Maid of Deception (26 page)

“Well, I’m not sure if she was fully aware of exactly what rights she was giving away,” grumbled Meg. “It seems to me that she—”

A clatter of feet sounded down the corridor then, the flapping stride lengthening in a haphazard style that proclaimed the runner barely more than a child. I looked up as a wild-eyed boy burst into the room without even knocking at the door. “Lady Beatrice!” he wheezed, and I was on my feet at once.

“What is it, William?” My urgent tone brought the boy’s color back into his cheeks. Even Sophia finally stirred, lifting her head from her pallet. “Is it my mother? Is she all right?”

“Oh, yes—oh, yes!” William said hurriedly. “Your father sent me to give you word that the Queen is—is on a tear. ’E said the words like that.
‘On a tear.’
”

I raised my eyes heavenward. We had barely escaped a full twenty-four hours without having to entertain the woman. Did she never cease with her needs and expectations? “She’s on a tear,” I repeated, allowing William a few more seconds to compose himself. “And—what? She wants another banquet? She wants a dance this coming night?” I glanced at the window, to see the thin thread of dawn breaking over the horizon. At this point, we had all gotten but a few hours’ sleep between us in the past few days, and I was losing my patience. “She wants me to conjure up a medieval joust out of thin air?”

“No, Lady Beatrice!” William protested, his eyes going saucer wide. “She wants to leave!”

That stopped us, I’ll give him that.

“To leave!” exclaimed Anna, jumping up with a whoosh of skirts. “Leave as in now? As in going back to Windsor?”

“Yes!” William nodded fiercely. “She wishes to be packed and on her way by noon!”

“She’s mad!” I protested, and then a dark thought streaked across my mind, as pervasive as the plague. “She’s doing it on purpose. She is trying to ruin my family with the disgrace of a hasty departure on top of eating us out of house and home.”

“That cannot be right,” Meg put in, even as Sophia nodded, her eyes eerily bright. “We have been well entertained by your father and all of your staff, Beatrice. She has had no reason to complain.”

I shook my head, trying to imagine what had set the Queen off, and coming up with nothing. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, disgusted. “She’s Elizabeth. She sets her own rules.”

From the corner of the room, Sophia sighed and folded her hands over her skirts. “And she will forever anon,” she said, her voice sounding oddly changed.

Jane looked at Sophia from her perch at the window. “Feeling better, are we?”

Sophia swiveled her head to look at Jane. Then her face lost a bit of color. She tried to smile, but all of us noticed her sudden return to fragility. Anna was the first to recover. “Sophia, perhaps you should—”

“Oh, leave off.” It was Jane who spoke again, and she
moved off the sill and stalked over to Sophia, then dropped down into a crouch so she could look her in the eye. “Sophia,” Jane said. She reached for the girl’s hands and caught them up before Sophia could pull them away. “I know what you see when you look at me. You see death. A great deal of death. Perhaps even my own.”

“No!” Sophia said, but her voice had lost its fear at least, and her eyes were less haunted. “I do not see your death, Jane. I pray I never will.”

This was progress, but Jane wasn’t about to let it go. “Then what can you see, girl? You do not need to mince words anymore. If your gift has manifested, there is no going back.”

“I know,” Sophia said, her words quiet but resolute. “But it is all still so confusing to me. The voices have always been there, but now—now they refuse to leave me alone.” She glanced away for just a moment, then looked back to Jane. “I do see death around you, Jane, but I see loneliness, too. A loneliness of your own making perhaps, but one you’re not willing to let go.” She turned to me, and I steeled myself to not step back, suddenly uneasy in my own home. “I see things about all of you, but they are mere impressions, nothing certain, nothing solid. I cannot see so clearly as that. And in truth I would not want to—not about you. Not about my friends.”

I thought about Lord Cavanaugh, and Sophia’s prediction that we would have no babies. Well, that certainly had been proven out, given the cancellation of our betrothal. What else could she see about me?

But as Sophia pressed her fingers together, another
thought suddenly sprang to life. “Your gift!” I said, remembering the cackling woman in the forest. “That old . . . woman, she gave me a gift for you!”

Sophia looked up, but I was already across the room, shifting aside gloves and ruffs where I’d stowed the small wrapped package.

“Here,” I said, turning around. I walked over and pressed the package into Sophia’s hands. “She said to give it to you when you woke up.”

“Oh. Thank you,” she said softly.

“Well, open it!” Anna said, her hands clasped together and her eyes bright. Anna was never one who wished to leave a package unopened or a mystery unsolved. “Do you think it is jewelry?”

“Possibly,” I said, and shrugged as Sophia turned the package over in her hands. “It’s heavy and round—perhaps a ring, or some bauble, surely?”

Sophia untied the string and gave a soft exclamation of surprise. She showed us the black ball of obsidian. “It’s a crystal!” she exclaimed.

“It’s a rock.” Jane quirked a brow, clearly unimpressed. “That’s useful.”

“A crystal! How curious,” breathed Anna, and Meg leaned forward too. “What is its significance?”

I tightened my lips, my conclusions already made. No one, perhaps, knew Travelers better than I did. I was familiar with their arcane ways.

The old woman had given our resident seer a scrying stone—the kind of crystal meant for gazing into, the better to
see the future or the past. And Sophia may not have had any idea how to use the thing, but she still knew its importance.

Sophia lifted her head then, sharply, and her gaze met mine. In that glance we understood each other. I with my Scotsman and her with her stone, we had secrets we dared not share with anyone else, secrets that we alone must keep for the moment. And for the first time I felt Sophia hand her trust to me, like a quivering bird only just out of its nest.

“Well, it’s a beautiful stone anyway,” I said. “You can set it into a necklace perhaps, to remind you of your adventure at Marion Hall.”

“A necklace.” Sophia nodded slowly and looked down at the stone again. “That must be why she gave it to me.”

“I cannot think of a smarter use for it,” I said emphatically. Not quite the truth—but something less than a lie, at that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

We talked on, making plans. The maids had agreed by common consent that I would be the one to bring to Elizabeth the tale of Cecil’s and Walsingham’s potential duplicity. First, I was the one who’d overheard the discussion of the Lords of the Congregation—and reasonably enough, since it was my house that had been used for the meeting. Second, I’d been charged to follow around the Scots like a simpering milkmaid, so it was most appropriate for me to have been the one to have “stumbled” across the secret consultation.

Never mind that Alasdair was now in the thick of things, and I’d breathed not a word of his involvement with the Lords of the Congregation to the other maids. I still wasn’t quite sure how to broach that topic with the Queen—or even if I should.

For one, I didn’t know what role Alasdair really played with the Lords, if any.

For the second, well . . . I no longer knew what role he played with
me
. If any.

Still, I had to present my information in such a way as to
not goad the Queen to anger. Her advisors had not been candid with her—or I suspected they had not been. If I were to put this fact to her too baldly, she would fly into a rage. If I were to put it too subtly, she would not see the importance of acting prudently to regain her power with Cecil and Walsingham. There was a game in this, and it was a game Elizabeth had to win, which meant I had to act with particular grace.

I tried to meet with the Queen that morning while we were still confined to Marion Hall. I wanted to tell her everything (or nearly everything) we had seen and heard of the Lords of the Congregation. I tried at full daybreak, and then again at noon. And then again at nightfall, as dinner was drawing to a close.

She denied me at every turn.

The Queen, it appeared, did not want to hear about
anything
except how quickly we could get her back to Windsor. It was maddening, and yet quintessentially Elizabeth. She knew I had information for her, and she had decided it would keep. She would govern in her own way, on her schedule. And the world could very well wait for her pleasure.

True to the Queen’s command, we’d packed her up as quickly as possible, but it had still required another night at Marion Hall before we’d been able to get Her Obnoxiousness safely on her way. We’d served a light repast, claiming that it would help her travel, and plied the woman with the heady ale that had so pleased her court at the Grand Revel. That was what the servants were calling it now, the party that had completely emptied the larders of Marion Hall and drained its casks: the Grand Revel.

I had a few other words for it, but at least it was behind us.

And the Queen still refused to speak with me.

The Lords of the Congregation, for their part, did not travel with the Queen’s retinue back to Windsor. After some additional spying of our own, with Jane following around the guards of the Lords until they’d let slip their discussion as to what to buy with some newly received gold, I decided that Alasdair had
not
originally been invited to join that midnight meeting of the Lords. Instead he had paid the guards to let him pose as one of them. That they’d done so readily was interesting enough—clearly the young MacLeod had posed no concern to them.

But why had Alasdair cared enough to join the conversation in the first place? What had he hoped to gain?

In any event, Alasdair did not join the rest of the Lords and their guards as they left under cover of darkness the night before the Queen’s departure. From our outlook in the western drawing room, we five maids watched that worthy company depart. They moved without torchlight under the midnight sky, but we were gratified to see that they chose to take the main road after a bare quarter mile through the trees. They would not run afoul of the Travelers on the main road. And if they did, there would be precious little incentive for them to turn back to serve notice about it, particularly since they were Scotsmen, not Englishers. They had no concern for our laws.

Father had saddled his horse almost immediately after hearing of the Queen’s intention to leave, and had returned to Windsor like a shot. We’d not seen him since, but it was
all the same to me. As long as Father kept his mouth shut about what we’d seen at Marion Hall, I didn’t care where he spent his days.

Now, however, as we neared the enormous ramparts of Windsor Castle after a day and night of travel, I watched the approaching fortress with equal parts relief and trepidation. Our time at Marion Hall had been no respite from the politics of court—far from it. Yet I knew there had been during that fortnight an endless round of gossip circulating among the courtiers and ladies who’d been left behind. I’d need to get caught up as quickly as possible, and reestablish my primacy of place. Unfortunately, in the world of information you were only as good as your latest revelation. And there simply was not a great deal that had happened at Marion Hall that I could actually discuss.

Worse, there was far too much that I
still
had to tell the Queen.

Our return to Windsor had been an easy trip, with the court spending the night at a noble house south of Chepping Wycombe. We arrived at the castle midmorning, and I spent the better part of the day cozening information out of my informants—primarily about the good Lady Ariane and Lord Brighton, reaping the bounty of the questions I’d seeded about the couple prior to our departure for the north. Everything I learned made me glad of heart.

Unlike Lord Cavanaugh’s mistress, Lady Ariane was a beloved member of the court, widowed most properly and with a huge estate to run. It had been rumored she’d be on the marriage block as soon as her mourning ended, and I had
no doubt that she’d originally found Lord Brighton a worthy enough escort. He was betrothed, after all. He was safe.

But according to my watchers, Lady Ariane now gazed upon Lord Brighton with far more interest than was considered seemly for a woman in mourning . . . particularly if the object of her attention was all but wed. The two were in each other’s company quite often—not enough for impropriety, but enough to raise a discerning brow once attention was brought to the matter. Excellent.

The news I learned about my lord Cavanaugh was less pleasant.

He’d been sullen and furious by turns, when he’d been at Windsor at all. His maid merry had not been seen within the castle, and speculation was rampant that he’d either disposed of the poor woman or was continuing his affair with her away from prying eyes.

This information struck me with naught but a hollow blow, and I realized I did not care as much as I should about Lord Cavanaugh’s philandering. In fact, I found it very difficult to think on the good lord at all without his visage being replaced by the laughing, swarthy countenance of one Alasdair MacLeod. I told myself that of course I could not stop thinking of Alasdair—he was my quarry.