “That’s four, wench!”

Aidan flexed his legs to stand in the stirrups. Stirrups.Until a fortnight ago, he had never even used such a device, or a curbed bit, either. Perhaps, after all, there was some use in this visit to England. He could do without all the fancy draping Lord Lumley had insisted upon, though. Horses were horses in Ireland, not poppet dolls dressed in satin and plumes.

Elevated in the stirrups, he caught another glimpse of the girl: battered hat crammed down on matted hair, dirty, laughing face, ragged clothes.

“Well,” she said to the heckler, “I never said I could count, unless it be the coppers you toss me.”

A sly-looking man in tight hose joined her on the steps. “I saves me coppers for them what entertains me.” Boldly he snaked an arm around the girl and drew her snugly against him.

She slapped her hands against her cheeks in mock surprise. “Sir! Your codpiece flatters my vanity!”

The clink of coins punctuated a spate of laughter. A fat man near the girl held three flaming torches aloft. “Sixpence says you can’t juggle them.”

“Ninepence says I can, sure as Queen Elizabeth’s white arse sits upon the throne,” hollered the girl, deftly catching the torches and tossing them into motion.

Aidan guided his horse closer still. The huge Florentine mare he’d christened Grania earned a few dirty looks and muttered curses from people she nudged out of the way, but none challenged Aidan. Although the Londoners could not know he was the O Donoghue Mór of Ross Castle, they seemed to sense that he and his horse were not a pair to be trifled with. Perhaps it was the prodigious size of the horse; perhaps it was the dangerous, wintry blue of the rider’s eyes; but most likely it was the naked blade of the shortsword strapped to his thigh.

He left his massive escort milling outside the churchyard and passing the time by intimidating the Londoners. When he drew close to the street urchin, she was juggling the torches. The flaming brands formed a whirling frame for her grinning, sooty face.

She was an odd colleen, looking as if she had been stitched together from leftovers: wide eyes and wider mouth, button nose, and spiky hair better suited to a boy. She wore a chemise without a bodice, drooping canion trews and boots so old they might have been relics of the last century.

Yet her Maker had, by some foible, gifted her with the most dainty and deft pair of hands Aidan had ever seen. Round and round went the torches, and when she called for another, it joined the spinning circle with ease. Hand to hand she passed them, faster and faster. The big-bellied man then tossed her a shiny red apple.

She laughed and said, “Eh, Dove, you don’t fear I’ll tempt a man to sin?”

Her companion guffawed. “I like me wenches made of more than gristle and bad jests, Pippa girl.”

She took no offense, and while Aidan silently mouthed the strange name, someone tossed a dead fish into the spinning mix.

Aidan cringed, but the girl called Pippa took the new challenge in stride. “Seems I’ve caught one of your relatives, Mort,” she said to the man who had procured the fish.

The crowd roared its approval. A few red-heeled gentlemen dropped coins upon the steps. Even after a fortnight in London Aidan could ill understand the Sassenach. They would as lief toss coins to a street performer as see her hanged for vagrancy.

He felt something rub his leg and looked down. A sleepy-looking whore curved her hand around his thigh, fingers inching toward the horn-handled dagger tucked into the top of his boot.

With a dismissive smile, Aidan removed the whore’s hand. “You’ll find naught but ill fortune there, mistress.”

She drew back her lips in a sneer. The French pox had begun to rot her gums. “Irish,” she said, backing away. “Chaste as a priest, eh?”

Before he could respond, a high-pitched mew split the air, and the mare’s ears pricked up. Aidan spied a half-grown cat flying through the air toward Pippa.

“Juggle that,” a man shouted, howling with laughter.

“Jesu!” she said. Her hands seemed to be working of their own accord, keeping the objects spinning even as she tried to step out of range of the flying cat. But she caught it and managed to toss it from one hand to the next before the terrified creature leaped onto her head and clung there, claws sinking into the battered hat.

The hat slumped over the juggler’s eyes, blinding her.

Torches, apple and fish all clattered to the ground. The skinny man called Mort stomped out the flames. The fat man called Dove tried to help but trod instead upon the slimy fish. He skated forward, sleeves ripping as his pudgy arms cartwheeled. Just as he lost his balance, his flailing fist slammed into a spectator, who immediately threw himself into the brawl. With shouts of glee, others joined the fisticuffs. It was all Aidan could do to keep the mare from rearing.

Still blinded by the cat, the girl stumbled forward, hands outstretched. She caught the end of a bookseller’s cart. Cat and hat came off as one, and the crazed feline climbed a stack of tomes, toppling them into the mud of the churchyard.

“Imbecile!” the bookseller screeched, lunging at Pippa.

Dove had taken on several opponents by now. With a wet thwap, he slapped one across the face with the dead fish.

Pippa grasped the end of the cart and lifted. The remaining books slid down and slammed into the bookseller, knocking him backward to the ground.

“Where’s my ninepence?” she demanded, surveying the steps. People were too busy brawling to respond. She snatched up a stray copper and shoved it into the voluminous sack tied to her waist with a frayed rope. Then she fled, darting toward St. Paul’s Cross, a tall monument surrounded by an open rotunda. The bookseller followed, and now he had an ally—his wife, a formidable lady with arms like large hams.

“Come back here, you evil little monkey,” the wife roared. “This day shall be your last!”

Dove was enjoying the fight by now. He had his opponent by the neck and was playing with the man’s nose, slapping it back and forth and laughing.

Mort, his companion, was equally gleeful, squaring off with the whore who had approached Aidan earlier.

Pippa led a chase around the cross, the bookseller and his wife in hot pursuit.

More spectators joined in the fray. The horse backed up, eyes rolling in fear. Aidan made a crooning sound and stroked her neck, but he did not leave the square. He simply watched the fight and thought, for the hundredth time since his arrival, what a strange, foul and fascinating place London was. Just for a moment, he forgot the reason he had come. He turned spectator, giving his full attention to the antics of Pippa and her companions.

So this was St. Paul’s, the throbbing heart of the city. It was more meeting place than house of worship to be sure, and this did not surprise Aidan. The Sassenach were a people who clung feebly to an anemic faith; all the passion and pageantry had been bled out of the church by the Rome-hating Reformers.

The steeple, long broken but never yet repaired, shadowed a collection of beggars and merchants, strolling players and thieves, whores and tricksters. At the opposite corner of the square stood a gentleman and a liveried constable. Prodded by the screeched urging of the bookseller’s wife, they reluctantly moved in closer. The bookseller had cornered Pippa on the top step.

“Mort!” she cried. “Dove, help me!” Her companions promptly disappeared into the crowd. “Bastards!” she yelled after them. “Geld and splay you both!”

The bookseller barreled toward her. She stooped and picked up the dead fish, took keen aim at the bookseller and let fly.

The bookseller ducked. The fish struck the approaching gentleman in the face. Leaving slime and scales in its wake, the fish slid down the front of his silk brocade doublet and landed upon his slashed velvet court slippers.

Pippa froze and gawked in horror at the gentleman. “Oops,” she said.

“Indeed.” He fixed her with a fiery eye of accusation. Without even blinking, he motioned to the liveried constable.

“Sir,” he said.

“Aye, my lord?”

“Arrest this, er, rodent.”

Pippa took a step back, praying the way was clear to make a run for it. Her backside collided with the solid bulk of the bookseller’s wife.

“Oops,” Pippa said again. Her hopes sank like a weighted corpse in the Thames.

“Let’s see you worm your way out of this fix, missy,” the woman hissed in her ear.

“Thank you,” Pippa said cordially enough. “I intend to do just that.” She put on her brightest I’m-an-urchin grin and tugged at a forelock. She had recently hacked off her hair to get rid of a particularly stubborn case of lice. “Good morrow, Your Worship.”

The nobleman stroked his beard. “Not particularly good for you, scamp,” he said. “Are you aware of the laws against strolling players?”

Her gaze burning with indignation, she looked right and left. “Strolling players?” she said with heated outrage. “Who? Where? To God, what is this city coming to that such vermin as strolling players would run loose in the streets?”

As she huffed up her chest, she furtively searched the crowd for Dove and Mortlock. Like the fearless gallants she knew them to be, her companions had vanished.

For a moment, her gaze settled on the man on the horse. She had noticed him earlier, richly garbed and well mounted, with a foreign air about him she could not readily place.

“You mean to say,” the constable yelled at her, “that you are not a strolling player?”

“Sir, bite your tongue,” she fired off. “I’m…I am…” She took a deep breath and plucked out a ready falsehood. “An evangelist, my lord. Come to preach the Good Word to the unconverted of St. Paul’s.”

The haughty gentleman lifted one eyebrow high. “The Good Word, eh? And what might that be?”

“You know,” she said with an excess of patience. “The gospel according to Saint John.” She paused, searching her memory for more tidbits gleaned from days she had spent huddled and hiding in church. An inveterate collector of colorful words and phrases, she took pride in using them. “The pistol of Saint Paul to the fossils.”

“Ah.” The constable’s hands shot out. In a swift movement, he pinned her to the wall beside the si quis door. She twisted around to look longingly into the nave where the soaring stone pillars marched along Paul’s Walk. Like a well-seasoned rat, she knew every cranny and cubbyhole of the church. If she could get inside, she could find another way out.

“You’d best do better than that,” the constable said, “else I’ll nail your foolish ears to the stocks.”

She winced just thinking about it. “Very well, then.” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Here’s the truth.”

A small crowd had gathered, probably hoping to see nails driven through her ears. The stranger on horseback dismounted, passed his reins to a stirrup runner and drew closer.

The lust for blood was universal, Pippa decided. But perhaps not. Despite his savage-looking face and flowing black hair, the man had an air of reckless splendor that fascinated her. She took a deep breath. “Actually, sir, I am a strolling player. But I have a nobleman’s warrant,” she finished triumphantly.

“Have you, then?” His Lordship winked at the constable.

“Oh, aye, sir, upon my word.” She hated it when gentlemen got into a playful mood. Their idea of play usually involved mutilating defenseless people or animals.

“And who might this patron be?”

“Why, Robert Dudley himself, the Earl of Leicester.” Pippa threw back her shoulders proudly. How clever of her to think of the queen’s perpetual favorite. She nudged the constable in the ribs, none too gently. “He’s the queen’s lover, you know, so you’d best not irritate me.”

A few of her listeners’ mouths dropped open. The nobleman’s face drained to a sick gray hue; then hot color surged to his cheeks and jowls.

The constable gripped Pippa by the ear. “You lose, rodent.” With a flourish, he indicated the haughty man. “That is the Earl of Leicester, and I don’t believe he’s ever seen you before.”

“If I had, I would certainly remember,” said Leicester.

She swallowed hard. “Can I change my mind?”

“Please do,” Leicester invited.

“My patron is actually Lord Shelbourne.” She eyed the men dubiously. “Er, he is still among the living, is he not?”

“Oh, indeed.”

Pippa breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, then. He is my patron. Now I had best be go—”

“Not so fast.” The grip on her ear tightened. Tears burned her nose and eyes. “He is locked up in the Tower, his lands forfeit and his title attainted.”

Pippa gasped. Her mouth formed an O.

“I know,” said Leicester. “Oops.”

For the first time, her aplomb flagged. Usually she was nimble enough of wit and fleet enough of foot to get out of these scrapes. The thought of the stocks loomed large in her mind. This time, she was nailed indeed.

She decided to try a last ditch effort to gain a patron. Who? Lord Burghley? No, he was too old and humorless. Walsingham? No, not with his Puritan leanings. The queen herself, then. By the time Pippa’s claim could be verified, she would be long gone.

Then she spied the tall stranger looming at the back of the throng. Though he was most certainly foreign, he watched her with an interest that might even be colored by sympathy. Perhaps he spoke no English.

“Actually,” she said, “he is my patron.” She pointed in the direction of the foreigner. Be Dutch, she prayed silently. Or Swiss. Or drunk. Or stupid. Just play along.

The earl and the constable swung around, craning their necks to see. They did not have far to crane. The stranger stood like an oak tree amid low weeds, head and shoulders taller, oddly placid as the usual St. Paul’s crowd surged and seethed and whispered around him.

Pippa craned, too, getting her first close look at him. Their gazes locked. She, who had experienced practically everything in her uncounted years, felt a jolt of something so new and profound that she simply had no name for the feeling.

His eyes were a glittering, sapphire blue, but it was not the color or the startling face from which the eyes stared that mattered. A mysterious force dwelt behind the eyes, or in their depths. Awareness flew between Pippa and the stranger; she felt it enter her, dive into her depths like sunlight breaking through shadow.

Old Mab, the woman who had raised Pippa, would have called it magic.

Old Mab would have been right, for once.

The earl cupped his hands around his mouth. “You, sir!”

The foreigner pressed a very large hand to his much larger chest and raised a questioning black brow.

“Aye, sir,” called the earl. “This elvish female claims she is performing under your warrant. Is that so, sir?”

The crowd waited. The earl and the constable waited. When they looked away from her, Pippa clasped her hands and looked pleadingly at the stranger. Her ear was going numb in the pinch of the constable.

Pleading looks were her specialty. She had practiced them for years, using her large, pale eyes to prize coppers and crusts from passing strangers.

The foreigner raised a hand. Into the alleyway behind him flooded a troop of—Pippa was not certain what they were.

They moved about in a great mob like soldiers, but instead of tunics these men wore horrible gray animal hides, wolfskins by the look of them. They carried battleaxes with long handles. Some had shaved heads; others wore their hair loose and wild, tumbling over their brows.

Everyone moved aside when they entered the yard. Pippa did not blame the Londoners for shrinking in fear. She would have shrunk herself, but for the iron grip of the constable.

“Is that what the colleen said, then?” He strode forward. He spoke English, damn him. He had a very strange accent, but it was English.

He was huge. As a rule, Pippa liked big men. Big men and big dogs. They seemed to have less need to swagger and boast and be cruel than small ones. This man actually had a slight swagger, but she realized it was his way of squeezing a path through the crowd.

His hair was black. It gleamed in the morning light with shards of indigo and violet, flowing over his shoulders. A slim ebony strand was ornamented with a strap of rawhide and beads.

Pippa chided herself for being fascinated by a tall man with sapphire eyes. She should be taking the opportunity to run for cover rather than gawking like a Bedlamite at the foreigner. At the very least, she should be cooking up a lie to explain how, without his knowledge, she had come to be under his protection.

He reached the steps in front of the door, where she stood between the constable and Leicester. His flame-blue eyes glared at the constable until the man relinquished his grasp on Pippa’s ear.

Sighing with relief, she rubbed the abused, throbbing ear.

“I am Aidan,” the stranger said, “the O Donoghue Mór.”

A Moor! Immediately Pippa fell to her knees and snatched the hem of his deep blue mantle, bringing the dusty silk to her lips. The fabric felt heavy and rich, smooth as water and as exotic as the man himself.

“Do you not remember, Your Preeminence?” she cried, knowing important men adored honorary titles. “How you ever so tenderly extended your warrant of protection to my poor, downtrodden self so that I’d not starve?” As she rambled on, she found a most interesting bone-handled knife tucked into the cuff of his tall boot. Unable to resist, she stole it, her movements so fluid and furtive that no one saw her conceal it in her own boot.

Her gaze traveled upward over a strong leg. The sight set off a curious tingling. Strapped to his thigh was a shortsword as sharp and dangerous looking as the man himself.

“You said you did not wish me to suffer the tortures of Clink Prison, nor did you want my pitiful weight forever on your delicate conscience, making you terrified to burn in hell for eternity because you let a defenseless woman fall victim to—”

“Yes,” said the Moor.

She dropped his hem and stared up at him. “What?” she asked stupidly.

“Yes indeed, I remember, Mistress…er—”

“Trueheart,” she supplied helpfully, plucking a favorite name from the arsenal of her imagination. “Pippa Trueheart.”

The Moor faced Leicester. The smaller man gaped up at him. “There you are, then,” said the black-haired lord. “Mistress Pippa Trueheart is performing under my warrant.”

With a huge bear paw of a hand, he took her arm and brought her to her feet. “I do confess the little baggage is unmanageable at times and did slip away for today’s performance. From now on I shall keep her in closer tow.”

Leicester nodded and stroked his narrow beard. “That would be most appreciated, my lord of Castleross.”

The constable looked at the Moor’s huge escort. The members of the escort glared back, and the constable smiled nervously.

The Moor turned and addressed his fierce servants in a tongue so foreign, so unfamiliar, that Pippa did not recognize a single syllable of it. That was odd, for she had a keen and discerning ear for languages.

The skin-clad men marched out of the churchyard and clumped down Paternoster Row. The lad who served as stirrup runner led the big horse away. The Moor took hold of Pippa’s arm.

“Let’s go, a storin,” he said.

“Why do you call me a storin?”

“It is an endearment meaning ‘treasure.’”

“Oh. No one’s ever called me a treasure before. A trial, perhaps.”

His lilting accent and the scent of the wind that clung in his hair and mantle sent a thrill through her. She had never been rescued in her life, and certainly not by such a specimen as this black-haired lord.

As they walked toward the low gate linking St. Paul’s with Cheapside, she looked sideways at him. “You seem rather nice for a Moor.” She passed through the gate he held open for her.

“A Moor, you say? Mistress, sure and I am no Moor.”

“But you said you were Aidan, the O Donoghue Moor.”

He laughed. She stopped in her tracks. She earned her living by making people laugh, so she should be used to the sound of it, but this was different. His laughter was so deep and rich that she imagined she could actually see it, flowing like a banner of dark silk on the breeze.

He threw back his great, shaggy head. She saw that he had a full set of teeth. The eyes, blazing blue like the hearts of flames, drew her in with that same compelling magic she had felt earlier.

He was beginning to make her nervous.

“Why do you laugh?” she asked.

“Mór,” he said. “I am the O Donoghue Mór. It means ‘great.’”

“Ah.” She nodded sagely, pretending she had known all along. “And are you?” She let her gaze travel the entire length of him, lingering on the more interesting parts.

God was a woman, Pippa thought with sudden certainty. Only a woman would create a man like the O Donoghue, forming such toothsome parts into an even more delectable whole. “Aside from the obvious, I mean.”

Mirth still glowed about him, though his laughter had ceased. He touched her cheek, a surprisingly tender gesture, and said, “That, a stor, depends on whom you ask.”

The light, brief touch shook Pippa to the core, though she refused to show it. When people touched her, it was to box her ears or send her packing, not to caress and comfort.

“And how does one address a man so great as yourself?” she asked in a teasing voice. “Your Worship? Your Excellency?” She winked. “Your Hugeness?”

He laughed again. “For a lowly player, you know some big words. Saucy ones, too.”

“I collect them. I’m a very fast learner.”

“Not fast enough to stay out of trouble today, it seems.” He took her hand and continued walking eastward along Cheapside. They passed the pissing conduit and then the Eleanor Cross decked with gilded statues.

Pippa saw the foreigner frowning up at them. “The Puritans mutilate the figures,” she explained, taking charge of his introduction to London. “They mislike graven images. At the Standard yonder, you might see real mutilated bodies. Dove said a murderer was executed Tuesday last.”

When they reached the square pillar, they saw no corpse, but the usual motley assortment of students and ’prentices, convicts with branded faces, beggars, bawds, and a pair of soldiers tied to a cart and being flogged as they were conveyed to prison. Leavening all the grimness was the backdrop of Goldsmith Row, shiny white houses with black beams and gilt wooden statuary. The O Donoghue took it all in with quiet, thoughtful interest. He made no comment, though he discreetly passed coppers from his cupped hand to the beggars.

From the corner of her eye, Pippa saw Dove and Mortlock standing by an upended barrel near the Old ’Change. They were running a game with weighted dice and hollow coins. They smiled and waved as if nothing had happened, as if they had not just deserted her in a moment of dire peril.

She poked her nose in the air, haughty as any grande dame, and put her grubby hand on the arm of the great O Donoghue. Let Dove and Mort wonder and squirm with curiosity. She belonged to a lofty nobleman now. She belonged to the O Donoghue Mór.

Aidan was wondering how to get rid of the girl. She trotted at his side, chattering away about riots and rebels and boat races down the Thames. There was precious little for him to do in London while the queen left him cooling his heels, but that did not mean he needed to amuse himself with a pixielike female from St. Paul’s.

Still, there was the matter of his knife, which she had stolen while groveling at his hem. Perhaps he ought to let her keep it, though, as the price of a morning’s diversion. The lass was nothing if not wildly entertaining.

He shot a glance sideways, and the sight of her clutched unexpectedly at his heart. She bounced along with all the pride of a child wearing her first pair of shoes. Yet beneath the grime on her face, he could see the smudges of sleeplessness under her soft green eyes, the hollows of her cheekbones, the quiet resignation that bespoke a thousand days of tacit, unprotesting hunger.

By the staff of St. Brigid, he did not need this, any more than he had needed the furious royal summons to court in London.

Yet here she was. And his heart was moved by the look of want in her wide eyes.

“Have you eaten today?” he asked.

“Only if you count my own words.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“No food has passed these lips in a fortnight.” She pretended to sway with weakness.

“That is a lie,” Aidan said mildly.

“A week?”

“Also a lie.”

“Since last night?” she said.

“That I am likely to believe. You do not need to lie to win my sympathy.”

“It’s a habit, like spitting. Sorry.”

“Where can I get you a hearty meal, colleen?”

Her eyes danced with anticipation. “Oh, there, Your Greatness.” She pointed across the way, past the ’Change, where armed guards flanked a chest of bullion. “The Nag’s Head Inn has good pies and they don’t water down their ale.”

“Done.” He strode into the middle of the road. A few market carts jostled past. A herd of laughing, filthy children charged past in pursuit of a runaway pig, and a noisome knacker’s wagon, piled high with butchered horse parts, lumbered by. When at last the way seemed clear, Aidan grabbed Pippa’s hand and hurried her across.

“Now,” he said, ducking beneath the low lintel of the doorway and drawing her inside. “Here we are.”

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. The tavern was nearly full despite the early hour. He took Pippa to a scarred table flanked by a pair of three-legged stools.

He called for food and drink. The alewife slumped lazily by the fire as if loath to bestir herself. In high dudgeon, Pippa marched over to her. “Did you not hear His Lordship? He desires to be served now.” Puffed up with self-importance, she pointed out his rich mantle and the tunic beneath, decked in cut crystal points. The sight of a well-turned-out patron spurred the woman to bring the ale and pasties quickly.

Pippa picked up her wooden drinking mug and drained nearly half of it, until he rapped on the bottom. “Slowly now. It won’t sit well on an empty stomach.”

“If I drink enough, my stomach won’t care.” She set down the mug and dragged her sleeve across her mouth. A certain glazed brightness came over her eyes, and he felt a welling of discomfort, for it had not been his purpose to make her stupid with drink.

“Eat something,” he urged her. She gave him a vague smile and picked up one of the pies. She ate methodically and without savor. The Sassenach were terrible cooks, Aidan thought, not for the first time.

A hulking figure filled the doorway and plunged the tavern deeper into darkness. Aidan’s hand went for his dagger; then he remembered the girl still had it.

As soon as the newcomer stepped inside, Aidan grinned and relaxed. He would need no weapon against this man.

“Come sit you down, Donal Og,” he said in Gaelic, dragging a third stool to the table.

Aidan was known far and wide as a man of prodigious size, but his cousin dwarfed him. Donal Og had massive shoulders, legs like tree trunks and a broad, prominent brow that gave him the look of a simpleton. Nothing was farther from the truth. Donal Og was brilliant, wry and unfailingly loyal to Aidan.

Pippa stopped chewing to gape at him.

“This is Donal Og,” said Aidan. “The captain of my guard.”

“Donal Og,” she repeated, her pronunciation perfect.

“It means Donal the Small,” Donal Og explained.

Her gaze measured his height. “Where?”

“I was so dubbed at birth.”

“Ah. That explains everything.” She smiled broadly. “I am honored. My name is Pippa Trueblood.”

“The honor is my own, surely,” Donal Og said with faint irony in his voice.

Aidan frowned. “I thought you said Trueheart.”

She laughed. “Silly me. Perhaps I did.” She began licking grease and crumbs from her fingers.

“Where,” Donal Og asked in Gaelic, “did you find that?”

“St. Paul’s churchyard.”

“The Sassenach will let anyone in their churches, even lunatics.” Donal Og held out a hand, and the alewife served him a mug of ale. “Is she as crazy as she looks?”

Aidan kept a bland, pleasant smile on his face so the girl would not guess what they spoke of. “Probably.”

“Are you Dutch?” she asked suddenly. “That language you’re using to discuss me—is it Dutch? Or Norse, perhaps?”

Aidan laughed. “It is Gaelic. I thought you knew. We’re Irish.”

Her eyes widened. “Irish. I’m told the Irish are wild and fierce and more papist than the pope himself.”

Donal Og chuckled. “You’re right about the wild and fierce part.”

She leaned forward with interest burning in her eyes. Aidan gamely ran a hand through his hair. “You’ll see I have no antlers, so you can lay to rest that myth. If you like, I’ll show you that I have no tail—”

“I believe you,” she said quickly.

“Don’t tell her about the blood sacrifices,” Donal Og warned.

She gasped. “Blood sacrifices?”

“Not lately,” Aidan concluded, his face deadly serious.

“Certainly not on a waning moon,” Donal Og added.

But Pippa held herself a bit more stiffly and regarded them with wariness. She seemed to be measuring the distance from table to door with an expert eye. Aidan had the impression that she was quite accustomed to making swift escapes.

The alewife, no doubt drawn by the color of their money, sidled over with more brown ale. “Did ye know we’re Irish, ma’am?” Pippa asked in a perfect imitation of Aidan’s brogue.

The alewife’s brow lifted. “Do tell!”

“I’m a nun, see,” Pippa explained, “of the Order of Saint Dorcas of the Sisters of Virtue. We never forget a favor.”

Suitably impressed, the alewife curtsied with new respect and withdrew.

“So,” Aidan said, sipping his ale and hiding his amusement at her little performance. “We are Irish and you cannot decide on a family name for yourself. How is it that you came to be a strolling player in St. Paul’s?”

Donal Og muttered in Gaelic, “Really, my lord, could we not just leave? Not only is she crazy, she’s probably crawling with vermin. I’m sure I just saw a flea on her.”

“Ah, that’s a sad tale indeed,” Pippa said. “My father was a great war hero.”

“Which war?” Aidan asked.

“Which war do you suppose, my lord?”

“The Great Rebellion?” he guessed.

She nodded vigorously, her hacked-off hair bobbing. “The very one.”

“Ah,” said Aidan. “And your father was a hero, you say?”

“You’re as giddy as she,” grumbled Donal Og, still speaking Irish.

“Indeed he was,” Pippa declared. “He saved a whole garrison from slaughter.” A faraway look pervaded her eyes like morning mist. She looked past him, out the open door, at a patch of the sky visible between the gabled roofs of London. “He loved me more than life itself, and he wept when he had to leave me. Ah, that was a bleak day for the Truebeard family.”

“Trueheart,” Aidan corrected, curiously moved. The story was as false as a strumpet’s promise, yet the yearning he heard in the girl’s voice rang true.

“Trueheart,” she agreed easily. “I never saw my father again. My mother was carried off by pirates, and I was left quite alone to fend for myself.”

“I’ve heard enough,” said Donal Og. “Let’s go.”

Aidan ignored him. He found himself fascinated by the girl, watching as she helped herself to more ale and drank greedily, as if she would never get her fill.

Something about her touched him in a deep, hidden place he had long kept closed. It was in the very heart of him, embers of warmth that he guarded like a windbreak around a herdsman’s fire. No one was allowed to share the inner life of Aidan O Donoghue. He had permitted that just once—and he had been so thoroughly doused that he had frozen himself to sentiment, to trust, to joy, to hope—to everything that made life worth living.

Now here was this strange woman, unwashed and underfed, with naught but her large soft eyes and her vivid imagination to shield her from the harshness of the world. True, she was strong and saucy as any rollicking street performer, but not too far beneath the gamine surface, he saw something that fanned at the banked embers inside him. She possessed a subtle, waiflike vulnerability that was, at least on the surface, at odds with her saucy mouth and nail-hard shell of insouciance.

And, though her hair and face and ill-fitting garments were smeared with grease and ashes, a charming, guileless appeal shone through.

“That is quite a tale of woe,” Aidan commented.

Her smile favored them both like the sun bursting through stormclouds.

“Too bad it’s a pack of lies,” Donal Og said.

“I do wish you’d speak English,” she said. “It’s bad manners to leave me out.” She glared accusingly at him. “But I suppose, if you’re going to say I’m crazy and a liar and things of that sort, it is probably best to speak Irish.”

Seeing so huge a man squirm was an interesting spectacle. Donal Og shifted to and fro, causing the stool to creak. His hamlike face flushed to the ears. “Aye, well,” he said in English, “you need not perform for Aidan and me. For us, the truth is good enough.”

“I see.” She elongated her words as the effects of the ale flowed through her. “Then I should indeed confess the truth and tell you exactly who I am.”

Diary of a Lady

It is a mother’s lot to rejoice and to grieve all at once. So it has always been, but knowing that has never eased my grief nor dimmed my joy.

In the early part of her reign, the queen gave our family a land grant in County Kerry, Munster, but until recently, we kept it in name only, content to leave Ireland to the Irish. Now, quite suddenly, we are expected to do something about it.

Today my son Richard received a royal commission. I wonder, when the queen’s advisers empowered my son to lead an army, if they ever, even for an instant, imagined him as I knew him—a laughing small boy with grass stains on his elbows and the pure sweetness of an innocent heart shining from his eyes.

Ah, to me it seems only yesterday that I held that silky, golden head to my breast and scandalized all society by sending away the wet nurse.

Now they want him to lead men into battle for lands he never asked for, a cause he never embraced.

My heart sighs, and I tell myself to cling to the blessings that are mine: a loving husband, five grown children and a shining faith in God that—only once, long ago—went dim.

—Lark de Lacey,

Countess of Wimberleigh

Two

“I can’t believe you brought her with us,” said Donal Og the next day, pacing in the walled yard of the old Priory of the Crutched Friars.

As a visiting dignitary, Aidan had been given the house and adjacent priory by Lord Lumley, a staunch Catholic and unlikely but longtime royal favorite. The residence was in Aldgate, where all men of consequence lived while in London. The huge residence, once home to humble and devout clerks, comprised a veritable village, including a busy glassworks and a large yard and stables. It was oddly situated, bordered by broad Woodroffe Lane and crooked Hart Street and within shouting distance of a grim, skeletal scaffold and gallows.

Aidan had given Pippa a room of her own, one of the monks’ cells facing a central arcade. The soldiers had strict orders to watch over her, but not to threaten or disturb her.

“I couldn’t very well leave her at the Nag’s Head.” He glanced at the closed door of her cell. “She might’ve been accosted.”

“She probably has been, probably makes her living at it.” Donal Og cut the air with an impatient gesture of his hand. “You take in strays, my lord, you always have—orphaned lambs, pups rejected by their dams, lame horses. Creatures better left—” He broke off, scowled and resumed pacing.

“To die,” Aidan finished for him.

Donal Og swung around, his expression an odd mix of humanity and cold pragmatism. “It is the very rhythm of nature for some to struggle, some to survive, some to perish. We’re Irish, man. Who knows that better than we? Neither you nor I can change the world. Nor were we meant to.”

“But isn’t that what we came to London to accomplish, cousin?” Aidan asked softly.

“We came because Queen Elizabeth summoned you,” Donal Og snapped. “And now that we’re here, she refuses to see you.” He tilted his great blond head skyward and addressed the clouds. “Why?”

“It amuses her to keep foreign dignitaries cooling their heels, waiting for an audience.”

“I think she’s insulted because you go all about town with an army of one hundred. Mayhap a little more modesty would be in order.”

Iago came out of the barracks, scratching his bare, ritually scarred chest and yawning. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said in the lilting tones of his native island. “You never shut up.”

Aidan said a perfunctory good morning to his marshal. Through an extraordinary chain of events, Iago had come ten years earlier from the West Indies of the New World. His mother was of mixed island native and African blood, his father a Spaniard.

Iago and Aidan had grown to full manhood together. Two years younger than Iago and in awe of the Caribbean man’s strength and prowess, Aidan had insisted on emulating him. Gloriously drunk one day, he had endured the ritual scarring ceremony in secret, and in a great deal of pain. To the horror of his father, Aidan now bore, like Iago, a series of V-shaped scars down the center of his chest.

“I was just saying,” Donal Og explained, “that Aidan is always taking in strays.”

Iago laughed deeply, his mahogany face shining through the morning mist. “What a fool, eh?”

Chastened, Donal Og fell silent.

“So what did he drag home this time?” Iago asked.

Pippa lay perfectly still with her eyes closed, playing a familiar game. From earliest memory, she always awoke with the certain conviction that her life had been a nightmare and, upon awakening, she would find matters the way they should be, with her mother smiling like a Madonna while her father worshipped her on bended knee and both smiled upon their beloved daughter.

With a snort of self-derision, she beat back the fantasy. There was no place in her life for dreams. She opened her eyes and looked up to see a cracked, limewashed ceiling. Timber and wattled walls. The scent of slightly stale, crushed straw. The murmur of masculine voices outside a thick timber door.

It took a few moments to remember all that had happened the day before. While she reflected on the events, she found a crock of water and a basin and cupped her hands for a drink, finally plunging in her face to wash away the last cobwebby vestiges of her fantasies.

Yesterday had started out like any other day—a few antics in St. Paul’s; then she and Mortlock and Dove would cut a purse or filch something to eat from a carter. Like London smoke borne on a breeze, they would drift aimlessly through the day, then return to the house on Maiden Lane squished between two crumbling tenements.

Pippa had the attic room all to herself. Almost. She shared it with a rather aggressively inquisitive rat she called, for no reason she could fathom, Pavlo. She also shared quarters with all the private worries and dreamlike memories and unfocused sadness she refused to confess to any other person.

Yesterday, the free-flowing course of her life had altered. For better or worse, she knew not. She felt no ties to Mort and Dove; the three of them used each other, shared what they had to, and jealously guarded the rest. If they missed her at all, it was because she had a knack for drawing a crowd. If she missed them at all—she had not decided whether or not she did—it was because they were familiar, not necessarily beloved.

Pippa knew better than to love anyone.

She had come with the Irish nobleman simply because she had nothing better to do. Perhaps fate had taken a hand in her fortune at last. She had always wanted the patronage of a rich man, but no one had ever taken notice of her. In her more fanciful moments, she thought about winning a place at court. For now, she would settle for the Celtic lord.

After all, he was magnificently handsome, obviously rich and surprisingly kind.

A girl could do far worse than that.

By the time he had brought her to this place, she had been woozy with ale. She had a vague memory of riding a large horse with the O Donoghue Mór seated in front of her and all his strange, foreign warriors tramping behind.

She made certain her shabby sack of belongings lay in a corner of the room, then dried her face. As she cleaned her teeth with the tail of her shift dipped in the water basin, she saw, wavering in the bottom of the bowl, a coat of arms.

Norman cross and hawk and arrows.

Lumley’s device. She knew it well, because she had once stolen a silver badge from him as he had passed through St. Paul’s.

She straightened up and combed her fingers through her hacked-off hair. She did not miss having long hair, but once in a while she thought about looking fashionable, like the glorious ladies who went about in barges on the Thames. In the past, when she bothered to wash her hair, it had hung in honey gold waves that glistened in the sun.

A definite liability. Men noticed glistening golden hair. And that was the last sort of attention she wanted.

She jammed on her hat—it was a slouch of brown wool that had seen better days—and wrenched open the door to greet the day.

Morning mist lay like a shroud over a rambling courtyard. Men and dogs and horses slipped in and out of view like wraiths. The fog insulated noise, and the arcade created soft, hollow echoes, so that the Irish voices of the men had an eerie intimacy.

She tucked her thumbs into her palms to ward off evil spirits—just in case.

Several yards from Pippa, three men stood talking in low tones. They made a most interesting picture—the O Donoghue with his blue mantle slung back over one shoulder, his booted foot propped on the tongue of a wagon, and his elbow braced upon his knee.

Donal Og, the rude cousin, leaned against the wagon wheel, gesticulating like a man in the grips of St. Elmo’s fire. The third man stood with his back turned, feet planted wide as if he were on the deck of a ship. He was tall—she wondered if prodigious height was a required quality of the Irish lord’s retinue—and his long, soft tunic blazed with color in hues more vivid than April flowers.

She strolled out of her chamber to find that it was one of a long line of barracks or cells hunched against an ancient wall and shaded by the arcade. She walked over to the wagon, and in her usual forthright manner, she picked up the hem of the man’s color-drenched garment and fingered the fabric.

“Now, colleen,” Aidan O Donoghue said in a warning voice.

The man in the bright cloak turned.

Pippa’s mouth dropped open. A squeak burst from her throat and she stumbled back. Her heel caught on a broken paving stone. She tripped and landed on her backside in a puddle of morning-chilled mud.

“Jesus Christ on a flaming crutch!” she said.

“Reverent, isn’t she?” Donal Og asked wryly. “Faith, but she’s a perfect little saint.”

Pippa kept staring. This was a Moor. She had heard about them in story and song, but never had she seen one. His face was remarkable, a gleaming sculpture of high cheekbones, a bony jaw, beautiful mouth, eyes the color of the stoutest ale. He had a perfect black cloud of hair, and skin the color of antique, polished leather.

“My name is Iago,” he said, stepping back and twitching the hem of his remarkable cloak out of the way of the mud.

“Pippa,” she said breathlessly. “Pippa True—True—”

Aidan stuck out his hand and pulled her to her feet. She felt his smooth, easy strength as he did so, and his touch was a wonder to her, in its way, more of a wonder than the Moor’s appearance.

Iago looked from Pippa to Aidan. “My lord, you have outdone yourself.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve never had one before.”

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

“Why am I not surprised?” he asked.

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

“At Steelyard store of wines there be

Your dulled minds to glad,

And handsome men that must not wed,

Except they leave their trade.

They oft shall seek for proper girls,

And some perhaps shall find—”

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

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

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

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

She took his patronage seriously. Too seriously.

“The bed it shook

As pleasure took

The carpet-knight for a ride…”

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you quite finished?” Aidan asked.

“Finished? Are we pressed for time?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re very kind,” she said.

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

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

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

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

His loins burned with the image, and he gritted his teeth. The last thing he had expected was that he might desire her. Pippa lifted her arms and held them steady while he unlaced the bodice.

It proved to be the most excruciating exercise in self-restraint he had ever endured. Somehow, the dust and ashes of her harsh life had masked an uncounted wealth of charms. He had the feeling that he was the first man to see beneath the grime and ill-fitting clothes.

As he pulled the laces through, his knuckles grazed her. The maids had provided neither shift nor corset. All that lay between Pippa’s sweet flesh and his busy hands was a chemise of wispy lawn. He could feel the heat of her, could smell the clean, beeswaxy fragrance of her just washed skin and hair.

Setting his jaw with manly restraint, he turned the bodice right side up and brought it around her. As he slowly laced the garment, watching the stiff buckram close around a narrow waist and then widen over the subtle womanly flare of her hips, pushing up her breasts, he could not banish his insistent desire.

True to her earlier observation, her bosom swelled out over the top with frank appeal, barely contained by the sheer fabric of the chemise. He could see the high, rounded shapes, the rosy shadows of the tips, and for a long, agonizing moment all he could think of was touching her there, tenderly, learning the shape and weight of her breasts, burying his face in them, drowning in the essence of her.

A roaring, like the noise of the sea, started in his ears, swishing with the quickening rhythm of his blood. He bent his head closer, closer, his tongue already anticipating the flavor of her, his lips hungry for the budded texture. His mouth hovered so close that he could feel the warmth emanating from her.

She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and the movement reminded him to think with his brain—even the small part of it that happened to be working at the moment—not with his loins.

He was the O Donoghue Mór, an Irish chieftain who, a year before, had given up all rights to touch another woman. He had no business dallying with—of all things—a Sassenach vagabond, probably a madwoman at that.

He forced himself to stare not at the bodice, but into her eyes. And what he saw there was more dangerous than the lush curves of her body. What he saw there was not madness, but a painful eagerness.

It struck him like a slap, and he caught his breath, then hissed out air between his teeth.

He wanted to shake her. Don’t show me your yearning, he wanted to say. Don’t expect me to do anything about it.

What he said was, “I am in London on official business. I will return to Ireland as soon as I am able.”

“I’ve never been to Ireland,” she said, an ember of unbearable hope glowing in her eyes.

“These days, it is a sad country, especially for those who love it.” Sad. What a small, inadequate word to describe the horror and desolation he had seen—burned-out peel towers, scorched fields, empty villages, packs of wolves feeding off the unburied dead.

She tilted her head to one side. Unlike Aidan, she seemed perfectly comfortable with their proximity. A suspicion stung him. Perhaps it was nothing out of the ordinary for her to have a man tugging at her clothing.

The idea stirred him from his lassitude and froze the sympathy he felt for her. He made short, neat work of trussing her up, helped her slide her feet into the little shoes, then stepped back.

She ruined his hard-won indifference when she pointed a slippered toe, curtsied as if to the manner born and asked, “How do I look?”

From neck to floor, Aidan thought, like his own private dream of paradise.

But her expression disturbed him; she had the face of a cherub, filled with a trust and innocence that seemed all the more miraculous because of the hardships she must have endured living the life of a strolling player.

He studied her hair, because it was safer than looking at her face and drowning in her eyes. She lifted a hand, made a fluttery motion in the honey gold spikes. “It’s that awful?” she asked. “After I cut it all off, Mort and Dove said I could use my head to swab out wine casks or clean lamp chimneys.”

A reluctant laugh broke from him. “It is not so bad. But tell me, why is your hair cropped short? Or do I want to know?”

“Lice,” she said simply. “I had the devil of a time with them.”

He scratched his head. “Aye, well. I hope you’re no longer troubled by the little pests.”

“Not lately. Who dresses your hair, my lord? It is most extraordinary.” Brazen as an inquisitive child, she stood on tiptoe and lifted the single thread-woven braid that hung amid his black locks.

“That would be Iago. He does strange things on shipboard to avoid boredom.” Like getting me drunk and carving up my chest, Aidan thought grumpily. “I’ll ask him to do something about this mop of yours.”

He meant to reach out and tousle her hair, a meaningless, playful gesture. Instead, as if with its own mind, his palm cradled her cheek, his thumb brushing up into her sawed-off hair. The soft texture startled him.

“Will that be agreeable to you?” he heard himself ask in a whisper.

“Yes, Your Immensity.” Pulling away, she craned her neck to see over his shoulder. “There is something I need.” She hurried into the kitchen, where her old, soiled clothes lay in a heap.

Aidan frowned. He had not noticed any buttons worth keeping on her much worn garb. She snatched up the tunic and groped along one of the seams. An audible sigh of relief slipped from her. Aidan saw a flash of metal.

Probably a bauble or copper she had lifted from a passing merchant in St. Paul’s. He shrugged and went to the kitchen garden door to call for Iago.

As he turned, he saw Pippa lift the piece and press it to her mouth, closing her eyes and looking for all the world as if the bauble were more precious than gold.

From the Annals of Innisfallen

I am old enough now to forgive Aidan’s father, yet young enough to remember what a scoundrel Ronan O Donoghue was. Ah, I could roast for eternity in the fires of my unkind thoughts, but there you are, I hated the old jackass and wept no tears at his wake.

He expected more of his only son than any man could possibly give—loyalty, honor, truth, but most of all blind, stupid obedience. It was the one quality Aidan lacked. It was the one thing that could have saved the father, niggardly lout that he was, from dying.

For certain, Aidan thinks on that often, and with a great, seizing pain in his heart.

A pitiful waste if you ask me, Revelin of Innisfallen. For until he lets go of his guilt about what happened that fateful night, Aidan O Donoghue will not truly live.

—Revelin of Innisfallen

Three

“So after my father’s ship went down,” Pippa explained blithely, “his enemies assumed he had perished.” She sat very still on the stool in the kitchen garden. The smell of blooming herbs filled the spring air.

“Naturally,” Iago said in his dark honey voice. “And of course, your papa did not die at all. Even as we speak, he is attending the council of Her Majesty the queen.”

“How did you know?” Beaming, Pippa twisted around on her stool to look up at him.

Framed by the nodding boughs of the old elm tree that shaded the garden path, he regarded her with tolerant interest, a comb in his hand and a gentle compassion in his velvety black eyes. “I, too, like to invent answers to the questions that keep me awake at night,” he said.

“I invent nothing,” she snapped. “It all happened just as I described it.”

“Except that the story changes each time you encounter someone new.” He spoke with mild amusement, but no accusation. “Your father has been pirate, knight, foreign prince, soldier of fortune and ratcatcher. Oh. And did I not hear you tell O Mahoney you were sired by the pope?”

Pippa blew out a breath, and her shoulders sagged. A raven cackled raucously in the elm tree, then whirred off into the London sky. Of course she invented stories about who she was and where she had come from. To face the truth was unthinkable. And impossible.

Iago’s touch was soothing as he combed through her matted hair. He tilted her chin up and stared at her face-on for a long moment, intent as a sculptor. She stared back, rapt as a dreamer. What a remarkable person he was, with his lovely ebony skin and bell-toned voice, the fierce, inborn pride he wore like a mantle of silk.

He closed one eye; then he began to snip with his little crane-handled scissors, the very ones she had been tempted to steal from a side table in the kitchen.

As Iago worked, he said, “You tell the tales so well, pequeña, but they are just that—tales. I know this because I used to do the same. Used to lie awake at night trying to put together the face of my mother from fragments of memory. She became every good thing I knew about a mother, and before long she was more real to me than an actual woman. Only bigger. Better. Sweeter, kinder.”

“Yes,” she whispered past a sudden, unwelcome thickness in her throat. “Yes, I understand.”

He twisted a few curls into a soft fringe upon her brow. The breeze sifted lightly through them. “If you were an Englishman, you would be the very rage of fashion. They call these lovelocks. They look better on you.” He winked. “A dream mother. It was something I needed at a very dark time of my life.”

“Tell me about the dark time,” she said, fascinated by the deftness of his hands and the way they were so brown on one side, while the palms were sensitive and pale.

“Slavery,” he said. “Being made to work until I fell on my face from exhaustion, and then being beaten until I dragged myself up to work some more. You have a dream mother, too, eh?”

She closed her eyes. A lovely face smiled at her. She had spent a thousand nights and more painting her parents in her mind until they were perfect. Beautiful. All wise. Flawless, save for one minor detail. They had somehow managed to misplace their daughter.

“I have a dream mother,” she confessed. “A father, too. The stories might change, but that does not.” She opened her eyes to find him studying her critically again. “What about the O Donoghue?” she asked, pretending only idle curiosity.

“His father is dead, which is why Aidan is the lord. His mother is dead also, but his—” He cut himself off. “I have said too much already.”

“Why are you so loyal to the O Donoghue?”

“He gave me my freedom.”

“How was it his to give in the first place?”

Iago grinned, his face blossoming like an exotic flower. “It was not. I was put on a ship for transport from San Juan—that is on an island far across the Ocean Sea—to England. I was to be a gift for a great noblewoman. My master wished to impress her.”

“A gift?” Pippa was hard-pressed to sit still on her stool. “You mean like a drinking cup or a salt cellar or a pet ermine?”

“You have a blunt way of putting it, but yes. The ship wrecked off the coast of Ireland. I swam straightaway from my master even as he begged me to save him.”

Pippa sat forward, amazed. “Did he die?”

Iago nodded. “Drowned. I watched him. Does that shock you?”

“Yes! Was the water very cold?”

His chest-deep chuckle filled the air. “Close to freezing. I dragged myself to an island—I later found out it is called Skellig Michael—and there I met a pilgrim in sackcloth and ashes, climbing the great stairs to the shrine.”

“The O Donoghue Mór in sackcloth and ashes?” In Pippa’s mind, Aidan would always be swathed in flashing jewel tones, his jet hair gleaming in the sun; he was no drab pilgrim, but a prince from a fairy story.

“He was not the O Donoghue Mór then. He helped me get dry and warm, and he became my first and only true friend.” Black fury shadowed Iago’s eyes. “When Aidan’s father saw me, he declared himself my master, tried to make me a slave again. And Aidan let him.”

Pippa clutched the sides of the stool. “The jackdog! The bootlicker, the skainsmate—”

“It was a ruse. He claimed me on the grounds that he had found me. His father agreed, thinking it would enhance Aidan’s station to be the first Irishman to own a black slave.”

“The scullywarden!” she persisted. “The horse’s a—”

“And then he set me free,” Iago said, laughing at her. “He had a priest called Revelin draw up a paper. That day Aidan promised to help me return to my home when we were both grown. In fact, he promised to come with me across the Ocean Sea.”

“Why would you want to go back to a land where you were a slave? And why would Aidan want to go with you?”

“Because I love the islands, and I no longer have a master. There was a girl called Serafina….” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head as if to cast away the thought. “Aidan wanted to come because he loves Ireland too much to stay.” Iago fussed with more curls that tickled the nape of her neck.

“If he loves Ireland, why would he want to leave it?”

“When you come to know him better, you will understand. Have you ever been forced to watch a loved one die?”

She swallowed and nodded starkly, thinking of Mab. “I never felt so helpless in all my life.”

“So it is with Aidan and Ireland,” said Iago.

“Why is he here, in London?”

“Because the queen summoned him. Officially, he is here to sign treaties of surrender and regrant. He is styled Lord of Castleross. Unofficially, she is curious, I think, about Ross Castle. She wants to know why, after her interdict forbidding the construction of fortresses, it was completed.”

The idea that her patron had the power to decide the fate of nations was almost too large for Pippa to grasp. “Is she very angry with him?” It even felt odd referring to Queen Elizabeth as “she,” for Her Majesty had always been, to Pippa and others like her, a remote idea, more of an institution like a cathedral than a flesh-and-blood woman.

“She has kept him waiting here for a fortnight.” Iago lifted her from the stool to the ground. “You look as pretty as an okasa blossom.”

She touched her hair. Its shape felt different—softer, balanced, light as the breeze. She would have to go out to Hart Street Well and look at her reflection.

“You said when you met Aidan, he was not the O Donoghue Mór,” she said, thinking that the queen must enjoy having the power to summon handsome men to her side.

“His father, Ronan, was. Aidan became Lord Castleross after Ronan died.”

“And how did his father die?”

Iago went to the half door of the kitchen and held the lower part open. “Ask Aidan. It is not my place to say.”

“Iago said you killed your father.”

Aidan shot to his feet as if Pippa had touched a brand to his backside. “He said what?”

Hiding her apprehension, she strolled into the great hall of Lumley House and moved through gloomy evening shadows on the flagged floor. An ominous rumbling of thunder sounded in the distance. Aidan’s fists were clenched, his face stark and taut. Instinct told her to flee, but she forced herself to stay.

“You heard me, my lord. If you’re going to keep me, I want to make sure. Is it true? Did you kill your father?”

He grabbed an iron poker. A single Gaelic word burst from him as he stabbed at the fat log smoldering in the grate.

Pippa took a deep breath for courage. “It was Iago who—”

“Iago said nothing of the sort.”

She emerged from the shadows and joined him by the hearth, praying he would deny her suggestion. “Did you, my lord?” she whispered.

He moved so swiftly, it took her breath away. One moment the iron poker clattered to the floor; the next he had his great hands clamped around her shoulders, her back against a stone pillar and his furious face pushed close to hers. Though she still stood cloaked in shadow, she could see the flames from the hearth fire reflected in his eyes.

“Yes, damn your meddling self. I killed my father.”

“What?” She trembled in his grip.

Aidan thrust away from her, turning back to face the fire. “Isn’t that what you expected to hear?” He clenched his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. Sharp fragments of that last, explosive argument came back to slice fresh wounds into his soul.

He spun around to face Pippa, intending to carry her bodily out of the hall, out of Lumley House, out of his life. She stepped from the gloom and into the light. Aidan stopped dead in his tracks.

“What in God’s name did Iago do to you?” he asked. As if to echo his words, thunder muttered outside the hall.

Her hand wavered a little as she brought it up to touch her hair, which now curled softly around her glowing face. “The best he could?” she attempted. Then she dropped her air of trembling uncertainty. “You are trying to change the subject. Are you or are you not a father-murderer?”

He planted his hands on his hips. “That depends on whom you ask.”

She mimicked his aggressive stance, looking for all the world like a fierce pixie. “I’m asking you.”

“And I’ve answered you.”

“But it was the wrong answer,” she said, so vehemently that he expected her to stomp her foot. Something—the washing, the grooming—had made her glow as if a host of fairies had showered her with a magical mist. “I demand an explanation.”

“I feel no need to explain myself to a stranger,” he said, dismayed by the intensity of his attraction to her.

“We are not strangers, Your Loftiness,” she said with heavy irony. “Wasn’t it just this morning that you undressed me and then dressed me like the most intimate of handmaids?”

He winced at the reminder. Beneath her elfin daintiness lay a soft, womanly body that he craved with a power that was both undeniable and inappropriate. Shed of her beggar’s garb, she had become the sort of woman for whom men swore to win honors, slay dragons, cheerfully lay down their lives. And he was in no position to do any of those things.

“Some would say,” he admitted darkly, “that the death of Ronan O Donoghue was an accident.” From the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of lightning through the mullioned windows on the east side of the hall.

“What do you say?” Pippa asked.

“I say it is none of your affair. And if you persist in talking about it, I might have to do something permanent to you.”

She sniffed, clearly recognizing the idleness of his threat. He was not accustomed to females who were unafraid of him. “If I had a father, I’d cherish him.”

“You do have a father. The war hero, remember?”

She blinked. “Oh. Him. Yes, of course.”

Aidan slammed a fist on the stone mantel and regarded the Lumley shield hanging above as if it were a higher authority. “What am I going to do with you?” The wind hurled gusts against the windows, and he swung around to glower at her.

“‘Do’ with me?” She glanced back over her shoulder at the door. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to be alone with him. She wouldn’t be the first.

“You can’t stay here forever,” he stated. “I didn’t ask to be your protector.” The twist of guilt in his gut startled him. He was not used to making cruel statements to defenseless women.

She did not look surprised. Instead, she dropped one shoulder and regarded him warily. She resembled a dog so used to being kicked that it came as a surprise when it was not kicked.

Her rounded chin came up. “I never asked to stay forever. I can go back to Dove and Mortlock. We have plans to gain the patronage of…of the Holy Roman Emperor.”

He remembered her disreputable companions from St. Paul’s—the portly and greasy Dove and the cadaverous Mortlock. “They must be mad with worry over you.”

“Those two?” She snorted and idly picked up the iron poker, stabbing at the log in the hearth. Sparks flew upward on a sweep of air, then disappeared. “They only worry about losing me because they need me to cry up a crowd. Their specialty is cutting purses.”

“I won’t let you go back to them,” Aidan heard himself say. “I’ll find you a—” he thought for a moment “—a situation with a gentlewoman—”

That made her snort again, this time with bitter laughter. “Oh, for that I should be well and truly suited.” She slammed the poker back into its stand. “It has long been my aim in life to empty some lady’s slops and pour wine for her.” The hem of her skirts twitched in agitation as she pantomimed the menial work.

“It’s a damned sight better than wandering the streets.” Irritated, he walked to the table and sloshed wine into a cup. The lightning flashed again, stark and cold in the April night.

“Oh, do tell, my lord.” She stalked across the room, slapped her palms on the table, leaned over and glared into his face. “Listen. I am an entertainer. I am good at it.”

So he had noticed. She could mimic any accent, highborn or low, copy any movement with fluid grace, change character from one moment to the next like an actor trying on different masks.

“I didn’t ask you to drag me out of St. Paul’s and into your life,” she stated.

“I don’t remember any objections from you when I saved you from having your ears nailed to the stocks.” He tasted the wine, a sweet sack favored by the English nobility. He missed his nightly draft of poteen. Pippa was enough to make him crave two drafts of the powerful liquor.

“I was hungry. But that doesn’t mean I’ve surrendered my life to you. I can get another position in a nobleman’s household just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

She was so close, he could see the dimple that winked in her left cheek. She smelled of soap and sun-dried laundry, and now that her hair was fixed, it shone like spun gold in the glow from the hearth.

He took another sip of wine. Then, very gently, he set down the cup and reached across to touch a wispy curl that drifted across her cheek. “How can it be enough to simply survive?” he asked softly. “Do you never dream of doing more than that?”

“Damn you,” she said, echoing his words to her. She shoved away from the table and turned her back on him. There was a heartbreaking pride in the stiff way she held herself, the set of her shoulders and the haughty tilt of her head. “Goodbye, Your Worship. Thank you for our brief association. We shan’t be seeing each other again.”

“Pippa, wait—”

In a sweep of skirts and injured dignity, she strode out of the hall, disappearing into the gloom of the cloister that bordered the herbiary. Aidan could not explain it, but the sight of her walking away from him caused a painful squeeze of guilt and regret in his chest.

He swore under his breath and finished his wine, then paced the room. He had more pressing matters to ponder than the fate of a saucy street performer. Clan wars and English aggression were tearing his district apart. The settlement he had negotiated last year was shaky at best. A sad matter, that, since he had paid such a dear price for the settlement. He had bought peace at the cost of his heart.

The thought caused his mind to jolt back to Pippa. The ungrateful little female. Let her storm off to her chamber and sulk until she came to her senses.

It occurred to him then that she was the sort not to sulk, but to act. She had survived—and thrived—by doing just that.

A jagged spear of lightning split the sky just as a terrible thought occurred to him. Hurling the pewter wine cup to the floor, he dashed out of the house and into the cloister of Crutched Friars, running down the arcade to her door, jerking it open.

Empty. He passed through the refectory and emerged onto the street. He had been right. He saw Pippa in the distance, hurrying down the broad, tree-lined road leading to Woodroffe Lane and the eerie, lawless area around Tower Hill. A gathering wind stirred the bobbing heads of chestnut trees. Clouds rolled and tumbled, blackening the sky, and when he breathed in, he caught the heavy taste and scent of rain and the faint, sizzling tang of close lightning.

She walked faster still, half running.

Turn back, he called to her silently, trying to will her to do his bidding. Turn back and look at me.

Instead, she lifted her skirts and began to run. As she passed the communal well of Hart Street, lightning struck.

From where Aidan stood, it looked as if the very hand of God had cleaved the heavens and sent a bolt of fire down to bury itself in the breast of London. A crash of thunder seemed to shake the ground. The clouds burst open like a ripe fruit, and it began to rain.

For an Irishman, Aidan was not very superstitious, but thunder and lightning were a clear sign from a powerful source. He should not have let her go.

Without a second thought, he plunged into the howling storm, racing between the rows of wildly bending chestnut trees. The rain pelted him in huge, cold drops, and lightning speared down through the clouds once more.

He dragged a hand across his rain-stung eyes and squinted through the sodden twilight. Already the ditch down the middle of the street ran like a small, flooding river, carrying off the effluvia of London households.

People scurried for cover here and there, but the darkness had swallowed Pippa. He shouted her name. The storm drowned his voice. With a curse, he began a methodical search of each side alley and path he encountered, working south toward the river, turning westward toward St. Paul’s each time he saw a way through.

The storm gathered force, belting him in the face, tearing at his clothes. Mud spattered him to the thighs, but he ignored it.

He went farther west, turning into each alley, calling her name. The rain blinded him, the wind buffeted him, the mud sucked at his feet.

At a particularly grim-looking street, the wind tore down a painted sign of a blue devil and hurled it to the ground. It struck a slanting cellar door, then fell sideways onto a pile of wood chippings.

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

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

“Pippa!” He touched her quaking shoulder.

She screamed and looked up at him.

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

“Faith, Pippa, are you hurt?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nurse screamed Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary…

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bad dream?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“True,” he said gently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diary of a Lady

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

Oliver’s other siblings will come with husbands and wives. Belinda and Kit, Simon and Rosamund, whom I have not seen in two winters. Sebastian will come with one special friend or other; these days it is a gifted but disreputable young poet called Marlowe.

Dear Belinda still clings to her scandalous pastime of incendiary displays. She has lit her fireworks for members of the noble houses of Hapsburg and Valois, and of course for Her Majesty the queen. She has promised a special program of Italian colored fire in honor of Richard.

But I wonder, amid all the revelry, if anyone save Oliver will mark the event that tonight’s storm reminds me of so poignantly. For many years I have struggled to survive our loss, and daily I thank God for my family. Still, the storm hurled me back to that dark, rain-drenched night.

It is a time that lives in my heart as its most piercing memory.

—Lark de Lacey,

Countess of Wimberleigh

Four

Aidan was watching her with those penetrating flame-blue eyes. Pippa could tell from his fierce chieftain’s glare that he would tolerate no more jests or sidestepping.

She combed her hair with both hands, raking her fingers through the damp, yellow tangles. She felt shaky, much as she did after being stricken with a fever and then getting up for the first time in days. The storm had slammed through her with terrifying force, leaving her limp.

“The problem is,” she said with bleak, quiet honesty, “I have the same answer to all of your questions.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know.” She watched him closely for a reaction, but he merely sat there at the end of the bed, waiting and watching. Firelight flared behind him, outlining his massive shoulders and the gleaming fall of his black hair.

His eyes never left her, and she wondered just what he saw. Why in heaven’s name would a grand Irish lord take an interest in her? What did he hope to gain by befriending her? She had so little to offer—a handful of tricks, a few sorry jests, a chuckle or two. Yet he seemed enraptured, infinitely patient, as he awaited her explanation.

The rush of tenderness she felt for him was frightening. Ah, she could love this man, she could draw him into her heart. But she would not. In his way, he was as remote as the moon, beautiful and unreachable. Before long he would go back to Ireland, and she would resume her existence in London.

“I don’t know who I am,” she explained, “nor where I come from, nor even where I am going. And I certainly don’t know what you’re going to do with me.” With an effort, she squared her shoulders. “Not that it’s any of your concern. I am mistress of my own fate. If and when I decide to delve into my past, it will be to find the answers for me, not you.”

“Ah, Pippa.” He got up, took a dipper of wine from a cauldron near the hearth and poured the steaming, spice-scented liquid in a cup. “Sip it slowly,” he said, handing her the drink, “and we’ll see if we can sort this out.”

Feeling cosseted, she accepted the wine and let a soothing swallow slide down her throat. Mab had been her teacher, her adviser in herbal arts and foraging, but the old woman had seen only to her most basic needs, keeping her dry and fed as if she were livestock. From Mab, Pippa had learned how to survive. And how to protect herself from being hurt.

“You do not know who you are?” he inquired, sitting again at the foot of the bed.

She hesitated, caught her lower lip with her teeth. Turmoil boiled up inside her, and her immediate reaction was to erupt with laughter and make yet another joke about being a sultan’s daughter or a Hapsburg orphan. Then, cradling the cup in her hands, she lifted her gaze to his.

She saw concern burning like a flame in his eyes, and its appeal had a magical effect on her, warming her like the wine, unfurling the secrets inside her, plunging down through her to find the words she had never before spoken to another living soul.

Slowly, she set the cup on a stool beside the bed and began to talk to him. “For as long as I can remember, I have been Pippa. Just Pippa.” The admission caught unpleasantly in her throat. She cleared it with a merry, practiced laugh. “It is a very liberating thing, my lord. Not knowing who I am frees me to be whoever I want to be. One day my parents are a duke and duchess, the next they are poor but proud crofters, the next, heroes of the Dutch revolt.”

“But all you really want,” he said softly, “is to belong somewhere. To someone.”

She blinked at him and could summon no tart remark or laughter to answer the charge. And for the first time in her life, she admitted the stark, painful truth. “Oh, God in heaven, yes. All I want to know is that someone once loved me.”

He reached across the bed and covered her hands with his. A strange, comfortable feeling rolled over her like a great wave. This man, this foreign chieftain who had all but admitted he’d killed his father, somehow made her feel safe and protected and cared for.

“Let us work back over time.” He rubbed his thumbs gently over her wrists. “Tell me how you came to be there on the steps of St. Paul’s the first day I met you.”

He spoke of their meeting as if it had been a momentous occasion. She pulled her hands away and set her jaw, stubbornly refusing to say more. The fright from the storm had lowered her defenses. She struggled to shore them up again. Why should she confess the secrets of her heart to a virtual stranger, a man she would never see again after he left London?

“Pippa,” he said, “it’s a simple enough question.”

“Why do you care?” she shot back. “What possible interest could it be to you?”

“I care because you matter to me.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Is that so hard to understand?”

“Yes,” she said.

He reached for her and then froze, his hand hovering between them for a moment before he pulled it back. He cleared his throat. “I am your patron. You perform under my warrant. And these are simple questions.”

He made her feel silly for guarding her thoughts as if they were dark secrets. She took a deep breath, trying to decide just where to begin. “Very well. Mort and Dove said eventually, all of London passes through St. Paul’s. I suppose—quite foolishly, as it happens—I hoped that one day I would look up and see a man and woman who would say, “You belong to us.’” She plucked at a loose thread in the counterpane. “Stupid, am I not? Of course, that never happened.” She gave a short laugh, tamping back an errant feeling of wistful longing. “Even if they did recognize me, why would they claim me, unwashed and dishonest, thieving from people in the churchyard?”

“I claimed you,” he reminded her.

His words lit a glow inside her that warmed her chest. She wanted to fling herself against him, to babble with gratitude, to vow to stay with him always. Only the blade-sharp memories of other moments, other partings, held her aloof and wary.

“For that I shall always thank you, my lord,” she said cordially. “You won’t be sorry. I’ll keep you royally entertained.”

“Never mind that. So you continued to perform as a strolling player, just wandering about, homeless as a Gypsy?” he asked.

A sting of memory touched her, and she caught her breath in startlement.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Something extraordinary just occurred to me. Years ago, when I first came to London town, I saw a tribe of Gypsies camped in Moor Fields outside the city. I thought they were a troupe of players, but these people dressed and spoke differently. They were like a—a family. I was drawn to them.”

Warming to her tale, she shook off the last vestiges of terror from the storm. She sat forward on the bed, draping her arms around her drawn-up knees. “Aidan, it was so exciting. There was something familiar about those people. I could almost understand their language, not the actual words, mind, but the rhythms and nuances.”

“And they welcomed you?”

She nodded. “That night, there was a dance around a great bonfire. I was taken to meet a woman called Zara—she was very old. Ancient. Some said more than fourscore years old. Her pallet had been set out so that she could watch the dancing.” Pippa closed her eyes, picturing the snowy tangle of hair, the wizened-apple face, the night-dark eyes so intense they seemed to see into tomorrow.

“They said she was ill, not expected to live, but she asked to see me. Fancy that.” Opening her eyes again, she peered at Aidan to see if he believed her or thought she was spinning yarns once more. She could not tell, for he merely watched and waited with calm interest. No one had ever listened to her with such great attention before.

“Go on,” he said.

“Do you know the first thing she said to me? She said I would meet a man who would change my life.”

He muttered something Celtic and scowled at her.

“No, it’s true, my lord, you must believe me.”

“Why should I? You’ve lied about everything else.”

His observation should not have hurt her, but it did. She pressed her knees even closer to her chest and tried to will away the ache in her heart. “Not everything, Your Loftiness.”

“Continue, then. Tell me what the witch woman said.”

“Her speech was slow, broken.” In her mind’s eye, Pippa saw it all as if it had happened yesterday—the leaping flames and the ancient face, the deep eyes and the Gypsies whispering among themselves and pointing at Pippa, who had knelt beside Zara’s pallet.

“She was babbling, I suppose, and speaking in more than one language, but I remember she told me about the man. And she also spoke of blood and vows and honor.”

“Blood, vows and honor?” he repeated.

“Yes. That part was very distinct. She spoke the three words, just like that. She was dying, my lord, but clutching my hand with a grip stronger than death itself. I hadn’t the heart to question her or show any doubt. It’s as if she thought she knew me and somehow needed me in those last moments.”

He folded his arms against his massive chest and studied her. Pippa was terrified that he would accuse her again of lying, but he gave the barest of nods. “They say those in extremis often mistake strangers for people they have known. Did the old woman say more?”

“One more thing.” Pippa hesitated. She felt it all again, the emotions that had roared through her while the stranger held her hand. A feeling of terrible hope had welled from somewhere deep inside her. “A statement I will never, ever forget. She lifted her head, using the very last of her strength to fix me with a stare. And she said, “The circle is complete.” Then, within an hour, she was dead. A few of the young Gypsies seemed suspicious of me, so I thought it prudent to leave after that. Besides, the woman’s wild talk…”

“Frightened you?” Aidan asked.

“Not frightened so much as touched something inside me. As if the words she spoke were words I should know. I tell you, it gave me much to think on.”

“I imagine it did.”

“Not that anything ever came of it,” she said, then ducked her head and lowered her voice. “Until now.”

She watched him, studied his face. Lord, but he was beautiful. Not pretty, but beautiful in the way of a crag overlooking the moors of the north, or in the majestic stance of a roebuck surveying its domain deep in a green velvet wood. It was the sort of beauty that caught at her chest and held fast, defying all efforts to dislodge a dangerous, glorious worship.

Then she noticed that one eyebrow and one corner of his mouth were tilted up in wry irony. She released her breath in an explosive sigh. “I suppose that is the price of being an outrageous and constant liar.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“When I finally tell the truth, you don’t believe me.”

“And why would you be thinking I don’t believe you?”

“That look, Your Worship. You seem torn between laughing at me and summoning the warden of Bedlam.”

The eyebrow inched up even higher. “Actually, I am torn between laughing at you and kissing you.”

“I choose the kissing,” she blurted out all in a rush.

Both of his eyebrows shot up, then lowered slowly over eyes gone soft and smoky. He gripped her hands and drew her forward so that she came up on her knees. The bedclothes pooled around her, and the thin shift whispered over her burning skin.

“I choose the kissing, too.” He lifted his hand to her face. The pad of his thumb moved slowly, tantalizingly, along the curve of her cheekbone and then downward, slipping like silk over marble, to touch her bottom lip, to rub over the fullness until she almost did not need the kiss in order to feel him.

Almost.

“Have you ever been kissed before, colleen?”

The old bluster rose up inside her. “Well, of c—”

“Pippa,” he said, pressing his thumb gently on her lips. “This would be a very bad time to lie to me.”

“Oh. Then, no, Your Immensity. I have never been kissed.” The few who had tried had had their noses rearranged by her fist, but she thought it prudent not to mention that.

“Do you know how it’s done?”

“Yes.”

“Pippa, the truth. You were doing so well.”

“I’ve seen it happen, but I don’t know how it’s done in actual practice.”

“The first thing that has to happen—”

“Yes?” Unable to believe her good fortune, she bounced up and down on her knees, setting the bed to creaking on the rope latticework that supported the mattress. “This is really too exciting, my lord—”

His thumb stopped her mouth again. “—is that you have to stop talking. And for God’s sake don’t narrate everything. This is supposed to be a gesture of affection, but you’re turning it into a farce.”

“Oh. Well, of course I didn’t mean—”

Again he hushed her, and at the same moment a log fell in the grate. The brief flare of sparks found, just for an instant, a bright home in the centers of his eyes. She moaned in sheer wanting but remembered at last not to speak.

“Ah, well done,” he whispered, and his thumb moved again, with subtle, devastating tenderness, slipping just inside her mouth and then emerging to spread moisture along her lip.

“If you like, you can close your eyes.”

She mutely shook her head. It was not every day she got a kiss from an Irish chieftain, and she was not about to miss a single instant of giddy bliss.

“Then just look up at me,” he said, surging closer to her on the bed. “Just look up, and I’ll do the rest.”

She tilted her chin up as he lowered his head. His thumb slid aside to make room for his lips, and his mouth brushed over hers, softly, sweetly, with a sensation that made raw wanting jolt to life inside her.

She made a sound, but he caught it with his mouth and pressed down gently, until their lips were truly joined. His deft fingers rubbed with tender insistence along her jawline, and his lips pushed against the seam of hers.

Open.

Here was something she had not learned from spying on couples pumping away in the alleys of Southwark or groping one another in the shadows of the pillars of St. Paul’s.

His tongue came into her, and she made a squeak of surprise and delight. Her hands drifted upward, over his chest and around behind his neck. She wanted this closeness with a staggering, overwhelming need. His mouth and tongue went deeper, and his hands smoothed down her back, fingers splaying as he pressed her closer, closer.

The quickness of his breath startled her into the realization that he, too, was moved by the intimacy. He, too, had chosen the kiss.

All her life, Pippa had been curious about every bright, shiny thing she saw, and loveplay was no different, yet wholly different. It was not a case of simple wanting, but the experience of a sudden, devastating need she did not know she had.

Tightening her arms around his neck, she thrust against him, wanting the closeness to last forever. She could feel his heartbeat against her chest, feel the life force of another person beating against her and, in an odd, spiritual way, joining with her.

He lifted his mouth from hers. A stunned expression bloomed on his face. “Ah, colleen,” he whispered urgently, “we must stop before I—”

“Before what?” She reveled in the feel of his wine-sweet breath next to her face.

“Before I want more than just a kiss.”

“Then it’s too late for me,” she admitted, “for I already want more.”

He chuckled, very low and very softly, and there was a subtle edge of anguish in his voice. “When you decide to be honest, you don’t stint, do you?”

“I suppose not. Ah, I do want you, Aidan.”

A sad-sweet smile curved his beautiful mouth. “And I want you, lass. But we must not let this go any further.”

“Why not?”

He lifted her hands away from him and rose from the bed, moving slowly as if he were in pain. “Because it’s not proper.”

Stung, she scowled. “I have never been preoccupied with what is proper.”

“I have,” he muttered, and turned away. From the cauldron, he ladled himself a cup of wine and drank it in one gulp. “I’m sorry, Pippa.”

Already he had withdrawn from her, and she shivered with the chill of rejection. “Can’t you look at me and say that?”

He turned, and still his movements seemed labored. “I said I was sorry. I took advantage of your innocence, and I should never have done that.”

“I chose the kiss.”

“So did I.”

“Then why did you stop?”

“I want you to tell me about yourself. Kissing gets in the way of clearheaded thinking.”

“So if I tell you about myself, we can go back to the kissing?”

An annoyed tic started in his jaw. “I never said that.”

“Well, can we?”

With exaggerated care, he set down his cup and walked over to the bed. Cradling her face between his hands, he gazed at her with heartbreaking regret. “No, colleen.”

“But—”

“Consider the consequences. Some of them are quite lasting.”

She swallowed. “You mean a baby.” A wistful longing rose in her. Would it be such a catastrophe, she wondered, if the O Donoghue Mór were to give her a child? A small, helpless being that belonged solely to her?

She felt his hands, so gentle upon her face, yet his expression was one of painful denial. “Why should I do as you say?” she asked, resisting the urge to hurl herself at him, to cling to him and not let go.

“Because I’m asking you to, a gradh. Please.”

She blew out a weary sigh, aware without asking that the Irish word was an endearment. “Do you know how impossible it is to say no to you?”

He smiled a little, bent and kissed the top of her head before letting her go. “Now. We were working backward from your move to London. You met a mysterious hag—”

“Gypsy woman.”

“In Ireland we would call her a woman of the sidhe.”

“She said I’d meet a man who would change my life.” Pippa leaned back against the banked pillows. She wondered if he noticed her blush-stung cheeks. “I always thought it meant I’d find my father. But I’ve changed my mind. She meant you.”

He lowered himself to the foot of the bed and sat very quietly and thoughtfully. How could he be so indifferent upon learning he was the answer to a magical prophecy? What a fool he must think her. Then he asked, “What changed your mind?”

“The kiss.” Jesu, she had not been so truthful in one conversation since she had first come to London. Aidan O Donoghue coaxed honesty from her; it was some power he possessed, one that made it safe to speak her mind and even her heart, if she dared.

He seemed to go rigid, though he did not move.

Idiot, Pippa chided herself. By now he probably could not wait to get rid of her. Surely he would drag her to Bedlam, collecting his fee for turning in a madwoman. He would not be the first to rid himself of a smitten girl in such a manner. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she explained, forcing out a laugh. “It was just a kiss, not a blood oath or some such nonsense. Verily, Your Magnitude, we should forget all about this.”

“I’m Irish,” he cut in softly, his musical lilt more pronounced than ever. “An Irishman does not take a kiss lightly.”

“Oh.” She stared at his firelit, mystical face and held her breath. It took all her willpower not to fling herself at him, ask him to toss up her skirts and do whatever it was a man did beneath a woman’s skirts.

“Pippa?”

“Yes?”

“The story. Before you came to London, where did you live? What did you do?”

The simple questions drew vivid images from the well of her memories. She closed her eyes and traced her way back over the long, oft interrupted journey to London. She lost count of the strolling troupes she had belonged to. Always she was greeted first with skepticism; then, after a display of jests and juggling, she was welcomed. She never stayed long. Usually she slipped away in the night, more often than not leaving a half-conscious man on the ground, clutching a shattered jaw or broken nose, cursing her to high heaven or the belly of hell.

“Pippa?” Aidan prompted again.

She opened her eyes. Each time she looked at him, he grew more beautiful. Perhaps she was under some enchantment. Simply looking at him increased his appeal and weakened her will to resist him.

Almost wistfully, she touched her bobbed hair. I want to be like you, she thought. Beautiful and beloved, the sort of person others wish to embrace, not put in the pillory. The yearning felt like an aching knot in her chest, stunning in its power. Against her will, Aidan O Donoghue was awakening her to feelings she had spent a lifetime running from.

“I traveled slowly to London,” she said, “jesting and juggling along the way. There were times I went hungry, or slept in the cold, but I didn’t really mind. You see, I had always wanted to go to London.”

“To seek your family.”

How had he guessed? It was part of the magic of him, she decided. “Yes. I knew it was next to impossible, but sometimes—” She broke off and looked away in embarrassment at her own candor.

“Go on,” he whispered. “What were you going to say?”

“Just that, sometimes the heart asks for the impossible.”

He reached across the bed, lifted her chin with a finger and winked at her. “And sometimes the heart gets it.”

She sent him a bashful smile. “Mab would agree with you.”

“Mab?”

“The woman who reared me. She lived in Humberside, along the Hornsy Strand. It was a land that belonged to no one, so she simply settled there. That’s how she told it. Mab was simple, but she was all I had.”

“How did you come to live with her?”

“She found me.” A dull sense of resignation weighted Pippa, for she had always hated the truth about herself. “According to her, I lay upon the strand, clinging to a herring keg. A large lurcher or hound was with me. I was tiny, Mab said, two or three, no more.” Like a lightning bolt, memory pierced her, and she winced with the force of it. Remember. The command shimmered through her mind.

“Colleen?” Aidan asked. “Are you all right?”

She clasped her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the insistent swish of panic.

“No!” she shouted. “Please! I don’t remember anymore!”

With a furious Irish exclamation, Aidan O Donoghue, Lord of Castleross, took her in his arms and let her bathe his shoulder in bitter tears.

“Act as if nothing’s amiss,” Donal Og hissed. He, Iago and Aidan were in the stableyard of Crutched Friars the next day. Aidan had grooms to look after his horse, but currying the huge mare was a task he enjoyed, particularly in the early morning when no one was about.

Iago looked miserable in the bright chill of early morn. He detested cold weather. He made impossible claims about the climate of his homeland, insisting that it never snowed in the Caribbean, never froze, and that the sea was warm enough to swim in.

Absently patting Grania’s strong neck, Aidan studied his cousin and Iago. What a formidable pair they made, one dark, one fair, both as large and imposing as cliff rocks.

“Nothing is amiss,” Aidan said, leaning down to pick up a currying brush. Then he saw what Donal Og had clutched in his hand. “Is it?”

Donal Og glanced to and fro. The stableyard was empty. A brake of rangy bushes separated the area from the kitchen garden of the main house and the glassworks of Crutched Friars. Through gaps in the bushes, Lumley House and its gardens appeared serene, the well-sweep and stalks of herbs adorned with drops of last night’s rain that sparkled in the rising sun.

“Read for yourself.” Donal Og shoved a paper at Aidan. “But for God’s sake, don’t react too strongly. Walsingham’s spies are everywhere.”

Aidan glanced back over his shoulder at the house. “Faith, I hope not.”

Donal Og and Iago exchanged a glance. Their faces split into huge grins. “It is about time, amigo,” Iago said.

Aidan’s ears felt hot with foolish defensiveness. “It’s not what you think. Sure and I’d hoped for better understanding from the two of you.”

The manly grins subsided. “As you wish, coz,” Donal Og said. “Far be it from such as us to suspect yourself of swiving your wee guest.”

“Ahhh.” A sweet female voice trilled in the distance. All three of them peered through the tall hedge at the house. Slamming open the double doors to the upper hall, Pippa emerged into the sunlight.

The parchment crinkled in Aidan’s clenched hand. Aside from that, no one made a sound. They stood still, as if a sudden frost had frozen them. She stood on the top step, clad only in her shift. Clearly she thought she’d find no one in the private garden so early. She inhaled deeply, as if tasting the crisp morning air, cleansed by the rain.

Her hair was sleep tousled, soft and golden in the early light. Although Aidan had kissed her only once, he remembered vividly the rose-petal softness of her lips. Her eyes were faintly bruised by shadows from last night’s tears.

As spellbinding as her remarkable face was her body. The thin shift, with the sun shimmering through, revealed high, upturned breasts, womanly hips, a tiny waist and long legs, shaded at the top by dark mystery.

She held a basin in her arms and shifted the vessel to perch on her hip. She descended the steps while three pairs of awestruck eyes, peering avidly through the stableyard hedge, watched her.

At the bottom of the steps, she stopped to shake back a tumble of golden curls. Then she bent forward over the well to draw the water. The thin fabric of the shift whispered over a backside so lush and shapely that Aidan’s mouth went dry.

“Ay, mujer,” whispered Iago. “Would that I had such a bedmate.”

“It’s not what you think,” Aidan managed to repeat in a low, strained voice.

“No,” said Donal Og with rueful envy, his jaw unhinging as Pippa straightened. Some of the water dampened the front of her shift, so that her flesh shone pearly pink through the white lawn fabric. She paused to pluck the top of a daffodil and tuck it behind her ear. “No doubt,” Donal Og continued, “it is a hundred times better than we think.”

Aidan grabbed him by the front of his tunic. “I’ll see you do penance for six weeks if you don’t quit staring.”

Oblivious, Pippa slipped back into the house. Iago made a great show of wiping his brow while Donal Og paced the yard, limping as if in discomfort. The horse made a loud, rude sound.

“The urchin turned out to be a beauty, Aidan,” he said. “I would never have looked twice at her, but you looked once and found a true jewel.”

“I wasn’t looking for treasure, cousin,” Aidan said. “The lass was caught up in a riot and in danger of being thrown into prison. I merely—”

“Hush.” Donal Og held up a hand. “You needn’t explain, coz. We’re happy for you. Sure it wasn’t healthy for you to be living like a monk, pretending you were not troubled by a man’s needs. It is not as if you and Felicity ever—”

“Cease your infernal blather,” Aidan snapped, pierced to the core by the merest thought of Felicity. His grip on the parchment tightened. Perhaps the letter from Revelin of Innisfallen contained good news. Perhaps the bishop had granted the annulment. Oh, please God, yes.

“Don’t speak of Felicity again. And by God, if you so much as insinuate that Pippa and I are lovers, I’ll turn blood ties into a blood bath.”

“You didn’t bed her?” Iago demanded, horrified.

“No. She ran off at the height of the storm and I brought her back here. She seems to have a particular fear of storms.”

“You,” said Iago, aiming a finger at Aidan’s chest, “are either a sick man or a saint. She has the body of a goddess. She adores you. Take her, Aidan. I am certain she’s had offers from lesser men than an Irish chieftain. She will thank you for it.”

Aidan swore and stalked over to a stone hitch post. Propping his hip on it, he unfurled the parchment and began to read.

The letter from Revelin of Innisfallen was in Irish. Aye, there it was, news regarding the marriage Aidan had made in hell and desperation. But that hardly mattered, considering the rest. Each word stabbed into him like a shard of ice. When he finished reading, he looked up at Donal Og and Iago.

“Who brought this?”

“A sailor on a flax boat from Cork. He can’t read.”

“You’re certain?”

“Aye.”

Aidan tore the parchment into three equal portions. “Good appetite, my friends,” he said wryly. “I pray the words do not poison you.”

“Tell me what I am eating,” said Iago, chewing on the paper with a pained expression.

Aidan grimaced as he swallowed his portion. “An insurrection,” he said.

By the time Aidan went back to Pippa’s chamber, she had dressed herself. Her skirt and bodice had been laced correctly this time.

She sat at the thick-legged oaken table in the center of the room, and she did not look up when he entered. Several objects lay before her on the table. The morning sun streamed over her in great, slanting bars. The light glinted in her hair and gilded her smooth, pearly skin. The daffodil she had picked adorned her curls more perfectly than a comb of solid gold.

Aidan felt a twist of sentiment deep in his gut. Just when he had thought he’d conquered and killed all tenderness within himself, he found a girl who reawakened his heart.

Devil take her. She looked like the soul of virtue and innocence, an angel in an idealized portrait with her sun-drenched face and halo of hair, the lean purity of her profile, the fullness of her lips as she pursed them in concentration.

“Sit down, Your Serenity,” she said softly, still not looking up. “I’ve decided to tell you more because…”

“Because why?” Willingly shoving aside the news from Ireland, he approached the table and lowered himself to the bench beside her.

“Because you care.”

“I shouldn’t—”

“Yet you do,” she insisted. “You do in spite of yourself.”

He did not deny it, but crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. “What is all this?”

“My things.” She patted the limp, dusty bag she had worn tied to her waist the first day they had met. “It is uncanny how little one actually needs in order to survive. All I ever had fits in this bag. Each object has a special meaning to me, a special significance. If it does not, I get rid of it.”

She rummaged with her hand in the bag and drew out a seashell, placing it on the table between them. It was shiny from much handling, bleached white on the outside while the inner curve was tinted with pearly shades of pink in graduated intensity.

“I don’t remember ever actually finding this. Mab always said I was a great one for discovering things washed up on shore, and from the time I was very small, I would bring her the most marvelous objects. Apples to juggle, a pessary of wild herbs. One time I found the skull of a deer.”

She took out a twist of hair, sharply contrasting black and white secured with a bit of string.

“I hope that’s not poor Mab,” Aidan commented.

She laughed. “Ah, please, Your Magnificence. I am not so bloodthirsty as that.” She stroked the lock. “This is from the dog I was with when Mab found me. Mab swore the beast saved me from drowning. He was half drowned himself, but he revived and lived with us. She said I told her his name was Paul.”

She propped her chin in her cupped hand and gazed at the whitewashed wall by the window, where the morning sun created colored ribbons of light on the plastered surface. “The dog died four years after Mab found us. I barely remember him, except—” She stopped and frowned.

“Except what?” asked Aidan.

“During storms at night, I would creep over to his pallet and sleep.” She showed him a few more of her treasures—a page from a book she could not read. He saw that it was from an illegal pamphlet criticizing the queen’s plans to marry the Duke of Alençon. “I like the picture,” Pippa said simply, and showed him a few other objects: a ball of sealing wax and a tiny brass bell—“I nicked it from the Gypsy wagon”—flint and steel, a spoon.

It was, Aidan realized with a twinge of pity, the flotsam and jetsam of a hard life lived on the run.

And then, almost timidly, she displayed things recently collected: his horn-handled knife, which he hadn’t the heart to reclaim; an ale weight from Nag’s Head Tavern.

She looked him straight in the eye with a devotion that bordered discomfitingly on worship. “I have saved a memento of each day with you,” she told him.

A tightness banded across his chest. He cleared his throat. “Indeed. Have you naught else to show me?”

She took her time putting all her treasures back in the bag. She worked so slowly and so deliberately that he felt an urge to help her, to speed her up.

The message he had received still burned in his mind. He had a potential disaster awaiting him in Ireland, and here he sat, reminiscing with a confused, possibly deluded girl.

The letter had come all the way from Kerry, first by horseman to Cork and then by ship. Revelin, the gentle scholar of Innisfallen, had sounded the alarm about a band of outlaws roving across Kerry, pillaging at will, robbing even fellow Irish, inciting idle men to rise against their oppressors. Revelin reported that the band had reached Killarney town and gathered around the residence of Fortitude Browne, recently appointed constable of the district. And a hated Englishman.

Revelin was not certain, but he suggested the outlaws would try to take hostages, perhaps Fortitude’s fat, sniveling nephew, Valentine.

Aidan crushed his hands together as a feeling of powerlessness swept over him. He could do nothing from here in London. Queen Elizabeth had summoned him to force him to submit to her and then to regrant his lands to him. Just to show her might, she had kept him waiting. He battled the urge to storm out of London without even a by-your-leave. But that would be suicide—both for him and for his people. Elizabeth’s armies in Ireland were the instruments of her wrath.

Just as Felicity had been.

He would write back to Revelin, of course, but beyond that, he could only pray that cooler heads prevailed and the reckless brigands dispersed.

“I must show you one more thing,” Pippa said, snapping him out of his reverie.

He looked into her soft eyes and for no particular reason felt a lifting sensation inside him.

Something about her touched him. She reminded him of the hardscrabbling people of his district and their stubborn struggle against English rule. Her determination was as stout as that of his father, who had died rather than submit to the English. And yes—Pippa reminded him of Felicity Browne—before the cold English beauty had shown her true colors.

“Very well,” he said, trying to clear his mind of the potential disaster seething back in Ireland. “Show me one more thing.”

She took a deep breath, then released it slowly as she placed her fisted hand on the table. With a deliberate movement she turned her hand over to reveal a sizable yet rather ugly object of gold.

“It’s mine,” she declared.

“I never said it wasn’t.”

“I was worried you might. See?” She set it down. “It looks odd now, but it wasn’t always. It was pinned to my frock when Mab found me.” She angled it toward him. “It’s got a hollow interior, as if something once fit inside. The outside used to have twelve matched pearls around a huge ruby in the middle. Mab said this pin, and the finely made frock I wore, are proof that I came from the nobility. What think you, my lord? Am I of noble stock?”

He studied her, the elfin features, the wide, fragile eyes, the expressive mouth. “I think you were made by fairies.”

She laughed and continued her tale. “Each year, Mab sold one of the pearls. After she died, I tried to sell the ruby, but I was accused of stealing it and I had to run for my life.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, even with an edge of wry humor, but that did not banish the image in his mind of a hungry, frightened young girl escaping the law.

“So now all I have left is this.” She turned it over and pointed to some etchings on the back beneath the pin. “I’m quite certain I know what these symbols mean.”

“Oh?” He grinned at her earnest expression.

“They are Celtic runes proclaiming the wearer of this brooch to be the incarnation of Queen Maeve.”

“Indeed.”

She shrugged. “Have you a better idea?”

He angled the brooch so that the sunlight picked out every detail of the etching. He started to nod his head and gamely declare that Pippa was absolutely right, when a memory teased him.

These were no random designs, but writings in a different alphabet. Not Hebrew or Greek; he had studied those. Then why did it look so familiar?

Frowning, Aidan found parchment and stylus. While Pippa watched in fascination, he carefully copied down the symbols, then turned the page this way and that, frowning in concentration.

“Aidan?” Pippa spoke loudly. “You’re staring as if it’s the flaming bush of Moses.”

He handed back the pin. “It’s very nice, and I have no doubt you are Queen Maeve’s descendant.” Absently, he tucked away the copy he had made. “Tell me. You faced starvation many times rather than selling that piece of gold. Why did you never try to pawn or trade it?”

She clutched the pin to her chest. “I will never give this up. It is the only thing I belong to. The only thing that belongs to me. When I hold it in my hand, sometimes I can—” She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Can what?”

“Can see them.” She whispered the words.

“See them?”

“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “Aidan, I have never told this to another living soul.”

Then don’t tell me, he wanted to caution her. Don’t make me privy to your dreams, for I cannot make any of them come true.

Instead he waited, and in a moment she spoke again. “This idea has consumed me ever since Mab died. I must find them, Aidan. I want to find my family. I want to know where I came from.”

“That is only natural. But you have so few clues.”

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