The Emerald Swan

Chapter six

"My God, if it isn't Harcourt. Gareth, where have you been, man? It's been this age since we laid eyes on you."

The cheerful hail brought Gareth swinging round on the balls of his feet, an oath forming unspoken on his lips. Two men crossed the yard of the livery stable attached to the inn in Rochester.

"God, man, you look as if you've seen a ghost." The taller of the two, a stout, merry-eyed man in a doublet of scarlet damask embroidered with jet, laughingly slapped Gareth's shoulder with a jeweled gauntlet. "As whey-faced as a girl with her terms, eh, Kip?" He gave another booming laugh, turning for corroboration to his companion, a slimmer version of himself.

"Gareth, how goes it with you?" Kip Rossiter greeted the earl of Harcourt with a smile. "Take no notice of Brian, here. You know he can't keep an opinion to himself."

Neither opinions nor secrets. "I landed two days ago from France," Gareth said easily. "I'm trying to exchange a miserable nag, the best Dover could offer, for something that might get me home before the end of the year." He gestured to the horse who, now unsaddled, was cropping peacefully at a bale of hay.

"Lord, what a broken-down beast," Brian said in a tone of disgust. "You actually rode that creature, Gareth? Dear God, I'd rather walk."

"The thought crossed my mind once or twice,"

Gareth agreed with a laugh, his covert gaze darting across the livery yard on the watch for Miranda. "What brings you here?"

"We've been visiting the old man in Maidstone. Duty visit, y'know." Brian stroked his auburn beard, which like the rest of him seemed rather larger than life. Gareth nodded. The Rossiter brothers' cultivation of their ancient, irascible, and extremely wealthy male relative was a standing joke at court.

"Aye," Kip agreed. "Keep 'im sweet. He can't last much longer… Have you dined, Gareth? We're about to order a repast fit for the queen, as recompense for the gruel and stewed dry fowl that passes for victuals at the old man's table. Let's break a bottle together." Kip flung a friendly arm around Gareth's shoulder. "We've ordered a private parlor. No common-room company for us this day."

"Aye, and afterward we're goin' on the town," Brian declared with an expansive gesture. "I've been chaste as a monk for the last week and I've heard tell there's a decent house hard by the cathedral."

Gareth thought rapidly. Miranda had disappeared to the outhouse while he'd been negotiating the horse exchange. If his two old friends came face to face with her it would be useless to hope that they wouldn't immediately notice the startling resemblance to Maude.

"I'll join you shortly. I've yet to complete my business with the livery stable," he demurred.

"Oh, we'll send for the man to wait upon us in the inn. No need for you to hang around at his beck and call." Brian flung an arm around Gareth's other shoulder with an exuberant bellow of good-fellowship. "Come, my throat's as dry as an old maid's tits."

At that moment Miranda appeared from the corner of the inn, Chip, dressed once more in his now-dry jacket and cap, sitting on her shoulder.

She saw him, half lifted a hand in greeting, then abruptly turned on her heel and sauntered back the way she had come, her orange dress fluttering around her calves.

Gareth exhaled in slow relief. His companions had their backs to the corner and wouldn't have spied her. She had swift reactions, this little d'Albard.

"I'll join you in the parlor directly," he said. "I've need of hot water and clean linen after the day's ride."

The Rossiter brothers agreed amiably to meet him in half an hour in the private parlor and he hurried into the inn and upstairs to the large front chamber he had earlier bespoken for himself and Miranda.

Miranda had gone immediately to the chamber, where she hitched herself up on the high bed and sat swinging her legs in the gloom as dusk's shadows lengthened. She had reacted without a moment's thought when she'd seen the earl with the two men and she had no doubt that she had done the right thing. But she was feeling a little forlorn until she heard the earl's footsteps on the landing outside. The door was not fully closed and he stepped into the doorway, peering into the dimness.

"Why are you sitting in the dark, Miranda?"

"I don't know," she said frankly. "I felt as if I ought to stay hidden somehow, and it seemed more appropriate to sit in darkness." She slid off the bed and struck flint on tinder, lighting the branched candlestick on the low table beside the bed. The golden light glowed through the veil of her hair as it fell forward from her bent head, sending dark red flares shooting through the rich brown locks.

So like her mother's, Gareth thought. He could remember watching his cousin Elena brush her hair at her dresser and the candle had set alight exactly the same fires in the thick, dark mane.

"What made you disappear like that?" he inquired curiously, leaning against the dresser, resting his hands on the smooth cherry wood on either side of his hips.

"I didn't stop to think," she said. "It just seemed obvious that if we were to practice a deception in London then I probably shouldn't show myself to people you know before then."

"Not everyone would have thought so shrewdly… or so swiftly," he said, smiling. "I congratulate you."

Miranda flushed with pleasure at the compliment. "Do those men know your cousin?"

"They've seen her several times… more often than most people." He unbuckled his sword belt, laying it over a stool, then threw off his cloak on his way to the washstand where he poured water from the jug into the ewer. "They would certainly notice your resemblance to her."

"Even with my short hair and when I'm dressed like this?"

He looked over at her, saying consideringly, "It requires a leap of faith, I grant you."

Miranda knew that tone by now and she grinned. "I suppose I'd better stay up here for the evening."

"I think it would be best if you dined up here. You won't be too lonely, will you?"

Miranda shook her head, although she knew that she would. She was not accustomed to being alone.

Gareth hesitated, unconvinced by the headshake, but he could see no alternative. As he began to remove his doublet, his fingers slid inside the inner pocket as they did without conscious thought countless times a day. The waxed parchment was there and the little velvet pouch with the bracelet. He glanced at Miranda, who had wandered to the window and was looking out into the gathering dusk.

Her slim, straight back, the long, delicate stem of her swanlike neck, reminded him so much of her mother. Elena had had just such grace of movement, just such naturally erect posture. And the bracelet that had so graced her mother's slender wrist would grace the daughter's. For him it took no leap of faith to imagine the grubby, tattered urchin in courtier's dress. She was Elena's daughter.

He turned back to the washstand, rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt.

Miranda turned away from the window. She watched him as he performed the simple gesture. His fingers were so long and elegant, meticulously folding over the cuffs of the shirt before pushing the sleeves up to his elbows, baring the brown muscular forearms and strong wrists. The candlelight caught the fine dusting of dark hair on his forearms. A pulse in her throat began to beat fast and she felt a strange quickening low in her belly, a strange fullness in her loins. It was not a sensation she had ever before experienced.

"Could you look in my portmanteau for a clean shirt? This one reeks of sweat and horseflesh after that mad ride this morning."

Gareth bent to splash water on his face and Miranda found herself gazing at the curve of his back, the taut swell of his buttocks in the short trunk hose, the long, hard thighs outlined under close-fitting black stockings. She swallowed as the strange sensation in her lower body intensified and she felt her cheeks warm.

Hastily, she turned her attention to the portmanteau, finding a clean shirt of soft cream linen.

Gareth took it from her with a word of thanks, tossed it over the bedrail, and pulled the shirt he was wearing over his head. His chest was broad and smooth, paler than the strong brown column of his neck. The muscles rippled in his upper arms, almost as powerful as Raoul's, the strongman in the troupe.

Miranda's eyes went to the sword and the heavy studded belt. She remembered the strength with which he'd wielded both that morning at the Adam and Eve. Maybe Milord Harcourt was a courtier, but he was also a powerful swordsman, it seemed.

Gareth emerged from the lavender-smelling folds of his clean shirt and tucked it into the waist of his trunk hose. Then he leaned against the bedpost and examined Miranda, suggesting with a quizzically raised eyebrow, "Maybe you'd like to use the water, too."

"I wish I had clean clothes," she said sorrowfully. "Or just a clean chemise. All my possessions are probably back in France by now."

"We'll remedy the situation as soon as we reach London," he promised, lifting her chin on a forefinger. She looked so bereft. "Don't look so mournful, firefly. I'll order you a very special dinner to be sent up." Now where had that oddly affectionate nickname come from? Then he heard Mama Gertrude's robust tones as she'd stormed past him muttering: That girl… like a firefly she is with her darting about.

He continued hastily, "I expect I'll be late returning, but I've ensured that there's a truckle bed for you." He released her chin with a smile, picked up his sleeveless doublet again, and left the chamber, pulling the garment on as he went.

Miranda sat down again on the bed. Chip jumped into her arms and gently touched her face with one hand. She rubbed his neck, wondering why she was feeling so forlorn. She and milord were so easy, so companionable together that it was hard to believe they'd only known each other for two days.

Gareth stretched his long legs beneath the oak refectory table and reached for his tankard of mead. Around him the buzz of voices ebbed and flowed, the light, eager tones of the women interspersed with the rougher, more gravelly tones of men who had drunk deep throughout the evening. Ribald laughter gusted upward to the smoke-blackened rafters.

A thin-faced serving girl appeared at his side with a jug of mead. She refilled his glass, holding herself away from him as if she expected him at any minute to grab, pinch, tickle, or slap. But Gareth to his surprise found that he had no interest in the women on sale in the house hard by the cathedral. All around him, men examined, women displayed, and when negotiations were completed, the pair would disappear into one of the many curtained niches ranging along the sides of the great hall.

The bawd who owned the whorehouse, a sharp-featured woman, richly dressed in orange damask, crossed the thronged hall purposefully toward the earl.

"You find nothing to tempt you, my lord?" She sat on a stool beside him, resting her cheek on her hand, regarding him with narrowed, calculating eyes and a smile that didn't deceive him for a moment. "Your friends seem to be perfectly satisfied."

Gareth nodded and drank from his tankard. "I find I'm not in the mood for play tonight, mistress."

"We can satisfy any tastes, my lord. My girls are always ready to oblige in any way." She winked. "Ellie." The bawd beckoned imperiously to a young woman who had just emerged from behind one of the curtains. "Ellie has some very particular specialities, my lord. Isn't that so, dear?" She smiled at the girl, a smile radiating menace.

Ellie immediately leaned over the earl, encircling his neck with her arms, and whispered into his ear. Her hair brushed his cheek and her skin exuded the scent he always associated with whores-a musky perfume overlaying the dirt and the smell of other men.

Once Charlotte had come to him smelling exactly like this. After one of her wild nights when she'd given herself to anyone who'd wanted her. As usual she'd been drunk, her eyes almost feral in their predatory hunger. She'd rubbed herself against him just as the whore was doing now, whispering lasciviously in his ear, inviting and yet taunting at the same time. Only her husband had ever refused the invitation of her lush body, her sharp little teeth, her ferocious hungers. Hungers that no one man could satisfy.

The whore purred her filth into his ear, moving sinuously around his body, rubbing and pressing herself against him. With a violent oath, Gareth pushed back his stool and stood up. The girl fell back, only just managing to keep her feet. The bawd rose, too, her narrowed eyes filled with anger.

"Stupid girl," she hissed at Ellie, who stood with her hand pressed to her mouth, utterly nonplussed by the client's reaction. "A little finesse, a little delicacy. Isn't that what I'm always tellin' you?"

"It's not the girl's fault." Gareth imposed his large frame between the bawd and her whore. "Here." He handed the bawd a guinea and swung on his heel, making for the door and the freshness of the night air.

"Gareth… eh, Gareth, m'boy. Where're you off to in such haste? The night is young, and there's some choice wares I've yet to sample." Brian barreled across the room, without his doublet, his shirt unbuttoned, his hose unlaced. He flourished a goblet in the air and beamed. "Kip's found himself a nice young thing, just what he likes."

"I'm going back to the inn," Gareth said brusquely. "I find I've no taste for this tonight. Enjoy yourself. I'll see you in London."

"Eh, but you won't journey with us on the morrow?" Brian looked as injured as it was ever possible for such a man to be.

"No, my friend. I'll be on the road at dawn. You'll not have opened your eyes by then."

Brian chuckled. "If I've closed 'em by then."

Gareth merely raised a hand in salute and plunged outside into the quiet street. He strode back to the inn under the bulking shadow of the cathedral. His head cleared in the fresh air and he began to feel clean again as the soiled memories retreated.

Since Charlotte's death he had satisfied his sexual need with simple, clean, unemotional encounters with willing women who wanted nothing more themselves- unsatisfied wives, lonely widows, the occasional whore. He was resigned to a lifetime of such satisfaction. Mary would be dutiful, of course, but there was no passion there. After Charlotte, he needed as wife a woman who would lie still, be glad when it was over, and grateful for each pregnancy that freed her from her marital duty.

The reflection brought a cynical twist to his mouth as he entered the inn beneath the lantern that threw his profile into harsh relief. He was unaware of the figure in the bedchamber above the door, kneeling on the window seat looking down at the street.

Miranda jumped off the window seat and dived under the covers on the truckle bed. She lay looking up into the darkness, listening for his footfall in the corridor outside. How strange he had looked. How cold, his mouth twisted out of shape so that he didn't look like the man she knew.

But then of course she didn't know him. How could she? After a mere two days in his company? He came from a world she knew nothing about, and she had sat up waiting for him because she was not used to sleeping alone and the bedchamber had seemed vast and gloomy and so empty. Even Chip's familiar company had not been quite enough. But now, as she heard the latch lift, her heart lurched as if the man who entered the chamber was a stranger.

She closed her eyes tightly, concentrated on breathing deeply, felt him approach the truckle bed, felt his scrutiny as he looked at her in the starlight from the unshuttered window. Only Chip stared back with his bright eyes as he curled in the crook of Miranda's neck.

Gareth bent and delicately adjusted the cover, drawing it up to her neck so the draught from the open window wouldn't chill her. He scratched the monkey's neck with a fingernail because somehow it seemed impossible to ignore the animal's presence, and then threw off his clothes, aiming for the chest at the foot of his bed.

He climbed into bed. A great wash of weariness swamped him, the melancholy fatigue that had dogged him since the end of his idyll with Charlotte, those few short months of happiness. He knew with familiar dread that in his sleep the dreams would return.

Miranda listened as the earl's breathing dipped into the even rhythms of sleep. Only then did she allow herself to sleep. And she awoke at some point in the darkest hour of the night, her heart thudding. She sat bolt upright, aware that Chip had left her and was on the window seat gibbering anxiously to himself.

The occupant of the big four-poster was thrashing around, the covers had fallen to the floor. His breathing was harsh and ragged, and half-formed words, rushed and nonsensical phrases, escaped from his lips.

Miranda thrust aside the covers and slid off the truckle bed. She approached the big bed tentatively. The earl's large frame was twisted among the sheets. But it was his face in the starlight that brought her heart to her throat. His mouth was hard and cruel, with a white shade about the lips, and deep lines scored his face alongside his nose.

Resolutely, she put her hand on the earl's shoulder, shaking him as she shook Robbie when the nightmares had him in thrall. She spoke softly, steadily, telling him who he was, where he was, that everything was all right, that he should open his eyes.

Gareth's eyes suddenly flew open. He stared unseeing at the small white face above him, dominated by huge blue eyes filled with anxiety. The sweet, melodious voice continued to wash over him and slowly the words penetrated and the horrors of the night receded. Her hand was warm on his shoulder and as the demons left his own eyes she wiped his sweat-soaked brow with a corner of the sheet.

"Are you awake now, milord?"

He sat up, aware that the sheet was tangled around his thighs, leaving the best part of his body exposed. He tugged the covers up to his waist and lay back against the pillows waiting for his heart to slow and his ragged breathing to ease.

"Did I wake you? Forgive me," he said after a minute.

"Robbie had dreadful nightmares, too, so I'm used to it," Miranda said, hovering by the bed. "Is there something I can get you?"

"In my saddlebag… a flagon of brandy…"

Miranda went to the corner to fetch the saddlebag.

"My thanks." He unscrewed the top and put the flagon to his lips. The fiery liquid burned down his gullet and settled warmingly into his cold belly.

"Do they happen often?" Miranda asked softly.

"No," he said curtly. He put the flask to his lips again.

What could this fresh-faced innocent know of a woman's madness, of all-consuming sexual appetites that had to be satisfied just as the body needed food and water to go on living? Miranda could never know what it had been like to watch helplessly as the cruel sickness destroyed the woman he had once loved… what it had been like to know that only Charlotte's death would free him.

What could Miranda know of such things? And what could she know of the dreadful moment when his cold, purposeful hands had felt for and failed to find the pulse of life and he had wanted to shout for joy that this beautiful, vibrant young life had been extinguished? How could she judge a man who had prayed daily for his wife's death to free him from torment; who knew whose violent hands had answered his prayer? How could she judge a man who intended to take that secret knowledge to his grave?

Miranda turned aside to pick up Chip, who was still looking alarmed on the windowsill. If Lord Harcourt didn't wish to talk of his nightmares, so be it. Maybe, like Robbie, he didn't understand them or know what caused them. Robbie could never even describe them afterward. All he could ever say was that he'd fallen into a black hole. She leaned out of the window to breathe the freshness of the night air, observing the very faintest pearly shadow in the east. "It'll soon be dawn."

Gareth set the flagon on the table. "I've a mind to try for an hour's peaceful sleep, then. Do you do the same, Miranda."

Miranda stayed at the window for a minute longer, then she returned to bed. But she was no longer sleepy and lay watching the darkness beyond the window lighten slowly, listening as the dawn chorus heralded the new day with all its jubilant song. Where would she be at the end of this new day? In some palace in London in a world she knew nothing about… a world she had never expected to know anything about. How could she possibly expect to play the part of this London lady, Maude? She was a strolling player, an acrobat. It was ridiculous to think she could pretend to be someone so very different from herself. But the earl seemed to think she could do it.

Chip, with a low chattering, jumped from the bed to the windowsill and vanished into the spreading branches of a magnolia tree.

It was no good, she was not going to be able to sleep again. Miranda flung aside the covers and stood up with a luxurious stretch. She dressed quietly then glanced around the chamber. Milord's clothes lay scattered on the floor, some half on, half off the chest at the foot of the bed where he'd thrown them. She bent to pick them up and her nose wrinkled at the familiar odor clinging to his doublet and shirt. It was one that clung to Raoul after one of his nighttime forays into town. He'd come back bleary-eyed, loose-lipped, disheveled.

"You smell like a whorehouse, Raoul," Gertrude had complained one morning when the strongman in a fit of alcohol-induced benevolence had attempted to lift her in his powerful embrace.

Men and whorehouses were one of life's natural conjunctions, but Miranda was oddly disappointed to think milord had taken comfort there.

She shook out the soiled garments vigorously. Something flew out of the silken folds of the doublet and fell to the floor. She bent to pick up the small velvet pouch. The laces had loosened and she caught the glitter of gold within.

She laid the doublet and shirt neatly on the chest and then shook the contents of the pouch into her hand. A gold pearl-encrusted bracelet most intricately worked into the undulating curves of a serpent lay on her palm. She held the object up to the light. A serpent with a pearl apple in its mouth. From the gold links depended a golden swan inset with perfect emeralds. The jewel was both beautiful and forbidding. There was something sinister about its exquisite sinuous form and yet the swan, glowing an almost liquid green in the rays of the early morning sun, had a curiously innocent quality to its beauty.

An involuntary shudder rippled down Miranda's back. There was something about the bracelet that filled her with a nameless dread. And yet she felt a shadow of familiarity, although she knew she had never laid eyes, let alone hands, upon such a precious object.

She was about to slide it back in the pouch when the earl's voice spoke from the big bed. "What are you doing, Miranda?"

She turned with a jump. "I was shaking out your clothes, milord, and this bracelet fell from the pocket." She slipped it back into the pouch, continuing almost in an undertone, "Judging by the reek of your clothes, you went a-whoring last even."

Gareth linked his arms behind his head. A smile quirked his mouth. "And what if I did?"

Miranda shrugged. "Nothing, I suppose."

Gareth's eyes gleamed with laughter. "Oh, so I've taken up with a prude, have I?"

Miranda didn't reply, but a slight flush warmed her cheeks. She wasn't a prude, and yet she felt very much like one at the moment.

Gareth took pity and changed the subject. "Bring the bracelet over here."

Miranda did so and he took the pouch from her, shaking the bracelet out into his palm. "Give me your wrist."

Miranda held out her hand and watched half mesmerized as he clasped the jewel around her thin wrist. She held it up to the light, and the emeralds danced deepest green and the pearls glowed softly against the rich gold. Again she felt that strange dread, that same little shiver of foreboding and familiarity. "It's very beautiful, but I don't like wearing it," she said, puzzled, fingering the charm, the pearl apple in the serpent's mouth.

Gareth frowned, reaching to take her wrist, to examine the bracelet himself. "You wear it well," he said, almost absently, and his eyes were distant, as if he were looking backward into some memory. Elena too had worn it well. Her wrist had been as thin as Miranda's, her fingers as long and slender. But where Elena's thinness had denoted fragility, Miranda's had a sinuous strength.

He remembered seeing the bracelet for the first time on the night of Elena's betrothal, when Francis had clasped it around her wrist. And he remembered how Charlotte later had coveted it. How shamelessly she had hinted to Elena, praising the bracelet, touching it, begging to be allowed to borrow it for an evening. He had scoured the streets of Paris and London for another such bracelet, but Charlotte had rejected with careless displeasure every substitute he had bought her.

"I don't like it," Miranda persisted, a note almost of desperation in her voice as she tried to unfasten the intricate clasp with her free hand.

"How strange," Gareth mused, unfastening it for her, holding it curled in the palm of his hand. "It's unique and very beautiful. You will have to wear it to play your part." What if he told her the truth? Told her that it would not be a part? For a moment he toyed with the idea. Would it make it easier for her or harder?

"I expect I'm just being fanciful," Miranda said. "Perhaps it's because I'm a little anxious about things."

It would come as too much of a shock, he decided. When she'd settled into this new life, then the truth would be easier for her to accept. The last thing he wanted was to frighten her off. And on the surface the story was so incredible, it would be more natural for her to disbelieve it and suspect some evil design, than embrace the truth.

"There's no cause to be anxious," he said bracingly. "Nothing will be asked of you that will not come easily. In a day or two, you'll be astonished that you could have worried."

Miranda did her best to believe him.