Fire Raven (22 page)

“’Tisn’t half so grand or fun as being at Court,” Merry confided, with visible relief. Kat’s gesture of understanding prompted her to confide her true feelings.

“Marry, ’tis quite boring in Ireland, Kat. For one thing, there are no suitable men, and I’d remain a virgin maid forever before I’d wed an ugly old farmer or fisherman.”

Kat released a peal of laughter at Merry’s remark, then sobered when she realized a deeper truth hidden beneath her sister’s declaration; Merry was ashamed of the O’Neills, ashamed of the fact she herself was part Irish, and ashamed most of all that her twin apparently acted more like a Celtic warrior-queen than a proper Tudor maiden.

“Here are your gowns.” Merry turned to address a brown-haired servant who entered the apartment with a mound of glistening material in her arms. “Be careful with those, Jane. They are too costly to replace.”

“Aye, mistress,” Jane panted, as she carried the voluminous pile to the bed. There she laid out two outfits reverently, smoothing the shining folds back with great care, as Merry looked to Kat.

“Which d’you fancy wearing for your debut? I shall have Jane set aside the other for now.”

Both gowns were beautiful, displaying huge paned sleeves and elegantly embroidered skirts. One was a shimmering blue-green silk with watchet satin sleeves and cloth-of-silver insets; the other, a rich velvet in a shade of blue bordering on purple, with cloth-of-gold petticoats trimmed with sarcenet.

Kat sensed the servant girl surreptitiously studying her as she said, “I know nothing of courtly fashion, I fear. You choose for me, Merry.”

Pursing her lips, as if such a decision was of monumental importance, Merry said thoughtfully, “Methinks the violet for your presentation. We’ll save the other for the midsummer masque. You can borrow my pearls on both occasions. I’m sorry I haven’t any finer jewels to lend, but y’know a Maid of Honor is forbidden to wear anything of greater worth until she’s wed.”

Kat didn’t know, but she nodded anyway and allowed Jane to help her disrobe. Feeling self-conscious, she quickly slipped into a silk chamber robe Jane held for her, then tied the sash herself.

“I’ll have a bath sent up for you,” Merry said. By the tone of her sister’s voice, Kat could tell she was expected to act awed and grateful. Merry continued:

“’Tis rather difficult to procure such niceties, but Uncle Kit taught me that a few well-placed coins can work miracles at Court.”

“Thank you, Merry.”

Merry smiled in return, though Kat sensed she was disappointed by the lack of ebullience in her thanks.

“’Twill not be so difficult once you get used to it, dear Kat. I will teach you all the rules of Court and you and I shall get along splendidly. What fun we two shall have till Mother and Father return. What a tale we shall have to tell them, too.”

While Jane departed again to see about Kat’s bath, Merry set out the various cosmetics and perfumes she intended to experiment with today. Watching for a moment, Kat remembered with aching clarity the scent of wild lavender Winnie had used to wash her hair at Falcon’s Lair.

A sense of loss gripped her like a dark hand — would she ever see Morgan again? Surely by now, he should have sent word, an inquiry, something. He had seemed so determined to help her find her family; why would he care so little for her fate now? Or had it never occurred to him to wonder what had happened to her?

Such agonizing questions plagued Kat day and night, but she found no answers. Day by day, Morgan came ever closer to becoming a part of her past. She was in a different world now. Kat knew she should direct her attention to surviving at Court, but her memories were relentless. So, too, was the realization that she would love Morgan Trelane until her dying day.

L
ESS THAN A FORTNIGHT
later, Kat received a partial answer to her questions about Morgan. A missive from Falcon’s Lair reached the queen. It was delayed by the Court’s move to Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, where Elizabeth Tudor retired for a summer hunt. Morgan confirmed Kat’s story of the shipwreck with a single terse passage. The curt paragraph revealed nothing of his true thoughts or what had happened between them.

Merry cheerfully relayed the contents of the letter, never suspecting how Lord Trelane’s words might wound Kat. For weeks, Merry had planned for the day when Kat could be properly presented at Court, and now that her sister’s identity was established, she was delighted at the assurance of success.

“At last we are able to formally introduce you at Court, dear. So you needn’t mope about these rooms any longer.”

“’Tis some relief, I grant,” Kat said with a touch of asperity. “I was beginning to think I was your best-kept secret, sister, short of being stowed beneath the bed.”

Merry shook her head. “Please try to understand the queen’s caution, Kat. Till the truth of your tale was proven, ’twas wisest to placate critics like Lawrence. He did seem to have a fearful grudge against you. Now all appears resolved, and we can finish planning your debut.”

Kat had already decided she would leave such details to Merry, a master intriguer. Her thoughts were of Morgan and the letter. She was devastated far more by his cutting reply than she cared to admit. Yet she found it impossible to despise him. Instead, more questions came to mind. Why had Morgan not inquired as to her fate, her health? Why had he chosen those impersonal phrases, so clipped and cold? They conveyed a notion of complete and utter contempt for Kat, and disregard for her plight.

She realized she would never know what prompted his scorn. She dared not write Morgan and ask such questions herself; there was too much risk that a message would be intercepted by the queen’s spies or betrayed by a messenger and summarily misinterpreted.

Far more likely, though, she feared Morgan would never reply. Did he think so little of her, then? Had his declaration of love been a fleeting lark, a means by which he might amuse himself with a blind woman too foolish to see past her own heart?

Such dark musings occupied Kat’s mind one evening, as she watched Merry excitedly preparing for her Court presentation. Days of exhausting etiquette lessons and nights of rigorous coaching in courtly manners had apparently rendered Kat acceptable, at last. She wondered why she felt inclined to rebel. She would not hurt Merry for all the world, but she was weary of the superficial and oft foolish conduct required of those who would grace the Tudor Court.

Before Kat had dressed in her formal attire, Merry drew a flat case of Moroccan leather from her bureau. She opened it and revealed a long strand of creamy white pearls and matching earbobs.

“Father gave them to me on our sixteenth birthday,” Merry said to Kat, lifting the necklace out. She ran it lovingly through her fingers, then pressed it into Kat’s palm. “He knew how I longed for my own jewelry. ’Twill be the perfect touch for your gown this evening.”

“What happened to my own pearls?”

Merry laughed. “You never begged for any jewelry, Kat; you wanted your own ship, and nothing else would do. Father and Mother arranged for it somehow, the boys saw ’twas decorated with all manner of finery, and the moment you saw the ship, you christened her the
Fiach Teine
.”

“Fire Raven,” Kat whispered, an ache rising in her breast when a thread of memory teased at her. She closed her eyes and fancied she felt the gentle rise and fall of a deck beneath her feet. She fancied a breeze teased at her hair, filling the sails and her lungs with crisp brine air. She touched her neck, expecting to feel something cool and round — a metal disk. The amulet — ’Twas gone.

Kat’s eyes flew open, and the image shattered into a thousand shards of memory, whisked away by an invisible wind. She almost remembered. Almost … Yet something prevented the full revelation, something she dared not dwell upon. She shivered, though she was covered by her velvet gown and layers of petticoats. Merry did not seem to notice.

“La, I’ll admit to being jealous, Kat. The arrival of your mighty present quite upstaged the play I had planned for everyone the same evening at Raven Hall. Rowan and Devlin were relieved to have any excuse to escape their roles — the naughty villains — and Kerill — well, he was a hopeless Sir Lancelot anyway. Of course, baby Blase and Sebastian were too young to appreciate my efforts at all.”

Kat shook her head, still unable to picture her five younger brothers. She tried to hand back the necklace her sister had given her. “’Tis obvious you love these pearls well, Merry, and I do not wish to usurp them from you.”

Merry smiled conspiratorially. “Keep them, dear. As I said, pearls are the only permissible jewelry for a maid to wear before the queen. However, after your presentation, I shall not be required to attend Her Majesty any longer, as she is having a late meeting with her advisors. With any luck, it should last well into the wee hours of the morn.

“So I intend to wear something else with my gown this night, Kat. Something more elegant, perhaps a trifle daring.”

With a twinkle in her gray-green eyes, Merry withdrew another, slightly smaller, velvet case from the drawer. This one opened to reveal a beautiful necklace of rose-gold, with a single, teardrop-shaped blue gem dangling from its center.

Kat granted it was a pretty bauble but didn’t understand why it was considered daring. Merry glanced at her expectantly, so she merely said, “Interesting.”

“Interesting?” Merry exclaimed, disappointed to have her prize reduced by such a word to paltry insignificance. “Marry, sister, don’t you recognize a priceless sapphire when you see one? With all your grand voyages, I thought you were the expert on precious gems. More importantly, ’tis from a secret admirer who begged me in romantic verse to wear it this night, so he can seek me out amidst the others.”

Kat gazed with amazement at her precocious sister. “D’you mean to encourage a stranger to a tryst?”

Merry colored. “Nay, of course not.” She sounded indignant. She shut the case and slid it back into the drawer, just as a rap came at the chamber door.

“But it cannot hurt to encourage more gifts, can it?” she hissed at Kat beneath her breath. Another rap came at the door.

“Enter!” Merry called, and the door opened to admit Jane and a pair of male servants lugging a heavy oak tub. A maidservant followed, bearing pitchers of steaming water. Jane poured the water into the tub under her mistress’s watchful eye.

After dismissing all save her tiring woman, Merry added the crowning touch: a generous dollop of some sweetly scented oil. The cloying scent caused Kat to wrinkle her nose.

“What is it?” she suspiciously demanded.

“Attar of roses, dear. A lady cannot be properly presented at Court without everything on her person the height of fashion,” Merry explained. She corked the bottle and set it aside. Then she folded her arms and looked at Kat. “Into the water with you now.”

Suppressing a grin at the maternal tone Merry used, Kat obediently shed her robe and sank into the tub. It was nearly too hot at first. As it cooled to a perfect degree, however, Kat sighed with satisfaction and bathed at her leisure.

Jane shortly returned with two more pitchers and helped Kat wash her hair and rinse it out. While Merry supervised Kat’s toilette, she gossiped about the latest courtly affairs and speculated on what she herself would wear this night.

“Sky-blue silk, I think, the better to set off my magnificent new jewel,” Merry mused. “Or, mayhap, dark blue velvet to make me seem more mysterious. What do you think, Kat? Kat?”

Merry leaned forward from the velvet footstool where she perched beside the tub. She peered down at her sister with exasperation.

“By the rood,” she exclaimed. “Kat’s fallen fast asleep.”

“It seems so,” Jane agreed, amused. “If ye don’t mind my saying, mistress, she’s an odd one, this sister of yers. Ye claim yer twins?”

Merry nodded absently. “Nineteen this spring past.”

Jane crossed herself while Mistress Merry wasn’t looking. Her mum always said twins were unlucky, and Jane vowed this dark-haired wench was a stark contrast to her sunny-natured mistress.

Indeed, it seemed too strange that she had appeared just when Mistress Merry reached the height of her popularity at Court. Why, what if the green-eyed jade tried to steal Mistress Merry’s admirers from her? Granted, Kat was beauty enough to do it. Jane frowned at the unsuspecting woman in the tub.

Mistress Merry was no beauty, to be sure, Jane admitted. It was whispered at Court that her hair color was too vivid to be fashionable, her mouth a trifle too generous for perfection. Mistress Merry’s sweet laughter, however, was a pure delight, her sense of humor well known and appreciated by courtiers. Her gray-green eyes always sparkled with mirth, and her personality alone drew men to her side, as bees to honey.

Yet what a mouse Mistress Merry is beside this sister of hers, Jane thought. All the sweetness in the world couldn’t counter a pair of sultry, emerald-green eyes, nor a waterfall of hair like black silk. Jane shivered, looking for any excuse to leave the apartment. There was some odd sort of shadow hovering about Mistress Kat which she didn’t trust. Jane’s mum had told her daughter she possessed the Sight. If it was true, Jane feared Mistress Merry had a date with disaster, just as surely as her twin sister did.